Interactive sensory objects for and by people with learning disabilities

This project engages people with learning disabilities to participate as co-researchers and explore museum interpretation through multisensory workshops using microcontrollers and sensors to enable alternative interactive visitor experiences in museums and heritage sites. This article describes how the project brings together artists, engineers, and experts in multimedia advocacy, as well as people with learning disabilities in the co-design of interactive multisensory objects that replicate or respond to objects of cultural significance in our national collections. Through a series of staged multi-sensory art and electronics workshops, people with learning disabilities explore how the different senses could be utilised to augment existing artefacts or create entirely new ones. The co-researchers employ multimedia advocacy tools to reflect on and to communicate their experiences and findings.

Interactive sensory objects for and by people with learning disabilities

This project engages people with learning disabilities to participate as co-researchers and explore museum interpretation through multisensory workshops using microcontrollers and sensors to enable alternative interactive visitor experiences in museums and heritage sites. This article describes how the project brings together artists, engineers, and experts in multimedia advocacy, as well as people with learning disabilities in the co-design of interactive multisensory objects that replicate or respond to objects of cultural significance in our national collections. Through a series of staged multi-sensory art and electronics workshops, people with learning disabilities explore how the different senses could be utilised to augment existing artefacts or create entirely new ones. The co-researchers employ multimedia advocacy tools to reflect on and to communicate their experiences and findings.

Watch-and-Comment as a Paradigm toward Ubiquitous Interactive Video Editing

The literature reports research efforts allowing the editing of interactive TV multimedia documents by end-users. In this article we propose complementary contributions relative to end-user generated interactive video, video tagging, and collaboration. In earlier work we proposed the watch-and-comment (WaC) paradigm as the seamless capture of an individual`s comments so that corresponding annotated interactive videos be automatically generated. As a proof of concept, we implemented a prototype application, the WACTOOL, that supports the capture of digital ink and voice comments over individual frames and segments of the video, producing a declarative document that specifies both: different media stream structure and synchronization. In this article, we extend the WaC paradigm in two ways. First, user-video interactions are associated with edit commands and digital ink operations. Second, focusing on collaboration and distribution issues, we employ annotations as simple containers for context information by using them as tags in order to organize, store and distribute information in a P2P-based multimedia capture platform. We highlight the design principles of the watch-and-comment paradigm, and demonstrate related results including the current version of the WACTOOL and its architecture. We also illustrate how an interactive video produced by the WACTOOL can be rendered in an interactive video environment, the Ginga-NCL player, and include results from a preliminary evaluation.

Can multimedia meet tertiary educational needs better than the conventional lecture? A case study

Educational researchers have long derided the university lecture as an effective mode of delivery of educational materials, but currently there are many reports on the advantages offered by computer. In this study a multimedia solution was sought to replace existing face to face lectures because it appeared to offer a close 'media versus need' match. Consequently, a decision was made to develop a design template for an interactive computer based program that would be suitable for a range of subject content. In order to personalise the instruction, a large video insert was incorporated as the main screen's most prominent design feature. From here the learner could navigate to support material including interactive simulations. The program was piloted with a small group of students and, in particular, the student tracking data that the program automatically generates yield some interesting learning style information.

A touch of sugar : a multimedia case study to facilitate student dietitians learning about the clinical management of diabetes

This paper describes the development, implementation and evaluation of a multimedia case study on dietetic case management of diabetes. A multimedia web-based program was developed to use the interactive capacity of the web-based environment to enable student dietitians to develop the skills of clinical reasoning and to trigger their learning about the nutritional management of diabetes. A case study of a person with diabetes was developed using a simulated medical history, video clips and sound clips. The students were asked to manage the patient online by responding to the patient's questions, attending a team meeting and outpatient clinic, attending to food service tasks and responding to visual cues. Tutors were able to access the student's responses to submissions online. Evaluation of the program was by questionnaire, which gathered quantitative and qualitative data on the student's perceptions of their experiences in using the web-based case. The students rated the content and the interactive parts of the case highly but experienced technical difficulties and found the case took too much time to complete.

Exploration of a first year university multimedia module on field geology

As part of the teaching programme within a first year university unit on the earth’s physical systems, a ‘virtual reality’ field trip has been developed to support field studies relating to geological materials and landscape history. This module aims to increase student understanding of the use of geological features in the evaluation of geological / landscape history. The module has various applications in the curriculum. For students attending a weekend excursion, the module is available as an adjunct to actual field studies and can be used by students as either a digital pre-lab or as an excursion review tutorial. For students not attending a weekend excursion (i.e. off campus students), it is used as a digital ‘virtual reality’ substitute for field site inspection. The module has simple linked interactive and dynamic image base digital media that provide a framework in which the geology and landscape history of excursion sites can be explored. This module is delivered as a website via CD, but can also be integrated with the 'online interface' for this unit via a QuickTime reference movie loaded inside a relevant 'Deakin (University) Studies Online’ web page. The latter strategy enables assimilation of large multimedia files into online teaching formats

Teaching robotics systems in a multimedia environment

This paper describes the development of a multimedia educational system to teach and learn robotic systems. Multimedia resources have been used to build a virtual laboratory where users are able to utilize functions of a robotic arm, by moving and clicking the mouse without worrying about the detailed robot internal operation. The multimedia system is integrated with a real robotic arm, which was also developed at the university. Through robotic topic presentations and interactive capabilities provided by this system and its tools, students can devote themselves on the learning process just as they do in the traditional face-to-face classes. and the target public of this system are the engineering students themselves.

