Deictic pointing—pointing at things during conversations—is natural and ubiquitous in human communication. Deictic pointing is important in the real world; it is also important in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) because CVEs are 3D virtual environments that resemble the real world. CVEs connect people from different locations, allowing them to communicate and collaborate remotely. However, the interaction and communication capabilities of CVEs are not as good as those in the real world. In CVEs, people interact with each other using avatars (the visual representations of users). One problem of avatars is that they are not expressive enough when compare to what we can do in the real world. In particular, deictic pointing has many limitations and is not well supported. This dissertation focuses on improving the expressiveness of distant pointing—where referents are out of reach—in desktop CVEs. This is done by developing a framework that guides the design and development of pointing techniques; by identifying important aspects of distant pointing through observation of how people point at distant referents in the real world; by designing, implementing, and evaluating distant-pointing techniques; and by providing a set of guidelines for the design of distant pointing in desktop CVEs. The evaluations of distant-pointing techniques examine whether pointing without extra visual effects (natural pointing) has sufficient accuracy; whether people can control free arm movement (free pointing) along with other avatar actions; and whether free and natural pointing are useful and valuable in desktop CVEs. Overall, this research provides better support for deictic pointing in CVEs by improving the expressiveness of distant pointing. With better pointing support, gestural communication can be more effective and can ultimately enhance the primary function of CVEs—supporting distributed collaboration.

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) have been with us for some years however the way people utilise them is evolving and their potential is unclear. This research attempts to achieve a better understanding of retail in CVEs by comparing this channel with the competing retail channels of ‘bricks and mortar’, or offline, and two dimensional navigation websites (2D websites), in order to identify their respective Relative Advantages (RA). This is investigated from the consumer viewpoint, as they are the ones who will ultimately shape CVEs by voting with their feet, clicks or virtual feet. By exploring the literature a model was chosen to guide the research. Furthermore, based on this model and other literature five key objectives were identified for further investigation. These objectives are categories of RA that must be explored when comparing retail channels. The first research objective is as follows: A RA of CVEs to the 2D websites for e-commerce may be the aspects of offline retail it includes that do not exist in the 2D websites. The second research objective is: A RA of CVEs retail compared to offline retail may be aspects of 2D e-commerce it includes that are not included in the offline retail environment. The third research objective is: Consumers may vary their intended usage of CVEs across the different stages of the purchase process because the significance of the dimensions of RA may vary across those stages. The fourth research objective is: Consumers’ usage of CVEs may be different for simple and complex products. The fifth research objective is: CVEs such as Second Life (SL) may have the RA of a higher degree of institutional trust compared to the 2D websites. The first stage of data collection used focus groups to clarify the objectives identified from the literature. The second stage involved interviews where these objectives were explored with participants that had relevant experience. Both stages were analysed using template analysis. The first contribution was verifying the relevance of the five objectives and identifying significant dimensions within them. The second contribution was to develop the model used for comparing retail channels by adding enjoyment to the criteria. The third stage of this research is a survey. This quantitative analysis supplemented the two qualitative stages by gauging the significance of the objectives and their dimensions. This enables the findings to be more useful to retailers in making the strategic decisions to achieve the optimum synergies within and between channels. Participants showed a preference for offline and 2D in most situations however there was evidence that enjoyment, entertainment, sociable shopping, the ability to reinvent yourself, convenience and institutional trust were RA of SL in comparison to one of the other two channels.

