128 research outputs found
Towards the next generation of advanced technical documentation in augmented reality: the case of MILL 4.0
No full textLa Realtà Aumentata (AR) promette di creare collegamenti diretti, automatici e azionabili tra il mondo fisico e le informazioni elettroniche. Fornisce un'interfaccia utente immediata e diretta ad un mondo fisico potenziato elettronicamente. In particolare, la AR industriale permette l'integrazione tra le informazioni basate sulla conoscenza, tradizionalmente utilizzate dagli operatori e fornite principalmente sotto forma di documentazione cartacea e di dati disponibili dai sensori sulle attrezzature. Questo approccio è suggerito dalle aziende, soprattutto dalle piccole e medie imprese, che desiderano un'introduzione graduale delle tecnologie di Industria 4.0 all'interno delle loro pratiche consolidate.
Lo scopo di questo lavoro è quello di sviluppare un sistema avanzato di documentazione tecnica in AR per un impianto di macinazione di farina. Il lavoro discusso in questa tesi mira a portare un valore aggiunto alla letteratura esistente nel campo dell'AR industriale e della documentazione tecnica avanzata. Inoltre, si cercherà di far luce sul ruolo dell'AR come tecnologia abilitante per l'industria del futuro. In primo luogo, ci siamo concentrati su diverse interfacce AR industriali al fine di comprendere le pratiche consolidate per guidare la progettazione dell'interfaccia IAR. Poi, indaghiamo la tecnologia chiave AR con un nuovo approccio basato sulla ricerca sui brevetti. Infine, il risultato principale di questo lavoro è la progettazione e lo sviluppo di due sistemi AR per un impianto di macinazione della farina che seguono due diversi approcci di progettazione.Augmented Reality (AR) promises to create direct, automatic, and actionable links between the physical world and electronic information. It provides an immediate and straightforward user interface to an electronically enhanced physical world. In particular, Industrial AR allows the integration between knowledge-based information, traditionally used by operators and provided mainly in paper documentation and data available from sensors on equipment. This approach is suggested by companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, who want a gradual introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies within their established practices.
The scope of this work is to develop an advanced technical documentation system in AR for a flour milling plant. The work discussed in this dissertation aims to bring added value to the existing literature in the field of industrial AR and advanced technical documentation. Besides, an attempt will be made to shed light on the role of AR as an enabling technology for the industry of the future. First, we focused on different industrial AR interfaces in order to understand established practices to guide IAR interface design. Then, we investigate the AR key technology with a novel approach based on patent research. Finally, the main result of this work is the design and development of two AR systems for a flour milling plant that following two different design approaches
Augmented Reality for Sailing Navigation. Design and Evaluation of Novel User Interfaces
No full textQuesta tesi affronta il tema dell'applicazione della Realtà Aumentata (AR) alla navigazione nautica, in particolare la progettazione e la validazione di un'interfaccia AR per la visualizzazione di informazioni di navigazione specifiche per la navigazione a vela. Attualmente gli utenti, durante la navigazione, utilizzano piccoli display per la visualizzazione delle informazioni di navigazione, fissi sull'imbarcazione. Questo modo di visualizzare le informazioni fa distrarre l'utente dalla scena di navigazione, che è costretto a cambiare costantemente l'attenzione tra la lettura delle informazioni sul display e la scena di navigazione. Questo lavoro a cui è sottoposto l'utente aumenta il carico cognitivo diminuendo la sicurezza a bordo.
Per questo motivo, il nostro obiettivo di ricerca è quello di sviluppare un sistema di interfaccia AR specifico per la vela che supporti i velisti fornendo loro le informazioni visualizzate direttamente nell'ambiente reale. La soluzione farà in modo che gli utenti evitino di distogliere lo sguardo dalla scena della navigazione, per rendere la navigazione più sicura e confortevole aumentando l'accessibilità a bordo.
