Interactive Simulation Application Research Articles

Modelarea matematică și simularea asistată de calculator a sistemelor mecanice cu multe grade de libertate

The vast majority of phenomena and processes in nature for which computer-assisted simulation is of scientific and methodical-didactic interest, from a mathematical point of view, are described by systems of differential equations of the second order. In this context, the paper describes and implements in the Object Pascal programming language an original algorithm for the numerical solution of systems of differential equations of the second order. Interactive simulation applications are made in the Delphi programming environment (FMX variant). Based on the examples, described in detail in the paper, users can perform interactive simulation activities for any processes, which from a mathematical point of view are described by systems of differential equations of the second degree.

Virtual laboratory use in science education with digitalization

AbstractIn science class, students learn by making and living information, enabling them to make sense of knowledge effectively and permanently and to associate it with daily life. Applied science courses make learning more qualified. While science teaching is carried out in application areas such as laboratories, virtual laboratories are used with the development of information technologies today. Virtual laboratories are auxiliary tools that make teaching and learning easier. Virtual environments offer the opportunity to experiment through simulation programs and modeling. In the study, it was examined which of the experiments in the PhET simulation software was suitable for the student gain in the science course curriculum according to the grade level. In the research, a qualitative research method was employed. Simulation programs on the web address “phet.colorado.edu” were examined by document analysis. According to the findings of the study, there are 80 interactive simulation applications in the PhET application that are suitable for student gains in the science curriculum prepared by the Ministry of National Education. In the PhET simulation software, it was determined that most physical experiments can be done according to the student gains in the science course curriculum, and the experiments in the field of biology are limited.

Investigate the effect of argumentation-promoted interactive simulation applications on students’ argumentation levels, academic achievements, and entrepreneurship skills in science classes

This research investigates the effect of argumentation-promoted interactive simulation applications on academic achievements, argumentation levels, and entrepreneurship skills of 7th-grade students in a science class. The research has a quasi-experimental design which includes two groups one is experimental and the other one is control. The research data were collected by academic achievement test, entrepreneurship skills scale, and argumentation test. Mann-Whitney U test and descriptive statistics analysis were used to analyze the data. The sample includes middle school students who study in a public school. It has been found that the academic achievement, entrepreneurship skills, and the formation dimension of the argumentation were statistically significantly different although no statistically significant difference was found in the dimension of Objection to the arguments.

Management of industrial communications slices: Towards the Application Driven Networking concept

To address the performance problems that many business critical applications are experiencing, network vendors and Network Service Providers (NSP) are reconsidering the integration of some form of application awareness in the way their networks forward user traffic. Their ultimate goal is to devise new network service models that are dedicated and customized to applications while efficiently using network resources. Even if this approach is not new and has been already followed with a mitigated success two decades ago, the emergence of software-Defined networking and network virtualization coupled with DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) pave the way for the investigation of new approaches/solutions towards application aware/driven networks. This is exactly the motivations of this work whose objective is to propose an Application Driven Network (ADN) that provides services to a specific type of applications, i.e. Dynamic Data Distribution Service (DDS) based applications. Considered as one of the leading connectivity standard for industrial IoT communications, focusing on DDS allows a fine-grained description of applications’ traffic and needs. With this information as input, the proposed ADN is able to provision network services that stick to application needs while using network resources efficiently. This paper sketches the general architecture of such ADN by describing its main components, their requirements as well as their algorithms. This solution has been implemented, prototyped and applied to a DDS based distributed interactive simulation application.

A New Deformation Model of Biological Tissue for Surgery Simulation.

A novel meshless deformation model of biological soft tissue, which is mainly based on the radial basis function point interpolation, is presented for interactive simulation applications such as virtual surgery simulators. Compared with conventional mesh models, the proposed model is particularly suitable for simulating large deformation, sucking and cutting tasks since there is no need to maintain grid information. Kelvin viscoelasticity, which represents relaxation, creep, and hysteresis of soft tissue, is integrated into the proposed model, making the simulation much more realistic than many existing meshless models. To verify the validity of the proposed model, a biomechanical test was performed on real-life biological tissue and the results show that the maximum relative error between the forces from the biomechanical test and those obtained from the model is less than 5.8%. The proposed model was also implemented on a neurosurgery simulator, which showed that the deformation of the brain tumor can be simulated in a high degree of accuracy with real-time performance. In particular, the error and distortion from the remeshing process inherited in conventional mesh models when deformation is large are avoided.

Constraint-based soft tissue simulation for virtual surgical training.

