Marker-Based Embodied Interaction for Handheld Augmented Reality Games

This article deals with embodied user interfaces for handheld augmented reality games, which consist of both physical and virtual components. We have developed a number of spatial interaction techniques that optically capture the device's movement and orientation relative to a visual marker. Such physical interactions in 3-D space enable manipulative control of mobile games. In addition to acting as a physical controller that recognizes multiple game-dependent gestures, the mobile device augments the camera view with graphical overlays. We describe three game prototypes that use ubiquitous product packaging and other passive media as backgrounds for handheld augmentation. The prototypes can be realized on widely available off-the-shelf hardware and require only minimal setup and infrastructure support.

Semi-Automated Creation of Converged iTV Services: From Macromedia Director Simulations to Services Ready for Broadcast

While sound and video may capture viewers' attention, interaction can captivate them. This has not been available prior to the advent of Digital Television. In fact, what lies at the heart of the Digital Television revolution is this new type of interactive content, offered in the form of interactive Television (iTV) services. On top of that, the new world of converged networks has created a demand for a new type of converged services on a range of mobile terminals (Tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile phones). This paper aims at presenting a new approach to service creation that allows for the semi-automatic translation of simulations and rapid prototypes created in the accessible desktop multimedia authoring package Macromedia Director into services ready for broadcast. This is achieved by a series of tools that de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces (UI) and applications for mobile terminals. The benefits of rapid prototyping are essential for the production of these new types of services, and are therefore discussed in the first section of this paper. In the following sections, an overview of the operation of content, service, creation and management sub-systems is presented, which illustrates why these tools compose an important and integral part of a system responsible of creating, delivering and managing converged broadcast and telecommunications services. The next section examines a number of metadata languages candidates for describing the iTV services user interface and the schema language adopted in this project. A detailed description of the operation of the two tools is provided to offer an insight of how they can be used to de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces and applications for mobile terminals. Finally, representative broadcast oriented and telecommunication oriented converged service components are also introduced, demonstrating how these tools have been used to generate different types of services.

ARTHUR: A Collaborative Augmented Environment for Architectural Design and Urban Planning

Projects in the area of architectural design and urban planning typically engage several architects as well as experts from other professions. While the design and review meetings thus often involve a large number of cooperating participants, the actual design is still done by the individuals in the time in between those meetings using desktop PCs and CAD applications. A real collaborative approach to architectural design and urban planning is often limited to early paper-based sketches.In order to overcome these limitations, we designed and realized the ARTHUR system, an Augmented Reality (AR) enhanced round table to support complex design and planning decisions for architects. WhileAR has been applied to this area earlier, our approach does not try to replace the use of CAD systems but rather integrates them seamlessly into the collaborative AR environment. The approach is enhanced by intuitiveinteraction mechanisms that can be easily con-figured for different application scenarios.

tkCybernetics

tkCybernetics is a simulation software that can be used to create and evaluate simple cybernetic circuits as a combination of lowpass and highpass filters and several nonlinear elements. tkCybernetics has been developed for and successfully applied to introductory courses on biological cybernetics at Bielefeld University. Therefore, it is recommended for students who start learning about cybernetics. Students can quickly grasp the concepts used in the graphical user interface and are able to create their own circuits after a short introduction to the program. Its usefulness for advanced students and researchers is limited to quickly testing circuits. This article provides detailed tutorial information on how to install and work with tkCybernetics for self-learning and for higher education.

MHP Oriented Interactive Augmented Reality System for Sports Broadcasting Environments

Television and movie images have been altered ever since it was technically possible. Nowadays embedding advertisements, or incorporating text and graphics in TV scenes, are common practice, but they can not be considered as integrated part of the scene. The introduction of new services for interactive augmented television is discussed in this paper. We analyse the main aspects related with the whole chain of augmented reality production. Interactivity is one of the most important added values of the digital television: This paper aims to break the model where all TV viewers receive the same final image. Thus, we introduce and discuss the new concept of interactive augmented television, i. e. real time composition of video and computer graphics - e.g. a real scene and freely selectable images or spatial rendered objects - edited and customized by the end user within the context of the user's set top box and TV receiver.