<p> Many manual tasks such as those in surgical applications require a high degree of motor skills that can only be gained through extensive training. This thesis is concerned with the design and control of collaborative training virtual environments with haptic feedback for skills training. The term "collaborative training" refers to a scheme in which the trainee and the trainer operate in a shared virtual environment. They collaboratively carry out the intended tasks using a shared "virtual tool". In order to enhance the trainee's motor skills, the conventional visual feedback will be augmented by force feedback providing the feel of the task environment as well as active guidance by the expert trainer.</p> <p> First, a set of psychophysics experiments are designed to investigate the usefulness of haptic-enabled collaborative virtual environments for motor skills training. Eighteen volunteers randomly divided between two training and control groups have participated in the experiments. The training group would undergo a number of collaborative training sessions with active help from the trainer whereas the control group would try the task on their own to achieve a set of stated goals. Each of the experiments is designed with specific performance objectives in mind, including trajectory tracking and task completion time. The results of the psychophysics experiments confirm that, when visual feedback is partially impaired, haptic-enabled collaborative training improves learning of a trajectory tracking task. In all the experimental scenarios tested, the results showed improvements in temporal response after receiving training.</p> <p> The second part of the thesis is devoted to the development of a general control framework for the coordination of the users in haptic-enabled collaborative virtual environments. The haptic interface control design is separated from the virtual environment simulation in order to provide more versatility in control strategies for both impedance and admittance-type virtual environments. Adaptive nonlinear controllers are proposed that establish desired linear-time-invariant and/or nonlinear static mappings amongst the users and the virtual task environment positions and forces. These controllers account for the nonlinear model of haptic devices and can handle uncertainties in the haptic devices, the users, and the virtual environment dynamics. First, the tracking behavior of the system is shown via a Lyapunov analysis. Then using a priori known bounds on user and environment parameters, the robust stability of the system is analyzed by employing the Nyquist envelops of interval plants and an off-axis circle criterion. The robust stability analysis provides bounds on the parameter of the linear and nonlinear mappings within which the stability of the system is guaranteed, for all possible system parameters with their a priori given bounds. Experiments carried out with two similar Quanser twin-pantograph haptic devices confirm the effectiveness of the proposed controllers in achieving the performance and stability objectives.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Video-mediated communication (VMC) is currently the prevalent mode of telecommunication for applications such as remote collaboration, teleconferencing, and distance learning. It is generally assumed that transmitting real-time talking-head videos of participants in addition to their audio is beneficial and desirable, enabling remote conferencing to feel almost the same as face-to-face collaboration. However, compared to being face-to-face, VMC still feels distant, artificial, cumbersome, and detached. One limitation of standard video-collaboration that contributes to this feeling is that the 3D context between people and their shared workspace given in face-to-face collaboration is lost. It is therefore not possible for participants to tell from the video what others are looking at, what they are working on, or who they are talking to. Video Collaborative Virtual Environments (video-CVEs) are novel VMC interfaces which address these problems by re-introducing a virtual 3D context into which distant users are mentally "transported" to be together and interact with the environment and with each other, represented by their spatially controllable video-avatars. To date, research efforts following this approach have primarily focused on the demonstration of working prototypes. However, maturation of these systems requires a deeper understanding of human factors that emerge during mediated collaborative processes. This thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of human factors. It investigates the hypothesis that video-CVEs can effectively support face-to-face aspects of collaboration which are absent in standard video-collaboration. This hypothesis is tested in four related comparative user studies involving teams of participants collaborating in video-CVEs, through standard video-conferencing systems, and being face-to-face. The experiments apply and extend methods from the research fields of human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and presence. Empirical findings indicate benefits of video-CVEs for user experience dimensions such as social presence and copresence, but also highlight challenges for awareness and usability that need to be overcome to unlock the full potential of this type of interface.

Spatial collaboration refers to collaboration activities involving physical space. It occurs every day as people work together to solve spatial problems, such as rearranging furniture or communicating about an environmental issue. In this work, we investigate how to support spatial collaboration when the collaborators are not colocated. We propose using shared, interactive representations of the space to support distributed, spatial collaboration. Our study examines viewpoint constraint techniques, which determine how the collaborators individually view the representation, and awareness techniques, which enable the collaborators to maintain an understanding of each other's work efforts. Our work consists of four phases, in which we explore a design space for interactive representations and examine the effects of different viewpoint constraint and awareness techniques. We consider situations where the collaborators use the same viewpoints, different viewpoints, and have a choice in viewpoint constraint techniques. In phase 1, we examine current technological support for spatial collaboration and designed two early prototypes. Phase 2 compares various two-dimensional map techniques, with the collaborators using identical techniques. Phase 3 focuses on three-dimensional virtual environment techniques, comparing similar and different frames of reference. The final phase reuses the favorable techniques from the previous studies and presents a novel prototype that combines both two-dimensional and three-dimensional representations. Each phase of this research is limited to synchronous communication activities and non-professional users working together on everyday tasks. Our findings highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the different techniques for spatial collaboration solutions. Also, having conducted multiple evaluations of spatial collaboration prototypes, we offer a common set of lessons with respect to distributed, spatial collaboration activities. This research also highlights the need for continued study to improve on the techniques evaluated and to consider additional spatial collaboration activities. / Ph. D.

