269 research outputs found
New paradigms for human-robot interaction using tangible user interfaces
No full textBibliography: p. 88-93Some pages are in colou
Exploring interpersonal touch as a human-computer interface for video games
No full textBibliography: p. 142-145Many pages are in colour
Exploring the affect of emotive motion in social human robot interaction
No full textBibliography: p. 134-142.Many pages are in colour
Vuzik: Exploring a Medium for Painting Music
No full textWhat if one could paint music? Music is often shaped by the medium we use to interact with it, and thus the development of different ways to compose and experience music can open up new creative possibilities to people. This somewhat whimsical proposition of painting music, and a quest to find a new medium to create, experience, and interact with music, gave impetus and shape to the development of a musical interface known as Vuzik. Vuzik is an interface for creating and visualizing music through painting gestures on a large interactive surface. This thesis presents the vision, design and implementation of Vuzik. It then describes explorations of it as a tool for music education, and for the performance and creation of electronic music. Finally, it presents evaluation efforts of Vuzik in its performance of each of these explorations, and reflects on their implications regarding the nature and potential of Vuzik
Exploring the Design of Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction
No full textAutonomous vehicle research today places an emphasis on developing better sensors and algorithms to enable the vehicle to localize itself in the environment, plan routes, and control its movement. Surveying the general public reveals optimism about the technology but also some skepticism about its ability to communicate with vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. In today's interaction with vehicles at crosswalks, pedestrians rely on cues originating from the vehicle and the driver. Vehicle cues relate to its kinematics such as speed and stopping distance while driver cues are concerned with communication such as eye gaze and contact, head and body movement, and hand gestures. In autonomous vehicles, however, a driver is not expected to be on-board to provide cues to pedestrians. We attempted to tackle the problem of designing novel ways to facilitate autonomous vehicle-pedestrian interaction at crosswalks. We propose interfaces which communicate an autonomous vehicle's awareness and intent as a means of helping pedestrians make safe crossing decisions. Through our exploration, we make several contributions. First, we propose a design space for building interfaces using different cue modalities and cue locations. From an early exploration of this design space, we prototype interfaces designed to facilitate autonomous vehicle-pedestrian interaction. The interaction between vehicles and pedestrians will become more challenging during the transition period until all vehicles on the road are fully autonomous. During this period which we term mixed traffic, vehicles of varying levels of autonomy will occupy roads, some of which will have drivers, others such as semi-autonomous which may have distracted drivers, and fully autonomous vehicles which may or may not have drivers. To study this problem, we contribute a virtual reality-based pedestrian simulator. Our final contribution relates to the evaluation of interfaces in the real and virtual world where we found their inclusion helped pedestrians make safe crossing decisions
PetroVis & FractVis: Interactive Visual Exploration of High-dimensional Oil and Gas Data
No full textMany processes within the oil and gas domain deal with ‘big data’–large sets of multidimensional data. Effectively analyzing these data sets is crucial to understanding the structure and the behaviour of oil and gas fields, and to the optimization of hydrocarbons production. However, experts face many challenges while attempting to analyze these data sets due to their high dimensionality, the inherent uncertainty of the data, and the lack of effective visual analytic interactive tools.
In this thesis, we attempt to look for new ways to support domain experts in interpreting high dimensional oil and gas data. For the exploration we designed, implemented and evaluated two new interactive visualization tools: FractVis and PetroVis. Our design efforts involved characterization of two oil and gas domain case studies, namely: microseismic monitoring (in the design of FractVis) and petrographic analysis (in the design of PetroVis). For each of the case studies, we outline the necessary tasks, needs, and the challenges faced by the domain experts. By closely collaborating with domain experts we iteratively designed, implemented, and evaluated the two interactive novel visualization systems to simplify the exploration of high dimensional domain data.
FractVis is a visualization tool aimed at supporting the visual analysis and exploration of the microseismic monitoring data. It combines, extends, and synchronizes parallel coordinates representation with other visualizations and interactions in order to facilitate the visual correlation of the data attributes. FractVis was further expanded by integrating new proxemic interaction and an interactive painting metaphor to simplify navigation and manipulation of the 3D microseismic data. The findings of our preliminary evaluation of FractVis suggest that the tool can provide insight regarding the simplification of the correlation of the microseismic data attributes, as detailed in the thesis.
PetroVis is a novel interactive visualization system developed for exploring petrographic data. PetroVis integrates interactive visualization elements with domain-specific statistical features, to simplify the analysis process which involves (manual) validation of the automatic clustering of the data. The experts focus-group evaluation of PetroVis provided insight into the usefulness of the tool in simplifying the analysis of petrographic data clusters.
We conclude this thesis by presenting a set of design heuristics, reflecting on lessons we have learned while designing FractVis and PetroVis, with the hope of aiding and guiding future research that targets visual exploration of high dimensional oil and gas data
Two-Sided Transparent Display as a Collaborative Medium
No full textTransparent displays are ‘see-through’ screens: a person can simultaneously view both the graphics on the screen and real-world content visible through the screen. Interactive transparent displays can serve as an important medium supporting face-to-face collaboration, where people interact with both sides of the display and work together. Such displays enhance workspace awareness, which smooths collaboration: when a person is working on one side of a transparent display, the person on the other side can see the other's hand gestures, gaze, and what s/he is currently manipulating on the shared screen. Even so, we argue that in order to provide effective support for collaboration, designing such transparent displays must go beyond current offerings. We propose using two-sided transparent displays, which can present different content on both sides. The displays should also accept interactive input on both sides and visually augment users’ actions when display transparency is reduced. We operationalized these design requirements with our two-sided transparent display prototype, FACINGBOARD-II, and devised a palette of supportive interaction techniques. Through empirical studies, we found that the workspace awareness provided by transparent displays is compromised with degrading display transparency, and that visually enhancing user actions can compensate for this awareness loss
An RNA interference knock-down of nitrate reductase enhances lipid biosynthesis in the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum
No full textWhen diatoms are stressed for inorganic nitrogen they remodel their intermediate metabolism and redirect carbon towards lipid biosynthesis. However, this response comes at a significant cost reflected in decreased photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency and growth. Here we explore a molecular genetics approach to restrict the assimilation of inorganic nitrogen by knocking down nitrate reductase (NR). The transformant strain, NR21, exhibited about 50% lower expression and activity of the enzyme but simultaneously accumulated over 40% more fatty acids. However, in contrast to nitrogen-stressed wild-type (WT) cells, which grow at about 20% of the rate of nitrogen-replete cells, growth of NR21 was only reduced by about 30%. Biophysical analyses revealed that the photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency of photosystem II was unaffected in NR21; nevertheless, the plastoquinone pool was reduced by 50% at the optimal growth irradiance while in the WT it was over 90% oxidized. Further analyses reveal a 12-fold increase in the glutamate/glutamine ratio and an increase NADPH and malonyl-CoA pool size. Transcriptomic analyses indicate that the knock down resulted in changes in the expression of genes for lipid biosynthesis, as well as the expression of specific transcription factors. Based on these observations, we hypothesize that the allocation of carbon and reductants in diatoms is controlled by a feedback mechanism between intermediate metabolites, the redox state of the plastid and the expression and binding of transcription factors related to stress responses.Peer reviewe
Designing video games with social, physical, and authorship gameplay
No full textBibliography: p. 132-135Many pages are in colour
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