An interactive interior design syatem using desktop virtual reality technology

In the design plan of a living room, a 3D simulation can provide a much better sense of what and how the living room would look like. This 3D simulation can provide better perception of the living room plan rather than simply sketches, drawings, or catalogues. Generally, the objective of this project is to design and develop a virtual interior design of a living room which allows the users to visualize and also change some of the attributes of the living room using the VR system to their own preferences. For this project, two virtual living rooms with two different sets of interior design we re constructed. The virtual living room was constructed using V RML text editor as well as 3ds M ax 7 software. Software such as Adobe Photoshop CS and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 has been chosen as the tools for designing and developing the interface of the virtual living room control panel. The system developed enables the user to change the color and texture of some of the furnishing attributes as well as being able to switch the lamps on or off. The system’s usability is evaluated using the Cooperative Evaluation Technique that brings together designer and user in a cooperative context. With the VR system that is able to navigate, define and modify the living room virtually, this system can play an important role as a user interface system for virtual experience

A Room With an Overview: Towards Meaningful Transparency for the Consumer Internet of Things

As our physical environments become ever-more connected, instrumented and automated, it can be increasingly difficult for users to understand what is happening within them and why. This warrants attention; with the pervasive and physical nature of the IoT comes risks of data misuse, privacy, surveillance, and even physical harm. Such concerns come amid increasing calls for more transparency surrounding technologies (in general), as a means for supporting scrutiny and accountability. This paper explores the practical dimensions to transparency mechanisms within the consumer IoT. That is, we consider how smart homes might be made more meaningfully transparent, so as to support users in gaining greater understanding, oversight, and control. Through a series of three user-centric studies, we (i) survey prospective smart home users to gain a general understanding of what meaningful transparency within smart homes might entail; (ii) identify categories of user-derived requirements and design elements (design features for supporting smart home transparency) that have been created through two co-design workshops; and (iii) validate these through an evaluation with an altogether new set of participants. In all, these categories of requirements and interface design elements provide a foundation for understanding how meaningful transparency might be achieved within smart homes, and introduces several wider considerations for doing so.Comment: To Appear: C. Norval and J. Singh, "A Room With an Overview: Towards Meaningful Transparency for the Consumer Internet of Things," in IEEE Internet of Things Journal. DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2023.331836

Design and Implementation of Computing-based Air Conditioner (AC) (ComBAC) – A Preliminary Work

Computing-based air conditioner (ComBAC) highlights the concept of spot cooling that helps to reduce energy consumption without sacrificing consumer comfortability, while the conventional air conditioner (AC) cooling down the entire space regardless of occupancy. In this study, National Instruments (NI) myRIO has been explored as a hardware solution, and the advantage of graphical-based programming in LabVIEW has been fully used to design the graphical user interface (GUI) as well as for data acquisition programming. For the input, web camera C170 is used to detect the presence of human/object in a room, while the value of current is being measured using current sensor and later being analysed by NI myRIO to exhibit the energy consumed of an AC. NI myRIO also acts to control the AC, to divert the air flow according to the spot cooling concept and visualisation of energy consumed available via liquid crystal display (LCD). To evaluate the proposed system, ComBAC has been prototyped into a wallmounted AC unit with 2.5 meter height within a 3 3 square meter room floor area. An evaluation for objects/humans detection and dynamic tracking mechanism has been conducted and results obtained shown promising results. The proposed system has successfully captured the presence of object/human in a room, analyse the data and finally portray the value of energy consumption of the AC

Control of virtual environments for young people with learning difficulties

Purpose: The objective of this research is to identify the requirements for the selection or development of usable virtual environment (VE) interface devices for young people with learning disabilities. Method: a user-centred design methodology was employed, to produce a design specification for usable VE interface devices. Details of the users' cognitive, physical and perceptual abilities were obtained through observation and normative assessment tests. Conclusions : A review of computer interface technology, including virtual reality and assistive devices, was conducted. As there were no devices identified that met all the requirements of the design specification, it was concluded that there is a need for the design and development of new concepts. Future research will involve concept and prototype development and user-based evaluation of the prototypes

Ohjaajien automaatiotietoisuutta tukevat käyttöliittymäratkaisut ydinvoimalaitoksen valvomossa

