Walking with virtual humans : understanding human response to virtual humanoids' appearance and behaviour while navigating in immersive VR

In this thesis, we present a set of studies whose results have allowed us to analyze how to improve the realism, navigation, and behaviour of the avatars in an immersive virtual reality environment. In our simulations, participants must perform a series of tasks and we have analyzed perceptual and behavioural data. The results of the studies have allowed us to deduce what improvements are needed to be incorporated to the original simulations, in order to enhance the perception of realism, the navigation technique, the rendering of the avatars, their behaviour or their animations. The most reliable technique for simulating avatars’ behaviour in a virtual reality environment should be based on the study of how humans behave within the environment. For this purpose, it is necessary to build virtual environments where participants can navigate safely and comfortably with a proper metaphor and, if the environment is populated with avatars, simulate their behaviour accurately. All these aspects together will make the participants behave in a way that is closer to how they would behave in the real world. Besides, the integration of these concepts could provide an ideal platform to develop different types of applications with and without collaborative virtual reality such as emergency simulations, teaching, architecture, or designing. In the first contribution of this thesis, we carried out an experiment to study human decision making during an evacuation. We were interested to evaluate to what extent the behaviour of a virtual crowd can affect individuals' decisions. From the second contribution, in which we studied the perception of realism with bots and humans performing just locomotion or varied animations, we can conclude that the combination of having human-like avatars with animation variety can increase the overall realism of a crowd simulation, trajectories and animation. The preliminary study presented in the third contribution of this thesis showed that realistic rendering of the environment and the avatars do not appear to increase the perception of realism in the participants, which is consistent with works presented previously. The preliminary results in our walk-in-place contribution showed a seamless and natural transition between walk-in-place and normal walk. Our system provided a velocity mapping function that closely resembles natural walk. We observed through a pilot study that the system successfully reduces motion sickness and enhances immersion. Finally, the results of the contribution related to locomotion in collaborative virtual reality showed that animation synchronism and footstep sound of the avatars representing the participants do not seem to have a strong impact in terms of presence and feeling of avatar control. However, in our experiment, incorporating natural animations and footstep sound resulted in smaller clearance values in VR than previous work in the literature. The main objective of this thesis was to improve different factors related to virtual reality experiences to make the participants feel more comfortable in the virtual environment. These factors include the behaviour and appearance of the virtual avatars and the navigation through the simulated space in the experience. By increasing the realism of the avatars and facilitating navigation, high scores in presence are achieved during the simulations. This provides an ideal framework for developing collaborative virtual reality applications or emergency simulations that require participants to feel as if they were in real life.En aquesta tesi, es presenta un conjunt d'estudis els resultats dels quals ens han permès analitzar com millorar el realisme, la navegació i el comportament dels avatars en un entorn de realitat virtual immersiu. En les nostres simulacions, els participants han de realitzar una sèrie de tasques i hem analitzat dades perceptives i de comportament mentre les feien. Els resultats dels estudis ens han permès deduir quines millores són necessàries per a ser incorporades a les simulacions originals, amb la finalitat de millorar la percepció del realisme, la tècnica de navegació, la representació dels avatars, el seu comportament o les seves animacions. La tècnica més fiable per simular el comportament dels avatars en un entorn de realitat virtual hauria de basar-se en l'estudi de com es comporten els humans dins de l¿entorn virtual. Per a aquest propòsit, és necessari construir entorns virtuals on els participants poden navegar amb seguretat i comoditat amb una metàfora adequada i, si l¿entorn està poblat amb avatars, simular el seu comportament amb precisió. Tots aquests aspectes junts fan que els participants es comportin d'una manera més pròxima a com es comportarien en el món real. A més, la integració d'aquests conceptes podria proporcionar una plataforma ideal per desenvolupar diferents tipus d'aplicacions amb i sense realitat virtual col·laborativa com simulacions d'emergència, ensenyament, arquitectura o disseny. En la primera contribució d'aquesta tesi, vam realitzar un experiment per estudiar la presa de decisions durant una evacuació. Estàvem interessats a avaluar en quina mesura el comportament d'una multitud virtual pot afectar les decisions dels participants. A partir de la segona contribució, en la qual estudiem la percepció del realisme amb robots i humans que realitzen només una animació de caminar o bé realitzen diverses animacions, vam arribar a la conclusió que la combinació de tenir avatars semblants als humans amb animacions variades pot augmentar la percepció del realisme general de la simulació de la multitud, les seves trajectòries i animacions. L'estudi preliminar presentat en la tercera contribució d'aquesta tesi va demostrar que la representació realista de l¿entorn i dels avatars no semblen augmentar la percepció del realisme en els participants, que és coherent amb treballs presentats anteriorment. Els resultats preliminars de la nostra contribució de walk-in-place van mostrar una transició suau i natural entre les metàfores de walk-in-place i caminar normal. El nostre sistema va proporcionar una funció de mapatge de velocitat que s'assembla molt al caminar natural. Hem observat a través d'un estudi pilot que el sistema redueix amb èxit el motion sickness i millora la immersió. Finalment, els resultats de la contribució relacionada amb locomoció en realitat virtual col·laborativa van mostrar que el sincronisme de l'animació i el so dels avatars que representen els participants no semblen tenir un fort impacte en termes de presència i sensació de control de l'avatar. No obstant això, en el nostre experiment, la incorporació d'animacions naturals i el so de passos va donar lloc a valors de clearance més petits en RV que treballs anteriors ja publicats. L'objectiu principal d'aquesta tesi ha estat millorar els diferents factors relacionats amb experiències de realitat virtual immersiva per fer que els participants se sentin més còmodes en l'entorn virtual. Aquests factors inclouen el comportament i l'aparença dels avatars i la navegació a través de l'entorn virtual. En augmentar el realisme dels avatars i facilitar la navegació, s'aconsegueixen altes puntuacions en presència durant les simulacions. Això proporciona un marc ideal per desenvolupar aplicacions col·laboratives de realitat virtual o simulacions d'emergència que requereixen que els participants se sentin com si estiguessin en la vida realPostprint (published version

