Speech-driven Animation with Meaningful Behaviors

Conversational agents (CAs) play an important role in human computer interaction. Creating believable movements for CAs is challenging, since the movements have to be meaningful and natural, reflecting the coupling between gestures and speech. Studies in the past have mainly relied on rule-based or data-driven approaches. Rule-based methods focus on creating meaningful behaviors conveying the underlying message, but the gestures cannot be easily synchronized with speech. Data-driven approaches, especially speech-driven models, can capture the relationship between speech and gestures. However, they create behaviors disregarding the meaning of the message. This study proposes to bridge the gap between these two approaches overcoming their limitations. The approach builds a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN), where a discrete variable is added to constrain the behaviors on the underlying constraint. The study implements and evaluates the approach with two constraints: discourse functions and prototypical behaviors. By constraining on the discourse functions (e.g., questions), the model learns the characteristic behaviors associated with a given discourse class learning the rules from the data. By constraining on prototypical behaviors (e.g., head nods), the approach can be embedded in a rule-based system as a behavior realizer creating trajectories that are timely synchronized with speech. The study proposes a DBN structure and a training approach that (1) models the cause-effect relationship between the constraint and the gestures, (2) initializes the state configuration models increasing the range of the generated behaviors, and (3) captures the differences in the behaviors across constraints by enforcing sparse transitions between shared and exclusive states per constraint. Objective and subjective evaluations demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach over an unconstrained model.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, 5 table

3D City Models and urban information: Current issues and perspectives

Considering sustainable development of cities implies investigating cities in a holistic way taking into account many interrelations between various urban or environmental issues. 3D city models are increasingly used in different cities and countries for an intended wide range of applications beyond mere visualization. Could these 3D City models be used to integrate urban and environmental knowledge? How could they be improved to fulfill such role? We believe that enriching the semantics of current 3D city models, would extend their functionality and usability; therefore, they could serve as integration platforms of the knowledge related to urban and environmental issues allowing a huge and significant improvement of city sustainable management and development. But which elements need to be added to 3D city models? What are the most efficient ways to realize such improvement / enrichment? How to evaluate the usability of these improved 3D city models? These were the questions tackled by the COST Action TU0801 “Semantic enrichment of 3D city models for sustainable urban development”. This book gathers various materials developed all along the four year of the Action and the significant breakthroughs

A case study: what attracts teachers to augmented reality

This study aimed to identify the reasons why teachers are interested in augmented reality (AR) technology. AR is a technology that allows simultaneous enrichment of real-world images with virtual objects. AR is used at all levels of education from preschool to graduate school. The teachers who liked the Facebook page were sent the online survey via a message. 205 teachers who responded voluntarily to the questionnaire constituted the study group. Criterion sampling method, which is a purposeful sampling method, was used in the research. Case study design which is one of the qualitative research methods was used in this research. To ensure the reliability of the study, the coding process was conducted by the first researcher and another domain expert, and the codes were cross-checked. The results of the study showed that the reasons teachers are interested in AR were classified under three themes: educational benefit (teaching more effective lessons, attracting students' attention to lessons, enriching the content of the course, facilitating easier understanding of subjects, ensuring more permanent learning, making lessons more fun were attractive for teachers), professional development (follow current educational technologies, develop specialized course materials, share what they know with other teachers, use this information with other subjects) and personal development (learning new things, benefit from academic studies, prepare projects). © 2022, Ozgen Korkmaz. All rights reserved

Enhancing foreign language learning through the integration of computer technology

This thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of using computer technology and the Internet to enhance classroom teaching. A variety of computer and internet based projects that complement lessons initiated by the classroom teacher provide real life situations for additional practice, reinforcement, motivation and greater student achievement

Virtual Reality in University Teaching: Experiences from a Computer Science Seminar

Due to the corona pandemic, numerous courses were held using digital solutions in order to be able to continue teaching. Conventional collaboration tools (Zoom, Big Blue Button, etc.) were used in particular to digitally map a synchronous session for teaching and learning purposes. While these conventional collaboration tools offer a solid basis for communication between learners and teachers, aspects such as presence or a realistic type of interaction are neglected. In this work, we report on the experiences from a computer science seminar where virtual reality (VR) technology was used as an alternative solution for teaching and group work. The benefits of VR compared to conventional collaboration tools were examined using questionnaires and interviews with the participants. On the one hand, the results show the high potential of VR to increase the clarity and experienceability of learning content and to promote cooperation through social presence. On the other hand, the use of VR brings with it some technical and organizational difficulties that should be taken into account in the didactic implementation.Comment: accepted as publication for "die hochschullehre", preprint of my Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projec

Virtual Reality in Education from the Perspective of Teachers

Virtual reality is the system in which users feel that they are in a virtual world with various equipment and the users interact with this world. With this feature, virtual reality is very useful for many fields of activity, as well as education. Virtual reality applications in education enable students to gain experiences that are dangerous or impossible for them to acquire in real life and learn by doing and living. For this reason, virtual reality is an important innovation for future educational environments. The population of this study is composed of teachers in private schools in Iraq in the 2017-2018 academic year. One hundred thirty teachers participated in the online questionnaire, 101 of which were considered valid. The sample consisted of 101 teachers who completed the questionnaire. Based on the findings, the results of the research were stated, and recommendations were developed. As a result of the research, we realized that the vast majority of teachers think that virtual reality is interesting, encourages students to be active, is suitable for students with schematic and visual thinking style, provides students with a general idea about the subject, facilitates the implementation of information, makes it easier to learn, and it provides a quick review of the course they have studied. They also think it requires concentration

Meshless Mechanics and Point-Based Visualization Methods for Surgical Simulations

Computer-based modeling and simulation practices have become an integral part of the medical education field. For surgical simulation applications, realistic constitutive modeling of soft tissue is considered to be one of the most challenging aspects of the problem, because biomechanical soft-tissue models need to reflect the correct elastic response, have to be efficient in order to run at interactive simulation rates, and be able to support operations such as cuts and sutures. Mesh-based solutions, where the connections between the individual degrees of freedom (DoF) are defined explicitly, have been the traditional choice to approach these problems. However, when the problem under investigation contains a discontinuity that disrupts the connectivity between the DoFs, the underlying mesh structure has to be reconfigured in order to handle the newly introduced discontinuity correctly. This reconfiguration for mesh-based techniques is typically called dynamic remeshing, and most of the time it causes the performance bottleneck in the simulation. In this dissertation, the efficiency of point-based meshless methods is investigated for both constitutive modeling of elastic soft tissues and visualization of simulation objects, where arbitrary discontinuities/cuts are applied to the objects in the context of surgical simulation. The point-based deformable object modeling problem is examined in three functional aspects: modeling continuous elastic deformations with, handling discontinuities in, and visualizing a point-based object. Algorithmic and implementation details of the presented techniques are discussed in the dissertation. The presented point-based techniques are implemented as separate components and integrated into the open-source software framework SOFA. The presented meshless continuum mechanics model of elastic tissue were verified by comparing it to the Hertzian non-adhesive frictionless contact theory. Virtual experiments were setup with a point-based deformable block and a rigid indenter, and force-displacement curves obtained from the virtual experiments were compared to the theoretical solutions. The meshless mechanics model of soft tissue and the integrated novel discontinuity treatment technique discussed in this dissertation allows handling cuts of arbitrary shape. The implemented enrichment technique not only modifies the internal mechanics of the soft tissue model, but also updates the point-based visual representation in an efficient way preventing the use of costly dynamic remeshing operations