Ontology of a scene based on Java 3D architecture

The present article seeks to make an approach to the class hierarchy of a scene built with the architecture Java 3D, to develop an ontology of a scene as from the semantic essential components for the semantic structuring of the Web3D. Java was selected because the language recommended by the W3C Consortium for the Development of the Web3D oriented applications as from X3D standard is Xj3D which compositionof their Schemas is based the architecture of Java3D In first instance identifies the domain and scope of the ontology, defining classes and subclasses that comprise from Java3D architecture and the essential elements of a scene, as its point of origin, the field of rotation, translation The limitation of the scene and the definition of shaders, then define the slots that are declared in RDF as a framework for describing the properties of the classes established from identifying the domain and range of each class, then develops composition of the OWL ontology on SWOOP Finally, be perform instantiations of the ontology building for a Iconosphere object as from class expressions defined

Towards Interactive Geodata Analysis through a Combination of Domain-Specific Languages and 3D Geo Applications in a Web Portal Environment

Urban planning processes affect a wide range of stakeholders including decision makers, urban planners, business companies as well as citizens. ICT-enabled tools supporting urban planning are considered key to successful and sustainable urban management. Based on previous work in the areas of web-based participation tools for urban planning, rule-based geospatial processing as well as 3D virtual reality applications we present a tool that supports experts from municipalities in planning and decision making but also provides a way for the public to engage in urban planning processes. The main contribution of this work is in the combination of 3D visualization and interaction components with a new ontology-driven rule editor based on domain-specific languages. The 3D visualization, on the one hand, enables stakeholders to present and discuss urban plans. On the other hand, the rule editor particularly targets expert users who need to perform spatial analyses on urban data or want to configure the 3D scene according to custom rules. Compared to previous approaches we propose a portable and interactive solution. Our tool is web-based and uses HTML5 technology making it accessible by a broad audience

TREE-D-SEEK: A Framework for Retrieving Three-Dimensional Scenes

In this dissertation, a strategy and framework for retrieving 3D scenes is proposed. The strategy is to retrieve 3D scenes based on a unified approach for indexing content from disparate information sources and information levels. The TREE-D-SEEK framework implements the proposed strategy for retrieving 3D scenes and is capable of indexing content from a variety of corpora at distinct information levels. A semantic annotation model for indexing 3D scenes in the TREE-D-SEEK framework is also proposed. The semantic annotation model is based on an ontology for rapid prototyping of 3D virtual worlds. With ongoing improvements in computer hardware and 3D technology, the cost associated with the acquisition, production and deployment of 3D scenes is decreasing. As a consequence, there is a need for efficient 3D retrieval systems for the increasing number of 3D scenes in corpora. An efficient 3D retrieval system provides several benefits such as enhanced sharing and reuse of 3D scenes and 3D content. Existing 3D retrieval systems are closed systems and provide search solutions based on a predefined set of indexing and matching algorithms Existing 3D search systems and search solutions cannot be customized for specific requirements, type of information source and information level. In this research, TREE-D-SEEK—an open, extensible framework for retrieving 3D scenes—is proposed. The TREE-D-SEEK framework is capable of retrieving 3D scenes based on indexing low level content to high-level semantic metadata. The TREE-D-SEEK framework is discussed from a software architecture perspective. The architecture is based on a common process flow derived from indexing disparate information sources. Several indexing and matching algorithms are implemented. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the usability and performance of the framework. Retrieval performance of the framework is evaluated using benchmarks and manually collected corpora. A generic, semantic annotation model is proposed for indexing a 3D scene. The primary objective of using the semantic annotation model in the TREE-D-SEEK framework is to improve retrieval relevance and to support richer queries within a 3D scene. The semantic annotation model is driven by an ontology. The ontology is derived from a 3D rapid prototyping framework. The TREE-D-SEEK framework supports querying by example, keyword based and semantic annotation based query types for retrieving 3D scenes

