The measurement of meaning

The Human Hippocampus and Spatial and Episodic Memory

With the invention of the low-cost Microsoft Kinect sensor, high-resolution depth and visual (RGB) sensing has become available for widespread use. The complementary nature of the depth and visual information provided by the Kinect sensor opens up new opportunities to solve fundamental problems in computer vision. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent Kinect-based computer vision algorithms and applications. The reviewed approaches are classified according to the type of vision problems that can be addressed or enhanced by means of the Kinect sensor. The covered topics include preprocessing, object tracking and recognition, human activity analysis, hand gesture analysis, and indoor 3-D mapping. For each category of methods, we outline their main algorithmic contributions and summarize their advantages/differences compared to their RGB counterparts. Finally, we give an overview of the challenges in this field and future research trends. This paper is expected to serve as a tutorial and source of references for Kinect-based computer vision researchers.

Enhanced Computer Vision With Microsoft Kinect Sensor: A Review

As computers become more pervasive in society, facilitating natural human---computer interaction (HCI) will have a positive impact on their use. Hence, there has been growing interest in the development of new approaches and technologies for bridging the human---computer barrier. The ultimate aim is to bring HCI to a regime where interactions with computers will be as natural as an interaction between humans, and to this end, incorporating gestures in HCI is an important research area. Gestures have long been considered as an interaction technique that can potentially deliver more natural, creative and intuitive methods for communicating with our computers. This paper provides an analysis of comparative surveys done in this area. The use of hand gestures as a natural interface serves as a motivating force for research in gesture taxonomies, its representations and recognition techniques, software platforms and frameworks which is discussed briefly in this paper. It focuses on the three main phases of hand gesture recognition i.e. detection, tracking and recognition. Different application which employs hand gestures for efficient interaction has been discussed under core and advanced application domains. This paper also provides an analysis of existing literature related to gesture recognition systems for human computer interaction by categorizing it under different key parameters. It further discusses the advances that are needed to further improvise the present hand gesture recognition systems for future perspective that can be widely used for efficient human computer interaction. The main goal of this survey is to provide researchers in the field of gesture based HCI with a summary of progress achieved to date and to help identify areas where further research is needed.

/pdf/vision-based-hand-gesture-recognition-for-human-computer-3dczparvi2.pdf

Vision based hand gesture recognition for human computer interaction: a survey

The concept of presence, or “being there” is a frequently emphasized factor in immersive mediated environments. It is often assumed that greater levels of immersive quality elicit higher levels of presence, in turn enhancing the effectiveness of a mediated experience. To investigate this assumption the current meta-analysis synthesizes decades of empirical research examining the effect of immersive system technology on user experiences of presence. Aggregating 115 effect sizes from 83 studies, it finds that technological immersion has a medium-sized effect on presence. Additionally, results show that increased levels of user-tracking, the use of stereoscopic visuals, and wider fields of view of visual displays are significantly more impactful than improvements to most other immersive system features, including quality of visual and auditory content. These findings are discussed in light of theoretical accounts of the presence construct as well as practical implications for design.

How Immersive Is Enough? A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Immersive Technology on User Presence

Infinite reality: Avatars, eternal life, new worlds, and the dawn of the virtual revolution

Mobile location-aware applications have become quite popular across a range of new areas such as pervasive games and mobile edutainment applications. However it is only recently, that approaches have been presented which combine gaming and education with mobile Augmented Reality systems. However they typically lack a close crossmedia integration of the surroundings, and often annotate or extend the environment rather than modifying and altering it.In this paper we present a mobile outdoor mixed reality game for exploring the history of a city in the spatial and the temporal dimension. We introduce the design and concept of the game and present a universal mechanism to define and setup multi-modal user interfaces for the game challenges. Finally we discuss the results of the user tests.

https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/9422/1/p235-herbst.pdf

TimeWarp: interactive time travel with a mobile mixed reality game

This demonstration presents findings from two studies on presence that use a new technology for developing photo-realistic virtual environments. Our studies have used a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures, and in doing so have pointed to the importance of exploring place as part of presence. The demonstration explores issues of presence in such environments and the range of data capture methods we used and methodological issues found..

Measuring presence in virtual environments

We present a novel technique implementing barehanded interaction with virtual 3D content by employing a time-of-flight camera. The system improves on existing 3D multi-touch systems by working regardless of lighting conditions and supplying a working volume large enough for multiple users. Previous systems were limited either by environmental requirements, working volume, or computational resources necessary for realtime operation. By employing a time-of-flight camera, the system is capable of reliably recognizing gestures at the finger level in real-time at more than 50 fps with commodity computer hardware using our newly developed precision hand and finger-tracking algorithm. Building on this algorithm, the system performs gesture recognition with simple constraint modeling over statistical aggregations of the hand appearances in a working volume of more than 8 cubic meters. Two iterations of user tests were performed on a prototype system, demonstrating the feasibility and usability of the approach as well as providing first insights regarding the acceptance of true barehanded touch-based 3D interaction.

/pdf/lightweight-palm-and-finger-tracking-for-real-time-3d-2cqh2rk64g.pdf

Lightweight palm and finger tracking for real-time 3D gesture control

The growing popularity of augmented reality (AR) games in both a research and more recently commercial context has led for a need to take a closer look at design related issues which impact on player experience. While issues relating to this area have been considered, to date most of the emphasis has been on the technology aspects. Furthermore it is almost always assumed that the augmented reality element in itself will provide a sufficient experience for the player. This has led to a need to evaluate what makes a successful augmented reality game.In this paper we present a set of design guidelines which are drawn from experiences of three mixed reality games. The guidelines provide specific guidance on relationships between real and virtual space, social interaction, use of AR technologies, maintaining consistent themes and implicitly address higher level aspects such as presence within a particular augmented reality place.

/pdf/guidelines-for-designing-augmented-reality-games-25i12i4jyu.pdf

Roderick McCall

Papers

Infinite reality: Avatars, eternal life, new worlds, and the dawn of the virtual revolution

TimeWarp: interactive time travel with a mobile mixed reality game

Measuring presence in virtual environments

Lightweight palm and finger tracking for real-time 3D gesture control

Guidelines for designing augmented reality games