661 research outputs found
F.W. Angel memorial lecture ; 1970; F.W. Angel memorial lecture, 1970
No full textThe Third Annual F.W. Angel Memorial Lectur
Gesture Interaction at a Distance
No full textThe aim of this work is to explore, from a perspective of human behavior, which gestures are suited to control large display surfaces from a short distance away; why that is so; and, equally important, how such an interface can be made a reality. A well-known example of the type of interface that is the focus in this thesis is portrayed in the science fiction movie ‘Minority Report’. The lead character of this movie uses hand gestures such as pointing, picking-up and throwing-away to interact with a wall-sized display in a believable way. Believable, because the gestures are familiar from everyday life and because the interface responds predictably. Although only fictional in this movie, such gesture-based interfaces can, when realized, be applied in any environment that is equipped with large display surfaces. For example, in a laboratory for analyzing and interpreting large data sets; in interactive shopping windows to casually browse a product list; and in the operating room to easily access a patient’s MRI scans. The common denominator is that the user cannot or may not touch the display: the interaction occurs at arms-length and larger distances. Hand and arm movements are the gestures that computer systems interpret in this thesis. The users can control the large display, and its contents, directly with their hands through acts similar to those in ‘Minority Report’. The control is gained through explicitly issuing commands to the system through gesturing. After defining the elementary commands in such an interface (Chapter 2), we index existing approaches to build gesture-based interfaces (Chapter 3) and, more precisely, the gesture sets that have been used in these interfaces. Meticulous investigation of which gestures are suited for issuing these elementary commands, and why, then follows. In a Wizard of Oz setting, we explore the gestures that otherwise uninstructed users make when asked to issue a command through gesturing alone (Chapter 4). By gesturing as they see fit, users pan and zoom a map of the local topology of our university. Our observations show that users apply the same idiosyncratic gesture for each command with a great deal of similarity between users. Also, gestures are explicitly started and ended by changing the hand shape from rest to tensed and back again. Users really believed that they were in actual control of the display; immersed in the interaction that they found believable. This consensus in the observed gestures is explored with an online questionnaire (Chapter 5) filled out by a hundred users from multiple western countries. User ratings of video prototyped interactions through gesturing show that there is significant preference for certain gesture-command pairs. In addition, some gestures are preferably reused in a different context or system state to improve understanding and predicting of the system’s responses. These results are validated in another (partial) Wizard of Oz setting (Chapter 6) where the users experience what it feels like to issue commands with the proposed gestures. The ratings in each investigated condition were similar, with minor differences that are mostly caused by physical comfort, or lack thereof, while gesturing. Our findings were influenced profoundly by both traditional WIMP-style interfaces and recent mainstream multi-touch interfaces that swayed our participants’ preference towards some gestures. To consolidate our previous findings, we designed, built and evaluated a gesture interface with which the user can interact with 3D and 2D visualizations of biochemical structures on a wall-sized display (Chapter 7). This prototype uses lasers for pointing, one for each hand, and small buttons attached to the fingers for issuing commands. The preferred gestures define the precise layout of these buttons on the hand. Again, we found that our participants preferred to interact with the least amount of effort and with the highest comfort possible. There was little variation between users in the shape of the gestures that they preferred: tapping the thumb on one of the other fingers was the prevalent gesture to indicate the beginning and ending of a command: it mimicked pressing a button. When taking a human perspective on gestures suited to issue commands to largedisplay interfaces, it is possible to formulate a set of intuitive gestures that comes naturally to its users. The gestures are learned and remembered with ease. In addition, it is comfortable to perform these gestures, also when interacting for longer periods of time. We observe in our line of research that technological developments that reach mainstream distribution in the public domain influence the perception of ‘intuitive’ and ‘natural’ in the end-users. The best example of this is perhaps the influence of the indoctrination over the past four decades that the keyboardand- mouse interface has had on the public’s notion of human-computer interaction. More recent examples include the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone. We, as the interface designers of future intelligent environments, are very much dependent on this notion. That is, if we wish to have gesture-based interfaces succeed in providing easy to use, intuitive interaction with the pervasive large display surfaces in these environments. The gestures that are described in this thesis are an important part of those interfaces
Human Computing in the Life Sciences: What does the future hold?
No full textIn future computing environments you will be surrounded and supported by all kinds of technologies. Characteristic is that you can interact with them in a natural way: you can speak to, point at, or even frown about some piece of presented information: the environment understands your intent. Natural interaction approaches will improve the way we work in general. However, it is still far from applicable in everyday life. True automated understanding can only come from context. The BioRange project at the Human Media Interaction (HMI) group addresses such natural interfaces from the viewpoint of scientific experiments in the molecular biology domain
Gesture Interfaces
No full textTake away mouse and keyboard. Now, how do you interact with a computer? Especially one that has a display that is the size of an entire wall. One possibility is through gesture interfaces. Remember Minority Report? Cool stuff, but that was already five years ago.. So, what is already possible now and where is this all going? And what are the technical (computational) challenges of building these interfaces? Find out
Human Computing in the Life Sciences: What does the future hold?
