Virtual prototyping for planning bridge construction

4D simulation, building information modeling, virtual construction, computer simulation and virtual prototyping are emerging topics in the building construction industry. These techniques not only relate to the buildings themselves, but can also be applied to other forms of construction, including bridges. Since bridge construction is a complex process involving multiple types of plant and equipment, applying such virtual methods benefits the understanding of all parties in construction practice. This paper describes the relationship between temporary platforms, plant and equipment resources and a proposed-built model in the construction planning and use of Virtual Prototyping Simulation (VPS) to implement different construction scenarios in order to help planners identify an optimal construction plan. A case study demonstrates the use of VPS integrated with temporary platform design and plant and equipment-resource allocation to generate different construction scenarios.

The role of the rule of law in virtual communities

Please see the updated published version of this work at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/37850/ There is a severe tendency in cyberlaw theory to delegitimize state intervention in the governance of virtual communities. Much of the existing theory makes one of two fundamental flawed assumptions: that communities will always be best governed without the intervention of the state; or that the territorial state can best encourage the development of communities by creating enforceable property rights and allowing the market to resolve any disputes. These assumptions do not ascribe sufficient weight to the value-laden support that the territorial state always provides to private governance regimes, the inefficiencies that will tend to limit the development utopian communities, and the continued role of the territorial state in limiting autonomy in accordance with communal values...

Neural network-based detection of virtual environment anomalies

The increasingly widespread use of large-scale 3D virtual environments has translated into an increasing effort required from designers, developers and testers. While considerable research has been conducted into assisting the design of virtual world content and mechanics, to date, only limited contributions have been made regarding the automatic testing of the underpinning graphics software and hardware. In the work presented in this paper, two novel neural network-based approaches are presented to predict the correct visualization of 3D content. Multilayer perceptrons and self-organizing maps are trained to learn the normal geometric and color appearance of objects from validated frames and then used to detect novel or anomalous renderings in new images. Our approach is general, for the appearance of the object is learned rather than explicitly represented. Experiments were conducted on a game engine to determine the applicability and effectiveness of our algorithms. The results show that the neural network technology can be effectively used to address the problem of automatic and reliable visual testing of 3D virtual environments.

A simulated annealing algorithm for energy efficient virtual machine placement

Improving energy efficiency has become increasingly important in data centers in recent years to reduce the rapidly growing tremendous amounts of electricity consumption. The power dissipation of the physical servers is the root cause of power usage of other systems, such as cooling systems. Many efforts have been made to make data centers more energy efficient. One of them is to minimize the total power consumption of these servers in a data center through virtual machine consolidation, which is implemented by virtual machine placement. The placement problem is often modeled as a bin packing problem. Due to the NP-hard nature of the problem, heuristic solutions such as First Fit and Best Fit algorithms have been often used and have generally good results. However, their performance leaves room for further improvement. In this paper we propose a Simulated Annealing based algorithm, which aims at further improvement from any feasible placement. This is the first published attempt of using SA to solve the VM placement problem to optimize the power consumption. Experimental results show that this SA algorithm can generate better results, saving up to 25 percentage more energy than First Fit Decreasing in an acceptable time frame.

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.

The development of a virtual reality environment to model the experience of schizophrenia

Virtual Reality (VR) techniques are increasingly being used for education about and in the treatment of certain types of mental illness. Research indicates that VR is delivering on its promised potential to provide enhanced training and treatment outcomes through incorporation of this high-end technology. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder affecting 1-2% of the population, and it is estimated 12-16% of hospital beds in Australia are occupied by patients with psychosis. Tragically, there is also an increased risk of suicide associated with this diagnosis. A significant research project being undertaken across the University of Queensland faculties of Health Sciences and EPSA (Engineering, Physical Sciences and Architecture) has constructed a number of virtual environments that reproduce the phenomena experienced by patients who have psychosis. Symptoms of psychosis include delusions, hallucinations and thought disorder. The VR environment will allow behavioral, exposure therapies to be conducted with exactly controlled exposure stimuli and an expected reduction in risk of harm. This paper reports on the current work of the project, previous stages of software development and the final goal to introduce VR to medical consulting rooms.

