Augmented reality meeting table: a novel multi-user interface for architectural design

Immersive virtual environments have received widespread attention as providing possible replacements for the media and systems that designers traditionally use, as well as, more generally, in providing support for collaborative work. Relatively little attention has been given to date however to the problem of how to merge immersive virtual environments into real world work settings, and so to add to the media at the disposal of the designer and the design team, rather than to replace it. In this paper we report on a research project in which optical see-through augmented reality displays have been developed together with prototype decision support software for architectural and urban design. We suggest that a critical characteristic of multi user augmented reality is its ability to generate visualisations from a first person perspective in which the scale of rendition of the design model follows many of the conventions that designers are used to. Different scales of model appear to allow designers to focus on different aspects of the design under consideration. Augmenting the scene with simulations of pedestrian movement appears to assist both in scale recognition, and in moving from a first person to a third person understanding of the design. This research project is funded by the European Commission IST program (IST-2000-28559)

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

TiEV: The Tongji Intelligent Electric Vehicle in the Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge of China

TiEV is an autonomous driving platform implemented by Tongji University of China. The vehicle is drive-by-wire and is fully powered by electricity. We devised the software system of TiEV from scratch, which is capable of driving the vehicle autonomously in urban paths as well as on fast express roads. We describe our whole system, especially novel modules of probabilistic perception fusion, incremental mapping, the 1st and the 2nd planning and the overall safety concern. TiEV finished 2016 and 2017 Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge of China held at Changshu. We show our experiences on the development of autonomous vehicles and future trends

Physiological and psychological influence of multi-media in urban business districts

Understanding the complex interaction between human needs and physical facilities in public spaces remains a challenge given the knowledge gap in sustainable cities design and research. This study selected six typical urban business walkways to compare the physiological and psychological effects of a visual-audio environment dominated by visual media on visitors. A total of 180 visitors were randomly selected on 6 walkways to collect physiological and psychological data, and visual-audio environment data were collected in the matching location. Results show that visual media are the most attractive content type in the multi-media system of business walkways, and their attractiveness is evenly distributed among all visitors. This type of media also continuously extends the engagement of visitors during their visiting time. Specifically, visitors spend 71% of their time gazing at visual media that occupy only 31.4% of the walkway facade area. Visitors also stare at videos for a longer time compared with text and images. The different visual-audio interactions in the walkway have different effects on visitors’ eye movements. These visitors also have different evaluations between indoor and outdoor walkways. Specifically, visitors feel 64.4% more comfortable with the visual-audio environment in indoor walkways than in outdoor walkways. Visual-audio interaction has varying effects on visitors’ comfort. Combining images with sound elements generates positive feedback, and visitors feel comfortable when the video content matches the music. The types of music played in indoor and outdoor walkways lead to differences in the temporal variability of acoustic environments. The results of this work contribute to an optimized design of multi-media installed on different functional business district walkways, which in turn can enhance the attractiveness of urban business district areas and bring a comfortable experience to visitors

Neuroadaptive LBS: towards human-, context-, and task-adaptive mobile geographic information displays to support spatial learning for pedestrian navigation

Well-designed, neuroadaptive mobile geographic information displays (namGIDs) could improve the lives of millions of mobile citizens of the mostly urban information society who daily need to make time critical and societally relevant decisions while navigating. What are the basic perceptual and neurocognitive processes with which individuals make movement decisions when guided by human- and context-adaptive namGIDs? How can we study this in an ecologically valid way, also outside of the highly controlled laboratory? We report first ideas and results from our unique neuroadaptive research agenda that brings us closer to answering this fundamental empirical question. We present our first implemented methodological solutions of novel ambulatory evaluation methods to study and improve Location-based System (LBS) displays, by critical examination of how perceptual, neurocognitive, psychophysiological, and display design factors might influence decision-making and spatial learning in pedestrian mobility across broad ranges of users and mobility contexts

Diverse perceptions of smart spaces

This is the era of smart technology and of ‘smart’ as a meme, so we have run three workshops to examine the ‘smart’ meme and the exploitation of smart environments. The literature relating to smart spaces focuses primarily on technologies and their capabilities. Our three workshops demonstrated that we require a stronger user focus if we are advantageously to exploit spaces ascribed as smart: we examined the concept of smartness from a variety of perspectives, in collaboration with a broad range of contributors. We have prepared this monograph mainly to report on the third workshop, held at Bournemouth University in April 2012, but do also consider the lessons learned from all three. We conclude with a roadmap for a fourth (and final) workshop, which is intended to emphasise the overarching importance of the humans using the spac