Vertical Viewpoint Research Articles

Experiments with Combining LiDAR and Camera Data Acquired by UAS and Smartphone to Support Mapping

Abstract. Aerial mapping using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), such as the DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise, has revolutionized photogrammetry, enabling efficient data capture for small-scale projects. The typical nadir perspective of UAS mapping, however, imposes limitations on capturing critical details of features due to its predominantly vertical viewpoint. Overcoming this challenge often requires manual, low-altitude flights by experienced UAS pilots to achieve high-angle oblique perspectives, unless gimbled camera mount is used. This study explores the integration of high oblique angle perspectives using the iPhone 15 Pro, which boasts advanced camera capabilities and an integrated LiDAR sensor, to complement UAS imagery. The iPhone 15 Pro's camera sensors provide a Ground Sampled Distance (GSD) comparable to UAS cameras, while its LiDAR sensor, with about five meters of range, enhances mapping capabilities by delivering accurate depth measurements in close range. By utilizing various georeferencing options for the imagery and LiDAR data from the iPhone 15 Pro with UAS nadir imagery, we can achieve a more comprehensive object space reconstruction, significantly improving the accuracy of geospatial mapping. Both the Mavic 3 Enterprise and the iPhone 15 Pro, though operating independently on their respective platforms, support Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) corrections, facilitating precise positioning for the entire system trajectory. Strategic placement and utilization of Ground Control Points (GCPs) aid in the georeferencing of the complete dataset, enhancing its overall accuracy. To validate the accuracy of the acquired data, checkpoints are established on-site. The positions derived from the integrated UAS and iPhone 15 Pro data are compared against these checkpoints to quantify the accuracy and reliability of the data. Additionally, Post-Processed Kinematic (PPK) techniques are employed to validate the trajectories of all data collection systems, ensuring the reliability of the acquired data, especially in instances where RTK corrections may be lacking. In summary, this research showcases comprehensive, multi-dimensional geospatial datasets by conducting validation studies that assess the accuracy and reliability of georeferenced datasets against known ground truth checkpoints. Such validation studies are crucial for identifying gaps in current methodologies and suggesting areas for improvement, thereby aiming to enhance the quality and accuracy of geospatial mapping applications. Through the integration of UAS and smartphone mapping, complemented by rigorous validation efforts, we aspire to achieve improved geospatial mapping accuracy.

Poetry Analysis of Osundare’s Random Blues: Using Speech Act Theory

Osundare's involvement in performative poetry is an attempt to fulfill her social responsibilities and connect with her community as her collective poetry is expressed through performance. The rhetoric of his poems and the structure of their presentation explains why he uses the techniques and resources of the African oral tradition in many of his poems. The purpose of this study is to explore the intertextual relationship between the second generation of Nigerian artists and the new Nigerian artists in terms of colonial influences and relationships. This study shows that poet Niyi Osundare is a second generation iconoclast through which he influenced the poetic landscape of contemporary Nigeria. This study shows that contemporary poets are not significant and methodologically influential to other secular poetic texts, so the aesthetic principle of poetry is emphasized when the dialogue between texts is seen in the form of Osundare poetry. Osundare tells about the paradigm shift of intertextual relations from a vertical point of view, and the artistic practices preserved from the colonial period are the vertical practices of the postcolonial space. The research is qualitative in nature and primarily analyzed primary and secondary data from the literature, original research and literature review. This study also uses poststructuralist intertextuality as a theoretical framework to explore the extent of intertextual relationships. This study suggests that in order to understand recent Nigerian poetry in English, there is an urgent need to explore the history of their intertextuality. Beyond the intertextual dimension, this study demonstrates that the symbiotic relationship between power and traditional formation provides an ontological framework for examining the aesthetic experience of recent English poetry in Nigeria.

Optimal Frequency and Amplitude of Vertical Viewpoint Oscillation for Improving Vection Strength and Reducing Neural Constrains on Gait.

