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Item User Interaction Feedback in a Hand-Controlled Interface for Robot Team Tele-operation Using Wearable Augmented Reality(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Cannavò, Alberto; Lamberti, Fabrizio; Andrea Giachetti and Paolo Pingi and Filippo StancoContinuous advancements in the field of robotics and its increasing spread across heterogeneous application scenarios make the development of ever more effective user interfaces for human-robot interaction (HRI) an extremely relevant research topic. In particular, Natural User Interfaces (NUIs), e.g., based on hand and body gestures, proved to be an interesting technology to be exploited for designing intuitive interaction paradigms in the field of HRI. However, the more sophisticated the HRI interfaces become, the more important is to provide users with an accurate feedback about the state of the robot as well as of the interface itself. In this work, an Augmented Reality (AR)-based interface is deployed on a head-mounted display to enable tele-operation of a remote robot team using hand movements and gestures. A user study is performed to assess the advantages of wearable AR compared to desktop-based AR in the execution of specific tasks.Item Study of the Influence of User Characteristics on the Virtual Reality Presence(The Eurographics Association, 2018) Mayor, Jesús; Sánchez, Alberto; Raya, Laura; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, CarlosIn recent years, virtual reality has grown a lot in different areas of application, including ludic, social and research, being used by a large and growing number of users with different profiles. Presence is one of the most distinctive and important features of a virtual reality experience. The aim of this article is to study the most suitable areas of application for users and to analyze the influence of different characteristics of the user's profile in the perceived presence. We have tested the interest applications indicated by 159 subjects and we have designed an immersive virtual reality experience, testing the behavior and performance of 48 users. The results obtained show that gender can influence the perceptual sensation of presence in these types of virtual environments.Item A Virtual Character Posing System based on Reconfigurable Tangible User Interfaces and Immersive Virtual Reality(The Eurographics Association, 2018) Cannavò, A.; Lamberti, F.; Livesu, Marco and Pintore, Gianni and Signoroni, AlbertoComputer animation and, particularly, virtual character animation, are very time consuming and skill-intensive tasks, which require animators to work with sophisticated user interfaces. Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) already proved to be capable of making character animation more intuitive, and possibly more efficient, by leveraging the affordances provided by physical props that mimic the structure of virtual counterparts. The main downside of existing TUI-based animation solutions is the reduced accuracy, which is due partly to the use of mechanical parts, partly to the fact that, despite the adoption of a 3D input, users still have to work with a 2D output (usually represented by one or more views displayed on a screen). However, output methods that are natively 3D, e.g., based on virtual reality (VR), have been already exploited in different ways within computer animation scenarios. By moving from the above considerations and by building upon an existing work, this paper proposes a VR-based character animation system that combines the advantages of TUIs with the improved spatial awareness, enhanced visualization and better control on the observation point in the virtual space ensured by immersive VR. Results of a user study with both skilled and unskilled users showed a marked preference for the devised system, which was judged as more intuitive than that in the reference work, and allowed users to pose a virtual character in a lower time and with a higher accuracy.Item A 3 Cent Recognizer: Simple and Effective Retrieval and Classification of Mid-air Gestures from Single 3D Traces(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Caputo, Fabio Marco; Prebianca, Pietro; Carcangiu, Alessandro; Spano, Lucio D.; Giachetti, Andrea; Andrea Giachetti and Paolo Pingi and Filippo StancoIn this paper we present a simple 3D gesture recognizer based on trajectory matching, showing its good performances in classification and retrieval of command gestures based on single hand trajectories. We demonstrate that further simplifications in porting the classic "1 dollar" algorithm approach from the 2D to the 3D gesture recognition and retrieval problems can result in very high classification accuracy and retrieval scores even on datasets with a large number of different gestures executed by different users. Furthermore, recognition can be good even with heavily subsampled path traces and with incomplete gestures.Item Virtual Reality: A Literature Review and Metrics-based Classification(The Eurographics Association, 2018) Ankomah, Peter; Vangorp, Peter; {Tam, Gary K. L. and Vidal, FranckThis paper presents a multi-disciplinary overview of research evaluating virtual reality (VR). The main aim is to review and classify VR research based on several metrics: presence and immersion, navigation and interaction, knowledge improvement, performance and usability. With the continuous development and consumerisation of VR, several application domains have studied the impact of VR as an enhanced alternative environment for performing tasks. However, VR experiment results often cannot be generalised but require specific datasets and tasks suited to each domain. This review and classification of VR