The application of virtual reality to the understanding and treatment of schizophrenia

Virtual Reality (VR) techniques are increasingly being used in education about and in the treatment of certain types of mental illness. Research indicates VR is delivering on it's promised potential to provide enhanced training and treatment outcomes through incorporation of this high-end technology. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder affecting 1−2% of the population. A significant research project being undertaken at the University of Queensland has constructed virtual environments that reproduce the phenomena experienced by patients who have psychosis. The VR environment will allow behavioral exposure therapies to be conducted with exactly controlled exposure stimuli and an expected reduction in risk of harm. This paper reports on the work of the project, previous stages of software development and current and future educational and clinical applications of the Virtual Environments.

SSCRC Project - work in progress

Video presented as part of Smart Services CRC Participants conferences. This video shows an example of the latest version of our middleware linking the YAWL workflow engine to Open Simulator. We have created a simple example of an accident victim being brought into a Hospital to be processed. The preliminary interface to the YAWL accident treatment workflow is shown as a worklist on the left of the image. The tasks are presented to the avatar via this interface, in a similar manner as done in web based workflow systems. Objects in the simulator are instrumented with a knowledge base, that enables the validation of actions within the world, to make sure that tasks are carried out correctly.

Virtual world process education

Video presented as part of Smart Services CRC Participants meeting. A short demonstration video of our ideas for using Business Process Software in Virtual Worlds for Process Education.

Using natural user interfaces for collaborative process modelling in virtual environments

A demo video showing the BPMVM prototype using several natural user interfaces, such as multi-touch input, full-body tracking and virtual reality.

Virtual world cultural probe

We have developed a virtual world environment for eliciting expert information from stakeholders. The intention is that the virtual world prompts the user to remember more about their work processes. Our example shows a sparse visualisation of the University of Vienna Department of Computer Science, our collaborators in this project.

Introducing standardized protocols for anthropological measurement of virtual subadult crania using computed tomography

Objectives This study introduces and assesses the precision of a standardized protocol for anthropometric measurement of the juvenile cranium using three-dimensional surface rendered models, for implementation in forensic investigation or paleodemographic research. Materials and methods A subset of multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) DICOM datasets (n=10) of modern Australian subadults (birth—10 years) was accessed from the “Skeletal Biology and Forensic Anthropology Virtual Osteological Database” (n>1200), obtained from retrospective clinical scans taken at Brisbane children hospitals (2009–2013). The capabilities of Geomagic Design X™ form the basis of this study; introducing standardized protocols using triangle surface mesh models to (i) ascertain linear dimensions using reference plane networks and (ii) calculate the area of complex regions of interest on the cranium. Results The protocols described in this paper demonstrate high levels of repeatability between five observers of varying anatomical expertise and software experience. Intra- and inter-observer error was indiscernible with total technical error of measurement (TEM) values ≤0.56 mm, constituting <0.33% relative error (rTEM) for linear measurements; and a TEM value of ≤12.89 mm2, equating to <1.18% (rTEM) of the total area of the anterior fontanelle and contiguous sutures. Conclusions Exploiting the advances of MSCT in routine clinical assessment, this paper assesses the application of this virtual approach to acquire highly reproducible morphometric data in a non-invasive manner for human identification and population studies in growth and development. The protocols and precision testing presented are imperative for the advancement of “virtual anthropology” into routine Australian medico-legal death investigation.