Inducing self-motion illusions referred as vection are critical for improving the sensation of walking in virtual environments (VE). Adding viewpoint oscillations to a constant forward velocity in VE is effective for improving vection strength under static conditions. However, the effects of oscillation frequency and amplitude on vection strength under treadmill walking conditions are still unclear. Besides, due to the visuomotor entrainment mechanism, these visual oscillations would affect gait patterns and be detrimental for achieving natural walking if not properly designed. This study was aimed at determining the optimal frequency and amplitude of vertical viewpoint oscillations for improving vection strength and reducing gait constraints. Seven subjects walked on a treadmill while watching a visual scene. The visual scene presented a constant forward velocity equal to the treadmill velocity with different vertical viewpoint oscillations added. Five oscillation patterns with different combinations of frequency and amplitude were tested. Subjects gave verbal ratings of vection strength. The mediolateral (M-L) center of pressure (CoP) complexity was calculated to indicate gait constraints. After the experiment, subjects were asked to give the best and the worst oscillation pattern based on their walking experience. The oscillation frequency and amplitude had strong positive correlations with vection strength. The M-L CoP complexity was reduced under oscillations with low frequency. The medium oscillation amplitude had greater M-L CoP complexity than the small and large amplitude. Besides, subjects preferred those oscillation patterns with large gait complexity. We suggested that the oscillation amplitude with largest M-L CoP complexity should first be chosen to reduce gait constraints. Then, increasing the oscillation frequency to improve vection strength until individual preference or the boundary of motion sickness. These findings provide important guidelines to promote the sensation of natural walking in VE.

Xi Jin-ping’s Inheritance and Development of Mao Zedong's Thought on Youth Education

The Communist Party of China has always attached great importance to youth education and has formed a systematic and complete youth education ideology. From a vertical point of view, the Chinese Communist Party’s youth education ideology has inherited and developed, reflecting the unity of continuity and development. Xi Jin-ping's thoughts on the importance, goals and methods of youth education have a high degree of inheritance and development to Mao Zedong's thoughts on youth education. The two are in the same line and keep pace with the times.

Thinking in Vertical: A Practical Application of the Two-Stage Pension System in Spain

Public pay-as-you-go pension systems are affected by sustainability problems due to the increasing longevity of the population. These problems come to light when there is unsustainable growth in pension expenditure in relation to GDP. The usual arrangement is for public systems to be complemented by private systems that provide a lifetime annuity paid alongside the public pension. This approach, which is horizontal in its way of thinking, is the one that all countries apply; in it, we can expect to find lifetime annuities, which are expensive because they have to take increasing longevity into account, as well as sustainability problems in the public accounts. Therefore, in this paper, we put forward a system that maintains the complementarity between private and public, but considers it from a vertical point of view. By this, we mean that over a certain period of time, the private system would provide the pension in the form of a temporary income, without the need to consider such a high longevity risk, and then in the following period, the public system would take over. We apply the model to Spain, one of the countries whose pension systems are most affected by problems of sustainability, and observe a decrease in the relationship between pension expenditure and GDP using this two-stage model as opposed to the current system, for the period 2025–2068. This decrease can be achieved without decrease of benefits, change in the retirement age or increase of the contribution level.

Managing Cost-Based Risks in Construction Supply Chains: A Stakeholder-Based Dynamic Social Network Perspective

In construction projects, cost-related risks are challenges that need to be coped with. These cost-related risks interact with each other along with the project progress and involve different stakeholders, forming a stakeholder-cost risk network. Previous studies have discussed the stakeholder-cost risk network; however, few studies have considered its dynamic characteristics. Different from traditional methods, this study employed the social network analysis (SNA) to explore the key indicators of cost-related risks within the supply chain and identify the key risks and stakeholders across four project stages: the planning start-up stage, design preparation stage, construction period, and operations and maintenance period. From a horizontal point of view (i.e., network development process), the complexity of the stakeholder-cost risk network demonstrates a U-shaped development process during the project life cycle, ranging from simple to complex to simple. From a vertical point of view (i.e., network hierarchical characteristics), the important cost-based risks are diversified within each stage. The current study contributes to forming a better understanding of the stakeholder-cost risk network from a dynamic perspective as well as the crucial cost-based risks within each stage of the project. The findings provide implications for managers to better align cost-based risk intervention strategies, thereby facilitating the achievement of construction project success.

