Semantics of immersive web through its architectural structure and graphic primitives

Currently, practices and tools for computer-aided three-dimensional design, do not allow the semantic description of objects constructed in some cases specified notations as handling layers, or labeling of each development itself. The lack of a standard for the description of the elements represents a major drawback for using advanced three-dimensional environments such as the automation of search and construction processes that require semantic knowledge of its elements. This project proposes the development the semantic composition from the hierarchy of three-dimensional visualization of graphics primitives used to construct three-dimensional objects, taking into account the geometric composition architecture of standard 19775-1 of the International Electrotechnical Commission of the International Organization for Standardization For the development of semantic composition use the methodology methontology proposed by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, because it allows the construction of ontologies about specific domains, limiting the domain by defining classes and subclasses, relationships and the generation of instances a framework for resource description on web ontology language

Partial differential equations for function based geometry modelling within visual cyberworlds

We propose the use of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) for shape modelling within visual cyberworlds. PDEs, especially those that are elliptic in nature, enable surface modelling to be defined as boundary-value problems. Here we show how the PDE based on the Biharmonic equation subject to suitable boundary conditions can be used for shape modelling within visual cyberworlds. We discuss an analytic solution formulation for the Biharmonic equation which allows us to define a function based geometry whereby the resulting geometry can be visualised efficiently at arbitrary levels of shape resolutions. In particular, we discuss how function based PDE surfaces can be readily integrated within VRML and X3D environment

An approach to convert vertex-based 3D representations to combinatorial B-splines for real-time visual collaboration

Scientific Visualization and Virtual Reality are increasingly being used for the design of complex systems. These technologies offer powerful capabilities to make decisions that are cost and time effective. The next logical extension is to collaborate with these visual models in real-time, where parts of a design team are geographically separated. Specifically, visual collaboration enables ideas and proposed changes to be discussed exactly on a virtual model of a product. However, high-end visualization hardware and Internet technologies impede widespread use of real-time visual collaboration due to the large amount of data from which these representations are created. These data are typically in the form of 3D vertex-based models, which offer a high degree of realism when displayed, but at a price of storage, rendering speeds and processing efficiency. The more realistic the representation desired, the larger the number of vertices required and hence the higher the file size. In this paper, we propose a new data modeling and handling technique where traditional vertex-based models are converted into combinatorial B-Spline based wire-frame models that allow realtime visual collaboration in the context of typical virtual reality systems. Using appropriate filtering methods, parametric equations are computed for each curved segment in a vertexbased representation and bundled together with sampled linear segments of the model. The computed parametric equation based models occupy only a fraction of the size when compared to the original vertex-based models. These lightweight models can easily be transmitted over the Internet, in real-time, for viewing with a platform independent visual client program. The proposed methods were tested on several example data files to prove the method’s effectiveness

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

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

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

3D Visualization Modules for Chemical Engineering – A Web-Based Approach Using Java and OpenGL

The main objective of this work is to implement web-based educational modules for chemical engineering students. Phase behavior is a topic with which the students seem to struggle with, particularly for mixtures, where a 2-D representation of the phase diagram falls far short of the understanding a 3-D model can provide. Using the platform-independence of Java and the graphics capability of OpenGL, three phase diagram Java applets have been developed. Users can view these web-based 3D applets by installing a plug-in. These modules provide users with an ability to rotate the 3D models, slice through them, zoom into them and view their various 2D projections. Also, a molecular simulation applet for measuring chemical potential of binary mixtures has been developed, using a Java-based molecular simulation application-programming interface (API). First, the thesis presents a brief overview of phase diagrams and explains why modeling them using computer graphics is useful. While visualization involves the merging of data with the display of geometric objects through computer graphics, it is important to study the software issues involved in web-based visualization. The paper explains the visualization framework by describing the visualization pipeline and then using it as a guideline for the development of the modules. Next, the paper describes the development of the molecular simulation applet using a molecular simulation API - Etomica. The Java applet provides for dynamic modification and interrogation of the simulation, while it is in progress, which enables students to see directly the effect of changing state conditions or molecular interactions on the behavior of the molecules and on the outcome of the simulation. It is hoped that by using these web-based 3D phase diagrams the chemical engineering students would gain a better understanding of the complicated 3D models, making this package a useful instructional aid. It is also hoped that the molecular simulation applet would be an effective tool to help students understand molecular simulations

Visualizing Information on a Sphere

We describe a method for the visualization of information units on spherical domains which is employed in the banking industry for risk analysis, stock prediction and other tasks. The system is based on a quantification of the similarity of related objects that governs the parameters of a mass-spring system. Unlike existing approaches we initialize all information units onto the inner surface of two concentric spheres and attach them with springs to the outer sphere. Since the spring stiffnesses correspond to the computed similarity measures, the system converges into an energy minimum which reveals multidimensional relations and adjacencies in terms of spatial neighborhoods. Depending on the application scenario our approach supports different topological arrangements of related objects. In order to cope with large data sets we propose a blobby clustering mechanism that enables encapsulation of similar objects by implicit shapes. In addition, we implemented various interaction techniques allowing semantic analysis of the underlying data sets. Our prototype system IVORY is written in JAVA, and its versatility is illustrated by an example from financial service providers