No full textIn future computing environments you will be surrounded and supported by all kinds of technologies. Characteristic is that you can interact with them in a natural way: you can speak to, point at, or even frown about some piece of presented information: the environment understands your intent. Natural interaction approaches will improve the way we work in general. However, it is still far from applicable in everyday life. True automated understanding can only come from context. The BioRange project at the Human Media Interaction (HMI) group addresses such natural interfaces from the viewpoint of scientific experiments in the molecular biology domain
Author Correction:A 41,500 year-old decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)
No full textCorrection to: Scientific Reports https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01221-6, published online 25 November 2021The original version of this Article contained errors in the author list where Marjolein D. Bosch was omitted from the author list, and Mikołaj Urbanowski was incorrectly listed as an author of the original Article, and has subsequently been removed.The Author contributions section now reads:“S.T. W.N. and A.N. conceived the project; S.T., W.N., A.P., M.B., S.C., M.D., H.F., A.M., M.D. B., D.P., M.P.R., C.M.R., V.S-M., G.M.S., P.S., M.S., K.S., A.V., F.W., H.W., A.W., M.Z., S.B., A.N., J-J. H., performed research; S.T., A.P., W.N., M.B., M.D.B., S.C., M.D., H.F., A.M., D.P., M.P.R., C.M.R., V.S-M., G.M.S., P.S., M.S., K.S., A.V., F.W., H.W., A.W., M.Z., S.B., A.N., J-J. H. analysed all archaeological data; S.T. and A.P. wrote the paper with the collaboration of all the co-authors.”The original Article and its accompanying Supplementary Information file have been corrected
Transforming Power Relationships: Leadership, Risk, and Hope. IHS Political Science Series No. 135, May 2013
No full textChronic communal conflicts resemble the prisoner’s dilemma. Both communities prefer peace to war. But neither trusts the other, viewing the other’s gain as its own loss, so
potentially shared interests often go unrealized.
Achieving positive-sum outcomes from apparently zero-sum struggles requires a kind of riskembracing leadership. To succeed leaders must: a) see power relations as potentially
positive-sum; b) strengthen negotiating adversaries instead of weakening them; and c) demonstrate hope for a positive future and take great personal risks to achieve it.
Such leadership is exemplified by Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in the South African democratic transition. To illuminate the strategic dilemmas Mandela and de Klerk faced, we examine the work of Robert Axelrod, Thomas Schelling, and Josep Colomer, who highlight important dimensions of the problem but underplay the role of risk-embracing leadership. Finally we discuss leadership successes and failures in the Northern Ireland settlement and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Interactive visualisation techniques for large time-dependent data sets
No full textThe research described in this thesis was part of a larger research project about multi-phase flows. These flows are characterised by a sharp transition between the fluids, the so-called phase front. One of the goals of the project was to study the evolution of the phase fronts using CFD, i.e. to study the development of the surfaces over time and to understand how they change and interact with each other. In order to study the evolving fronts, methods were needed for detecting and extracting them in the first place, and subsequently for tracking the phase fronts over time, and finding a way to visualise them interactively. The focus of this research was directed towards efficient techniques for interactive isosurfacing from very large time-dependent data sets. Fast-access data structures that were designed to perform one particular visualisation task efficiently were examined first. These data structures make use of the properties of a particular visualisation algorithm and are made to fit the algorithm closely. The advantage of data structures like these is that they are designed to perform a particular visualisation task very fast. However, the drawback is that they are also limited to perform only that visualisation task. The second approach that was explored is the use of multi-resolution data structures. These structures enable the data to be accessed at several levels of resolution. A multi-resolution data structure provides the flexibility to switch between different visualisations and is designed to handle large data sets by trading off data resolution for speed. This multi-resolution approach was extended to time-dependent data sets. Techniques for region-of-interest selection and time-window management were added to provide interactive visualisation and space-time navigation of these large 4D data sets.Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Multiple-view feature modelling with model adjustment
No full textMultiple-view feature modeling is a product development approach that combines concurrent engineering and feature modeling. It supports applications from various phases of product development, by providing an own interpretation of, or view on, a product for each of these applications. The approach can lead to higher quality of products in less time, which is one of the most important goals of contemporary product development. This thesis shows that a multiple-view feature modeling approach can also support the earlier phases of the product development process, by describing views that support conceptual and assembly design, and their integration with views that support part detail design and manufacturing planning. In addition, it shows that automatic model adjustment is a feasible and useful technique in feature modeling.Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Scientific visualization in virtual reality: Interaction techniques and application development
No full textThe research described in this thesis was carried out in the Computer Graphics & CAD/CAM group at Delft University of Technology. The project was directly supervised by Frits Post. It is the sixth project in a series of PhD projects on data visualization, but the first project concerned with Virtual Reality and data visualization. In summer 1998, the Responsive Workbench facility was installed at the High Performance Applied Computing Center (HPaC) at TU Delft. The Workbench was intended to serve as a high performance visualization system, working in a cluster with the other HPaC supercomputers. This PhD project was initiated to set up an environment for high-performance data visualization, so that our group and other research groups of TU Delft could use this VR facility. Another aspect was to include computational steering facilities, which would enable the user to control a supercomputer simulation directly from the virtual environment displayed on the Workbench. For the purposes of our research we developed the RWB Library and the VRX toolkit, together a basic environment for visualization and interaction on the RWB. The thesis covers three main topics: design and development of VR applications, interaction in virtual environments, and visualization of data, originating from scientific simulations. On various case studies we have demonstrated that the Responsive Workbench concept with our software and techniques can provide an efficient visualization environment with natural spatial interaction. The case studies were done in co-operation with internal TU Delft and external research groups. One of the early applications was an interactive 3D visualization of the flooding risk simulations, provided by WL|Delft Hydraulics. The Molecular Dynamics visualization and computational steering case study has been conducted in close co-operation with the Computational Physics group (Faculty of Applied Sciences, TU Delft). The visualization of atmospheric data, originating from cumulus clouds simulations, has been performed together with the Thermal and Fluids Sciences group (Faculty of Applied Sciences, TU Delft).Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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