How to Improve the Production Process for interactive TV with semi-formal Methods

The central question for this paper is how to improve the production process by closing the gap between industrial designers and software engineers of television(TV)-based User Interfaces (UI) in an industrial environment. Software engineers are highly interested whether one UI design can be converted into several fully functional UIs for TV products with different screen properties. The aim of the software engineers is to apply automatic layout and scaling in order to speed up and improve the production process. However, the question is whether a UI design lends itself for such automatic layout and scaling. This is investigated by analysing a prototype UI design done by industrial designers. In a first requirements study, industrial designers had created meta-annotations on top of their UI design in order to disclose their design rationale for discussions with software engineers. In a second study, five (out of ten) industrial designers assessed the potential of four different meta-annotation approaches. The question was which annotation method industrial designers would prefer and whether it could satisfy the technical requirements of the software engineering process. One main result is that the industrial designers preferred the method they were already familiar with, which therefore seems to be the most effective one although the main objective of automatic layout and scaling could still not be achieved.

Teaching Cognitive Modeling Using PDP++

PDP++ is a freely available, open source software package designed to support the development, simulation, and analysis of research-grade connectionist models of cognitive processes. It supports most popular parallel distributed processing paradigms and artificial neural network architectures, and it also provides an implementation of the LEABRA computational cognitive neuroscience framework. Models are typically constructed and examined using the PDP++ graphical user interface, but the system may also be extended through the incorporation of user-written C++ code. This article briefly reviews the features of PDP++, focusing on its utility for teaching cognitive modeling concepts and skills to university undergraduate and graduate students. An informal evaluation of the software as a pedagogical tool is provided, based on the author’s classroom experiences at three research universities and several conference-hosted tutorials.

Presence in a Three-Dimensional Test Environment: Benefit or Threat to Market Research?

In market research, the adoption of interactive virtual reality-techniques could be expected to contain many advantages: artificial lab environments could be designed in a more realistic manner and the consideration of “time to the market”-factors could be improved. On the other hand, with an increasing degree of presence and the notional attendance in a simulated test environment, the market research task could fall prey to the tensing virtual reality adventure. In the following study a 3D-technique is empirically tested for its usability in market research. It will be shown that the interactive 3D-simulation is not biased by the immersion it generates and provides considerably better test results than 2D-stimuli do.

Real Walking through Virtual Environments by Redirection Techniques

We present redirection techniques that support exploration of large-scale virtual environments (VEs) by means of real walking. We quantify to what degree users can unknowingly be redirected in order to guide them through VEs in which virtual paths differ from the physical paths. We further introduce the concept of dynamic passive haptics by which any number of virtual objects can be mapped to real physical proxy props having similar haptic properties (i. e., size, shape, and surface structure), such that the user can sense these virtual objects by touching their real world counterparts. Dynamic passive haptics provides the user with the illusion of interacting with a desired virtual object by redirecting her to the corresponding proxy prop. We describe the concepts of generic redirected walking and dynamic passive haptics and present experiments in which we have evaluated these concepts. Furthermore, we discuss implications that have been derived from a user study, and we present approaches that derive physical paths which may vary from the virtual counterparts.

