We describe our experiences of creating and using a wide variety of techniques and applications to support collaboration in virtual environments for different activities and user groups. Our aim is to offer plentiful and rich possibilities for interaction across and between both real and virtual environments.
In a distributed shared synthetic environment with provisions for high quality 3D visualization and interaction, it is possible to implement a powerful variant of a roomslspace metaphor based on the concept of presence or proximity between participants in 3D space. This kind of model can be used as an interface between the user and the computer, for overview and control of applications, tile systems, networks and other computer resources, as well as for communication and collaboration with other users in the networked environment. We model proximity with a geometric volume of the immediate surroundings, the aura, of the participant’s representation in the synthetic environment. This proximity, or aura, is used to establish presence at meetings, to establish communication channels and to provide interaction.
The Pond is a desk-projection-based system for search, visualisation and transactions of data elements stored in local databases or on the Internet. Based on a 3D ecosystem metaphor, the Pond approach to querying, presenting and manipulating data elements differs considerably from more conventional information systems.
A central aim of the COVEN project was to prototype large-scale applications of collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) that went beyond the existing state of the art. These applications were used in a series of real-scale networked trials that allowed us to gather many interesting human and technological results. To fulfil the technological and experimental goals of the project, we have modified an existing CVE platform: the DIVE (distributed interactive virtual environment) toolkit. In this paper, we present the different services and extensions that have been implemented within the platform during the four years of the project. Such a presentation will exemplify the different features that will have to be offered by next-generation CVE platforms. Implementation of the COVEN services has had implications at all levels of the platform: from a new networking layer through to mechanisms for high-level semantic modelling of applications.
We describe a museum installation that explains the technical and mental process that sonar operators undergo when identifying underwater sounds in the surroundings of a submarine. The installation places the public in a cramped space composed of several coupled interactive stations offering different perspectives onto a virtual environment representing a part of the Baltic Sea. The virtual environment and its presentation within the installation are implemented as an application of the DIVE research toolkit. The installation has been on display in several museums on a daily basis for over a year. We describe the technical solutions that we have employed to realise the installation and some of our learning.
Thanks to its non-invasive nature and high-resolution imaging capabilities, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a valuable diagnostic tool for pediatric patients. However, the fear and anxiety experienced by young children during MRI scans often result in suboptimal image quality and the need for sedation/anesthesia. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of a smartphone application called COSMO@home to prepare children for MRI scans to reduce the need for sedation or general anesthesia. The COSMO@home app was developed incorporating mini-games and an engaging storyline to prepare children for learning goals related to the MRI procedure. A multicenter study was conducted involving four hospitals in Belgium. Eligible children aged 4–10 years were prepared with the COSMO@home app at home. Baseline, pre-scan, and post-scan questionnaires measured anxiety evolution in two age groups (4–6 years and 7–10 years). Eighty-two children participated in the study, with 95% obtaining high-quality MRI images. The app was well-received by children and parents, with minimal technical difficulties reported. In the 4–6-year-old group (N = 33), there was a significant difference between baseline and pre-scan parent-reported anxiety scores, indicating an increase in anxiety levels prior to the scan. In the 7–10-year-old group (N = 49), no significant differences were observed between baseline and pre-scan parent-reported anxiety scores. Overall, the COSMO@home app proved to be useful in preparing children for MRI scans, with high satisfaction rates and successful image outcomes across different hospitals. The app, combined with minimal face-to-face guidance on the day of the scan, showed the potential to replace or assist traditional face-to-face training methods. This innovative approach has the potential to reduce the need for sedation or general anesthesia during pediatric MRI scans and its associated risks and improve patient experience.
This paper describes how home appliances might be enhanced to improve user awareness of energy usage. Households wish to lead comfortable and manageable lives. Balancing this reasonable desire with the environmental and political goal of reducing electricity usage is a challenge that we claim is best met through the design of interfaces that allows users better control of their usage and unobtrusively informs them of the actions of their peers. A set of design principles along these lines is formulated in this paper. We have built a fully functional prototype home appliance with a socially aware interface to signal the aggregate usage of the user's peer group according to these principles, and present the prototype in the paper.