Oltre alla possibilità di visualizzare le informazioni tracciate nell'ambiente reale, AR consente di mostrare l'invisibile nella realtà; anche i fenomeni e gli oggetti naturali possono essere invisibili, sia per distanza che per occlusione, oppure per mancanza di luce e scarsa visibilità. L'AR consente quindi di monitorare gli oggetti non identificati come potenziali ostacoli e pericoli, facilitando le decisioni critiche, soprattutto da parte dei meno esperti; il monitoraggio continuo dei dati di navigazione e dei dati ambientali è estremamente essenziale per evitare situazioni pericolose e rende più autonomi i naviganti inesperti in situazioni ordinarie. I potenziali pericoli e la perdita di controllo dell'imbarcazione, nelle stesse condizioni meteorologiche, sono direttamente proporzionali alla mancanza di esperienza del velista. L'AR può essere lo strumento che permette a tutti di navigare in sicurezza indipendentemente dal proprio livello di esperienza e conoscenza della vela.
Il lavoro di ricerca è partito da una Systematic Review delle interfacce grafiche AR presenti nella letteratura scientifica, unita ad un'approfondita ricerca sui dispositivi in commercio, catalogando e analizzando la tipologia e le modalità delle informazioni rappresentate.
È stato quindi creato un elenco completo di 154 informazioni di navigazione utili agli utenti. Attraverso una campagna di questionari su 56 velisti esperti e un panel di esperti, sono state selezionate le informazioni da visualizzare all'interno dell'interfaccia AR da noi proposta. Successivamente si è proceduto alla progettazione delle prime proposte di interfaccia AR, fino alla definizione della versione da testare. L'interfaccia AR proposta è stata testata sia con test di visualizzazione a monitor da parte di 75 utenti, sia con test che utilizzano sistemi di Realtà Virtuale immersiva, su un campione di 45 utenti, per validare l'ipotesi che la Realtà Aumentata renda più immediate le informazioni di navigazione in lettura, diminuendo il carico cognitivo dell'utente . I risultati dei test, la System Usability Scale (SUS) e l'User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), confermano la nostra ipotesi e forniscono un precedente scientifico nello sviluppo e nella validazione di sistemi di interfaccia AR per la vela che non erano mai stati condotti prima.
Il risultato di questa ricerca è l'ideazione, la progettazione, lo sviluppo e la validazione di un'interfaccia specifica innovativa per la vela, seguendo un percorso completo che non ha precedenti in letteratura scientifica.This thesis deals with the issue of the application of Augmented Reality (AR) technology to nautical navigation, specifically the design and validation of an AR interface for displaying specific navigation information for sailing. Currently, users, while sailing, use small displays for viewing navigation information, fixed on the boat. This way of viewing information causes the user to distract from the navigation scene, who is forced to constantly change the attention between reading the information on the display and the navigation scene. This work to which the user has subjected increases the cognitive load by decreasing safety on board.
For this reason, our research goal is to develop a specific AR interface system for sailing that supports sailors by providing them with the information displayed directly in the real environment. The solution will make users avoid taking they take their eyes off the navigation scene, to make safer and more comfortable sailing by increasing accessibility on board.
In addition to the ability to view tracked information in the real environment, AR allows to show the invisible in reality; natural phenomena and objects can also be invisible, either by distance or by occlusion, or by lack of light and poor visibility. Therefore, AR allows you to monitor unidentified objects as potential obstacles and dangers, making it easier to make critical decisions, especially by the less experienced; continuous monitoring of navigation data and environmental data is extremely essential to avoid dangerous situations and makes inexperienced sailors more autonomous in ordinary situations. Potential dangers and loss of control of the boat, in the same weather conditions, are directly proportional to the lack of experience of the sailor. AR can be the tool that allows everyone to navigate safely regardless of their level of experience and knowledge of sailing.
The research work started from a Systematic Review of the AR graphic interfaces present in scientific literature, combined with in-depth research on the devices on the market, cataloguing and analyzing the type and methods of information represented.