A research on EU trade policy system

Abstract The EU is the world’s largest trade group, occupying an important position in the world trade in goods and services, especially in the field of service trade. The EU trade in services exports and imports are higher than the United States and Japan, and the EU is the world’s largest capital output and input group, and the world’s largest foreign aid providers. With the deepening of the European integration process, Europe’s position in the world economy and trade is on the rise. Therefore, the EU’s trade policy has increasingly become the focus of attention. From the vertical point of view, research directions can be divided into trade in goods policy, trade in services policy, international direct investment policy, trade-related intellectual property policy four field. In this paper, the four vertical areas are illustrated as the focus of the study.

Fashioning Spaces: Mode and Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Paris by Heidi Brevik-Zender

Reviewed by: Fashioning Spaces: Mode and Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Paris by Heidi Brevik-Zender Kathryn A. Haklin (bio) Heidi Brevik-Zender. Fashioning Spaces: Mode and Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Paris. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2015. 376 pages. Glorified as one of today's foremost fashion capitals, Paris of the late nineteenth century offered an abundance of spaces where one could marvel at fashionable attire donned by ladies and dandies alike. Fashioning Spaces (University of Toronto Press, 2015) examines what author Heidi Brevik-Zender refers to as the "spatial turn" (5) in representations of Paris during the Third Republic. More precisely, the book addresses the depiction of spaces related to fashion in literary works between roughly 1870 and 1900. Brevik-Zender focuses on what she terms "dislocations," which are "[…] spaces of disruption in which [End Page 1120] challenges to traditional relationships of power--primarily those of class and gender--provocatively occur" (7). Fashionable locations abound in literature written about nineteenth-century Paris, from Haussmannian boulevards to department stores and public parks. However critics have privileged these more evident sartorial locales, neglecting the three dislocations foregrounded in Fashioning Spaces: the staircase, the antechamber, and the fashion atelier. With this impressive monograph, Brevik-Zender convincingly demonstrates the great extent to which writers used fashion's dislocations--spaces in which clothing was displayed, worn, tried on, or fabricated--to negotiate the social climate of their era. Fashioning Spaces contains three parts, each of which includes two chapters treating one of the three featured dislocations. The author examines both widely read and lesser-known texts, with evident choices like Zola's Au Bonheur des dames and La Curée treated alongside works by Rachilde and Feydeau. The book's diverse corpus includes novels, plays, and short stories and is supplemented by abundant examples from visual and material culture – including paintings by Caillebotte and Degas, ornate details from Third Republic dress, caricatures by Vernier and Grévin, and even performance techniques made famous by modern dancer Loie Fuller. Deftly covering a vast range of cultural material, Brevik-Zender exposes the permeability of the literary, artistic, and social worlds in late-nineteenth-century Paris. The book opens with a vivid description of the Opéra Garnier, recreating the excitement that accompanied the unveiling of the long-awaited opera house and its grandiose staircase. Concerning other notable staircases, enthusiasts of Au bonheur des dames will be unsurprised to discover an analysis of the department store's predominant escalier central. Nevertheless, Brevik-Zender's argument for the staircase as an emblem for civil insurgency and the trauma incited by the Paris Commune sheds new light on this familiar critical terrain. The second chapter focuses initially on Rachilde's La Jongleuse in which the female writer uses the intimacy of the private stairwell to stage the novel's most dramatic moments in order to subvert the male gaze. As a transition from Rachilde, Brevik-Zender calls upon the "plunging perspectives" (87) of Caillebotte's paintings in which the implied staircase one would mount to reach the vertical viewpoint of each scene paradoxically represents the moral decline associated with social ascent, a theme the author unpacks in Maupassant's Bel-Ami and Daudet's Sapho. The third chapter returns to Zola with passages from Au bonheur des dames and Nana that focus on antechambers and the notion of waiting. Unlike other novels from the Rougon-Macquart that emphasize speed and the rapid changes associated with modernity, Brevik-Zender shows how the antechambers of Bonheur and Nana dramatize patience and anticipation, symbolically linking these concepts to the delayed eruption of the Siege of Paris. The robe à transformation (a dress with a changeable bodice) then serves as the point of entry into the fourth chapter that reveals how this piece of attire, in addition to the space of the antechamber, reflects the dynamics of waiting and transformation in Maupassant's short story "La Parure." [End Page 1121] The final part of Fashioning Spaces begins with a visual analysis of Félicien Rops's watercolour Le Muscle du grand couturier, a provocative image that exposes the gender and sexual dynamics of the book's concluding dislocation: the fashion atelier...

