Design Of Virtual Environments Research Articles

Haptic-based Virtual Environment Design and Modeling of Motor Skill Assessment for Brain Injury PatientsRehabilitation

This paper presents a new haptic-based virtual environment system for diagnosis and rehabilitation of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients. By using the latest technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR), haptic force feedback and telecommunications, the system can work as an alternative to traditional labor intensive and expensive diagnosis and rehabilitation procedures for TBI patients. This paper also introduces a general approach to the design and prototyping of a haptic-based VR system for motor skill assessment and rehabilitation. A numerical model is presented to describe and record the motor skill assessment results and parameterize the rehabilitation training process. The prototype system demonstrates the potential for using advanced information and haptic-based VR technologies to build more effective and intelligent tools for healthcare. The specific techniques developed in this research can be used for motor-skill evaluation in clinical practice.

The Effect of Visual Feedback on Learnability and Usability of Design Methods

Currently 2D displays are used for the majority of design tasks, but 3D successors are slowly being introduced as a promising alternative. Understanding how the dimensionality of displayed images influences the effectiveness and efficiency of designers working with virtual reality design environments is therefore of great interest. This paper presents the results of a comparative usability study, which focuses on assessing the influence of different types of displays on learnability and usability. In our study, we carried out an experiment to compare 2D screen and 3D displays. Users were asked to design free form shapes in each of the three types of environments using a prescribed human-computer interaction process. This research shows that there are significant differences between the preferences of different user groups. Gender and level of expertise in using advanced visualization technologies had a significant influence on the usability and learnability of the design methods for each of the three display types.

The Design and Realization of the Virtual Learning Environment about Yiwu Regional Culture

It has become an urgent problem to be solved for the education world to strengthen cultural education, transmit and develop excellent regional culture and enhance cultural quality of middle school students and the new generation. In the traditional Web-based learning environments used for transmitting regional cultures, there is not strong immersion, flexible interaction methods, interests and entertainments. In response, the basics of the cone of experience and constructivism learning theory are analyzed, a virtual learning environment about Yiwu regional culture is designed, and the system model, framework and the realization processes of key parts are stated.

Lessons from research on interaction with virtual environments

Nowadays, virtual environments provide great potential for new applications. However, the management and interaction with virtual environments raises new open problems. In this sense, this paper discusses important ideas and findings from research on interaction with virtual environments and virtual agents which we think are relevant for the design of successful virtual environments. More concretely, the paper discusses three aspects which are the representation of virtual environments, navigation support and addition of life to the environments. For each theme we introduce and discuss relevant work. In the view of the work discussed, we also provide recommendations to guide the design and development of virtual environments.

Designing for real-world scientific inquiry in virtual environments

Background: Most policy doctrines promote the use of scientific inquiry in the K–12 classroom, but good inquiry is hard to implement, particularly for schools with fiscal and safety constraints and for teachers struggling with understanding how to do so. Purpose: In this paper, we present the design of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) science curriculum project focusing on the creation of virtual experimentation methods and tools that concentrate on real-world inquiry. The study investigated whether students could engage with and learn as much from virtual inquiry as physical inquiry. Furthermore, the impact on teachers was explored. Programme description: These research questions were evaluated through an implementation of the MUVE, River City, a curriculum that is based on hypothesis formation and testing. Sample: We present findings from an implementation of River City with 500 seventh-grade students and their five teachers in a US mid-Atlantic suburban school district. Students were evenly split by gender and only a few were classified as low socio-economic status. Design and methods: Each teacher's classes were randomly assigned to physical or virtual experimentation interventions. Quantitative analysis using multi-level modelling was conducted on affective and content pre/post surveys, comparing results across treatments. Student and teacher comments were also investigated for their insight into the research questions. Results: Girls using virtual experimentation learn more than any other subgroup; however, boys in the physical experimentation group outperform their counterparts in the virtual group. All students were engaged by the virtual experimentation as indicated by survey and teacher reports. Teachers on average indicated a high level of satisfaction with their students' learning but indicated concern over the length of time needed. Conclusions: Initial evidence indicates that virtual experimentation can engage students and help them learn as well as or better than physical experimentation.