A complete list of 154 navigational information useful to users was then created. Through a campaign of questionnaires on 56 experienced sailor users and a panel of experts, the information to be displayed within the AR interface proposed by us was selected. Then we proceeded to the design of the first AR interface proposals, up to the definition of the version to be tested. The proposed AR interface was tested both with monitor display tests by 75 users and with tests using immersive Virtual Reality systems, on a sample of 45 users, to validate the hypothesis that Augmented Reality makes more immediate navigation information in reading, decreasing the user's cognitive load. The results of the tests, the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), confirm our hypothesis and provide a scientific precedent in the development and validation of AR interface systems for sailing that had never been conducted before.
The result of this research is the conception, design, development and validation of an innovative specific interface for sailing, following a complete path that is unprecedented in scientific literature
Operator 4.0: Industrial Augmented Reality, Interfaces and Ergonomics
No full textIl programma Industry 4.0, in Germania, e le corrispondenti iniziative internazionali continueranno a trasformare la forza e l’ambiente di lavoro nell’industria fino al 2025.
Parallelamente all'evoluzione del settore, la storia dell'interazione dell’operatori con le varie tecnologie di produzione industriale e digitale può essere riassunta come un'evoluzione generazionale verso la generazione dell’Operatore 4.0.
Questo lavoro di tesi mira ad applicare le tecnologie abilitanti di Industry 4.0 per progettare e sviluppare, metodi e applicazioni a supporto della figura di Operator 4.0 rispetto a tre delle sue otto sfaccettature: l'Augmented Operator, il Virtual Operator e l'Healthy Operator.
Nel Capitolo 1, presentiamo le ricerche svolte nel campo Industrial Augmented Reality. Descriviamo la tecnologia della Realtà Aumentata (AR) e la sua applicazione nel campo della Realtà Aumentata Industriale (IAR). Nel capitolo 2 presentiamo un prototipo di banco di lavoro badato su Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) progettato nelle prime fasi di questa ricerca e descriviamo gli esperimenti effettuati per convalidare la sua efficienza come supporto per Operator 4.0.
Nel Capitolo 3 descriviamo gli esperimenti effettuati per ottimizzare la leggibilità del testo mostrato nelle interfacce AR per Optical See-Through Displays. In questa ricerca, proponiamo nuovi indici estratti dalle immagini di background, visualizzati su uno schermo LCD, e li confrontiamo con quelli proposti in letteratura attraverso un test utente specifico.
Nel Capitolo 4 presentiamo un framework AR per dispositivi palmari che aiuta gli utenti nella comprensione delle informazioni sugli impianti descritte tradizionalmente attraverso i Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P & ID) su supporto cartaceo.
Nel Capitolo 5 descriviamo la ricerca svolta nel campo delle Human Machine Interfaces relativa all'uso delle interfacce utente naturali in realtà virtuale. Abbiamo progettato e sviluppato un'interfaccia gestuale per la navigazione di tour virtuali costituiti da immagini sferiche. Abbiamo confrontato l'interfaccia sviluppata con una classica controllata da mouse per valutare l'efficacia di tale interfaccia in termini di accettazione e coinvolgimento degli utenti.
Nel Capitolo 6, descriviamo un framework generale per la progettazione di un vocabolario di gesti per la navigazione delle istruzioni tecniche nei manuali digitali per le operazioni di manutenzione. Viene anche proposta e utilizzata una procedura di validazione per confrontare i vocabolari gestuali in termini di fatica e carico cognitivo.
Nel Capitolo 7, trattiamo l'aspetto dell’Healthy Operator. Descriviamo la progettazione e lo sviluppo di uno strumento software semi-automatico in grado di monitorare l'ergonomia dell'operatore nell’ambiente di lavoro valutando la metrica Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). Descriviamo il design e lo sviluppo del nostro prototipo software, il K2RULA, basato su un sensore a basso costo, il Microsoft Kinect v2. Successivamente, convalidiamo il nostro strumento con due esperimenti. Nel primo, lo confrontiamo con un sistema di tracking ottico, il golden standard di settore. Nel secondo confrontiamo i risultati restituiti dal prototipo con quelli calcolati da un valutatore esperto.
Infine, traiamo le nostre conclusioni sul lavoro svolto e cerchiamo di tracciare un percorso per lo sviluppo futuro delle nostre ricerche.The German program Industry 4.0 and the corresponding international initiatives will continue to transform the industrial workforce and their work environment through 2025.
