Virtual reality haptic device for mental Illness treatment

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that alters mental functioning and can cause hallucinations, mental disorientation, and a variety of other symptoms, which results in a separation of schizophrenics from society. Despite the fact that the condition has been known about for a long time, there is still an urgent need for research and testing to develop better therapies. Virtual reality (VR) has had interesting outcomes when used to treat illnesses, and it is gradually emerging as a viable technical choice for the healthcare sector due to its immersion, which offers better and more intense user experiences. Once linked to a serious game, it can introduce the user to a number of situations that, when combined with medical assistance, aid in their rehabilitation and treatment. The use of haptic devices enhances VR immersion by enabling users to comprehend virtual environments with greater nuance, which increases their level of believing in the new environment they are in. When used in conjunction with VR, it can improve the efficacy of the treatment, making its use viable for the treatment of psychic diseases. The goal of this research is to develop haptic vest interactions using a three-dimensional virtual testing scenario to support and improve the use of VR for rehabilitation and therapy for schizophrenia. The established functionalities can be applied to a further serious game with the same focus.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A two teraflop swarm

© 2018 Jones, Studley, Hauert and Winfield. We introduce the Xpuck swarm, a research platform with an aggregate raw processing power in excess of two teraflops. The swarm uses 16 e-puck robots augmented with custom hardware that uses the substantial CPU and GPU processing power available from modern mobile system-on-chip devices. The augmented robots, called Xpucks, have at least an order of magnitude greater performance than previous swarm robotics platforms. The platform enables new experiments that require high individual robot computation and multiple robots. Uses include online evolution or learning of swarm controllers, simulation for answering what-if questions about possible actions, distributed super-computing for mobile platforms, and real-world applications of swarm robotics that requires image processing, or SLAM. The teraflop swarm could also be used to explore swarming in nature by providing platforms with similar computational power as simple insects. We demonstrate the computational capability of the swarm by implementing a fast physics-based robot simulator and using this within a distributed island model evolutionary system, all hosted on the Xpucks

Teachers’ Perspective Of The Use Of Three-Dimensional Virtual World (3DVW) In Teaching Pronunciation: A Qualitative Case Study

The aim of this article is to scrutinize EFL teachers' perspectives on using 3D Virtual World for teaching English pronunciation. The article is a case study with open-ended, in-depth interviews conducted with two Thai EFL teachers. The study finds topics based on a typological analysis of interview data: the use of 3DVW as a learning medium for teaching pronunciation, and teachers' perspectives on teaching using 3DVW. The findings revealed that teachers have a positive perspective on 3DVW as a medium for teaching pronunciation. It has advantages that can help students with their pronunciation understanding. Additionally, teachers serve as role models and facilitators for students during the learning process

SOVJETSKA DIJASPORA U NASTAJANJU: SUSRETI U KIBERPROSTORU

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a vital part of everyday life. The emphasis in CMC investigation is on the globalizing nature of the Internet, while its localizing role as the meeting place of dispersed communities has not been sufficiently researched. Defining diasporas, scholars indicate the importance of their symbolic dimensions and the ethnic group consciousness. In the case of former Soviets, however, the latter is less important than common language and culture. We discuss institutional and grassroots sites that function as a cyber extension of the real-life diaspora of former Soviets.U tekstu se analiziraju internetske stranice stvorene za ruske govornike koji borave izvan Ruske Federacije. Građa je prikupljena s internetskih stranica koje održavaju različite vladine institucije i nevladine organizacije u Rusiji kao i s internetskih stranica koje su pokrenuli bivši sovjetski emigranti nastanjeni u različitim zemljama. U radu se uspoređuje struktura dijasporičkih internetskih stranica i informacija koje oni donose, kao i intenzitet s kojim korisnici sudjeluju u virtualnim diskusijama. Uočene su tri tendencije u virtualnim dijasporičnim aktivnostima bivših Sovjeta. Kao prvo, riječ je o pokušaju da se na internetu ponovno stvori Sovjetski Savez, koji bi ujedinio svoje bivše građane svojim političkim i ideološkim simbolima. Slabi odaziv posjetitelja upućuje na bezuspješnost tog projekta. Drugo, službena Rusija nastoji konsolidirati dijasporu kojoj bi pripadali svi bivši Sovjeti. To se nastojanje manifestira u popularizaciji različitih programa znanstvene i kulturne suradnje putem interneta, stvaranju baze podataka o literaturi posvećenoj Rusima u inozemstvu, konzultacijama među ruskim građanima koji borave izvan Rusije o različitim pravnim pitanjima, itd. Unatoč tim naporima aktivnost publike kojoj su te informacije namijenjene ostaje niskom. Konačno, internetske stranice koje nastaju "odozdo" i održavaju se kao osobne ili zajedničke internetske stranice privlače puno više posjetitelja i aktivnih sudionika nego institucionalne internetske stranice. Oni pokazuju da svi bivši Sovjeti koji sudjeluju u aktivnostima na tim internetskim stranicama ne pripadaju dijaspori. Neki od njih žele održati veze sa "starom domovinom", no to ne pretpostavlja lojalnost Ruskoj Federaciji, a diskurs o povratku u domovinu tek je marginalan. Druge internetske stranice su više orijentirane na uspješnu integraciju u zemlji imigracije. No i one odražavaju napore imigranata da reproduciraju poznate institucije, kulturne prakse i lojalnost prema ruskom jeziku

Onboard Evolution of Understandable Swarm Behaviors

Designing the individual robot rules that give rise to desired emergent swarm behaviors is difficult. The common method of running evolutionary algorithms off‐line to automatically discover controllers in simulation suffers from two disadvantages: the generation of controllers is not situated in the swarm and so cannot be performed in the wild, and the evolved controllers are often opaque and hard to understand. A swarm of robots with considerable on‐board processing power is used to move the evolutionary process into the swarm, providing a potential route to continuously generating swarm behaviors adapted to the environments and tasks at hand. By making the evolved controllers human‐understandable using behavior trees, the controllers can be queried, explained, and even improved by a human user. A swarm system capable of evolving and executing fit controllers entirely onboard physical robots in less than 15 min is demonstrated. One of the evolved controllers is then analyzed to explain its functionality. With the insights gained, a significant performance improvement in the evolved controller is engineered