Demonstration of ObserVAR: Visualization System for Observing Virtual Reality Users using Augmented Reality

Santawat Thanyadit, Parinya Punpongsanon, and Ting-Chuen Pong. 2020. Demonstration of ObserVAR: Visualization System for Observing Virtual Reality Users using Augmented Reality. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 XR (SA '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 13, 1–2. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3415256.3421495.SA '20: SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 [December 4 - 13, 2020

Structuring lecture videos for distance learning applications. ISMSE

This paper presents an automatic and novel approach in structuring and indexing lecture videos for distance learning applications. By structuring video content, we can support both topic indexing and semantic querying of multimedia documents. In this paper, our aim is to link the discussion topics extracted from the electronic slides with their associated video and audio segments. Two major techniques in our proposed approach include video text analysis and speech recognition. Initially, a video is partitioned into shots based on slide transitions. For each shot, the embedded video texts are detected, reconstructed and segmented as high-resolution foreground texts for commercial OCR recognition. The recognized texts can then be matched with their associated slides for video indexing. Meanwhile, both phrases (title) and keywords (content) are also extracted from the electronic slides to spot the speech signals. The spotted phrases and keywords are further utilized as queries to retrieve the most similar slide for speech indexing. 1

Substituting Teleportation Visualization for Collaborative Virtual Environments

Santawat Thanyadit, Parinya Punpongsanon, Thammathip Piumsomboon, and Ting-Chuen Pong. 2020. Substituting Teleportation Visualization for Collaborative Virtual Environments. Symposium on Spatial User Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 31, 1–2. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3385959.3422698.SUI '20: Symposium on Spatial User Interaction [October 30 - November 1, 2020

PlanningVis: A visual analytics approach to production planning in smart factories

Production planning in the manufacturing industry is crucial for fully utilizing factory resources (e.g., machines, raw materials and workers) and reducing costs. With the advent of industry 4.0, plenty of data recording the status of factory resources have been collected and further involved in production planning, which brings an unprecedented opportunity to understand, evaluate and adjust complex production plans through a data-driven approach. However, developing a systematic analytics approach for production planning is challenging due to the large volume of production data, the complex dependency between products, and unexpected changes in the market and the plant. Previous studies only provide summarized results and fail to show details for comparative analysis of production plans. Besides, the rapid adjustment to the plan in the case of an unanticipated incident is also not supported. In this paper, we propose PlanningVis, a visual analytics system to support the exploration and comparison of production plans with three levels of details: a plan overview presenting the overall difference between plans, a product view visualizing various properties of individual products, and a production detail view displaying the product dependency and the daily production details in related factories. By integrating an automatic planning algorithm with interactive visual explorations, PlanningVis can facilitate the efficient optimization of daily production planning as well as support a quick response to unanticipated incidents in manufacturing. Two case studies with real-world data and carefully designed interviews with domain experts demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of PlanningVis

A mobile game (safe city) designed to promote children's safety knowledge and behaviors: protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Children have high levels of curiosity and eagerness to explore. This makes them more vulnerable to danger and hazards, and they thus have a higher risk of injury. Safety education such as teaching safety rules and tips is vital to prevent children from injuries. Although game-based approaches have the potential to capture children’s attention and sustain their interest in learning, whether these new instructional approaches are more effective than traditional approaches in delivering safety messages to children remains uncertain. Objective: The aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of a game-based intervention in promoting safety knowledge and behaviors among Hong Kong school children in Grades 4-6. It will also examine the potential effect of the game-based intervention on these children’s functioning and psychosocial difficulties. Methods: This study comprises the development of a city-based role-playing game Safe City, where players are immersed as safety inspectors to prevent dangerous situations and promote safety behavior in a virtual city environment. The usability and acceptability tests will be conducted with children in Grades 4-6 who will trial the gameplay on a mobile phone. Adjustments will be made based on their feedback. A 4-week randomized controlled trial with children studying in Grades 4-6 in Hong Kong elementary schools will be conducted to assess the effectiveness of the Safe City game–based intervention. In this trial, 504 children will play Safe City, and 504 children will receive traditional instructional materials (electronic and printed safety information). The evaluation will be conducted using both child self-report and parent proxy-report data. Specifically, child safety knowledge and behaviors will be assessed by a questionnaire involving items on knowledge and behaviors, respectively, for home safety, road safety, and sport-related safety; child functioning will be assessed by PedsQL Generic Core Scales; and psychosocial difficulties will be assessed by the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire. These questionnaires will be administered at 3 time points: before, 1 month, and 3 months after the intervention. Game usage statistics will also be reviewed. Results: This project was funded in September 2019. The design and development of the Safe City game are currently under way. Recruitment and data collection will begin from September 2020 and will continue up to March 1, 2021. Full analysis will be conducted after the end of the data collection period. Conclusions: If the Safe City game is found to be an effective tool to deliver safety education, it could be used to promote safety in children in the community and upgraded to incorporate more health-related topics to support education and empowerment for the larger public. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04096196; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04096196 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/1775

A web-based course delivery system for online teaching and learning

Distance learning is commonly used as a means of providing education to learners at remote locations. In the past, this mode of education was common in continuing education and corporate training. Recent advances in Internet technology have drastically expanded the scope of distance learning. Through Internet-based online learning, individuals can now take courses from anywhere around the world at any time without traveling further than to their computers. Hence, time, distance, and limited classroom space are no longer barriers to learning. In this paper, a Web-based course-delivery system developed at HKUST will be presented