This thesis discusses the effects of nuclear power plant control room digitalization and of increasing control room automation on the operator work. The concept of automation awareness is introduced and automation awareness is defined as a part of situation awareness. The development and maintenance of automation awareness is considered to be a continuous process that comprises of perceiving the current status of automation, comprehending the status and its meaning to the system behaviour as well as estimating the future statuses and their meanings. The human operator is seen as a part of the system, and their decisions and actions affect the system state. The questions of what is sufficient automation awareness and how to examine the acquired level of automation awareness are addressed briefly. Sufficient automation awareness is defined as the operator's understanding of automation, their skills to interact with it and their will to cooperate with it on such a level that leads to safe and efficient operation of the nuclear power plant in all situations. Factors affecting the development and maintenance of the operators' automation awareness in a nuclear power plant control room are listed. The thesis presents literature-based guidelines for successful human-automation cooperation as well as for presenting automation in control room user interfaces. The key contributors to a successful automation user interface are observability of automation, workload and failure management. In the practical part of the thesis, these factors were taken into account when designing and developing a user interface for a emergency diesel power generation system simulator. In developing the final user interface, user evaluation was utilized in addition to the literature-based theory. The ready-made user interface is presented and the design solutions are gone through especially in terms of the three mentioned guidelines.Diplomityö käsittelee ydinvoimaloiden valvomoiden digitalisoinnin ja lisääntyvän automaation vaikutuksia prosessinohjaajien työhön. Automaatiotietoisuuden konsepti esitellään ja automaatiotietoisuus määritellään osana tilannetietoisuutta. Automaatiotietoisuuden kehittymistä ja ylläpitoa käsitellään jatkuvana prosessina, joka pitää sisällään automaation nykyisen tilan havainnoimisen, tilan ja sen merkityksen ymmärtämisen sekä tulevien tilojen ja niiden merkityksien ennakoimisen. Prosessinohjaaja nähdään järjestelmän osana, jonka päätökset ja toiminta vaikuttavat koko järjestelmän tilaan. Työ ottaa lyhyesti kantaa kysymyksiin siitä, mitä on prosessinohjaajien kannalta riittävä automaatiotietoisuus ja miten saavutettua automaatiotietoisuuden tasoa voidaan tarkastella. Riittävä automaatiotietoisuus määritellään ohjaajan ymmärryksenä automaatiosta, taitona toimia automaation kanssa ja haluna tehdä yhteistyötä automaation kanssa tavalla, joka johtaa turvalliseen ja tehokkaaseen ydinvoimalan ohjaamiseen kaikissa tilanteissa. Automaatiotietoisuuden kehittymiseen ja ylläpitoon vaikuttavat seikat ydinvoimalan valvomossa listataan työssä. Diplomityö esittelee kirjallisuudesta koottuja ohjenuoria onnistuneeseen ihmisen ja automaation väliseen yhteistyöhön sekä automaation esittämiseen valvomokäyttöliittymissä. Toimivan automaatiokäyttöliittymän suunnittelussa ja toteuttamisessa huomioitavia seikkoja ovat automaation havaittavuus, työkuorma sekä vikojen hallinta. Työn käytännön osuudessa suunniteltiin ja toteutettiin nämä seikat huomioonottaen käyttöliittymä hätädieselsähköjärjestelmän simulaattoria varten. Lopullisen käyttöliittymän toteuttamisessa hyödynnettiin kirjallisuuteen pohjautuvan teorian lisäksi käyttäjäarviointia. Työ esittelee valmiin käyttöliittymän ja käy läpi sen suunnitteluratkaisuja erityisesti havaittavuuden, työkuorman ja vikojen hallinnan näkökulmasta

User-centered design of a dynamic-autonomy remote interaction concept for manipulation-capable robots to assist elderly people in the home

In this article, we describe the development of a human-robot interaction concept for service robots to assist elderly people in the home with physical tasks. Our approach is based on the insight that robots are not yet able to handle all tasks autonomously with sufficient reliability in the complex and heterogeneous environments of private homes. We therefore employ remote human operators to assist on tasks a robot cannot handle completely autonomously. Our development methodology was user-centric and iterative, with six user studies carried out at various stages involving a total of 241 participants. The concept is under implementation on the Care-O-bot 3 robotic platform. The main contributions of this article are (1) the results of a survey in form of a ranking of the demands of elderly people and informal caregivers for a range of 25 robot services, (2) the results of an ethnography investigating the suitability of emergency teleassistance and telemedical centers for incorporating robotic teleassistance, and (3) a user-validated human-robot interaction concept with three user roles and corresponding three user interfaces designed as a solution to the problem of engineering reliable service robots for home environments