Software als Schutzgegenstand des Europäischen Urheberrechts

After 20 years of silence, two recent references from the Czech Republic (Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace, Case C-393/09) and from the English High Court (SAS Institute, Case C-406/10) touch upon several questions that are fundamental for the extent of copyright protection for software under the Computer Program Directive 91/25 (now 2009/24) and the Information Society Directive 2001/29. In Case C-393/09, the European Court of Justice held that “the object of the protection conferred by that directive is the expression in any form of a computer program which permits reproduction in different computer languages, such as the source code and the object code.” As “any form of expression of a computer program must be protected from the moment when its reproduction would engender the reproduction of the computer program itself, thus enabling the computer to perform its task,” a graphical user interface (GUI) is not protected under the Computer Program Directive, as it does “not enable the reproduction of that computer program, but merely constitutes one element of that program by means of which users make use of the features of that program.” While the definition of computer program and the exclusion of GUIs mirror earlier jurisprudence in the Member States and therefore do not come as a surprise, the main significance of Case C-393/09 lies in its interpretation of the Information Society Directive. In confirming that a GUI “can, as a work, be protected by copyright if it is its author’s own intellectual creation,” the ECJ continues the Europeanization of the definition of “work” which began in Infopaq (Case C-5/08). Moreover, the Court elaborated this concept further by excluding expressions from copyright protection which are dictated by their technical function. Even more importantly, the ECJ held that a television broadcasting of a GUI does not constitute a communication to the public, as the individuals cannot have access to the “essential element characterising the interface,” i.e., the interaction with the user. The exclusion of elements dictated by technical functions from copyright protection and the interpretation of the right of communication to the public with reference to the “essential element characterising” the work may be seen as welcome limitations of copyright protection in the interest of a free public domain which were not yet apparent in Infopaq. While Case C-393/09 has given a first definition of the computer program, the pending reference in Case C-406/10 is likely to clarify the scope of protection against nonliteral copying, namely in how far the protection extends beyond the text of the source code to the design of a computer program and where the limits of protection lie as regards the functionality of a program and mere “principles and ideas.” In light of the travaux préparatoires, it is submitted that the ECJ is also likely to grant protection for the design of a computer program, while excluding both the functionality and underlying principles and ideas from protection under the European copyright directives.

Vergleich von Softwarelösungen für die Ökobilanzierung – eine softwareergonomische Analyse

Ökobilanzierung von Produktsystemen dient der Abschätzung ihrer Wirkung auf die Umwelt. Eine vollständige Lebenswegbetrachtung erfordert auch die Einbeziehung intralogistischer Transportprozesse bzw. -mittel. Für die Erstellung von Ökobilanzen wird i. d. R. ein Computerprogramm verwendet. Die Demoversionen dreier kommerzieller Softwarelösungen (SimaPro, GaBi und Umberto NXT LCA) und die Vollversion einer Open Source Software (openLCA) wurden aus softwareergonomischer Sicht analysiert. Hierzu erfolgte u. a. der Nachbau der bereitgestellten Tutorials bzw. die Modellierung eigener Produktsysteme. Im Rahmen der Analyse wurden die Punkte • Entstehung, Verbreitung, Zielgruppe, • Eignung der Tutorials, Erlernbarkeit, • Grafische Benutzeroberfläche, Individualisierbarkeit der Software, • Umsetzung der Anforderungen aus den Ökobilanzierungsnormen, • Notwendige Arbeitsschritte zur Erstellung einer Ökobilanz einer vergleichenden Betrachtung unterzogen. Der Beitrag beinhaltet eine Einführung in die wesentlichen Prinzipien der Ökobilanzierung und die Grundsätze der Softwareergonomie. Diese werden zu softwareergonomischen Eigenschaften für Ökobilanzsoftwarelösungen subsumiert. Anschließend werden die Ergebnisse des Softwarevergleiches dargestellt. Abschließend erfolgt eine Zusammenfassung der Erkenntnisse.

Comparison of 2D and 3D GUI Widgets for Stereoscopic Multitouch Setups

Recent developments in the area of interactive entertainment have suggested to combine stereoscopic visualization with multi-touch displays, which has the potential to open up new vistas for natural interaction with interactive three-dimensional (3D) applications. However, the question arises how the user interfaces for system control in such 3D setups should be designed in order to provide an effective user experience. In this article we introduce 3D GUI widgets for interaction with stereoscopic touch displays. The design of the widgets was inspired to skeuomorphism and affordances in such a way that the user should be able to operate the virtual objects in the same way as their real-world equivalents. We evaluate the developed widgets and compared them with their 2D counterparts in the scope of an example application in order to analyze the usability of and user behavior with the widgets. The results reveal differences in user behavior with and without stereoscopic display during touch interaction, and show that the developed 2D as well as 3D GUI widgets can be used effectively in different applications.