A modeling pattern for layered system interfaces

AbstractCommunications between systems is often initially represented at a single, high level of abstraction, a link between components. During design evolution it is usually necessary to elaborate the interface model, defining it from several different, related viewpoints and levels of abstraction. This paper presents a pattern to model such multi‐layered interface architectures simply and efficiently, in a way that supports expression of technical complexity, interfaces and behavior, and analysis of complexity. Each viewpoint and layer of abstraction has its own properties and behaviors. System elements are logically connected both horizontally along the communication path, and vertically across the different layers of protocols. The performance of upper layers depends on the performance of lower layers, yet the implementation of lower layers is intentionally opaque to upper layers. Upper layers are hidden from lower layers except as sources and sinks of data. The system elements may not be linked directly at each horizontal layer but only via a communication path, and end‐to‐end communications may depend on intermediate components that are hidden from them, but may need to be shown in certain views and analyzed for certain purposes.This architectural model pattern uses methods described in ISO 42010 [1], Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software‐intensive Systems and CCSDS 311.0‐M‐1 [2], Reference Architecture for Space Data Systems (RASDS). A set of useful viewpoints and views are presented, along with the associated modeling representations, stakeholders and concerns. These viewpoints, views, and concerns then inform the modeling pattern. This pattern permits viewing the system from several different perspectives and at different layers of abstraction. An external viewpoint treats the systems of interest as black boxes and focuses on the applications view, another view exposes the details of the connections and other components between the black boxes. An internal view focuses on the implementation within the systems of interest, either showing external interface bindings and specific standards that define the communication stack profile or at the level of internal behavior. Orthogonally, a horizontal view isolates a single layer and a vertical viewpoint shows all layers at a single interface point between the systems of interest. Each of these views can in turn be described from both behavioral and structural viewpoints.

History of Law and Comparative Methodology

Could we have a comparison without the knowledge of the history? Comparison is different from the history of law, as history is involved in each historical event in itself (every law system as a historical fact). Therefore, this historical fact could be both a term of comparison and what is a common unity as a working hypothesis in comparison. This distinction does not exclude that history and comparison are adjoining. Comparative law involves at least two different points of view: in the one hand, we may compare foreign systems with the domestic systems, and in the other hand, we may consider the causal relationship between different systems of law of various legal systems, also in a diachronic and vertical point of view.

Influence of head orientation and viewpoint oscillation on linear vection1

Sensory conflict theories predict that adding simulated viewpoint oscillation to self-motion displays should generate significant and sustained visual-vestibular conflict and reduce the likelihood of illusory self-motion (vection). However, research shows that viewpoint oscillation enhances vection in upright observers. This study examined whether the oscillation advantage for vection depends on head orientation with respect to gravity. Displays that simulated forward/backward self-motion with/without horizontal and vertical viewpoint oscillation were presented to observers in upright (seated and standing) and lying (supine, prone, and left side down) body postures. Viewpoint oscillation was found to enhance vection for all of the body postures tested. Vection also tended to be stronger in upright postures than in lying postures. Changing the orientation of the head with respect to gravity was expected to alter the degree/saliency of the sensory conflict, which may explain the overall posture-based differences in vection strength. However, this does not explain why the oscillation advantage for vection persisted for all postures. Thus, the current postural and oscillation based vection findings appear to be better explained by ecology: Upright postures and oscillating flow (that are the norm during self-motion) improved vection, whereas lying postures and smooth optic flows (which are less common) impaired vection.