Map-Based Navigation in a Graphical MOO

Traditional MUDs and MOOs lack support for global wareness and simple navigation. These problems can be addressed by the introduction of a map-based navigation tool. In this paper we report on the design and evaluation of such a tool for MOOsburg, a graphical 2D MOO based on the town of Blacksburg, Virginia. The tool supports exploration and place-based tasks in the MOO. It also allows navigation of a large-scale map and encourages users to develop survey knowledge of the town. An evaluation revealed some initial usability problems with our prototype and suggested new design ideas that may better support users. Using these results, the lessons learned about map-based navigation are presented

Navigation and interaction in a real-scale digital mock-up using natural language and user gesture

This paper tries to demonstrate a very new real-scale 3D system and sum up some firsthand and cutting edge results concerning multi-modal navigation and interaction interfaces. This work is part of the CALLISTO-SARI collaborative project. It aims at constructing an immersive room, developing a set of software tools and some navigation/interaction interfaces. Two sets of interfaces will be introduced here: 1) interaction devices, 2) natural language (speech processing) and user gesture. The survey on this system using subjective observation (Simulator Sickness Questionnaire, SSQ) and objective measurements (Center of Gravity, COG) shows that using natural languages and gesture-based interfaces induced less cyber-sickness comparing to device-based interfaces. Therefore, gesture-based is more efficient than device-based interfaces.FUI CALLISTO-SAR

Integrated Dynamic Facade Control with an Agent-based Architecture for Commercial Buildings

Dynamic façades have significant technical potential to minimize heating, cooling, and lighting energy use and peak electric demand in the perimeter zone of commercial buildings, but the performance of these systems is reliant on being able to balance complex trade-offs between solar control, daylight admission, comfort, and view over the life of the installation. As the context for controllable energy-efficiency technologies grows more complex with the increased use of intermittent renewable energy resources on the grid, it has become increasingly important to look ahead towards more advanced approaches to integrated systems control in order to achieve optimum life-cycle performance at a lower cost. This study examines the feasibility of a model predictive control system for low-cost autonomous dynamic façades. A system architecture designed around lightweight, simple agents is proposed. The architecture accommodates whole building and grid level demands through its modular, hierarchical approach. Automatically-generated models for computing window heat gains, daylight illuminance, and discomfort glare are described. The open source Modelica and JModelica software tools were used to determine the optimum state of control given inputs of window heat gains and lighting loads for a 24-hour optimization horizon. Penalty functions for glare and view/ daylight quality were implemented as constraints. The control system was tested on a low-power controller (1.4 GHz single core with 2 GB of RAM) to evaluate feasibility. The target platform is a low-cost ($35/unit) embedded controller with 1.2 GHz dual-core cpu and 1 GB of RAM. Configuration and commissioning of the curtainwall unit was designed to be largely plug and play with minimal inputs required by the manufacturer through a web-based user interface. An example application was used to demonstrate optimal control of a three-zone electrochromic window for a south-facing zone. The overall approach was deemed to be promising. Further engineering is required to enable scalable, turnkey solutions

A first empirical study of direct combination in a ubiquitous environment

In dynamic ubiquitous environments, end users may need to create services by causing two or more devices or resources to interoperate together in ad-hoc circumstances. In general, users can find this kind of process hard to manage. At the same time, existing UI architectures are not well suited to supporting such activities. It is proposed that a good basis for addressing these and related problems in a principled, scaleable way is the principle of Direct Combination (DC). The principle is summarized, and analytical arguments are presented that predict that DC can reduce the amount of search required by the user. Other things being equal, such a reduction in search would be expected to offer interactions which are faster, less frustrating, and impose less mental load on the user. We present a proof-of-concept implementation, and a small-scale evaluation of a DC interface. Within the limitations of a preliminary evaluation, consistent support is offered across several measures for the analytical predictions