Teacher-learning process based on an immersive and interactive environment

This paper explores the benefits of using immersive and interactive multiprojection environments (CAVE) to visualize molecules, and how it improves users’ understanding. We have proposed and implemented a tool for teachers to manipulate molecules and another to edit molecules and assist students at home. The contribution of the present research project are these tool that allows investigating structures, properties and dynamics of a molecular system which are extremely complex and comprises millions of atoms. The experience is enriched through multimedia information associated with parts of the model; for example, videos and text can be linked to specific molecule, demonstrating some detail. This solution is based on a teaching-learning process.

Evaluation of a multimedia online tool for teaching bronchial hygiene to physical therapy students

Background: Advances in information technology have been widely used in teaching health care professionals. The use of multimedia resources may be important for clinical learning and we are not aware of previous reports using such technology in respiratory physical therapy education. Objectives: Our approach was to evaluate a conventional bronchial hygiene techniques (BHTs) course with an interactive online environment, including multimedia resources. Methods: Previous developed audiovisual support material comprised: physiology, physiopathology and BHTs, accessible to students through the Internet in conjunction with BHTs classes. Two groups of students were compared and both attended regular classes: the on-line group (n=8) received access to online resources, while the control group (n=8) received conventional written material. Student's performance was evaluated before and after the course. Results: A preliminary test (score 0 to 10) was applied before the beginning of the course, showing that the initial knowledge of both groups was comparable [online, 6.75 (SD=0.88) vs. control, 6.125 (SD=1.35); p>0.05]. Two weeks after the end of the course, a second test showed that the online group performed significantly better than the control group [respectively, 7.75 (SD=1.28) vs. 5.93 (SD=0.72); p>0.05]. Conclusions: The use of a multimedia online resource had a positive impact on student's learning in respiratory therapy field in which instrumental and manual resources are often used and can be explored using this technology.

Interactive application in spanish sign language for a public transport environment

[ES] En este trabajo se presenta el diseño de una herramienta multimedia que traduce a la lengua de signos españolas los mensajes de avisos que puede proporcionar un sistema de megafonía. El objetivo del trabajo es proporcionar una herramienta que mejore la inclusión social de las personas con discapacidades auditivas. Con este propósito, se han seleccionado el entorno y los mensajes de audio habituales en un aeropuerto para desarrollar este proyecto piloto. Por último, los audios se han traducido a lengua de signos españolas sintetizando un avatar usando la técnica de animación de rotoscopía a partir de la grabación en vídeo de un traductor. Los resultados finales han sido evaluados por personas sordas.

Methods and Applications in Interactive Broadcasting

Interactive TV technology has been addressed in many previous works, but there is sparse research on the topic of interactive content broadcasting and how to support the production process. In this article, the interactive broadcasting process is broadly defined to include studio technology and digital TV applications at consumer set-top boxes. In particular, augmented reality studio technology employs smart-projectors as light sources and blends real scenes with interactive computer graphics that are controlled at end-user terminals. Moreover, TV producer-friendly multimedia authoring tools empower the development of novel TV formats. Finally, the support for user-contributed content raises the potential to revolutionize the hierarchical TV production process, by introducing the viewer as part of content delivery chain.

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.

A Fast Platform for Interactive E-Learning Systems

Modern e-learning systems represent a special type of web information systems. By definition, information systems are special computerized systems used to perform data operations by multiple users simultaneously. Each active user consumes an amount of hardware resources. A shortage of hardware resources can be caused by growing number of simultaneous users. Such situation can result in overall malfunctioning or slowed-down system. In order to avoid this problem, the underlying hardware system gets usually continuously upgraded. These upgrades, typically accompanied with various software updates, usually result in a temporarily increased amount of available resources. This work deals with the problem in a different way by proposing an implementation of a web e-learning system with a modified software architecture reducing resource usage of the server part to the bare minimum. In order to implement a full-scale e-learning system that could be used as a substitute to a conventional web e-learning system, a Rich Internet Application framework was used as basis. The technology allowed implementation of advanced interactivity features and provided an easy transfer of a substantial part of the application logic from server to clients. In combination with a special server application, the server part of the new system is able to run with a reasonable performance on a hardware with very limited computing resources.

Interactive free viewpoint video streaming using prioritized network coding

In free viewpoint applications, the images are captured by an array of cameras that acquire a scene of interest from different perspectives. Any intermediate viewpoint not included in the camera array can be virtually synthesized by the decoder, at a quality that depends on the distance between the virtual view and the camera views available at decoder. Hence, it is beneficial for any user to receive camera views that are close to each other for synthesis. This is however not always feasible in bandwidth-limited overlay networks, where every node may ask for different camera views. In this work, we propose an optimized delivery strategy for free viewpoint streaming over overlay networks. We introduce the concept of layered quality-of-experience (QoE), which describes the level of interactivity offered to clients. Based on these levels of QoE, camera views are organized into layered subsets. These subsets are then delivered to clients through a prioritized network coding streaming scheme, which accommodates for the network and clients heterogeneity and effectively exploit the resources of the overlay network. Simulation results show that, in a scenario with limited bandwidth or channel reliability, the proposed method outperforms baseline network coding approaches, where the different levels of QoE are not taken into account in the delivery strategy optimization.