Humans rely on all their senses when interacting with others in order to communicate and collaborate efficiently. In mediated interaction the communication channel is more or less constrained, and humans have to cope with the fact that they cannot get all the information that they get in face-to-face interaction. The particular concern in this thesis is how humans are affected by different multimodal interfaces when they are collaborating with another person in a shared virtual environment. One aspect considered is how different modalities affect social presence, i.e. people’s ability to perceive the other person’s intentions and emotions. Another aspect investigated is how different modalities affect people’s notion of being present in a virtual environment that feels realistic and meaningful. Finally, this thesis attempts to understand how human behavior and efficiency in task performance are affected when using different modalities for collaboration. In the experiment presented in articles A and B, a shared virtual environment that provided touch feedback was used, making it possible to feel the shape, weight and softness of objects as well as collisions between objects and forces produced by another person. The effects of touch feedback on people’s task performance, perceived social presence, perceived presence and perceived task performance were investigated in tasks where people manipulated objects together. Voice communication was possible during the collaboration. Touch feedback improved task performance significantly, making it both faster and more precise. People reported significantly higher levels of presence and perceived performance, but no difference was found in the perceived social presence between the visual only condition and the condition with touch feedback. In article C an experiment is presented, where people performed a decision making task in a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) using avatar representations. They communicated either by text-chat, a telephone connection or a video conference system when collaborating in the CVE. Both perceived social presence and perceived presence were significantly lower in the CVE text-chat condition than in the CVE telephone and CVE video conference conditions. The number of words and the tempo in the dialogue as well as the task completion time differed significantly for persons that collaborated using CVE text-chat compared to those that used a telephone or a video conference in the CVE. The tempo in the dialogue was also found to be significantly higher when people communicated using a telephone compared to a video conference system in CVEs. In a follow-up experiment people performed the same task using a website instead, with no avatar but with the same information content as before. Subjects communicated either by telephone or a video conference iv system. Results from the follow-up experiment showed that people that used a telephone completed tasks significantly faster than those that used a video conference system, and that the tempo in the dialogue was significantly higher in the web environments than in the CVEs. Handing over objects is a common event during collaboration in face-to face interaction. In the experiment presented in article D and E, the effects of providing touch feedback was investigated in a shared virtual environment in which subjects passed a series of cubic objects to each other and tapped them at target areas. Subjects could not communicate verbally during the experiment. The framework of Fitts’ law was applied and it was hypothesized that object hand off constituted a collaboratively performed Fitts’ law task, with target distance to target size ratio as a fundamental performance determinant. Results showed that task completion time indeed linearly increased with Fitts’ index of difficulty, both with and without touch feedback. The error rate was significantly lower in the condition with touch feedback than in the condition with only visual feedback. It was also found that touch feedback significantly increased people’s perceived presence, social presence and perceived performance in the virtual environment. The results presented in article A and E analyzed together, suggest that when voice communication is provided the effect of touch feedback on social presence might be overshadowed. However, when verbal communication is not possible, touch proves to be important for social presence. / QC 20100630