Mobile Games for Learning

Today, pupils at the age of 15 have spent their entire life surrounded by and interacting with diverse forms of computers. It is a routine part of their day-to-day life and by now computer-literacy is common at very early age. Over the past five years, technology for teens has become predominantly mobile and ubiquitous within every aspect of their lives. To them, being online is an implicitness. In Germany, 88% of youth aged between 12-19 years own a smartphone and about 20% use the Internet via tablets. Meanwhile, more and more young learners bring their devices into the classroom and pupils increasingly demand for innovative and motivating learning scenarios that strongly respond to their habits of using media. With this development, a shift of paradigm is slowly under way with regard to the use of mobile technology in education. By now, a large body of literature exists, that reports concepts, use-cases and practical studies for effectively using technology in education. Within this field, a steadily growing body of research has developed that especially examines the use of digital games as instructional strategy. The core concern of this thesis is the design of mobile games for learning. The conditions and requirements that are vital in order to make mobile games suitable and effective for learning environments are investigated. The base for exploration is the pattern approach as an established form of templates that provide solutions for recurrent problems. Building on this acknowledged form of exchanging and re-using knowledge, patterns for game design are used to classify the many gameplay rules and mechanisms in existence. This research draws upon pattern descriptions to analyze learning game concepts and to abstract possible relationships between gameplay patterns and learning outcomes. The linkages that surface are the starting bases for a series of game design concepts and their implementations are subsequently evaluated with regard to learning outcomes. The findings and resulting knowledge from this research is made accessible by way of implications and recommendations for future design decisions.

Learning in Virtual Worlds: Research and Applications

Three-dimensional (3D) immersive virtual worlds have been touted as being capable of facilitating highly interactive, engaging, multimodal learning experiences. Much of the evidence gathered to support these claims has been anecdotal but the potential that these environments hold to solve traditional problems in online and technology-mediated education—primarily learner isolation and student disengagement—has resulted in considerable investments in virtual world platforms like Second Life, OpenSimulator, and Open Wonderland by both professors and institutions. To justify this ongoing and sustained investment, institutions and proponents of simulated learning environments must assemble a robust body of evidence that illustrates the most effective use of this powerful learning tool. In this authoritative collection, a team of international experts outline the emerging trends and developments in the use of 3D virtual worlds for teaching and learning. They explore aspects of learner interaction with virtual worlds, such as user wayfinding in Second Life, communication modes and perceived presence, and accessibility issues for elderly or disabled learners. They also examine advanced technologies that hold potential for the enhancement of learner immersion and discuss best practices in the design and implementation of virtual world-based learning interventions and tasks. By evaluating and documenting different methods, approaches, and strategies, the contributors to Learning in Virtual Worlds offer important information and insight to both scholars and practitioners in the field. AU Press is an open access publisher and the book is available for free in PDF format as well as for purchase on our website: http://bit.ly/1W4yTRA

Exploring Urban Environments Using Virtual and Augmented Reality

In this paper, we propose the use of specific system architecture, based on mobile device, for navigation in urban environments. The aim of this work is to assess how virtual and augmented reality interface paradigms can provide enhanced location based services using real-time techniques in the context of these two different technologies. The virtual reality interface is based on faithful graphical representation of the localities of interest, coupled with sensory information on the location and orientation of the user, while the augmented reality interface uses computer vision techniques to capture patterns from the real environment and overlay additional way-finding information, aligned with real imagery, in real-time. The knowledge obtained from the evaluation of the virtual reality navigational experience has been used to inform the design of the augmented reality interface. Initial results of the user testing of the experimental augmented reality system for navigation are presented.