In parallel with the evolution of the industry, the history of the interaction of operators with various industrial and digital production technologies can be summarized as a generational evolution towards the Operator 4.0 generation.
This work aims at applying the enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 in order to design and develop, methods and applications supporting the figure of the Operator 4.0 with respect three out of her/his eight facets – the Augmented Operator, the Virtual Operator, and the Healthy Operator.
In Chapter 1, we introduce the researches carried out in the IAR field. We describe the Augmented Reality (AR) technology and its application in the field of the Industrial Augmented Reality (IAR). In chapter 2, we present a Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) workbench prototype designed in the early stage of this research and we describe the experiments carried out to validate its efficiency as support to the Operator 4.0.
In Chapter 3, we describe the experiments carried out to optimize legibility of text shown in AR interfaces for optical see-through displays. In this research, we propose novel indices extracted from the background images, displayed on an LCD screen, and we compare them with those proposed in the literature by designing a specific user test.
In Chapter 4, we present an AR framework for handheld devices that enhance users in the comprehension of plant information traditionally conveyed through printed Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID).
In Chapter 5 we describe the research carried out in the field of HMI related to the use of Natural User Interfaces in Virtual Reality. We designed and developed a gesture interface for navigation of virtual tours made-up of spherical images. We compared the developed interface with a classical mouse-controlled one to evaluate the effectiveness of such an interface in terms of user acceptance and user engagement.
In Chapter 6, we describe a general framework to design a mid-air gesture vocabulary for the navigation of technical instructions in digital manuals for maintenance operations. A validation procedure is also proposed and utilized to compare gesture vocabularies in terms of fatigue and cognitive load.
In Chapter 7, we treat the facet of the Healthy Operator. We describe the design and development of a semi-automatic software tool able at monitoring the operator ergonomics in the shop floor by assessing Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) metrics. We describe the design and development of our software prototype – the K2RULA - based on a low- cost sensor, the Microsoft Kinect v2 depth-camera. Subsequently, we validate our tool with two experiments. In the first one, we compared the K2RULA grand-scores with those obtained with a reference optical motion capture system. In the second experiment, we evaluate the agreement of the grand-scores returned by the proposed application with those obtained by a RULA expert rater.
Finally, we draw our conclusions regarding the work carried out and try to map out a path for the future development of our researches in these fields
Activating students through a tutorial-based approach: the case of the 'Virtual Prototyping' course
No full textDriving emotions: using virtual reality to explore the effect of low and high arousal on driver's attention
No full textThe role played by emotions and attention is crucial for the development of advanced driver assistance systems that improve safety by flexibly adapting to the current state of the driver. In the present study, we used immersive virtual reality as a testing tool to investigate how different emotional states affect drivers’ attention in a divided attention task. Two different emotional states, diversified by valence and arousal, were induced before performing a divided attention task in a driving simulation. The experimental task developed for this study allowed us to explore if and how two different emotional states can affect the way drivers divide their attention between a central driving-related task and a peripheral visual task. Our results showed that scared drivers presented lower reaction times at the central task compared to relaxed drivers. On the contrary, the emotional state did not affect the performance at the peripheral task, which revealed instead a significant effect of ..