Independent modulation of motion and vection aftereffects revealed by using coherent oscillation and random jitter in optic flow

We added simulated vertical viewpoint jitter and oscillation to radial optic flow displays designed to induce forward vection. Display jitter and oscillation were both found to increase vection strength during, and reduce motion aftereffects (MAE) following, exposure to the optic flow (compared to no-jitter controls). Display jitter, which induced the strongest vection of all the conditions tested, was also found to increase the duration of vection aftereffects (VAE).

Bootstrapping a prior? Effects of experience on the facing bias in biological motion perception

Biological motion point-light displays and stick-figures are ambiguous with respect to their depth and afford two different interpretations -both of them being consistent with the familiar shape of a human body. However this consistency requires the reversal in perceived depth to be accompanied by switches in other properties: • Handedness: left side right side • Vertical viewpoint: view from above view from below • Horizontal viewpoint: ccw spin cw spin

Development of gamma-ray diagnostics for ITER

Gamma-ray spectrometry is a diagnostic tool for fast ions in large tokamak plasmas. The information provided allows us to identify and simultaneously distinguish the presence of fast α-particles and other ions (H, D, T, 3He) to obtain information on their energy distribution and relative densities, in addition to performing a tomographic radial profile reconstruction of the γ-emission sources. The lack of vertical diagnostic ports in ITER makes the implementation of tomographic neutron and γ-ray systems more complicated. The use of a vertical divertor port for the implementation of a vertical viewpoint is currently suggested. The strong magnetic field (∼2 T) found there makes it hard to use conventional multi-dynode photomultipliers as light detectors. Instead, the use of micro-channel plate photomultipliers is suggested here. Investigations of the magnetic field impact on the performance of the γ-spectrometer with a micro-channel photomultiplier are carried out. A high-speed pulse height analysis technique, which allows us to trace gain changes in the photomultiplier tube, is developed at the Ioffe Institute. The tests demonstrate the feasibility of γ-spectrometric measurements in the divertor port provided that micro-channel photomultiplier detectors and the developed high-speed technique are used.

Effects of gaze on vection from jittering, oscillating, and purely radial optic flow

In this study, we examined the effects of different gaze types (stationary fixation, directed looking, or gaze shifting) and gaze eccentricities (central or peripheral) on the vection induced by jittering, oscillating, and purely radial optic flow. Contrary to proposals of eccentricity independence for vection (e.g., Post, 1988), we found that peripheral directed looking improved vection and peripheral stationary fixation impaired vection induced by purely radial flow (relative to central gaze). Adding simulated horizontal or vertical viewpoint oscillation to radial flow always improved vection, irrespective of whether instructions were to fixate, or look at, the center or periphery of the self-motion display. However, adding simulated high-frequency horizontal or vertical viewpoint jitter was found to increase vection only when central gaze was maintained. In a second experiment, we showed that alternating gaze between the center and periphery of the display also improved vection (relative to stable central gaze), with greater benefits observed for purely radial flow than for horizontally or vertically oscillating radial flow. These results suggest that retinal slip plays an important role in determining the time course and strength of vection. We conclude that how and where one looks in a self-motion display can significantly alter vection by changing the degree of retinal slip.