Innovative Learning Environments in STEM Higher Education

As explored in this open access book, higher education in STEM fields is influenced by many factors, including education research, government and school policies, financial considerations, technology limitations, and acceptance of innovations by faculty and students. In 2018, Drs. Ryoo and Winkelmann explored the opportunities, challenges, and future research initiatives of innovative learning environments (ILEs) in higher education STEM disciplines in their pioneering project: eXploring the Future of Innovative Learning Environments (X-FILEs). Workshop participants evaluated four main ILE categories: personalized and adaptive learning, multimodal learning formats, cross/extended reality (XR), and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This open access book gathers the perspectives expressed during the X-FILEs workshop and its follow-up activities. It is designed to help inform education policy makers, researchers, developers, and practitioners about the adoption and implementation of ILEs in higher education

Fire safety and emergency evacuation training for occupants of building using 3D virtual simulation

With advancement in technology, building structures are becoming bigger and more complex. Incidences of horrifying fires that occur in such complex structures resulting in loss of property as well as lives are recorded worldwide. Emergency evacuation training can play a crucial role in mitigating damage not only in cases of fire, explosion or chemical spill but also in cases of natural calamities like floods and hurricanes. Conventional safety training provided in industries mostly comprises of unidirectional flow of information. Due to this passive learning style, response of employees in real life emergency situations is known to be ineffective. The proposed research focuses on the development of virtual emergency evacuation safety training for residents, workers and employees. This research developed a 3 dimensional (3D) virtual fire safety and emergency evacuation training for building occupants. A 3D model of a real engineering college building in the University of Central Florida (UCF) was developed in a virtual world and participants could interact with various objects and scenarios in this virtual building on a standard desktop computer using keyboard and mouse. Expert interviews and literature review were utilized to develop contents of fire safety and emergency evacuation training. Also, a slide based fire safety and emergency evacuation training was developed based on same contents and made available through a website. An effort was made to develop both trainings- virtual and slide based to be comparable in terms of contents. A case study with two sets of experiments comprising of 143 participants from UCF community was conducted to understand factors such as fidelity, simulation sickness, engagement and effectiveness of 3D virtual and slide based fire safety and emergency evacuation training. Results of fidelity and simulation sickness validated use of 3D virtual training for training building residents on fire safety and emergency evacuation. Data analysis of knowledge tests allowed to compare short terms and long term effectiveness of 3D virtual training and slide based training. To further understand engagement, physiological measure- electroencephalograph (EEG) of 40 healthy participants was recorded in second set of experiments. Ratio of Beta and Alpha frequency bands was studied to understand attention paid by trainees in 3D virtual and slide based training