Compression of 3D models with NURBS

With recent progress in computing, algorithmics and telecommunications, 3D models are increasingly used in various multimedia applications. Examples include visualization, gaming, entertainment and virtual reality. In the multimedia domain 3D models have been traditionally represented as polygonal meshes. This piecewise planar representation can be thought of as the analogy of bitmap images for 3D surfaces. As bitmap images, they enjoy great flexibility and are particularly well suited to describing information captured from the real world, through, for instance, scanning processes. They suffer, however, from the same shortcomings, namely limited resolution and large storage size. The compression of polygonal meshes has been a very active field of research in the last decade and rather efficient compression algorithms have been proposed in the literature that greatly mitigate the high storage costs. However, such a low level description of a 3D shape has a bounded performance. More efficient compression should be reachable through the use of higher level primitives. This idea has been explored to a great extent in the context of model based coding of visual information. In such an approach, when compressing the visual information a higher level representation (e.g., 3D model of a talking head) is obtained through analysis methods. This can be seen as an inverse projection problem. Once this task is fullled, the resulting parameters of the model are coded instead of the original information. It is believed that if the analysis module is efficient enough, the total cost of coding (in a rate distortion sense) will be greatly reduced. The relatively poor performance and high complexity of currently available analysis methods (except for specific cases where a priori knowledge about the nature of the objects is available), has refrained a large deployment of coding techniques based on such an approach. Progress in computer graphics has however changed this situation. In fact, nowadays, an increasing number of pictures, video and 3D content are generated by synthesis processing rather than coming from a capture device such as a camera or a scanner. This means that the underlying model in the synthesis stage can be used for their efficient coding without the need for a complex analysis module. In other words it would be a mistake to attempt to compress a low level description (e.g., a polygonal mesh) when a higher level one is available from the synthesis process (e.g., a parametric surface). This is, however, what is usually done in the multimedia domain, where higher level 3D model descriptions are converted to polygonal meshes, if anything by the lack of standard coded formats for the former. On a parallel but related path, the way we consume audio-visual information is changing. As opposed to recent past and a large part of today's applications, interactivity is becoming a key element in the way we consume information. In the context of interest in this dissertation, this means that when coding visual information (an image or a video for instance), previously obvious considerations such as decision on sampling parameters are not so obvious anymore. In fact, as in an interactive environment the effective display resolution can be controlled by the user through zooming, there is no clear optimal setting for the sampling period. This means that because of interactivity, the representation used to code the scene should allow the display of objects in a variety of resolutions, and ideally up to infinity. One way to resolve this problem would be by extensive over-sampling. But this approach is unrealistic and too expensive to implement in many situations. The alternative would be to use a resolution independent representation. In the realm of 3D modeling, such representations are usually available when the models are created by an artist on a computer. The scope of this dissertation is precisely the compression of 3D models in higher level forms. The direct coding in such a form should yield improved rate-distortion performance while providing a large degree of resolution independence. There has not been, so far, any major attempt to efficiently compress these representations, such as parametric surfaces. This thesis proposes a solution to overcome this gap. A variety of higher level 3D representations exist, of which parametric surfaces are a popular choice among designers. Within parametric surfaces, Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) enjoy great popularity as a wide range of NURBS based modeling tools are readily available. Recently, NURBS has been included in the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) and its next generation descendant eXtensible 3D (X3D). The nice properties of NURBS and their widespread use has lead us to choose them as the form we use for the coded representation. The primary goal of this dissertation is the definition of a system for coding 3D NURBS models with guaranteed distortion. The basis of the system is entropy coded differential pulse coded modulation (DPCM). In the case of NURBS, guaranteeing the distortion is not trivial, as some of its parameters (e.g., knots) have a complicated influence on the overall surface distortion. To this end, a detailed distortion analysis is performed. In particular, previously unknown relations between the distortion of knots and the resulting surface distortion are demonstrated. Compression efficiency is pursued at every stage and simple yet efficient entropy coder realizations are defined. The special case of degenerate and closed surfaces with duplicate control points is addressed and an efficient yet simple coding is proposed to compress the duplicate relationships. Encoder aspects are also analyzed. Optimal predictors are found that perform well across a wide class of models. Simplification techniques are also considered for improved compression efficiency at negligible distortion cost. Transmission over error prone channels is also considered and an error resilient extension defined. The data stream is partitioned by independently coding small groups of surfaces and inserting the necessary resynchronization markers. Simple strategies for achieving the desired level of protection are proposed. The same extension also serves the purpose of random access and on-the-fly reordering of the data stream

Uma proposta de sistematização do processo de planejamento de trajetórias para o desenvolvimento da tarefas de robôs manipuladores

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Mecânica.O processo de planejamento de trajetórias é uma atividade comum em operações de fabricação, que incluem soldagem, pintura, fresamento, entre outras, tanto com o uso de equipamentos de controle de operações por comando numérico (NC) quanto com robôs manipuladores. Este trabalho propõe um estudo do processo de planejamento de trajetórias para tarefas em ambientes robóticos. Para o caso em que a ferramenta descreve uma trajetória sobre a superfície, o processo de planejamento de trajetórias envolve duas etapas principais: a descrição da superfície de interesse e a definição precisa da tarefa através do cálculo da trajetória sobre a superfície