Interaction and evaluation tools for collaborative virtual environment

The design of the virtual environment (VE) has to take into account several factors including the input and output devices, the design of the interaction metaphor and the application domain. In addition to these considerations, the design of collaborative virtual environment (CVE) needs to take into account the collaborative aspect of the interaction metaphor. in one hand, the interaction metaphor must be designed to produce the most possible task performance. In the other hand, the influence of the interaction metaphor on the user’s experience (in terms of psychological and social considerations) constitutes an important research question. To address this research question, we presented a new user-centred method for Collaborative Virtual Environments in taking into account human factors. Our goal is to study the effect of 3D interaction metaphors in CVE on copresence, involvement, awareness and collaborative effort.

Socio-Technical Influences on Virtual Research Environments

A number of socio-technical aspects that influence interorganizational research collaboration are embedded in local work contexts. Thus, they should be a main concern for the design of virtual research environments. A review of forty papers from different research fields provided an understanding of the influence of eleven socio-technical aspects grouped according to the following categories: nature of work; common ground; collaboration readiness; management style and leadership; technology readiness. There are five main implications for the design of virtual research environments. Emphasis is placed on the importance of consulting the stakeholders so that they suggest solutions and ideas, and imbue the collaborative environment with the values required for it to be sustainable.

Reflecting on the Design and Implementation Issues of Virtual Environments

We present a candid reflection on the issues surrounding virtual environment design and implementation (VEDI) in order to: (1) motivate the topic as a researchworthy undertaking, and (2) attempt a comprehensive listing of impeding VEDI issues so they can be addressed. In order to structure this reflection, an idealized model of VEDI is presented. This model, investigated using mixed methods, resulted in 67 distinct issues along the model's transitions and pathways. These were clustered into 11 themes and used to support five VEDI research challenges.

A theoretical framework for an intelligent design catalogue

Product catalogues constitute a valuable source of information for engineers engaged in design activities. Unfortunately, these catalogues provide only limited support to engineers in the earlier, conceptual stages of design. This research proposes the intelligent design catalogue consisting of a virtual design environment linked to catalogues of standard components. Engineers develop their design concepts within the virtual environment and refer to the catalogues as these concepts are refined. The selected components are assembled within the design environment. The intelligent design catalogue provides search aids as well as assessment tools. The theoretical framework draws on several engineering areas. Manufacturing demonstrates how process plans can be developed in a virtual environment independently of the machines on the shop floor just as products can be conceptually designed independently of the standard components available. The standard components themselves can be grouped borrowing from classification schemes of group technology. Object-oriented programming (OOP) provides an environment for the development of the software that runs the intelligent design catalogue. As the objects of OOP parallel standard components, OOP also serves as a design paradigm after which the catalogue can be modelled. Design theory suggests frameworks for developing a (semi-) hierarchical structure for cataloguing parts.

A Computer-Aided Ergonomics Evaluation System for Customized Furniture Design

Customized product development is facing the challenges of maintaining mass producibility and exploring customer perception on target products. The objective of this study was the application of ergonomic evaluation method for customized furniture design in virtual environment. At the first, the system architecture was built, and gordian techniques of the system were analyzed. Then a representative case was studied. In this case study, 3D scanning system and Motion Capture were used to get information of given user/users, REBA and Lifting Index (LI) of revised NIOSH lifting equation were selected as ergonomics evaluation methods. The prototype’s usability was verified by the result. This method can also be used to solve other relative problems.