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:47:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2683365 bytes, checksum: 209fb565a2c94ab8b53999d91edc05fd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-23 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Virtual Reality (VR) can be understood as a human-computer interface which promotes a realistic experience for users when interacting with tridimensional virtual environments (VEs). Over the last years, medicine has benefited from the advent of VR, particularly in training and assessment context of several procedures. However, it is observed that many simulators take into account only the individual and technical aspects, while the abilities of interaction and assessment of the collaborative procedures are often disregarded, such as surgical procedures. This study was developed according to a well systematized methodology, including the following steps: a) Survey and analysis of VR systems focused on training and assessment in health sciences; b) Planning a CVE designed for training and assessment of students during surgical procedures. In this step, some professionals (surgeons, dentists, anesthesiologists) were contacted, some surgeries were observed and references guides were consulted in order to define all requirements of the simulator (target audience, goals, covered content, evaluation metrics, among others). After defining all requirements, a Collaborative Simulator for Surgical Education (SimCEC) was developed. The system is the result of studies on the use of VEs in education and the possibility of integration of decision methods as tools for users evaluation. The SimCEC has an evaluation system attached to it which is based on computed score and takes into consideration evaluation metrics, possible errors made as well as the weight of each simulated procedure. Lastly, it is intended that SimCEC can be used at specific times during the curricular content of higher education courses (at undergraduate level), as a tool to assist the teaching-learning process of future professionals. In this perspective, groups of students can train together in virtual space and contribute to the collaborative learning at a distance. / A Realidade Virtual (RV) pode ser compreendida como uma interface avançada humano-computador que promove uma experiência realista aos seus usuários ao interagirem com Ambientes Virtuais (AVs) 3D. Ao longos dos últimos anos, a medicina tem se beneficiado com o advento da RV, particularmente no contexto de treinamento e avaliação de diversos procedimentos. No entanto, observa-se que muitos simuladores levam em consideração apenas os aspectos técnicos individuais, sendo desconsideradas as habilidades de interação e avaliação dos procedimentos realizados colaborativamente, como é o caso dos procedimentos cirúrgicos. Este trabalho se desenvolveu segundo uma metodologia bem sistematizada, englobando as seguintes etapas: a) Levantamento e análise de sistemas de RV com o enfoque no treinamento e avaliação em saúde; b) Planejamento de um AVC voltado para o treinamento e avaliação de estudantes em procedimentos cirúrgicos. Nesta etapa, foram contactados profissionais da saúde (cirurgiões, odontólogos, anestesistas), acompanhados procedimentos cirúrgicos in loco, e consultados guias de referências cirúrgico, a fim de serem bem definidos todos os requisitos do simulador (público-alvo, objetivos, conteúdos abordados, métricas de avaliação, dentre outros). Após definição de todos os requisitos, foi desenvolvido o Simulador Colaborativo para Educação Cirúrgica (SimCEC). O sistema é resultado dos estudos realizados sobre o uso dos ambientes virtuais de RV na educação e da possibilidade de integração dos métodos de decisão como ferramentas de avaliação dos usuários. O SimCEC possui acoplado um sistema de avaliação que se baseia na computação de escores, levando-se em consideração as métricas de avaliação, os possíveis erros cometidos, bem como os pesos de cada procedimento simulado. Finalmente, pretende-se que o simulador possa ser utilizado em momentos específicos da grade curricular de cursos superiores (em nível de graduação), como ferramenta auxiliar no processo de ensino-aprendizagem dos futuros profissionais. Nesta perspectiva, grupos de estudantes poderão se encontrar no espaço virtual e contribuírem a distância com o aprendizado colaborativo.