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

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

Philosophy of cognitive technology

The educational and methodical manual on the philosophy and methodology of science supplements the lecture material with topical issues of the philosophy of digital technologies. The section "Philosophy of Natural Science and Technology" outlines the features of the classical philosophy of technology. In the section "Philosophy, science, man at the beginning of the III millennium" the prospects for the impact of the fourth industrial revolution on the applied use of digital technologies and technological features of the functioning of digital ecosystems are analyzed development of digital technologies and the role of philosophy in the analysis of the ethical aspects of the technological modernization of modern society

End user oriented BIM enabled multi-functional virtual environment supporting building emergency planning and evacuation

Relevant research has identified that high level of building emergency casualty (e.g. due to fire) has direct link with the delayed evacuation especially in residential and high-rising buildings. The traditional fire drill can only passively identify some bottleneck for evacuation after the building has been constructed and under its operation stage; and end-users normally lack of means to be effectively involved in the decision making process in the first place (e.g. building emergency planning and design) and lack of cost-effective and convenient means to be well trained about emergency evacuation at later operation stage. Modern building emergency management research has highlighted the need for the effective utilization of dynamically updated building emergency information. Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become the information backbone which can enable integration and collaboration throughout the entire building life cycle. BIM can play a significant role in building emergency management due to its comprehensive and standardized data format and integrated life cycle process. This PhD research aims at developing an end user oriented BIM enabled virtual environment to address several key issues for building emergency evacuation and planning. The focus lies on how to utilize BIM as a comprehensive building information provider to work with virtual reality technology to build an adaptable immersive serious game for complex buildings to provide general end users emergency evacuation training/guides. The contribution lies on the seamless integration between BIM and a serious game based Virtual Reality (VR) environment, which enables effective engagement of end-uses. By doing so potential bottlenecks for existing and new buildings for emergency evacuation can be identified and rectified in a timely and cost-effective manner. The system has been tested for its robustness and functionality against the research hypothesis and research questions, and the results show promising potential to support more effective fire emergency evacuation and planning solutions

Simulating Social Situations in Immersive Virtual Reality - A Study of Bystander Responses to Violent Emergencies

The goal of this research is to show how immersive virtual reality (IVR) can be used to study human responses to extreme emergencies in social situations. Participants interact realistically with animated virtual humans. We show this through experimental studies of bystander responses to a violent confrontation, and find that there are conditions under which people intervene to help virtual characters that are threatened. We go on to show that a reinforcement learning (RL) method can capture the types of actions of virtual humans that lead to greater intervention on the part of the bystander. It has been shown that people tend to respond realistically in social situations depicted in IVR when they have the illusion of ’being there’ (Place Illusion, PI) and that what they perceive appears to be really happening (Plausibility Illusion, Psi). This has enabled IVR technology for the study of several fields including human behavioural studies, social phobia treatment and both physical and psychiatric rehabilitation. Additionally, IVR helps to overcome ethical issues such as deception that can arise from the nature of the study. The highly controlled environment reduces the variations induced by the repetition of the study, and thus, increases the internal validity. Furthermore, IVR allows setting up life-size computer-generated simulations and enables the possibility of interaction with natural body movements, making their responses close to being authentic thus increasing the ecological validity. We carried out a series of experiments to understand the circumstances likely to make people intervene when they witness a confrontation between two people. Faced with a potentially violent situation, any individual has to decide whether to intervene to try to prevent the violence, or do nothing. Evidence demonstrates that factors such as a shared social identity between the bystander and either the victim or the aggressor, the presence of other bystanders or authority figures and their behaviour influence people’s responses to an emergency. But for ethical and validity reasons, it is very difficult to set up studies with real actors which observe how people react to violence. The results of the experiments in this thesis show that the likelihood of a bystander intervention can be increased or diminished if the bystander perceives the other people present in the scene as sharing some type of affiliation with him. The main experiment variable that we manipulated was whether the people in the scene supported the same football team as the bystander, or on the contrary they did not have an explicit association with any team in particular. Additionally, this thesis provides evidence that the bystander effect also occurs in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) and that the strength of this phenomenon varies depending on the social identity of the characters present in the scene. The last part of the thesis shows that RL can provide learning capabilities to a computer to study human behaviour and use the knowledge towards eliciting pre-determined responses from real people in IVEs, such as increasing the likelihood of intervention in a violent emergency