User-centered virtual environment design for virtual rehabilitation

BackgroundAs physical and cognitive rehabilitation protocols utilizing virtual environments transition from single applications to comprehensive rehabilitation programs there is a need for a new design cycle methodology. Current human-computer interaction designs focus on usability without benchmarking technology within a user-in-the-loop design cycle. The field of virtual rehabilitation is unique in that determining the efficacy of this genre of computer-aided therapies requires prior knowledge of technology issues that may confound patient outcome measures. Benchmarking the technology (e.g., displays or data gloves) using healthy controls may provide a means of characterizing the "normal" performance range of the virtual rehabilitation system. This standard not only allows therapists to select appropriate technology for use with their patient populations, it also allows them to account for technology limitations when assessing treatment efficacy.MethodsAn overview of the proposed user-centered design cycle is given. Comparisons of two optical see-through head-worn displays provide an example of benchmarking techniques. Benchmarks were obtained using a novel vision test capable of measuring a user's stereoacuity while wearing different types of head-worn displays. Results from healthy participants who performed both virtual and real-world versions of the stereoacuity test are discussed with respect to virtual rehabilitation design.ResultsThe user-centered design cycle argues for benchmarking to precede virtual environment construction, especially for therapeutic applications. Results from real-world testing illustrate the general limitations in stereoacuity attained when viewing content using a head-worn display. Further, the stereoacuity vision benchmark test highlights differences in user performance when utilizing a similar style of head-worn display. These results support the need for including benchmarks as a means of better understanding user outcomes, especially for patient populations.ConclusionsThe stereoacuity testing confirms that without benchmarking in the design cycle poor user performance could be misconstrued as resulting from the participant's injury state. Thus, a user-centered design cycle that includes benchmarking for the different sensory modalities is recommended for accurate interpretation of the efficacy of the virtual environment based rehabilitation programs.

Vision for Performance in Virtual Environments: The Role of Feedback Timing

This work explores how people use visual feedback when performing simple reach-to-grasp movements in a tabletop virtual environment. In particular we investigated whether visual feedback is required for the entire reach or whether minimal feedback can be effectively used. Twelve participants performed reach-to-grasp movements toward targets at two locations. Visual feedback about the index finger and thumb was provided in four conditions: vision available throughout the movement, vision available up to peak wrist velocity, vision available until movement initiation, or vision absent throughout the movement. It was hypothesized that vision available until movement onset would be an advantage over a no vision situation yet not attain the performance observed when vision was available up to peak velocity. Results indicated that movement time was longest in the no vision condition but similar for the three conditions where vision was available. However, deceleration time and peak aperture measures suggest grasping is more difficult when vision is not available for at least the first third of the movement. These results suggest that designers of virtual environments can manipulate the availability of visual feedback of one's hand without compromising interactivity. This may be applied, for example, when detailed rendering of other aspects of the environmental layout is more important, when motion lag is a problem or when hand/object concealment is an issue.

Virtual reality: A state-of-the-art survey

This paper presents a survey on virtual reality systems and provides an in-depth understanding toward the notion of immersion, according to the semantic meanings of the terms “virtual” and “reality”. The paper analyses the structure and functions of a virtual reality system and takes the three dimensional display as the immersive medium to identify the key issues for construction of virtual environments. The paper also reviews the development of virtual reality technology and introduces new image processing techniques into the design of virtual reality systems and virtual environments.

Pipeline Design and Layout in Virtual Environment

Due to the difficulty of pipeline design and layout for complex mechanical products, a virtual reality-based method is proposed for pipeline design and routing in virtual environment. A parameter database is established for geometric design of pipelines according to their basic parameters in 3D models. Controlled-points and controlled-vectors are introduced to determine the position and direction of pipelines. Dynamic adjusting algorithm for straight pipelines and elbow pipelines in virtual environment are implemented respectively to joint and layout pipelines according to surrounding environment and features. A pipeline oriented virtual assembly environment system is developed, and some examples are given to demonstrate its function and validation.

Role of Landmark Size and Location in Way-finding and Spatial Cognition in Virtual Environments

The current study explored the impact of global landmarks, landmarks that are visible from a distance, and local landmarks, ones that are only visible from a short distance. Participants searched for targets in a virtual cityscape including either global or local landmarks. Way-finding performance was measured in addition to spatial memory using sketch maps. The findings indicate precedence of global landmarks during way-finding; however the impact of local landmarks increased with experience. Map sketches indicated that the impact of global and local landmarks was dependent on their location within and around the virtual environment. Theoretically, the findings help distinguish between the visibility and location aspects of global and local landmarks. Practically, the findings can inform the design of virtual environments with consideration to user tasks and requirements.