GOMES, George Allan Menezes. CRAbCVE- Uma arquitetura para viabilização de CVEs através da Internet. 2005. 184 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em ciência da computação)- Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza-CE, 2005. / Submitted by Elineudson Ribeiro (elineudsonr@gmail.com) on 2016-07-11T16:25:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_dis_gamgomes.pdf: 4975181 bytes, checksum: 1f5070528d52778cc7956833013d5af3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rocilda Sales (rocilda@ufc.br) on 2016-07-18T13:38:20Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_dis_gamgomes.pdf: 4975181 bytes, checksum: 1f5070528d52778cc7956833013d5af3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-18T13:38:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_dis_gamgomes.pdf: 4975181 bytes, checksum: 1f5070528d52778cc7956833013d5af3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Although the complexities of many tasks encountered in modern societies require the join effort of groups of people in order to be accomplished, cooperative work is still a difficult job. Usually the difficulties arise due to lack of appropriate coordination, poor definition of the context in which the activities are to be performed individually or in group; thus, generating redundancies, inconsistencies and contradictions within the workgroup. In order to overcome these problems, a new field of research, called Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), was created to seek means of properly supporting work groups. Despite the favorable results achieved by CSCW, thus far, tools that provide a high level of interaction among the group members and the leaders of sub-groups are still not satisfactory. The use of virtual reality within cooperative systems allows the interactions among participants to be highly spontaneous, because, in virtual environments, communication by means of image, text and audio is possible. The Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs), which employ shared virtual reality technology, have proved to possess great potential for collaborative work. Therefore, collaborative virtual environments have been developed taking into consideration the results obtained by CSCW research. Nonetheless, developing CVEs is complicated, since they demand a great deal of resources, and need to incorporate concepts and recommendations from several research fields, such as Virtual Reality (VR), Computer Supported Cooperative Work and l Distributed Computing. The main objective of this dissertation is to design a generic architecture (CRAbCVE) for allowing distribution of several collaborative virtual environments within a network of servers on the Internet. This architecture defines specialized components, capable of distributing the processing that takes place in the CVE, thus obtaining a great computational power at low costs. Another important objective is the specification of a Model of Authorship in CVEs (MAC) for helping to integrate the CRAbCVE architecture into the framework of collaborative work. All models proposed herein have been incorporated into a prototype system and a simple case study has been analyzed. / A complexidade das tarefas do mundo atual requer cada vez mais a cooperação das pessoas para sua execução. Entretanto cooperar não é uma tarefa fácil, e, muitas vezes, por falta de coordenação adequada ou por uma definição pobre do contexto em que as atividades dos participantes individualmente ou do grupo serão realizadas, são geradas redundâncias, inconsistências e contradições dentro do trabalho em grupo. Para evitar esses problemas, a área de CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) vem buscando meios de suportar adequadamente o trabalho em equipe. Apesar dos bons resultados alcançados pela área de CSCW, o principal obstáculo enfrentado pelos seus desenvolvedores é fornecer interatividade a suas aplicações. O uso de realidade virtual em sistemas cooperativos permite aos participantes interagirem com o mais alto grau de naturalidade, pois através do ambiente virtual é possível a comunicação por meio de imagem, texto e áudio. Os CVEs (Collaborative Virtual Environments) fazem uso da tecnologia de realidade virtual distribuída e apresentam grande potencial para o suporte ao trabalho colaborativo. Por conseguinte, esses ambientes virtuais colaborativos têm sido desenvolvidos, levando em consideração os resultados obtidos na área de CSCW. Entretanto, desenvolver CVEs é uma tarefa complicada, pois eles são grandes consumidores de recursos, e precisam incorporar conceitos e recomendações de várias áreas de pesquisa, como a de Realidade Virtual (RV), a de Trabalho Colaborativo Assistido por Computador (CSCW) e a de Sistemas Computacionais Distribuídos. O principal objetivo dessa dissertação é a definição de uma arquitetura de uso genérico, a CRAbCVE, projetada para viabilizar vários Ambientes virtuais colaborativos (CVEs) distribuídos em uma rede de servidores na Internet. Essa arquitetura define componentes especializados, capazes de distribuir, através da Internet, o processamento de todo o CVE; obtendo-se, assim, um grande poder computacional a um baixo custo. Outro importante objetivo é a definição do modelo MAC (Modelo de Autoria em CVEs), que visa auxiliar o emprego da arquitetura CRAbCVE no trabalho colaborativo. Os modelos propostos foram incorporados em um sistema protótipo e um estudo de caso simples foi analisado.

GOMES, George Allan Menezes. CRAbCVE- Uma arquitetura para viabilização de CVEs através da Internet. 2005. 170 f. : Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Ceará, Centro de Ciências, Departamento de Computação, Fortaleza-CE, 2005. / Submitted by guaracy araujo (guaraa3355@gmail.com) on 2016-06-30T19:31:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_dis_gamgomes.pdf: 4975181 bytes, checksum: 1f5070528d52778cc7956833013d5af3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by guaracy araujo (guaraa3355@gmail.com) on 2016-06-30T19:32:25Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_dis_gamgomes.pdf: 4975181 bytes, checksum: 1f5070528d52778cc7956833013d5af3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-30T19:32:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_dis_gamgomes.pdf: 4975181 bytes, checksum: 1f5070528d52778cc7956833013d5af3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Although the complexities of many tasks encountered in modern societies require the join effort of groups of people in order to be accomplished, cooperative work is still a difficult job. Usually the difficulties arise due to lack of appropriate coordination, poor definition of the context in which the activities are to be performed individually or in group; thus, generating redundancies, inconsistencies and contradictions within the workgroup. In order to overcome these problems, a new field of research, called Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), was created to seek means of properly supporting work groups. Despite the favorable results achieved by CSCW, thus far, tools that provide a high level of interaction among the group members and the leaders of sub-groups are still not satisfactory. The use of virtual reality within cooperative systems allows the interactions among participants to be highly spontaneous, because, in virtual environments, communication by means of image, text and audio is possible. The Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs), which employ shared virtual reality technology, have proved to possess great potential for collaborative work. Therefore, collaborative virtual environments have been developed taking into consideration the results obtained by CSCW research. Nonetheless, developing CVEs is complicated, since they demand a great deal of resources, and need to incorporate concepts and recommendations from several research fields, such as Virtual Reality (VR), Computer Supported Cooperative Work and l Distributed Computing. The main objective of this dissertation is to design a generic architecture (CRAbCVE) for allowing distribution of several collaborative virtual environments within a network of servers on the Internet. This architecture defines specialized components, capable of distributing the processing that takes place in the CVE, thus obtaining a great computational power at low costs. Another important objective is the specification of a Model of Authorship in CVEs (MAC) for helping to integrate the CRAbCVE architecture into the framework of collaborative work. All models proposed herein have been incorporated into a prototype system and a simple case study has been analyzed. / A complexidade das tarefas do mundo atual requer cada vez mais a cooperação das pessoas para sua execução. Entretanto cooperar não é uma tarefa fácil, e, muitas vezes, por falta de coordenação adequada ou por uma definição pobre do contexto em que as atividades dos participantes individualmente ou do grupo serão realizadas, são geradas redundâncias, inconsistências e contradições dentro do trabalho em grupo. Para evitar esses problemas, a área de CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) vem buscando meios de suportar adequadamente o trabalho em equipe. Apesar dos bons resultados alcançados pela área de CSCW, o principal obstáculo enfrentado pelos seus desenvolvedores é fornecer interatividade a suas aplicações. O uso de realidade virtual em sistemas cooperativos permite aos participantes interagirem com o mais alto grau de naturalidade, pois através do ambiente virtual é possível a comunicação por meio de imagem, texto e áudio. Os CVEs (Collaborative Virtual Environments) fazem uso da tecnologia de realidade virtual distribuída e apresentam grande potencial para o suporte ao trabalho colaborativo. Por conseguinte, esses ambientes virtuais colaborativos têm sido desenvolvidos, levando em consideração os resultados obtidos na área de CSCW. Entretanto, desenvolver CVEs é uma tarefa complicada, pois eles são grandes consumidores de recursos, e precisam incorporar conceitos e recomendações de várias áreas de pesquisa, como a de Realidade Virtual (RV), a de Trabalho Colaborativo Assistido por Computador (CSCW) e a de Sistemas Computacionais Distribuídos. O principal objetivo dessa dissertação é a definição de uma arquitetura de uso genérico, a CRAbCVE, projetada para viabilizar vários Ambientes virtuais colaborativos (CVEs) distribuídos em uma rede de servidores na Internet. Essa arquitetura define componentes especializados, capazes de distribuir, através da Internet, o processamento de todo o CVE; obtendo-se, assim, um grande poder computacional a um baixo custo. Outro importante objetivo é a definição do modelo MAC (Modelo de Autoria em CVEs), que visa auxiliar o emprego da arquitetura CRAbCVE no trabalho colaborativo. Os modelos propostos foram incorporados em um sistema protótipo e um estudo de caso simples foi analisado

