Meetings and Meeting Modeling in Smart Environments

In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear

Towards virtual communities on the Web: Actors and audience

We report about ongoing research in a virtual reality environment where visitors can interact with agents that help them to obtain information, to perform certain transactions and to collaborate with them in order to get some tasks done. Our environment models a theatre in our hometown. We discuss attempts to let this environment evolve into a theatre community where we do not only have goal-directed visitors, but also visitors that that are not sure whether they want to buy or just want information or visitors who just want to look around. It is shown that we need a multi-user and multiagent environment to realize our goals. Since our environment models a theatre it is also interesting to investigate the roles of performers and audience in this environment. For that reason we discuss capabilities and personalities of agents. Some notes on the historical development of networked communities are included

Embodiment and embodied design

Picture this. A preverbal infant straddles the center of a seesaw. She gently tilts her weight back and forth from one side to the other, sensing as each side tips downward and then back up again. This child cannot articulate her observations in simple words, let alone in scientific jargon. Can she learn anything from this experience? If so, what is she learning, and what role might such learning play in her future interactions in the world? Of course, this is a nonverbal bodily experience, and any learning that occurs must be bodily, physical learning. But does this nonverbal bodily experience have anything to do with the sort of learning that takes place in schools - learning verbal and abstract concepts? In this chapter, we argue that the body has everything to do with learning, even learning of abstract concepts. Take mathematics, for example. Mathematical practice is thought to be about producing and manipulating arbitrary symbolic inscriptions that bear abstract, universal truisms untainted by human corporeality. Mathematics is thought to epitomize our species’ collective historical achievement of transcending and, perhaps, escaping the mundane, material condition of having a body governed by haphazard terrestrial circumstance. Surely mathematics is disembodied

Agent mediation and management of virtual communities: a redefinition of the traditional community concept

The paper explores the evolution of the concept of community in the light of computer mediated immersive virtual environments. The traditional concept of community has become strained in its attempts to capture the evolving virtual community. We believe the concept of the virtual community is of paramount importance and examine the extent to which this is being redefined to cater for it. We examine the management and mediation of such an environment and specifically the social process associated with the cohabited users. We advocate the use of multi-agent systems in delivering this functionalit

Cultural robotics : The culture of robotics and robotics in culture

Copyright 2013 Samani et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedIn this paper, we have investigated the concept of "Cultural Robotics" with regard to the evolution o social into cultural robots in the 21st Century. By defining the concept of culture, the potential development of culture between humans and robots is explored. Based on the cultural values of the robotics developers, and the learning ability of current robots, cultural attributes in this regard are in the process of being formed, which would define the new concept of cultural robotics. According to the importance of the embodiment of robots in the sense of presence, the influence of robots in communication culture is anticipated. The sustainability of robotics culture based on diversity for cultural communities for various acceptance modalities is explored in order to anticipate the creation of different attributes of culture between robot and humans in the futurePeer reviewe

From Physical to Virtual: Widening the Perspective on Multi-Agent Environments

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23850-0_9Since more than a decade, the environment is seen as a key element when analyzing, developing or deploying Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) applications. Especially, for the development of multi-agent platforms it has become a key concept, similarly to many application in the area of location-based, distributed systems. An emerging, prominent application area for MAS is related to Virtual Environments. The underlying technology has evolved in a way, that these applications have grown out of science fiction novels till research papers and even real applications. Even more, current technologies enable MAS to be key components of such virtual environments. In this paper, we widen the concept of the environment of a MAS to encompass new and mixed physical, virtual, simulated, etc. forms of environments. We analyze currently most interesting application domains based on three dimensions: the way different "realities" are mixed via the environment, the underlying natures of agents, the possible forms and sophistication of interactions. In addition to this characterization, we discuss how this widened concept of possible environments influences the support it can give for developing applications in the respective domains.Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Klugl, F.; Ricci, A.; Boissier, O. (2015). From Physical to Virtual: Widening the Perspective on Multi-Agent Environments. En Agent Environments for Multi-Agent Systems IV. 4th International Workshop, E4MAS 2014 - 10 Years Later, Paris, France, May 6, 2014. 133-146. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23850-0_9S133146Aggarwal, J.K., Ryoo, M.S.: Human activity analysis: a review. ACM Comput. 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Agents and Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, pp. 17–31. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2012)Ferber, J.: Multi-Agent Systems: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Addison Wesley Longman, Harlow (1999)Gelernter, D.: Mirror Worlds - or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox: How it Will Happen and What it Will Mean. Oxford University Press, New York (1992)Gibson, W.: Neuromancer. Ace, New York (1984)Klügl, F., Fehler, M., Herrler, R.: About the role of the environment in multi-agent simulations. In: Weyns, D., Van Parunak, H.D., Michel, F. (eds.) E4MAS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3374, pp. 127–149. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)Krueger, M.: Artificial Reality II. Addison-Wesley, New York (1991)Luck, M., Aylett, R.: Applying artificial intelligence to virtual reality: intelligent virtual environments. Appl. Artif. Intell. 14(1), 3–32 (2000)Dorigo, M., Floreano, D., Gambardella, L.M., et al.: Swarmanoid: a novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms. IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 20(4), 60–71 (2013)Milgram, P., Kishino, A.F.: Taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. E77–D(12), 1321–1329 (1994)Olsson, T., Salo, M.: Online user survey on current mobile augmented reality applications. In: Proceedings of the 2011 10th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR 2011, pp. 75–84. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA (2011)Saunier, J., Balbo, F., Pinson, S.: A formal model of communication and context awareness in multiagent systems. J. Logic Lang. Inform. 23(2), 219–247 (2014)Stephenson, N.: Snow Crash. Bantam Books, New York (1992)Tummolini, L., Castelfranchi, C.: Trace signals: the meanings of stigmergy. In: Weyns, D., Van Parunak, H.D., Michel, F. (eds.) E4MAS 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4389, pp. 141–156. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Weyns, D., Omicini, A., Odell, J.: Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems. Auton. Agent. Multi-Agent Syst. 14(1), 5–30 (2007)Weyns, D., Schelfthout, K., Holvoet, T., Lefever, T.: Decentralized control of e’gv transportation systems. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 67–74. ACM (2005)Weyns, D., Schumacher, M., Ricci, A., Viroli, M., Holvoet, T.: Environments in multiagent systems. Knowl. Eng. Rev. 20(2), 127–141 (2005

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented