A Collision Detection Algorithm For Virtual Robot-Centered Flexible Manufacturing Cell

Collision detection is crucial in virtual manufacturing applications such as virtual prototyping, virtual assembly and virtual robot path planning. For accurate simulation of manufacturing systems and processes in virtual environment, physical interaction with the objects in the scene are triggered by collision detection. This thesis presents a collision detection algorithm for accurate simulation of a virtual flexible manufacturing cell. The technique utilizes the narrow phase approach in detecting collision detection of non-convex object by testing collision between basic primitive and polygon. This algorithm is implemented in a virtual flexible manufacturing cell for the loading and unloading process performed by the robot. The robot’s gripper is treated as non-convex object and the exact point of collision is represented with a virtual sphere and collision is tested between the virtual sphere and the polygon. To verify the collision detection algorithm, it is tested with different positions and heights of the storage system during simulation of the virtual flexible manufacturing cell. The results showed that the collision detection algorithm can be used to support the concept of hardware reconfigurablility of FMC which can be achieved by changing, removing, recombining or rearranging its manufacturing elements in order to meet new demands such as introduction of new product or change

An Efficient and Robust Mobile Augmented Reality Application

AR technology is perceived to be evolved from the bases of Virtual Reality (VR) technology. The ultimate goal of AR is to provide better management and ubiquitous access to information by using seamless techniques in which the interactive real world is combined with an interactive computer-generated world in one coherent environment. The direction of research in the field of AR has been shifted from traditional Desktop based mediums to the mobile devices such as the smartphones. However, image recognition on smartphones enforces many restrictions and challenges in the form of efficiency and robustness which are the general performance measurement of image recognition. Smart phones have limited processing capabilities as compared to the PC platform, hence the process of mobile AR application development and use of image recognition algorithm need to be emphasised. The processes of mobile AR application development include detection, description and matching. All the processes and algorithms need to be carefully selected in order to create an efficient and robust mobile AR application. The algorithm used in this work for detection, description and matching are AGAST, FREAK and Hamming distance respectively. The computation time, robustness towards rotation, scale and brightness are evaluated. The dataset used to evaluate the mobile AR application is the benchmark dataset; Mikolajczyk. The results showed that the mobile AR application is efficient with a computation time of 29.1ms. The robustness towards scale, rotation and brightness changes of the mobile AR application also obtained high accuracy which is 89.76%, 87.71% and 83.87% respectively. Hence, combination of algorithm AGAST, FREAK and Hamming distance are suitable to create an efficient and robust mobile AR application

Implementing Smart Mobile Application to Achieve a Sustainable Campus

The use of technology nowadays is not an unusual matter especially in universities. The use of computer technology and the advanced networking that creates an integrated services and enables communication among the community of universities is a concept in a digital campus. However, in the education sector, the digital campus needs to be built as an essential foundation for the modernization of education and to facilitate a better campus life. This paper presents the concept and framework of Digital Campus as part of the universitys challenges in fostering an economical and socially sustainable campus. The implementation of co-created value in framework increases the efficiency of the digital campus concept. The use of mobile applications is very appropriate for achieving campus sustainability because of its increasing significant and ability. UKM Mobile Application as part of Digital Campus strategy is seen to be able to contribute to the sustainability of the campus. We also present the implementation of Digital Campus based on smart card usage in the applications such as attendance system, canteen payment and academic services. Mobile application development embedding value co-creation can improve the quality of service in terms of good communication with customers and the best services to the university

Leveraging Multimodal Interaction and Adaptive Interfaces for Location-based Augmented Reality Islamic Tourism Application

A Location-based Augmented Reality (LBAR) application leveraging multimodal interaction and adaptive interface based on Islamic tourism information was proposed to enhance user experience while travelling. LBAR has the potential to improve tourist experience and help tourists to access relevant information, thus improving their knowledge regarding touristic destination while increasing levels of their entertainment throughout the process. In LBAR application, Point of Interest (POI) displayed are exposed to the “occlusion problem” where the AR contents are visually redundant and overlapping with one another causing the users to loose valuable information. Previous research have suggested the design of AR POI which help user to see the augmented POI clearly. The user can click on the desired POI but it still displays a large amount of POI. From our best study, there is limitation of research studying on how to minimize the amount of displayed POI based on user’s current needs. Therefore, in this paper we suggest to use an adaptive user interface and multimodal interaction to solve this problem. We discussed the process of analysing and designing the user interfaces of previous studies. The proposed mobile solution was presented by explaining the application contents, the combination of adaptive multimodal inputs, system’s flow chart and multimodal task definition. Then the user evaluation was conducted to measure the level of satisfaction in terms of the usability of the application. A total of 24 Islamic tourists have participated in this study. The findings revealed that the average SUS score of 75.83 of respondents agree in terms of satisfaction of the LBAR application to be utilized while traveling. Finally, we conclude this paper by providing the suggestion of future works

An Interactive Application for Halal Products Identification based on Augmented Reality

Identification of halal products is a challenging issue especially for the Muslim community. Previously, a few researches were conducted to identify halal products using AR technology which enables the end users to scan product to ensure the quality. Further study needs to be conducted in order to investigate augmented reality experience in identifying halal products and beverages for the Muslim community. This paper presents an application to identify halal products based on Malaysian Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) database for Muslim consumers in Malaysia. The core aim of this research is to provide experience to the user regarding the usage of the proposed mobile application based on AR technology. Evaluation of the proposed application by conducted a survey to 22 users, reveals that user can detect a halal status of the products and give knowledge of awareness to have confident in order to choose the halal product

TouristicAR: A Smart Glass Augmented Reality Application for UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia.

Modern day technologies including wearable devices such as smart glasses have changed the way people interact with their surroundings. Such developments have resulted in the increased popularity of Augmented Reality (AR) applications to project context-aware information on objects or users’ immediate surroundings. In order to enhance the overall tourism experience, a number of recent works have highlighted the opportunities for using outdoor AR or navigation-based AR systems. Due to the development of context-aware AR, tourists using such technology can acquire valuable knowledge and experience. Recent context-aware AR research lack empirical studies and works that integrate dimensions which are specific to cultural heritage tourism and smart glass specific context. This work presents the mapping of requirements identified during the affinity mapping and focuses group experiments into a smart glass-based AR application called “TouristicAR” to identifying the factors of user acceptance and specific tourist requirements. This works highlights the technical requirement, design conceptualisation, smart glass User Interface (UI) design and smart glass application development using a Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology. The smart glass AR application is developed in the context of cultural heritage tourism and provides context-aware and visually appealing tourism contents to the visitors at the UNESCO World Heritage sites in Malaysia