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3226.pdf: 6069687 bytes, checksum: 5d226daa93c8d5e313962b39c46b557e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-30 / Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos / The use of virtual environments, created by the computer, provides the execution of training simulations in a safe environment to investigate human behaviour and response to dangerous situations. However, building generic virtual environment simulations is a challenge to be researched. At present, existing virtual environment simulations are focused on specific applications. They also have their supporting architecture tightly coupled to the application making extensions or modifications difficult and dependent on computing specialists. Thus, it is important that environments that ease the building of these simulations be created. This work aims to specify an architecture to support the development, implementation, management, control and analysis of collaborative virtual environments, in conformance with the High Level Architecture, a reference architecture for simulations interoperability and reuse. In this work, simulation construction is driven by non-linear, interactive storytelling and instantiated ontologies. The history and ontologies integration facilitates the creation of different simulations without the need for programmers. The goal of the collaborative virtual environment simulations to be created is training for emergency preparedness and response application domain. However, new application domains can be designed by integrating new ontologies. For the ontologies creation, norms for protection against fire and exercise protocols, in use at São Paulo State, were used along with expert advice by São Carlos fire fighters. An environment for the creation of simulations is being developed as part of this work, as well as the whole process of development and execution of a simulation using our proposed architecture. A use case (fire and explosion occurrence) was devised for simulation instantiation. As the main results of this work a novel architecture was devised for the creation of complex training simulations as well as seven ontologies in the emergency management domain. These can be used as powerful tools for the creation of training simulations for the emergency preparedness and response teams. / O uso de ambientes virtuais, criados pelo computador, permite a realização de simulações de treinamento em um ambiente seguro para investigar o comportamento e a resposta de humanos a situações de perigo. Porém, a construção de simulações de ambientes virtuais genéricos e independentes é um desafio a ser pesquisado. Atualmente, as simulações de ambientes virtuais existentes são focadas em aplicações específicas e têm arquitetura de suporte estreitamente ligada à aplicação somado ao fato que a sua extensão ou alteração depende da atuação de especialistas em computação. Assim, é importante que ambientes que facilitem a construção dessas simulações sejam construídos. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo especificar uma arquitetura de suporte ao desenvolvimento, execução, gerenciamento, controle e análise de simulações de ambientes virtuais colaborativos, em conformidade com a arquitetura de referência High Level Architecture, que visa a interoperabilidade e o reuso de simulações. Neste trabalho, a construção de simulações é orientada pela narração de uma história interativa não linear e instanciada a partir de ontologias. A integração de história e ontologias pode facilitar a criação de diferentes modelos de simulações de treinamento sem a necessidade de programadores. As simulações de ambientes virtuais colaborativos a serem criados visam, inicialmente, treinamento de equipes no domínio de preparação e resposta a emergências. Porém novos domínios de aplicação podem ser concebidos ao integrarem-se novas ontologias. Para elaboração das ontologias, foram utilizadas normas de proteção contra incêndio e protocolos para realização de exercícios simulados, vigentes no Estado de São Paulo, além do apoio de profissionais especialistas (Corpo de Bombeiros de São Carlos). Um ambiente de criação de simulações está sendo desenvolvido como parte deste trabalho, bem como todo o processo de desenvolvimento e execução de uma simulação utilizando a arquitetura proposta. Um caso de uso (ocorrências de incêndio e explosão) foi elaborado para instanciação da simulação. Como resultados principais deste trabalho foram criadas uma arquitetura inovadora para a construção de simulações complexas e sete ontologias no domínio de emergência, que poderão ser usadas como ferramentas poderosas na criação de simulações de treinamento de profissionais da área de gerenciamento de emergência.