Designing Guided User Tasks in VR Embodied Experiences

International audienceVirtual reality (VR) offers extraordinary opportunities in user behavior research to study and observe how people interact in immersive 3D environments. A major challenge of designing these 3D experiences and user tasks, however, lies in bridging the inter-relational gaps of perception between the designer, the user, and the 3D scene. Based on Paul Dourish’s theory of embodiment, these gaps of perception are: ontology between the scene representation and the user and designer perception, intersubjectivity from designer to user in task communication, and intentionality from the user’s intentions to the designer’s interpretations.We present the GUsT-3D framework for designing Guided User Tasks in embodied VR experiences, i.e., tasks that require the user to carry out a series of interactions guided by the constraints of the 3D scene. GUsT-3D is implemented as a set of tools that support a 4-step workflow to (1) annotate entities in the scene with names, navigation, and interaction possibilities, (2) define user tasks with interactive and timing constraints, (3) manage scene changes, task progress, and user behavior logging in real-time, and (4) conduct post-scenario analysis through spatio-temporal queries using ontology definitions. To illustrate the diverse possibilities enabled by our framework, we present two case studies with an indoor scene and an outdoor scene, and conducted a formative evaluation involving 6 expert interviews to assess the framework and the implemented workflow. Analysis of the responses show that the GUsT-3D framework fits well into a designer’s creative process, providing a necessary workflow to create, manage, and understand VR embodied experiences of target users

Application-driven visual computing towards industry 4.0 2018

245 p.La Tesis recoge contribuciones en tres campos: 1. Agentes Virtuales Interactivos: autónomos, modulares, escalables, ubicuos y atractivos para el usuario. Estos IVA pueden interactuar con los usuarios de manera natural.2. Entornos de RV/RA Inmersivos: RV en la planificación de la producción, el diseño de producto, la simulación de procesos, pruebas y verificación. El Operario Virtual muestra cómo la RV y los Co-bots pueden trabajar en un entorno seguro. En el Operario Aumentado la RA muestra información relevante al trabajador de una manera no intrusiva. 3. Gestión Interactiva de Modelos 3D: gestión online y visualización de modelos CAD multimedia, mediante conversión automática de modelos CAD a la Web. La tecnología Web3D permite la visualización e interacción de estos modelos en dispositivos móviles de baja potencia.Además, estas contribuciones han permitido analizar los desafíos presentados por Industry 4.0. La tesis ha contribuido a proporcionar una prueba de concepto para algunos de esos desafíos: en factores humanos, simulación, visualización e integración de modelos

Aspectus: A flexible collaboration tool for multimodal and multiscalar 3D data exploitation.

High density remote survey technologies have become widespread practices. In recent years, we have seen a tenfold increase in volume of digital data acquired. Beyond this sheer amount of data, multimodal three-dimensional data exploitation has become another common challenge for specialists. The Aspectus project aims to ease the access to complex three-dimensional data and to promote collaborative work and remote expert assessment. Thus, we can get past the problem of distance and availability of the “object of expertise”, ranging from cultural heritage sites to artefacts. By extension, it enables us to circumvent the ever-present problem of destruction. Aspectus takes advantage of available open source solutions to produce a flexible web-based visualization and collaboration tool. After an overview of the theoretical framework and its technical implementation, we will discuss a practical application as part of the “Bibracte Numérique” project

Documenting, Interpreting, Publishing, and Reusing : Linking archaeological reports and excavation archives in the virtual space

This PhD thesis examines how application of 3D visualization and related digital analytical tools is having a transformative impact on archaeological practice via improvement of visual-spatial thinking and the strengthening of conceptual understanding. However, the deployment of these new digital methods is essentially still at an experimental stage. Therefore, the thesis undertakes a critical evaluation of current progress, identifying both shortcomings and opportunities. It argues that more work is needed to systematically identify and resolve current operational challenges in order to create improved digital frameworks that can strengthen future performance across the wider discipline.The PhD research is based on four “parallel experiments” designed to facilitate mutual enrichment and on-going refinement. Each individual experiment generated research articles, which investigate how particular 3D and digital methods can be adapted to diverse kinds of archaeological sites and features,each with unique characteristics. The articles demonstrate how particular methods can be deployed to constantly refine and improve documentation procedures, and to review and adjust interpretation during the excavation process. In total, the thesis produced five research articles and three new web-based publishing systems.Overall, the thesis demonstrates that application, proactive evaluation and constant improvement of new 3D visualization and digital analytical tools will play an increasingly significant role in strengthening and better integrating future archaeological methods and practice. The research also generates original insights and new digital platforms that together underline the importance of applying these new digital tools across the wider archaeological discipline. Finally, the thesis cautions that digital innovation needs to be anchored in an "open science" culture, including strong ethical frameworks and commitment to FAIR principles (i.e. Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) of data archiving as a key component of research design and wider societal engagement