Effects of Simulated Viewpoint Jitter on Visually Induced Postural Sway

In this study we examined the effects of simulated horizontal and vertical viewpoint jitter on the vection and postural sway induced by radial patterns of optic flow. During each trial, observers were exposed sequentially to 20 s periods of radially expanding flow, radially contracting flow, and static visual scenes. For half the trials, simulated viewpoint jitter was added to the radially expanding/contracting optic flow patterns. In experiment 1, we found that, while this jitter increased the backward postural sway induced by radial expansion, it actually decreased forward postural sway induced by radial contraction. However, in experiment 2 we found that jitter increased both the forward and backward vection induced by radially expanding and contracting flow patterns. We conclude that the processes involved in postural control are more sensitive to the sensory conflicts generated by viewpoint jitter than those involved in the perception of self-motion, and that the observed asymmetries in forward and backward sway are ecological in origin.

Three-month-old infants’ object recognition across changes in viewpoint using an operant learning procedure

Object knowledge refers to the understanding that all objects share certain properties. Various components of object knowledge (e.g., object occlusion, object causality) have been examined in human infants to determine its developmental origins. Viewpoint invariance—the understanding that an object viewed from different viewpoints is still the same object—is one area of object knowledge, however, that has received less attention. To this end, infants’ capacity for viewpoint-invariant perception of multi-part objects was investigated. Three-month-old infants were tested for generalization to an object displayed on a mobile that differed only in orientation (i.e., viewpoint) from a training object. Infants were given experience with a wide range of object views (Experiment 1) or a more restricted range during training (Experiment 2). The results showed that infants generalized between a horizontal and vertical viewpoint (Experiment 1) that they could clearly discriminate between in other contexts (i.e., with restricted view experience, Experiment 2). Overall, the outcome shows that training experience with multiple viewpoints plays an important role in infants’ ability to develop a general percept of an object's 3D structure and promotes viewpoint-invariant perception of multi-part objects; in contrast, restricting training experience impedes viewpoint-invariant recognition of multi-part objects.

Towards ‘Accountable Independence’? Parliamentary Controls of the European Central Bank and the Rise of a New Democratic Model

The independence of the European Central Bank is legally defined in very clear and strict terms. Although most scholars in economics describe this status as a crucial condition of the Bank's efficiency, it is frequently criticised by politicians and political scientists as a contradiction to democratic theory.This paper will examine the emerging practice of parliamentary control of the ECB, from its installation until September 1999, in order to understand which kind of ‘accountability’ is elaborated in this unprecedented relationship between ‘politicians’ and lsquo;technocrats’. It will first show that MEPs have rejected all forms of parliamentary control based on a logic of constraint. It will then describe the numerous institutional links created between the Bank and the EU political organs to favour their cooperation. Finally it will analyse the recent initiatives taken by MEPs to influence central bankers and to convince them to submit their decisions to public debates.The hypothesis developed from these empirical analyses is that a new kind of ‘accountability’ is emerging in the EU. From a horizontal point of view (inter‐institutional controls), it is based on influence rather than traditional parliamentary constraint. From a vertical point of view (accountability to citizens), it focuses on responsiveness rather than on classic responsibility.

The Noh mask effect: vertical viewpoint dependence of facial expression perception.

Full-face masks, worn by skilled actors in the Noh tradition, can induce a variety of perceived expressions with changes in head orientation. Out-of-plane rotation of the head changes the two-dimensional image characteristics of the face which viewers may misinterpret as non-rigid changes due to muscle action. Three experiments with Japanese and British viewers explored this effect. Experiment 1 confirmed a systematic relationship between vertical angle of view of a Noh mask and judged affect. A forward tilted mask was more often judged happy, and one backward tilted more often judged sad. This effect was moderated by culture. Japanese viewers ascribed happiness to the mask at greater degrees of backward tilt with a reversal towards sadness at extreme forward angles. Cropping the facial image of chin and upper head contour reduced the forward-tilt reversal. Finally, the relationship between head tilt and affect was replicated with a laser-scanned human face image, but with no cultural effect. Vertical orientation of the head changes the apparent disposition of facial features and viewers respond systematically to these changes. Culture moderates this effect, and we discuss how perceptual strategies for ascribing expression to familiar and unfamiliar images may account for the differences.