A 3D virtual medical imaging suite : bridging the academic-clinical training boundary

Aims The Medical Imaging Training Immersive Environment (MITIE) system is a recently developed virtual reality (VR) platform that allows students to practice a range of medical imaging techniques. The aim of this pilot study was to harvest user feedback about the educational value of the application and inform future pedagogical development. This presentation explores the use of this technology for skills training and blurring the boundaries between academic learning and clinical skills training. Background MITIE is a 3D VR environment that allows students to manipulate a patient and radiographic equipment in order to produce a VR-generated image for comparison with a gold standard. As with VR initiatives in other health disciplines (1-6) the software mimics clinical practice as much as possible and uses 3D technology to enhance immersion and realism. The software was developed by the Medical Imaging Course Team at a provider University with funding from a Health Workforce Australia “Simulated Learning Environments” grant. Methods Over 80 students undertaking the Bachelor of Medical Imaging Course were randomised to receive practical experience with either MITIE or radiographic equipment in the medical radiation laboratory. Student feedback about the educational value of the software was collected and performance with an assessed setup was measured for both groups for comparison. Ethical approval for the project was provided by the university ethics panel. Results This presentation provides qualitative analysis of student perceptions relating to satisfaction, usability and educational value as well as comparative quantitative performance data. Students reported high levels of satisfaction and both feedback and assessment results confirmed the application’s significance as a pre-clinical training tool. There was a clear emerging theme that MITIE could be a useful learning tool that students could access to consolidate their clinical learning, either during their academic timetables or their clinical placement. Conclusion Student feedback and performance data indicate that MITIE has a valuable role to play in the clinical skills training for medical imaging students both in the academic and the clinical environment. Future work will establish a framework for an appropriate supporting pedagogy that can cross the boundary between the two environments. This project was possible due to funding made available by Health Workforce Australia.

Performance-driven live migration of multiple virtual machines in datacenters

Live migration of multiple Virtual Machines (VMs) has become an indispensible management activity in datacenters for application performance, load balancing, server consolidation. While state-of-the-art live VM migration strategies focus on the improvement of the migration performance of a single VM, little attention has been given to the case of multiple VMs migration. Moreover, existing works on live VM migration ignore the inter-VM dependencies, and underlying network topology and its bandwidth. Different sequences of migration and different allocations of bandwidth result in different total migration times and total migration downtimes. This paper concentrates on developing a multiple VMs migration scheduling algorithm such that the performance of migration is maximized. We evaluate our proposed algorithm through simulation. The simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can migrate multiple VMs on any datacenter with minimum total migration time and total migration downtime.

The laws of the virtual worlds

What if you could check out of your world, and enter a place where the social environment was different, where real world laws didn't apply, and where the political system could be anything you wanted it to be? What if you could socialize there with family and friends, build your own palace, go skiing, and even hold down a job there? And what if there wasn't one alternate world, there were hundreds, and what if millions of people checked out of Earth and went there every day? Virtual worlds - online worlds where millions of people come to interact, play, and socialize - are a new type of social order. In this Article, we examine the implications of virtual worlds for our understanding of law, and demonstrate how law affects the interests of those within the world. After providing an extensive primer on virtual worlds, including their history and function, we examine two fundamental issues in detail. First, we focus on property, and ask whether it is possible to say that virtual world users have real world property interests in virtual objects. Adopting economic accounts that demonstrate the real world value of these objects and the exchange mechanisms for trading these objects, we show that, descriptively, these types of objects are indistinguishable from real world property interests. Further, the normative justifications for property interests in the real world apply - sometimes more strongly - in the virtual worlds. Second, we discuss whether avatars have enforceable legal and moral rights. Avatars, the user-controlled entities that interact with virtual worlds, are a persistent extension of their human users, and users identify with them so closely that the human-avatar being can be thought of as a cyborg. We examine the issue of cyborg rights within virtual worlds and whether they may have real world significance. The issues of virtual property and avatar rights constitute legal challenges for our online future. Though virtual worlds may be games now, they are rapidly becoming as significant as real-world places where people interact, shop, sell, and work. As society and law begin to develop within virtual worlds, we need to have a better understanding of the interaction of the laws of the virtual worlds with the law of this world.