Design of a Wearable Haptic Navigation Tool for Cyclists
No full textSince cyclists do not have their auditory and visual channels completely available while riding a bicycle, it is unsafe for them to use the GPS navigation tool provided by smartphones, which is based on audio and visual cues. In such situations, the haptic channel can be suitable to deliver information. Therefore, a research developing a system that uses haptic cues to give bicycle riders turn-by-turn information was carried out. The proposed solution uses two vibrotactile motors, each one located on each wrist. The motors are controlled by an Arduino board connected via Bluetooth to an Android App which oversees the GPS navigation and provides real-time turn-by-turn instructions. The cyclist is informed on the direction by the vibration of the motors: if the motor vibrating is located on the left wrist then s/he would have to turn left, and the same applies to the other side. We used two types of buzzes: a single buzz indicates a distance of approximately 60 m, and a double buzz points out that the turn is imminent. When both motors are activated at the same time the system communicates to the user the arrival to the destination. The system was initially tested with few users giving positive feedback. The haptic signal was considered intuitive and easy to understand, efficiently providing turn-by-turn navigation instructions
A Wearable Device to Detect in Real-Time Bimanual Gestures of Basketball Players during Training Sessions
No full textThe paper describes the design of a wearable and wireless system that allows the real-time identification of some gestures performed by basketball players. This system is specifically designed as a support for coaches to track the activity of two or more players simultaneously. Each wearable device is composed of two separate units, positioned on the wrists of the user, connected to a personal computer (PC) via Bluetooth. Each unit comprises a triaxial accelerometer and gyroscope, a microcontroller, installed on a TinyDuino platform, and a battery. The concept of activity recognition chain is investigated and used as a reference for the gesture recognition process. A sliding window allows the system to extract relevant features from the incoming data streams: mean values, standard deviations, maximum values, minimum values, energy, and correlations between homologous axes are calculated to identify and differentiate the performed actions. Machine learning algorithms are implemented to handle the recognition phase
Designing Awe in Virtual Reality: An Experimental Study
No full textAwe is a little-studied emotion with a great transformative potential. Therefore, the interest towards the study of awe’s underlying mechanisms has been increased. Specifically, researchers have been interested in how to reproduce intense feelings of awe within laboratory conditions. It has been proposed that the use of Virtual Reality (VR) could be an effective way to induce awe in controlled experimental settings, thanks to its ability of providing participants with a sense of “presence”, that is, the subjective feeling of being displaced in another physical or imaginary place. However, the potential of VR as awe-inducing medium has not been fully tested yet. In the present study, we provided an evidence-based design and a validation of four immersive virtual environments (VEs) involving 36 participants in a within-subject design. Of these, three VEs were designed to induce awe, whereas the fourth VE was targeted as an emotionally-neutral stimulus. Participants self-reported the extent to which they felt awe, general affect and sense of presence related to each environment. As expected, results showed that awe-VEs could induce significantly higher levels of awe and presence as compared to the neutral VE. Furthermore, these VEs induced significantly more positive than negative affect. These findings supported the potential of immersive VR for inducing awe and provide useful indications for the design of awe-inspiring virtual environments
Improving multisensory user experience through olfactory stimuli
No full textMore and more modern digital applications allow users to make experiences that elicit their senses. More traditional applications allow users to make visual and sound experiences. Recently, the sense of touch has been introduced to enrich the users’ experiences with digital worlds. The sense of smell is equally important for enriching and making the experiences engaging, but has been mostly neglected so far, mostly because of the limited knowledge about olfaction and of olfactory technologies. This chapter presents a methodology for the development of applications including multisensory user experiences based also on the sense of olfaction. The methodology has been used and tested for the development of applications in various sectors, which are reported in the chapter
Human in the loop: a model to integrate interaction issues in complex simulations
No full textSeveral activities of the product development process as for example ergonomic analyses, usability testing, and what is defined as User Experience - UX- design in general require humans to be involved as testers. In order to achieve a good effectiveness degree, these tests must be performed on prototypes as much as possible similar to the final product, and this is costly and sometimes difficult to obtain during the development process. This is especially true at the earliest stages of the process. Functional mock-up - FMU - methods and tools can be of great help, because they allow technological aspects of the products, as electronics, hydraulics, mechanics, etc. to be represented and managed in a simple and effective way. Mathematical equations allow product behavior to be determined, due to input values representing the application environment of the product. At the moment, an FMU model is great in simulating product behavior from the technological point of view, but concerns about user interaction issues are left apart. The research described in this paper aims at widening the coverage of FMU to user-product interaction issues. The goal aims at evaluating the possibility of substituting real users with a characterization of them, and to model and simulate interaction in a homogeneous way together with all the other product aspects. All of this makes the research activities very challenging, and the result is a sort of FMU-assisted interaction modeling. As an evolution of what is generally recognized as hardware and software-in-the-loop, this methodology will be referred as human-in-the-loop. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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