Smart monitoring of cattle on pasture According to the Swedish Board of Agriculture, meadows and pastures have decreased by hundreds of thousands of hectares in Sweden over the past hundred years. Valuable pastures can be located far from the farm, which means that the farmer chooses not to use it as it means long transport distances for daily supervision and monitoring of the animals. The problem has become more common with the structural change towards fewer and larger farms that has taken place in agriculture in recent decades. Farmers can, when the pasture is far from the farm, hire people who live closer to the pasture for the day-to-day care of the animals. However, counting the animals can be a task that is difficult to maintain, as it can be difficult even for an experienced zookeeper, especially if it is a larger group of animals and hilly terrain. If this step is handled automatically, it will be easier for the farmer to hire another person for the daily care of the animals and thus the possibility of using hard-to-reach pasture is increased. The project focused on finding low-cost and smart technical solutions to facilitate the tracking of animals, with the aim of developing a monitoring system for cattle on pasture to ensure that the animals are counted as part of a farmer’s daily supervision. The monitoring system that has been developed uses satellite communication to send the position of the animals up to four times a day to a mobile app, which gives the farmers an indication that all the animals have moved. In addition, the farmer receives alarms via email if the animals have too little activity or have moved outside of their designated pasture. Based on the experience from the field trials that were carried out, and from feedback from the farmers who participated in the project, it is concluded that the monitoring system can facilitate the monitoring of animals on pasture and at the same time be economically viable for a farmer. However, there is an opportunity to further develop the monitoring system to add functions such as water and electrical fence monitoring, which would make it possible to handle even more of the daily supervision digitally and only have manual supervision a few times a week.
This paper will discuss MDraw, a tool that supports cooperative work in the Tele-presence environment. The Tele-Presence project lies within a Swedish research program called MultiG, wich does research on distributed multimedia applications and high-speed networks. In the Tele-Presence system, several users can simultaneously reside in a virtual world where they can see graphical representations of each other. MDraw is a simple drawing tool, shaped like a whiteboard, that can be placed in any virtual world where it can be seen and accessed by all users present. The whiteboard supports the creation and manipulation of simple objects, like lines and ellipses, and also offers a video function that gives users the ability to display a live video picture on the board. Drawing is accomplished by using a wand, which is a six-dimensional interaction device...
The paper introduces a Mobile Companion prototype, which helps users to plan and keep track of their exercise activities via an interface based mainly on speech input and output. The Mobile Companion runs on a PDA and is based on a stand-alone, speaker-independent solution, making it fairly unique among mobile spoken dialogue systems, where the common solution is to run the ASR on a separate server or to restrict the speech input to some specific set of users. The prototype uses a GPS receiver to collect position, distance and speed data while the user is exercising, and allows the data to be compared to previous exercises. It communicates over the mobile network with a stationary system, placed in the user’s home. This allows plans for exercise activities to be downloaded from the stationary to the mobile system, and exercise result data to be uploaded once an exercise has been completed.
Multimodal conversational spoken dialogues using physical and virtual agents provide a potential interface to motivate and support users in the domain of health and fitness. The paper presents a multimodal conversational Companion system focused on health and fitness, which has both a stationary and a mobile component.
In this chapter we describe The Pond, a system used to search for and visualise data elements on an engaging tabletop display. The Pond uses methods of unencumbered interaction and audio feedback to allow users to investigate data elements, and supports shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration with the physical Pond artefact mediating the collaboration between those people gathered around it. The user interface is based on an ecosystem metaphor, presenting data elements in the form of shoals of aquatic creatures inside a virtual 3D pond.
In this paper we describe The Pond, a system used to search for and visualise data elements on an engaging tabletop display. The Pond uses methods of unencumbered interaction and audio feedback to allow users to investigate data elements, and supports shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration with the physical Pond artefact mediating the collaboration between those people gathered around it. The user interface is based on an ecosystem metaphor, presenting data elements in the form of shoals of aquatic creatures inside a virtual 3D pond. The Pond is an interactive system offering an appealing and novel way to search for and interchange information. We describe the motivation and design choices behind The Pond, the system as it stands today, details of its implementation, and observations from a study of The Pond in use.
Multimodal conversational spoken dialogues using physical and virtual agents provide a potential interface to motivate and support users in the domain of health and fitness. In this paper we present how such multimodal conversational Companions can be implemented to support their owners in various pervasive and mobile settings. In particular, we focus on different forms of multimodality and system architectures for such interfaces.