Improving remote collaborative process modelling using embodiment in 3D virtual environments

Identifying, modelling and documenting business processes usually require the collaboration of many stakeholders that may be spread across companies in inter-organizational settings. While modern process modelling technologies are beginning to provide a number of features to support remote, they lack support for visual cues used in co-located collaboration. In this paper, we examine the importance of visual cues for collaboration tasks in collaborative process modelling. Based on this analysis, we present a prototype 3D virtual world process modelling tool that supports a number of visual cues to facilitate remote collaborative process model creation and validation. We then report on a preliminary analysis of the technology. In conclusion, we proceed to describe the future direction of our research with regards to the theoretical contributions expected from the evaluation of the tool.

A virtual environment to simulate the experience of psychosis

Psychosis is a mental disorder that affects 1-2% of the population at some point in their lives. One of the main causes of psychosis is the mental illness schizophrenia. Sufferers of this illness often have terrifying symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and thought disorder. This project aims to develop a virtual environment to simulate the experience of psychosis, focusing on re-creating auditory and visual hallucinations. A model of a psychiatric ward was created and the psychosis simulation software was written to re-create the auditory and visual hallucinations of one particular patient. The patient was very impressed with the simulation, and commented that it effectively re-created the same emotions that she experienced on a day-to-day basis during her psychotic episodes. It is hoped that this work will result in a useful educational tool about schizophrenia, leading to improved training of clinicians, and fostering improved understanding and empathy toward sufferers of schizophrenia in the community, ultimately improving the quality of life and chances of recovery of patients.

Augmenting and assisting model elicitation tasks with 3D virtual world context metadata

Accurate process model elicitation continues to be a time consuming task, requiring skill on the part of the interviewer to extract explicit and tacit process information from the interviewee. Many errors occur in this elicitation stage that would be avoided by better activity recall, more consistent specification methods and greater engagement in the elicitation process by interviewees. Theories of situated cognition indicate that interactive 3D representations of real work environments engage and prime the cognitive state of the viewer. In this paper, our major contribution is to augment a previous process elicitation methodology with virtual world context metadata, drawn from a 3D simulation of the workplace. We present a conceptual and formal approach for representing this contextual metadata, integrated into a process similarity measure that provides hints for the business analyst to use in later modelling steps. Finally, we conclude with examples from two use cases to illustrate the potential abilities of this approach.

Model as you do : engaging an S-BPM vendor on process modelling in 3D virtual worlds

Accurate process model elicitation continues to be a time consuming task, requiring skill on the part of the interviewer to extract explicit and tacit process information from the interviewee. Many errors occur in this elicitation stage that would be avoided by better activity recall, more consistent specification methods and greater engagement in the elicitation process by interviewees. Metasonic GmbH has developed a process elicitation tool for their process suite. As part of a research engagement with Metasonic, staff from QUT, Australia have developed a 3D virtual world approach to the same problem, viz. eliciting process models from stakeholders in an intuitive manner. This book chapter tells the story of how QUT staff developed a 3D Virtual World tool for process elicitation, took the outcomes of their research project to Metasonic for evaluation, and finally, Metasonic’s response to the initial proof of concept.

A virtual environment for medical radiation collaborative learning

Asoftware-based environment was developed to provide practical training in medical radiation principles and safety. The Virtual Radiation Laboratory application allowed students to conduct virtual experiments using simulated diagnostic and radiotherapy X-ray generators. The experiments were designed to teach students about the inverse square law, half value layer and radiation protection measures and utilised genuine clinical and experimental data. Evaluation of the application was conducted in order to ascertain the impact of the software on students’ understanding, satisfaction and collaborative learning skills and also to determine potential further improvements to the software and guidelines for its continued use. Feedback was gathered via an anonymous online survey consisting of a mixture of Likert-style questions and short answer open questions. Student feedback was highly positive with 80 % of students reporting increased understanding of radiation protection principles. Furthermore 72 % enjoyed using the software and 87 %of students felt that the project facilitated collaboration within small groups. The main themes arising in the qualitative feedback comments related to efficiency and effectiveness of teaching, safety of environment, collaboration and realism. Staff and students both report gains in efficiency and effectiveness associated with the virtual experiments. In addition students particularly value the visualisation of ‘‘invisible’’ physical principles and increased opportunity for experimentation and collaborative problembased learning. Similar ventures will benefit from adopting an approach that allows for individual experimentation while visualizing challenging concepts.

Control of a Duct Flow Network for Wind Display in a Virtual Environment

Control of flow in duct networks has a myriad of applications ranging from heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning to blood flow networks. The system considered here provides vent velocity inputs to a novel 3-D wind display device called the TreadPort Active Wind Tunnel. An error-based robust decentralized sliding-mode control method with nominal feedforward terms is developed for individual ducts while considering cross coupling between ducts and model uncertainty as external disturbances in the output. This approach is important due to limited measurements, geometric complexities, and turbulent flow conditions. Methods for resolving challenges such as turbulence, electrical noise, valve actuator design, and sensor placement are presented. The efficacy of the controller and the importance of feedforward terms are demonstrated with simulations based upon an experimentally validated lumped parameter model and experiments on the physical system. Results show significant improvement over traditional control methods and validate prior assertions regarding the importance of decentralized control in practice.

Step synchronization and third person speed perception in virtual environment locomotion simulators

Human locomotion is known to be influenced by observation of another person's gait. For example, athletes often synchronize their step in long distance races. However, how interaction with a virtual runner affects the gait of a real runner has not been studied. We investigated this by creating an illusion of running behind a virtual model (VM) using a treadmill and large screen virtual environment showing a video of a VM. We looked at step synchronization between the real and virtual runner and at the role of the step frequency (SF) in the real runner's perception of VM speed. We found that subjects match VM SF when asked to match VM speed with their own (Figure 1). This indicates step synchronization may be a strategy of speed matching or speed perception. Subjects chose higher speeds when VMSF was higher (though VM was 12km/h in all videos). This effect was more pronounced when the speed estimate was rated verbally while standing still. (Figure 2). This may due to correlated physical activity affecting the perception of VM speed [Jacobs et al. 2005]; or step synchronization altering the subjects' perception of self speed [Durgin et al. 2007]. Our findings indicate that third person activity in a collaborative virtual locomotive environment can have a pronounced effect on an observer's gait activity and their perceptual judgments of the activity of others: the SF of others (virtual or real) can potentially influence one's perception of self speed and lead to changes in speed and SF. A better understanding of the underlying mechanisms would support the design of more compelling virtual trainers and may be instructive for competitive athletics in the real world. © 2009 ACM.

The specification and design of an interactive virtual environment for use in teacher training

The original concept was to create a 'simulation' which would provide trainee teachers, specializing in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with the opportunity to explore a primary school environment. Within the simulation, factors affecting the development and implementation of ICT would be modelled so that trainees would be able to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary to identify appropriate strategies to overcome the limitations. To this end, we have developed Allsorts Primary - the prototype of a simulated interactive environment, representing a typical primary school