Semantics for virtual humans

Population of Virtual Worlds with Virtual Humans is increasing rapidly by people who want to create a virtual life parallel to the real one (i.e. Second Life). The evolution of technology is smoothly providing the necessary elements to increase realism within these virtual worlds by creating believable Virtual Humans. However, creating the amount of resources needed to succeed this believability is a difficult task, mainly because of the complexity of the creation process of Virtual Humans. Even though there are many existing available resources, their reusability is difficult because there is not enough information provided to evaluate if a model contains the desired characteristics to be reused. Additionally, the knowledge involved in the creation of Virtual Humans is not well known, nor well disseminated. There are several different creation techniques, different software components, and several processes to carry out before having a Virtual Human capable of populating a virtual environment. The creation of Virtual Humans involves: a geometrical representation with an internal control structure, the motion synthesis with different animation techniques, higher level controllers and descriptors to simulate human-like behavior such individuality, cognition, interaction capabilities, etc. All these processes require the expertise from different fields of knowledge such as mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, design, etc. Furthermore, there is neither common framework nor common understanding of how elements involved in the creation, development, and interaction of Virtual Humans features are done. Therefore, there is a need for describing (1) existing resources, (2) Virtual Human's composition and features, (3) a creation pipeline and (4) the different levels/fields of knowledge comprehended. This thesis presents an explicit representation of the Virtual Humans and their features to provide a conceptual framework that will interest to all people involved in the creation and development of these characters. This dissertation focuses in a semantic description of Virtual Humans. The creation of a semantic description involves gathering related knowledge, agreement among experts in the definition of concepts, validation of the ontology design, etc. In this dissertation all these procedures are presented, and an Ontology for Virtual Humans is described in detail together with the validations that conducted to the resulted ontology. The goal of creating such ontology is to promote reusability of existing resources; to create a shared knowledge of the creation and composition of Virtual Humans; and to support new research of the fields involved in the development of believable Virtual Humans and virtual environments. Finally, this thesis presents several developments that aim to demonstrate the ontology usability and reusability. These developments serve particularly to support the research on specialized knowledge of Virtual Humans, the population of virtual environments, and improve the believability of these characters

Fachlich erweiterbare 3D-Stadtmodelle – Management, Visualisierung und Interaktion