Supporting Soundscape Design in Virtual Environments with Content-based Audio Retrieval

The computer-assisted design of soundscapes for virtual environments has received far less attention than the creation of graphical content. In this “think piece” we briefly introduce the principal characteristics of a framework under development that aims towards the creation of an automatic sonification of virtual worlds. As a starting point, the proposed system is based on an on-line collaborative sound repository that, together with content-based audio retrieval tools, assists the search of sounds to be associated with 3D models or scenes.

An Object-Oriented Approach to Simulating Human Gait Motion Based on Motion Tracking

An Object-Oriented Approach to Simulating Human Gait Motion Based on Motion TrackingAccurate bone motion reconstruction from marker tracking is still an open and challenging issue in biomechanics. Presented in this paper is a novel approach to gait motion reconstruction based on kinematical loops and functional skeleton features extracted from segmented Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. The method uses an alternative path for concatenating relative motion starting at the feet and closing at the hip joints. From the evaluation of discrepancies between predicted and geometrically identified functional data, such as hip joint centers, a cost function is generated with which the prediction model can be optimized. The method is based on the object-oriented multibody library MOBILE, which has already been successfully applied to the development of industrial virtual design environments. The approach has been implemented in a general gait visualization environment termedMobile Body.

ADVICE: A virtual environment for Engineering Change Management

In this paper, we analyze Engineering Changes (EC), which are modifications in forms, fits, functions, materials, or dimensions in components constituting the design. We propose a new approach for processing these changes within a Virtual Collaborative Design Environment. This environment, named Active Distributed Virtual Change Environment (ADVICE) offers an Engineering Change Management solution by merging graphical and parametric data involved in the process into a virtual platform, which improves the comprehension of users and hence decreases the time required for review. ADVICE provides smart user support for predicting Engineering Changes to be triggered due to a specific change and for offering priorities to Engineering Change Requests. This is managed by employing Sequential Pattern Mining techniques to process captured Engineering Change history with Prioritization and Change Propagation mechanisms. For verifying these mechanisms, experiments involving synthetic data are conducted. The experiments present the capability of ADVICE to facilitate Engineering Change Management.

Yearning to learn from e‐learning: the experiences of a University of Glamorgan practitioner

On the world stage, the use of e‐learning is not a new phenomenon. However, many teachers within higher education favour, and are most comfortable with, the “talk and chalk”, face‐to‐face mode of plying their trade. For them, facilitating learning within virtual learning environments (VLEs) is often alien, and technically and pedagogically challenging. This paper outlines the trials and tribulations of a higher education institution (HEI) practitioner when engaging in the design, use and development of virtual learning environments as a departmental ground breaker within his institution. A model is proposed that will help other practitioners who view conversion of their teaching and learning from the traditional “talk and chalk” mode to a VLE as perhaps daunting and frightful.

Case Studies of Musculoskeletal-Simulation-Based Rehabilitation Program Evaluation

Variability in motor rehabilitation program outcomes can be attributed not only to individual components (human patient/rehabilitation equipment) but also to their system-level interactions. Thus, effective deployment of a rehabilitation program depends upon: 1) suitable therapist selection of user-device ergonomics; 2) adjustable device settings; and 3) exercise regimen parameters; to achieve desired system-level motor performance. In this paper, we discuss aspects of creation of a virtual design environment, leveraging tools from musculoskeletal analysis, optimization, and simulation-based design, to permit therapists to rapidly evaluate and systematically customize rehabilitation programs. Specifically, this framework is intended to facilitate 1) parametric study of ergonomic/device/regimen settings on musculoskeletal performance; 2) use of design tools such as optimization for decision support in arriving at the best program; and 3) scaffolded examination of linkage between form and function by iterative what-if type of analyses. We use two case studies (bicep-curling and motor rehabilitative driving) to highlight benefits of such simulation-based rehabilitation program evaluation.