metrics presents an alternative metrics-based view of VR experiments and research.Item Screen Space Particle Selection(The Eurographics Association, 2018) Köster, Marcel; Krüger, Antonio; {Tam, Gary K. L. and Vidal, FranckAnalyses of large 3D particle datasets typically involve many different exploration and visualization steps. Interactive exploration techniques are essential to reveal and select interesting subsets like clusters or other sophisticated structures. State-of-the-art techniques allow for context-aware selections that can be refined dynamically. However, these techniques require large amounts of memory and have high computational complexity which heavily limits their applicability to large datasets. We propose a novel, massively parallel particle selection method that is easy to implement and has a processing complexity of O(n*k) (where n is the number of particles and k the maximum number of neighbors per particle) and requires only O(n) memory. Furthermore, our algorithm is designed for GPUs and performs a selection step in several milliseconds while still being able to achieve high-quality results.Item A Prototype of Virtual Reality System for the Visualization, Exploration and Modeling of Huge Point Clouds(The Eurographics Association, 2018) Ortega-Donaire, José; Segura-Sánchez, Rafael Jesús; Ogáyar-Anguita, Carlos-Javier; Rueda-Ruiz, Antonio Jesús; García-Fernández, Ignacio and Ureña, CarlosThe use of specific techniques for the management and visualization of huge point clouds is necessary to solve the drawbacks of inefficiency derived from the size of the dataset and the techniques used to visualize it. This work presents a prototype of VR system for the visualization and management of extensive point clouds in 3D with the ability to edit specific points. For this, the tool incorporates multiresolution techniques, which improve the performance and efficiency of the system. The prototype also incorporates the management of the point cloud stored in an unstructured database; so the prototype can request parts of the dataset from the required fractions generated by an octree. This allows the progressive processing of 3D point clouds, which is very useful to control and visualize a large data set in real time.Item Evolutionary Interactive Analysis of MRI Gastric Images Using a Multiobjective Cooperative-coevolution Scheme(The Eurographics Association, 2018) Al-Maliki, Shatha F.; Lutton, Évelyne; Boué, François; Vidal, Franck; {Tam, Gary K. L. and Vidal, FranckIn this study, we combine computer vision and visualisation/data exploration to analyse magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and detect garden peas inside the stomach. It is a preliminary objective of a larger project that aims to understand the kinetics of gastric emptying. We propose to perform the image analysis task as a multi-objective optimisation. A set of 7 equally important objectives are proposed to characterise peas. We rely on a cooperation co-evolution algorithm called 'Fly Algorithm' implemented using NSGA-II. The Fly Algorithm is a specific case of the 'Parisian Approach' where the solution of an optimisation problem is represented as a set of individuals (e.g. the whole population) instead of a single individual (the best one) as in typical evolutionary algorithms (EAs). NSGA-II is a popular EA used to solve multi-objective optimisation problems. The output of the optimisation is a succession of datasets that progressively approximate the Pareto front, which needs to be understood and explored by the end-user. Using interactive Information Visualisation (InfoVis) and clustering techniques, peas are then semi-automatically segmented.Item When Size Matters: Towards Evaluating Perceivability of Choropleths(The Eurographics Association, 2018) McNabb, Liam; Laramee, Robert S.; Wilson, Max; {Tam, Gary K. L. and Vidal, FranckChoropleth maps are an invaluable visualization type for mapping geo-spatial data. One advantage to a choropleth map over other geospatial visualizations such as cartograms is the familiarity of a non-distorted landmass. However, this causes challenges when an area becomes too small in order to accurately perceive the underlying color. When does size matter in a choropleth map? We conduct an experiment to verify the relationship between choropleth maps, their underlying color map, and a user's perceivability. We do this by testing a user's perception of color relative to an administrative area's size within a choropleth map, as well as user-preference of fixed-locale maps with enforced minimum areas. Based on this initial experiment we can make the first recommendations with respect to a unit area's minimum size in order to be perceivably useful.Item Data Painter: A Tool for Colormap Interaction(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Nagoor, Omniah H.; Borgo, Rita; Jones, Mark W.; Tao Ruan Wan and Franck VidalThe choice of a mapping from data to color should involve careful consideration in order to maximize the user understanding of the underlying data. It is desirable for features within the data to be visually separable and identifiable. Current practice involves selecting a mapping from predefined colormaps or coding specific colormaps using software such as MATLAB. The purposes of this paper are to introduce interactive operations for colormaps that enable users to create more visually distinguishable pixel based visualizations, and to describe our tool, Data Painter, that provides a fast, easy to use framework for defining these color mappings. We demonstrate the use of the tool to create colormaps for various application areas and compare to existing color mapping methods. We present a new objective measure to evaluate their efficacy