Domain-extendable semantic 3D city models are complex mappings and inventories of the urban environment which can be utilized as an integrative information backbone to facilitate a range of application fields like urban planning, environmental simulations, disaster management, and energy assessment. Today, more and more countries and cities worldwide are creating their own 3D city models based on the CityGML specification which is an international standard issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to provide an open data model and XML-based format for describing the relevant urban objects with regards to their 3D geometry, topology, semantics, and appearance. It especially provides a flexible and systematic extension mechanism called “Application Domain Extension (ADE)” which allows third parties to dynamically extend the existing CityGML definitions with additional information models from different application domains for representing the extended or newly introduced geographic object types within a common framework. However, due to the consequent large size and high model complexity, the practical utilization of country-wide CityGML datasets has posed a tremendous challenge regarding the setup of an extensive application system to support the efficient data storage, analysis, management, interaction, and visualization. These requirements have been partly solved by the existing free 3D geo-database solution called ‘3D City Database (3DCityDB)’ which offers a rich set of functionalities for dealing with standard CityGML data models, but lacked the support for CityGML ADEs. The key motivation of this thesis is to develop a reliable approach for extending the existing database solution to support the efficient management, visualization, and interaction of large geospatial data elements of arbitrary CityGML ADEs. Emphasis is first placed on answering the question of how to dynamically extend the relational database schema by parsing and interpreting the XML schema files of the ADE and dynamically create new database tables accordingly. Based on a comprehensive survey of the related work, a new graph-based framework has been proposed which uses typed and attributed graphs for semantically representing the object-oriented data models of CityGML ADEs and utilizes graph transformation systems to automatically generate compact table structures extending the 3DCityDB. The transformation process is performed by applying a series of fine-grained graph transformation rules which allow users to declaratively describe the complex mapping rules including the optimization concepts that are employed in the development of the 3DCityDB database schema. The second major contribution of this thesis is the development of a new multi-level system which can serve as a complete and integrative platform for facilitating the various analysis, simulation, and modification operations on the complex-structured 3D city models based on CityGML and 3DCityDB. It introduces an additional application level based on a so-called ‘app-concept’ that allows for constructing a light-weight web application to reach a good balance between the high data model complexity and the specific application requirements of the end users. Each application can be easily built on top of a developed 3D web client whose functionalities go beyond the efficient 3D geo-visualization and interactive exploration, and also allows for performing collaborative modifications and analysis of 3D city models by taking advantage of the Cloud Computing technology. This multi-level system along with the extended 3DCityDB have been successfully utilized and evaluated by many practical projects.Fachlich erweiterbare semantische 3D-Stadtmodelle sind komplexe Abbildungen und Datenbestände der städtischen Umgebung, die als ein integratives Informationsrückgrat genutzt werden können, um eine Reihe von Anwendungsfeldern wie z. B. Stadtplanung, Umweltsimulationen, Katastrophenmanagement und Energiebewertung zu ermöglichen. Heute schaffen immer mehr Länder und Städte weltweit ihre eigenen 3D-Stadtmodelle auf Basis des internationalen Standards CityGML des Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), um ein offenes Datenmodell und ein XML-basiertes Format zur Beschreibung der relevanten Stadtobjekte in Bezug auf ihre 3D-Geometrien, Topologien, Semantik und Erscheinungen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Es bietet insbesondere einen flexiblen und systematischen Erweiterungsmechanismus namens „Application Domain Extension“ (ADE), der es Dritten ermöglicht, die bestehenden CityGML-Definitionen mit zusätzlichen Informationsmodellen aus verschiedenen Anwendungsdomänen dynamisch zu erweitern, um die erweiterten oder neu eingeführten Stadtobjekt-Typen innerhalb eines gemeinsamen Framework zu repräsentieren. Aufgrund der konsequent großen Datenmenge und hohen Modellkomplexität bei der praktischen Nutzung der landesweiten CityGML-Datensätze wurden jedoch enorme Anforderungen an den Aufbau eines umfangreichen Anwendungssystems zur Unterstützung der effizienten Speicherung, Analyse, Verwaltung, Interaktion und Visualisierung der Daten gestellt. Die bestehende kostenlose 3D-Geodatenbank-Lösung „3D City Database“ (3DCityDB) entsprach bereits teilweise diesen Anforderungen, indem sie zwar eine umfangreiche Funktionalität für den Umgang mit den Standard-CityGML-Datenmodellen, jedoch keine Unterstützung für CityGML-ADEs bietet. Die Schlüsselmotivation für diese Arbeit ist es, einen zuverlässigen Ansatz zur Erweiterung der bestehenden Datenbanklösung zu entwickeln, um das effiziente Management, die Visualisierung und Interaktion großer Datensätze beliebiger CityGML-ADEs zu unterstützen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt zunächst auf der Beantwortung der Schlüsselfrage, wie man das relationale Datenbankschema dynamisch erweitern kann, indem die XML-Schemadateien der ADE analysiert und interpretiert und anschließend dem entsprechende neue Datenbanktabellen erzeugt werden. Auf Grundlage einer umfassenden Studie verwandter Arbeiten wurde ein neues graphbasiertes Framework entwickelt, das die typisierten und attributierten Graphen zur semantischen Darstellung der objektorientierten Datenmodelle von CityGML-ADEs verwendet und anschließend Graphersetzungssysteme nutzt, um eine kompakte Tabellenstruktur zur Erweiterung der 3DCityDB zu generieren. Der Transformationsprozess wird durch die Anwendung einer Reihe feingranularer Graphersetzungsregeln durchgeführt, die es Benutzern ermöglicht, die komplexen Mapping-Regeln einschließlich der Optimierungskonzepte aus der Entwicklung des 3DCityDB-Datenbankschemas deklarativ zu formalisieren. Der zweite wesentliche Beitrag dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung eines neuen mehrstufigen Systemkonzepts, das auf CityGML und 3DCityDB basiert und gleichzeitig als eine komplette und integrative Plattform zur Erleichterung der Analyse, Simulationen und Modifikationen der komplex strukturierten 3D-Stadtmodelle dienen kann. Das Systemkonzept enthält eine zusätzliche Anwendungsebene, die auf einem sogenannten „App-Konzept“ basiert, das es ermöglicht, eine leichtgewichtige Applikation bereitzustellen, die eine gute Balance zwischen der hohen Modellkomplexität und den spezifischen Anwendungsanforderungen der Endbenutzer erreicht. Jede Applikation lässt sich ganz einfach mittels eines bereits entwickelten 3D-Webclients aufbauen, dessen Funktionalitäten über die effiziente 3D-Geo-Visualisierung und interaktive Exploration hinausgehen und auch die Durchführung kollaborativer Modifikationen und Analysen von 3D-Stadtmodellen mit Hilfe von der Cloud-Computing-Technologie ermöglichen. Dieses mehrstufige System zusammen mit dem erweiterten 3DCityDB wurde erfolgreich in vielen praktischen Projekten genutzt und bewertet