1,721,001 research outputs found

    Multisensory Augmented Reality Experiences for Cultural Heritage Exhibitions

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    Human beings interact with the external world through the perception that they get by touching, looking at, listening to, tasting and smelling it. Even if this exploration is essential to identify opportunities and dangers, today it is also used to investigate, understand and enjoy objects that surround us and to use them to manage our life, have fun, increase our knowledge, relax, etc. To date, interaction is based primarily on sight, on hearing and on touch. Very little interaction, however, is based on smell, a sense considered very difficult to manage and to use for creating more pleasant and effective experiences. Yet, olfactory stimuli can make the interaction between users and objects more engaging and effective on sub-conscious levels and long-term memory. This can be particular relevant for museums, which are subjected to important changes in the way they use to involve visitors in their exhibitions. This work presents two case studies of olfactory experiences integrated in applications for cultural heritage purposes, and effectively used to enhance the user interaction and experience

    Multisensory VR for delivering training content to machinery operators

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    The issue of training operators in the use of machinery is topical in the industrial field and in many other contexts, such as university laboratories. Training is about learning how to use machinery properly and safely. Beyond the possibility of studying manuals to learn how to use a machine, operators typically learn through on-the-job training. Indeed, learning by doing is in general more effective, tasks done practically are remembered more easily, and the training is more motivating and less tiresome. On the other hand, this training method has several negative factors. In particular, safety may be a major issue in some training situations. An approach that may contribute overcoming negative factors is using Virtual Reality and digital simulations techniques for operators training. The research work presented in this paper concerns the development of a multisensory Virtual Reality environment for training operators to properly use machinery and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The context selected for the study is a university laboratory hosting manufacturing machinery. It has been developed an application that allows user to navigate the laboratory, to approach a machine and learn about how to operate it and also what PPE to use while operating. Specifically, the paper describes the design and implementation of the application

    A Framework for Developing XR Applications Including Multiple Sensorial Media

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    eXtended Reality applications include multiple sensorial media to increase the quality of the User Experience. In addition to traditional media, video, and sound, two other senses are typically integrated: touch and smell. The development of applications that integrate multiple sensorial media requires a framework for properly managing their activation and synchronization. The paper describes a framework for the development of eXtended Reality mulsemedia applications and presents some applications based on the integration of smells developed using the framework

    Support users towards more conscious food consumption habits: A case study

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    Design for Sustainability is a research area based on a multidisciplinary approach, which has become increasingly important in recent years. Great attention is paid to the design of products that can impact on users' behaviours, through embedded smart technologies, e.g. Internet of Things (IoT). In fact, IoT systems are able to "dialogue" with the users, supporting the identification of any misbehaviour, and suggesting more sustainable ones. This paper presents a research aiming at supporting users towards more conscious food consumption in their daily life to reduce food waste. As a case study, it has been developed an interactive system in which chicken eggs are used as main communication element. Indeed, the environmental footprint of the egg industry is very heavy, and eggs are one of the main wasted food. The interactive system consists of a physical product, an eggs tray, integrating sensors and actuators for handling the interaction with users. It is accompanied by an interactive application for monitoring eggs consumption, displaying eggs waste statistics, and an Augmented Reality part for children, aimed to improve their awareness about food waste and the impact on their food habits through an "edutainment" approach

    Applications virtually augmenting real experiences for behavioral change

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    Design for Sustainability is a research area based on a multidisciplinary approach, which has become increasingly important in recent years. Among the several approaches to Design for Sustainability emerged in the past decades, great attention is paid to the “Design for sustainable behavior” approach, used to design products that can impact on users' behaviors, through embedded smart technologies, e.g., Internet of Things (IoT). In fact, IoT systems are able to "dialogue" with the users, supporting the identification of any misbehavior, and suggesting more sustainable ones. The authors identified the opportunity to design and develop AR interactive applications aiming to generate awareness about the impact of humans on Earth, make people reason about how they can directly contribute to limit the expansion of this problem and induce their behavioral change. The applications are meant to engage users in an active process of exploring and discovering informative contents and to foster them to elaborate a personal and critical vision and change their bad habits. Specifically, this paper presents two case studies about the design and development of Augmented Reality applications and IoT products to be used for supporting users towards more conscious food consumption in their daily life, in order to reduce food waste

    Virtual reality to improve the user experience of traditional museums

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    Museums have been subjected to important changes in the approach they use to involve visitors. Among the other trends, storytelling and interactive exhibitions are two of the most used approaches used to make exhibitions more interesting for users. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality methods can be effectively used in the context of a museum exhibition to support both storytelling and interaction. The primary objective of the use of these technologies is to make the visit of museums much more engaging, and suitable for different types of visitors. Among the several museums that are moving in this direction, there is the Museo Astronomico di Brera. The museum mainly consists of a corridor, hosting instruments used by astronomers, and the Cupola Schiaparelli, which is an observatory dome. The aim of the research presented in this paper is to develop an interactive Virtual Reality application to be used for improving the users’ experience of visits to the Museo Astronomico di Brera. Specifically, the paper presents a VR application to virtually visit the Dome. Preliminary tests have been carried out for evaluating the users' sense of presence in the VR environment. An analysis of the collected data is presented in the paper

    Multisensory Virtual Reality for Delivering Training Content to Machinery Operators

    No full text
    The issue of training operators in the use of machinery is topical in the industrial field and in many other contexts, such as university laboratories. Training is about learning how to use machinery properly and safely. Beyond the possibility of studying manuals to learn how to use a machine, operators typically learn through on-The-job training. Indeed, learning by doing is in general more effective, tasks done practically are remembered more easily, and the training is more motivating and less tiresome. On the other hand, this training method has several negative factors. In particular, safety may be a major issue in some training situations. An approach that may contribute overcoming negative factors is using Virtual Reality and digital simulation techniques for operators training. The research work presented in this paper concerns the development of a multisensory virtual reality application for training operators to properly use machinery and personal protective equipment (PPE). The context selected for the study is a university laboratory hosting manufacturing machinery. The application allows user to navigate the laboratory, to approach a machine and learn about how to operate it, and also to use proper PPE while operating a machine. Specifically, the paper describes the design and implementation of the application and presents the results of preliminary testing sessions

    Wearable Olfactory Display for Museum Exhibitions

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    The use of odors in different areas, such as marketing, entertainment, wellbeing, and arts is nowadays calling increasing attention. Various types of olfactory displays to integrate into Virtual Reality applications have been proposed in recent years. Actually, several characteristics of the sense of smell and of odors still remain not fully understood, and the development of olfactory displays presents a high level of complexity. Therefore, new strategies for the development of more reliable and effective olfactory displays are required.This paper presents a wearable olfactory display, based on solid fragrances, to integrate into multisensory applications for museum exhibitions. The motivation is that the use of odors can be particularly effective for improving the users' involvement, comprehension and experience of art exhibitions. The paper also describes the experimental setup for the evaluation of the display

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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