Control en tiempo real de un mecanismo XY virtual por medio de un joystick

En este artículo se presenta el desarrollo de un mecanismo XY virtual creado en SolidWorks®, el cual es controlado en tiempo real por medio de un joystick USB utilizando LabVIEW® como interfaz. Se describe la forma en que se realiza la interconexión entre el dispositivo físico (joystick) y el programa desarrollado en LabVIEW®, así como de este con el dispositivo virtual en SolidWorks®. El trabajo incluye una interfaz gráfica por medio de la cual se puede interactuar con el mecanismo virtual.Se observó que SolidWorks® puede funcionar como un entorno de simulación virtual que puede ser de gran utilidad para su aplicación en el desarrollo de interfaces hombre máquina, entre muchas otras aplicaciones.Palabra(s) Clave(s): joystick, LabVIEW®, mecanismo XY, prototipo virtual,SolidWorks®

Effect of perceived intimacy on social decision-making in patients with schizophrenia

Social dysfunctions including emotional perception and social decision-making are common in patients with schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to determine the level of intimacy formation and the effect of intimacy on social decision in patients with schizophrenia using virtual reality tasks, which simulate complicated social situations. Twenty-seven patients with schizophrenia and 30 healthy controls performed the 2 virtual social tasks: the intimacy task and the social decision task. The first one was to estimate repeatedly how intimate participants felt with each avatar after listening to what avatars said. The second one was to decide whether or not participants accepted the requests of easy, medium, or hard difficulty by the intimate or distant avatars. During the intimacy task, the intimacy rating scores for intimate avatars were not significantly different between groups, but those for distant avatars were significantly higher in patients than in controls. During the social decision task, the difference in the acceptance rate between intimate and distant avatars was significantly smaller in patients than in controls. In detail, a significant group difference in the acceptance rate was found only for the hard requests, but not for the easy and medium difficulty requests. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in emotional perception and social decision-making. Various factors such as a peculiarity of emotional deficits, motivational deficits, concreteness, and paranoid tendency may contribute to these abnormalities.ope

Virtual reality prototype for measurement of expression characteristics in emotional situations.

Expressions are a basic necessity for daily living, as they are required for managing relationships with other people. Conventional expression training has difficulty achieving an objective measurement, because their assessment depends on the therapist's ability to assess a patient's state or training effectiveness. In addition, it is difficult to provide emotional and social situations in the same manner for each training or assessment session. Virtual reality techniques can overcome shortcomings occurring in conventional studies by providing exact and objective measurements and emotional and social situations. In this study, we developed a virtual reality prototype that could present emotional situation and measure expression characteristics. Although this is a preliminary study, it could be considered that this study shows the potential of virtual reality as an assessment tool.ope

Developing a lean enablers training program using virtual reality (VR) system

Training plays a major role in improving work within organisations by ensuring that the appropriate level of knowledge and skills are shared among personnel. It moulds the thinking process and leads to quality performance. However, training which includes a practical aspect usually targets a specific type of trainee and can limit the learning of an individual coming from a different background than that taken into consideration when the training programme was originally developed. This research focuses on training, and attempts to develop a program using a virtual reality (VR) system as a platform to create a simulated working environment which has the flexibility to train staff members of an organisation, who may come from a variety of different professional backgrounds, in the concept of the lean enablers. The main concern of this research is the adaptation of lean training for a virtual environment. Existing training methods have been analysed, along with the various ways in which they can be implemented, and these have been used in this research as a starting point from which to construct the virtual work environment. Through the research, a method has been developed to set up and run a training session using a virtual reality (VR) system by generating a structure to design the modelling elements that compose the virtual workplace, as well as establishing a method so that a trainee can navigate the simulated environment and perform tasks. A program to collect the performance measures and visualise the results has also been developed, with the aim of enabling the evaluation of a simulation run by assessors/trainers. This research covers new ground in providing a simulated working environment, which can suit any trainee’s professional background, to facilitate learning about the lean enablers. It offers the capacity of establishing a simulated work environment which can represent the trainee’s workplace and provide the necessary practical experience in order to grasp the concept taught through the training program. Additionally it offers the capacity for assessors/trainers to observe the performance measures and the trainee’s behaviour, simultaneously, while undertaking a simulation run. These combinations of information can be complementary and enable assessors/trainers in providing the best feedback while improving the learning curve of a trainee. Although training programmes in organisations have provided a number of improvements in completing work with high efficiency and minimum waste, the outcomes collected in this research demonstrate that their benefits can be pushed further in terms of providing a training method which can be accessible to a large variety of sectors.Technology Strategy Board project -ref: K1532