Most of surgical simulators employ a linear elastic model to simulate soft tissue material properties due to its computational efficiency and the simplicity. However, soft tissues often have elaborate nonlinear material characteristics. Most prominently, soft tissues are soft and compliant to small strains, but after initial deformations they are very resistant to further deformations even under large forces. Such material characteristic is referred as the nonlinear material incompliant which is computationally expensive and numerically difficult to simulate. This paper presents a constraint-based finite-element algorithm to simulate the nonlinear incompliant tissue materials efficiently for interactive simulation applications such as virtual surgery. Firstly, the proposed algorithm models the material stiffness behavior of soft tissues with a set of 3-D strain limit constraints on deformation strain tensors. By enforcing a large number of geometric constraints to achieve the material stiffness, the algorithm reduces the task of solving stiff equations of motion with a general numerical solver to iteratively resolving a set of constraints with a nonlinear Gauss-Seidel iterative process. Secondly, as a Gauss-Seidel method processes constraints individually, in order to speed up the global convergence of the large constrained system, a multiresolution hierarchy structure is also used to accelerate the computation significantly, making interactive simulations possible at a high level of details. Finally, this paper also presents a simple-to-build data acquisition system to validate simulation results with ex vivo tissue measurements. An interactive virtual reality-based simulation system is also demonstrated.

A visual interactive simulation application for minimizing risk and improving outbound logistical efficiency in time-sensitive attended home deliveries and services

Outbound logistic initiatives for business-to-consumer attended home deliveries have conventionally been fraught with uncertainties due to random customer demand and the exorbitant operational costs of servicing individual residences. Exacerbating this uncertainty is the inability to adequately visualize order capture, vehicle dispatch, deliveries, and vehicle return with interactive simulation applications that permit intuitive and interactive sensitivity analyses by incorporating variables such as profitability, friction of transportation distance, and varying customer populations per regions. This research introduces and displays a visual simulation application that incorporates the above factors into an animated user interface while generating various data-intensive reports in real time. The fully functional application is planned to be implemented as a web service for enterprises either considering home-delivery initiatives, or as an in-house enterprise supply-chain optimization engine for firms looking to streamline their existing outbound “last-mile” logistic strategies.

Assessing Effectiveness Of Interactive Electronics Lab Simulation: Learner’s Perspective

Simulation enables learning by doing and provides opportunity to explore the modeled domain. Interactive simulation allows to present information in more dynamic, compelling and interactive way with engaging environment. This paper discusses the application of interactive simulation supporting the actual laboratory session of basic Electronics lab activities. For this, interactive simulation for one of the basic electronics lab activity was designed, developed with state of art technology ‘Flash MX 2004’ and evaluated for its effectiveness. A particular focus of this investigation is on how the use of interactive simulation influences learners’ approach to learning. Pre test and post test were administrated on the target group, using quasi-experimental research methodology. ‘Total quality’ of developed package was evaluated by administrating a separate questionnaire. The comments and ratings obtained in the learners’ insights provided the basis for the learning impact study. This investigation indicated that the ‘self paced interactive simulation’ provides added value to the learners for the study of fundamental concepts of both theory and lab, able to perform lab experiment prior to an actual laboratory session and reach to the level of proficiency.

Learning control of robot manipulators by interactive simulation

Control systems of robot manipulators offer many challenges in education where the students must learn robot dynamics and control structures, and understand relations between the control parameters and the systems performance. Interactive simulation is aimed at improving the understanding of and intuition for the abstract parts of the control of robot courses. This paper presents an application of interactive simulation to teach control systems of robots. The application considers a nonlinear robot arm and two control modules: position control and motion control. Students can directly manipulate graphical representation of the systems such as a choice among seven control structures, controller gains, and desired trajectories, and obtain instant feedback on the effects. These features make the interactive learning tool stimulating and of high pedagogical value.

Quick and easy interactive molecular dynamics using Java3D

A new branch of interactive molecular dynamics has emerged. Unlike typical molecular dynamics simulations, it lets the user see the studied system and its behavior while interacting with it. This requires a graphical output device such as a Unix workstation. Desktop computers have reached a level of graphical power that allows rendering virtual universes in real time. This power enables the use of common desktop PCs for interactive molecular dynamics. High-end visualizations are usually based on native 3D graphics libraries. Using these libraries to create an interactive simulation application requires substantial effort for upgrading existing simulation code; many developers shrink from this. I present Java Interactive Molecular Dynamics, interactive molecular dynamics software for common desktop computers and workstations. JIMD is not a stand-alone interactive molecular dynamics application; it is a software package that can be quickly and easily adapted to existing molecular dynamics simulation software. For rendering the molecular system, JIMD uses Java3D, the application programming interface (API) for writing 3D graphics applications in Java.