Performance Analysis of an IoT Platform with Virtual Reality and Social Media Integration

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing network of physical objects where the devices are connected to the Internet through unique addressing schemes and multiple protocols. The increase of IoT devices in the recent years presents significant challenges in terms of security, authentication and usability. The recently introduced Social Internet of Things (SIoT) tries to address these challenges with the virtualisation of IoT devices and the use of an infrastructure where people and IoT devices can communicate with each other, both in the real-world and virtual-world, through a common platform. In the proposed SIoT architecture, IoT devices can be operated by virtual reality (VR)headsets and Twitter, a social media platform. The aim of the platform is to allow users to seamlessly operate IoT devices, using their preferred interface: remotely with text messages (i.e. tweets) and VR headsets or operate the IoT devices directly. This paper also describes the implementation of a testbed and presents the performance analysis of the solution, demonstrating its feasibility and low latency

REMOS-IoT - A Relay and Mobility Scheme for Improved IoT Communication Performance

The Internet of Things (IoT) can avail from device-to-device (D2D) communication techniques to increase object data exchange performance. IoT networks aim to offer a massive number of services at high quality levels, and many of the devices providing these services are mobile. Devices such as wearables, sensors, drones and smart vehicles need constant connectivity despite their moving patterns and therefore, an IoT architecture should consider both Quality of Service (QoS) and mobility. D2D allows devices to communicate directly to share content and functionality, such as access to the Internet. This paper proposes REMOS-IoT - A RElay and MObility Scheme for improved IoT communication performance in support of increased QoS for the data exchange services between mobile IoT devices. Simulation-based testing showed how performance of devices increased in several scenarios, demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed architecture and algorithms

Performance evaluation of a multi-user virtual reality platform

Virtual Reality (VR) popularity is increasing as it is becoming more affordable for end users. Available VR hardware includes low-end inexpensive devices like Google Cardboard and high-end ones like HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, which are more expensive headsets. Using VR as a platform for content delivery allows better user engagement than other traditional methods, as VR headsets remove external distractions. Multi- user VR applications provide shared experiences where users can communicate and interact in the same virtual space. This shared environment, however, introduces challenges regarding network performance, quality of service (QoS) and sessions privacy. This paper presents a multi-user VR application and aims to evaluate network behaviour in a number of scenarios, including real VR headsets (i.e. Oculus Rift), as well as simulated ones. This QoS analysis is important for the understanding of how many VR users can be simultaneously connected with high image qualit

Performance evaluation of a multi-user virtual reality platform

Virtual Reality (VR) popularity is increasing as it is becoming more affordable for end users. Available VR hardware includes low-end inexpensive devices like Google Cardboard and high-end ones like HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, which are more expensive headsets. Using VR as a platform for content delivery allows better user engagement than other traditional methods, as VR headsets remove external distractions. Multi- user VR applications provide shared experiences where users can communicate and interact in the same virtual space. This shared environment, however, introduces challenges regarding network performance, quality of service (QoS) and sessions privacy. This paper presents a multi-user VR application and aims to evaluate network behaviour in a number of scenarios, including real VR headsets (i.e. Oculus Rift), as well as simulated ones. This QoS analysis is important for the understanding of how many VR users can be simultaneously connected with high image quality

Performance analysis of an IoT platform with virtual reality and social media integration

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing network of physical objects where the devices are connected to the Internet through unique addressing schemes and multiple protocols. The increase of IoT devices in the recent years presents significant challenges in terms of security, authentication and usability. The recently introduced Social Internet of Things (SIoT) tries to address these challenges with the virtualisation of IoT devices and the use of an infrastructure where people and IoT devices can communicate with each other, both in the real-world and virtual-world, through a common platform. In the proposed SIoT architecture, IoT devices can be operated by virtual reality (VR) headsets and Twitter, a social media platform. The aim of the platform is to allow users to seamlessly operate IoT devices, using their preferred interface: remotely with text messages (i.e. tweets) and VR headsets or operate the IoT devices directly. This paper also describes the implementation of a testbed and presents the performance analysis of the solution, demonstrating its feasibility and low latency

An adaptive resolution scheme for performance enhancement of a web-based multi-user VR application

Over the last few years, several frameworks have been introduced to help developers build virtual reality (VR) experiences for the web. One such open-source web framework is the A-Frame framework, which is built on top of WebXR and Three.js. A-Frame can be used to create 3D scenes that can be rendered using compatible browsers such as Chrome and Firefox. The performance of web-based VR applications, however, can be affected due to the limitations of the CPU and GPU, especially in multi-user applications. In this paper, an A-Frame-based multi- user VR application is developed and the performance is analyzed under different scenarios, demonstrating how an increase in the number of users affects metrics related to VR quality of experience (QoE). Then, an Adaptive Resolution Scheme for VR (ARS-VR) is proposed, which improves the VR performance in terms of frame rate and frame latency on remote devices with limited processing and display features

A CNN-based Framework for Enhancing 360° VR Experiences with Multisensorial Effects

Improving user experience during the delivery of immersive content is crucial for its success for both the content creators and audience. Creators can express themselves better with multisensory stimulation, while the audience can experience a higher level of involvement. The rapid development of mulsemedia devices provides better access for stimuli such as olfaction and haptics. Nevertheless, due to the required manual annotation process of adding mulsemedia effects, the amount of content available with sensorial effects is still limited. This work introduces an innovative mulsemedia-enhancement solution capable of automatically generating olfactory and haptic content based on 360° video content, with the use of neural networks. Two parallel neural networks are responsible for automatically adding scents to 360° videos: a scene detection network (responsible for static, global content) and an action detection network (responsible for dynamic, local content). A 360° video dataset with scent labels is also created and used for evaluating the robustness of the proposed solution. The solution achieves a 69.19% olfactory accuracy and 72.26% haptics accuracy during evaluation using two different datasets

BeTwin: enhancing VR experiences with BLE beacon-based digital twins

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the technologies that can be used for short-range communications. BLE beacons are small wireless devices that can store URLs and real-world data, including GPS locations and identifiers. This article proposes BeTwin, an efficient solution that integrates BLE beacons with a digital twin environment in order to enhance and customise a virtual 3D platform, bridging the real and virtual worlds. The beacons are used to bring information from real objects into the virtual platform. We extend the Eddystone messaging protocol and investigate the impact of beacon distance, energy levels, and number of beacons on the system performance. We also describe a testbed consisting of a virtual environment, a beacon reader along with beacons, and assess its performance in terms of communications latency, Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), and number of beacons

A Novel Production Workflow and Toolset for Opera Co-creation Towards Enhanced Societal Inclusion of People

Opera uses all the visual and performing arts tocreate extraordinary worlds of passion and sensibility. It is rightly recognised as a great achievement of European culture. And yet a form that once inspired social and artistic revolutions is often seen as the staid preserve of the elite. With rising inequality and social exclusion, many see opera-if they think of it at all-as symbolic of what is wrong in Europe today. This paper presents technological and scientific approach of the European H2020 TRACTION project that aims to use opera as a path for social and cultural inclusion, making it once again a force for radicaltransformation. TRACTION wants to define new forms of artistic creation through which the most marginalised groups (e.g. migrants, the rural poor, young offenders and others) can work with artists to tell the stories that matter now. By combining best practices in participatory art with media technology's innovations of language, form and process, the project is defining new approaches to co-creation and innovation, exploring audiovisual formats based in european cultural heritage, such as opera