Towards transparent telepresence

It is proposed that the concept of transparent telepresence can be closely approached through high fidelity technological mediation. It is argued that the matching of the system capabilities to those of the human user will yield a strong sense of immersion and presence at a remote site. Some applications of such a system are noted. The concept is explained and critical system elements are described together with an overview of some of the necessary system specifications

“Robots cannot drink coffee or real ale”:the undeniable spark of face-to-face teaching moments in digital learning journeys

The purpose of this study is to evaluate student perceptions of a yearly workshop, held as part of the Master’s in Industrial Project Management programme at the University of Birmingham. This study employed action research methods to understand how the use of technology to deliver fully online and hybrid teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020/21) and its immediate aftermath (2022) impacted on student experience. A mix of technological tools was used, most notably the virtual world environment Virbela, MS Teams, the digital collaboration platform Miro, and telepresence robots. The data indicates that students generally preferred the hybrid teaching mode, which combines face-to-face interactions with remote learning. While fully online teaching offered higher flexibility in a time of crisis, the hybrid approach optimised both digital resources and in-person engagement, leading to enhanced student satisfaction, particularly for the social aspects of learning and community building.<br/

“Robots cannot drink coffee or real ale”:the undeniable spark of face-to-face teaching moments in digital learning journeys

The purpose of this study is to evaluate student perceptions of a yearly workshop, held as part of the Master’s in Industrial Project Management programme at the University of Birmingham. This study employed action research methods to understand how the use of technology to deliver fully online and hybrid teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020/21) and its immediate aftermath (2022) impacted on student experience. A mix of technological tools was used, most notably the virtual world environment Virbela, MS Teams, the digital collaboration platform Miro, and telepresence robots. The data indicates that students generally preferred the hybrid teaching mode, which combines face-to-face interactions with remote learning. While fully online teaching offered higher flexibility in a time of crisis, the hybrid approach optimised both digital resources and in-person engagement, leading to enhanced student satisfaction, particularly for the social aspects of learning and community building.<br/

Review of the Usage of Telepresence Robots in Education

The usage of telepresence robots can have a huge positive impact on education. They can provide remote access to the classrooms. This would be really helpful for students who are absent from school. It was especially noticeable during this period of the Covid-19 pandemic. This technology can complement the online teaching with displaying classroom boards, performing laboratory exercises that require better view and movement, and so on. Here, we show the usage of telepresence robots in education and cases when robots can be used for remote learning. The main goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of studies related to the application of telepresence robots in education in the last 4 years

IQ-Services: Network-Aware Middleware for Interactive Large-Data Applications

IQ-Services are application-specific, resource-aware code modules executed by data transport middleware. They constitute a 'thin' layer between application components and the underlying computational and communication resources that implements the data manipulations necessary to permit wide-area collaborations to proceed smoothly, despite dynamic resource variations. IQ-Services interact with the application and resource layers via dynamic performance attributes, and end-to-end implementations of such attributes also permit clients to interact with data providers. Joint middleware/resource and provider/consumer interactions implement a cooperative approach to data management for the large-data applications targeted by our research. Experimental results in this paper demonstrate substantial performance improvements attained by coordinating network-level with service-level adaptations of the data being transported and by permitting end users to dynamically deploy and use application-specific services for manipulating data in ways suitable for their current needs

Simbologia em realidade aumentada

Tese de mestrado em Engenharia Informática, apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2011A representação de símbolos gráficos para transmitir informação levanta questões cognitivas que devem ser tidas em conta para obter resultados compreensíveis em termos de visualização. Quando estes símbolos são representados sobre imagens reais, como acontece na Realidade Aumentada, estas questões tornam-se mais agudas. Sobretudo quando a visualização ocorre em ambientes exteriores: não existindo controlo sobre as características da imagem real do fundo, é necessário ir adaptando dinamicamente os símbolos gráficos que vão sendo sobrepostos. A Realidade Aumentada é uma área de estudo que surgiu no final da década de 1960, contudo, só muito recentemente tem vindo a ser aplicada em larga escala. Tal facto deve-se ao aparecimento também recente, de dispositivos móveis dotados de capacidades que suportam esta tecnologia e têm custos acessíveis ao público em geral. Por seu turno, o estudo de aspectos cognitivos relativos ao uso da cor e de símbolos tem sido tema de variados estudos. No entanto, não há ainda estudos feitos sobre a utilização de símbolos gráficos sobre imagens reais, estáticas ou em movimento, de modo a analisar como melhorar a sua visibilidade sobre o fundo real. O objectivo deste estudo foi, depois da análise do trabalho desenvolvido nesta área, implementar um protótipo que permite criar vários tipos de adaptações em símbolos gráficos e depois testar estas soluções com utilizadores. Com os resultados dos testes, tiraram-se ilações sobre as adaptações mais adequadas para desenvolver aplicações de Realidade Aumentada que vão ao encontro da satisfação do utilizador final.The representation of graphical symbols to convey information raises cognitive issues that must be taken into account to obtain comprehensible results in terms of visualization. When these symbols are drawn over real images, as in Augmented Reality, these issues become more acute. Especially when visualization occurs in outdoor environments: with the absence of control over the characteristics of the real background image, it is necessary to dynamically adapt the graphical symbols that are being overlaid. Augmented Reality is a research area that emerged in the end of the 1960s, however, only recently has been widely applied. This is due to the recent appearance of mobile devices, equipped with capabilities that support this technology, and affordable to the general public. The study of cognition aspects related to the use of color and symbols has been the subject of several studies. However, there are still no studies about the use of graphic symbols over real images, still or in motion, to examine how to improve their visibility over the background. The purpose of this study was, after studying the work developed in this area, the implementation of a prototype that allows the creation of different approaches to symbol adaptation, and then test them, with users. Taking into account the results of the tests, it was possible to identify the most important characteristics that best fulfill the needs of the users of Augmented Reality applications

A Meta-Study and Content Analysis of Science Fiction in Computer Science Research

Ph.D

Telepresence - the technology and its economic and social implications

Telepresence is the experience of being present at a real world location remote from one's own immediate physical environment. This is much more than simple teleconferencing since it attempts to allow the user to feel immersed in the remote environment and to be able, through teleoperation, to manipulate or control remote events. By using the Strathclyde Transparent Telepresence Research Group and the Strathclyde Telepresence System as examples this paper considers the organisation and technology that makes a telepresence system possible. It examines the current limitations of such systems and their eventual potential. The typical applications, present and future, of telepresence systems are noted before going on to discuss the economic and social implications of these applications, The paper is intended to stimulate further thought on possible future advantages and disadvantages of this emerging technology