This thesis involves systems for virtual presence in remote locations, a field referred to as telepresence. Recent image-based representations such as Google map's street view provide a familiar example. Several areas of research are open; such image-based representations are huge in size and the necessity to compress data efficiently for storage is inevitable. On the other hand, users are usually located in remote areas, and thus efficient transmission of the visual information is another issue of great importance. In this work, real-world images are used in preference to computer graphics representations, mainly due to the photorealism that they provide as well as to avoid the high computational cost required for simulating large-scale environments. The cubic format is selected for panoramas in this thesis. A major feature of the captured cubic-panoramic image datasets in this work is the assumption of static scenes, and major issues of the system are compression efficiency and random access for storage, as well as computational complexity for transmission upon remote users' requests. First, in order to enable smooth navigation across different view-points, a method for aligning cubic-panorama image datasets by using the geometry of the scene is proposed and tested. Feature detection and camera calibration are incorporated and unlike the existing method, which is limited to a pair of panoramas, our approach is applicable to datasets with a large number of panoramic images, with no need for extra numerical estimation. Second, the problem of cubic-panorama image dataset compression is addressed in a number of ways. Two state-of-the-art approaches, namely the standardized scheme of H.264 and a wavelet-based codec named Dirac, are used and compared for the application of virtual navigation in image based representations of real world environments. Different frame prediction structures and group of pictures lengths are investigated and compared for this new type of visual data. At this stage, based on the obtained results, an efficient prediction structure and bitstream syntax using features of the data as well as satisfying major requirements of the system are proposed. Third, we have proposed novel methods to address the important issue of disparity estimation. A client-server based scheme is assumed and a remote user is assumed to seek information at each navigation step. Considering the compression stage, a fast method that uses our previous work on the geometry of the scene as well as the proposed prediction structure together with the cubic format of panoramas is used to estimate disparity vectors efficiently. Considering the transmission stage, a new transcoding scheme is introduced and a number of different frame-format conversion scenarios are addressed towards the goal of free navigation. Different types of navigation scenarios including forward or backward navigation, as well as user pan, tilt, and zoom are addressed. In all the aforementioned cases, results are compared both visually through error images and videos as well as using the objective measures. Altogether free navigation within the captured panoramic image datasets will be facilitated using our work and it can be incorporated in state-of-the-art of emerging cubic-panorama image dataset compression/transmission schemes.

In this thesis, we present a tool that is an extension of the NAVIRE Framework and used in remote environment exploration and navigation. It is available for end users on everyday devices such as desktops and mobile devices. The tool offers the characteristic of being cross-platform and easy to use and manipulate. Cubic panoramas that are generated by the NAVIRE Framework are loaded in the tool and rendered in 3D space on the user’s device. The 3D panoramas are interactive by allowing the user to view the scene in all direction, move from one scene to another or through interaction with augmented objects. The tool is geared to be interactive in the most natural and intuitive fashion using the inputs available in the different devices of the end-user.

Αντικείμενο της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η δημιουργία πανοράματος από υποθαλάσσιες ψηφιακές φωτογραφίες που λαμβάνονται περιστρέφοντας μια φωτογραφική μηχανή στηριγμένη σε τρίποδο. Αναπτύσσεται μία μέθοδος δημιουργίας πανοράματος βασισμένη στην αντιστοίχιση σημείων των εικόνων. Η υλοποίηση πραγματοποιείται σε περιβάλλον Matlab. Αρχικά γίνεται μια εισαγωγή στις μεθόδους αποκατάστασης ενός περιβάλλοντος από εικόνες και στη συνέχεια παρουσιάζονται οι βασικές μέθοδοι δημιουργίας πανοραμάτων. Η διαδικασία της υλοποίησης περιλαμβάνει την ευθυγράμμιση των φωτογραφιών, με αντιστοίχιση των κοινών σημείων τους χρησιμοποιώντας μια μέθοδο ετεροσυσχέτισης και την συρραφή τμημάτων των εικόνων για τη δημιουργία του πανοράματος. Η αντιστοίχιση γίνεται πρώτα υπολογίζοντας μόνο την οριζόντια μετατόπιση και στη συνέχεια υπολογίζοντας την οριζόντια και την κάθετη μετατόπιση. Στο τέλος αναπτύσσεται μια μέθοδος υπολογισμού της τρισδιάστατης μετατόπισης μιας κάμερας που κινείται ευθύγραμμα με κατεύθυνση προς το αντικείμενο / --

abstract: This document highlights the increased involvement of “ college boys ” or “ white college boys ” - better-educated middle-class white and light-skinned persons - in steelbands in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Following an introductory overview of the demography of Trinidad and Tobago, the history of Carnival, and the interregnum of the temporary instruments used between the ban of indigenous drums in the 1880s and the invention of the steelpan at the end of the 1930s, this document will examine the history and membership of these college boy bands, with particular emphasis on the Hit Paraders. Two factors that highlight the vital role played by these college boy steelbands are discussed: commercial sponsorship of bands, and support that bands received from the People's National Movement Party. A detailed timeline of steelpan invention and innovations is also included. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2011

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Teoria Literária e Literaturas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Literatura, 2015. / Submitted by Fernanda Percia França (fernandafranca@bce.unb.br) on 2016-02-29T20:27:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_DaphenyDayLeandroFeitosa.pdf: 815667 bytes, checksum: e8c7b1bfdab3b02cfe497dc76b22146c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Raquel Viana(raquelviana@bce.unb.br) on 2016-02-29T21:32:54Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_DaphenyDayLeandroFeitosa.pdf: 815667 bytes, checksum: e8c7b1bfdab3b02cfe497dc76b22146c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-29T21:32:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_DaphenyDayLeandroFeitosa.pdf: 815667 bytes, checksum: e8c7b1bfdab3b02cfe497dc76b22146c (MD5) / Neste trabalho buscamos retratar o panorama literário em que o índio é configurado como protagonista na literatura brasileira. Para isso, acreditamos ser necessário criar uma linha temporal que se inicia nos relatos dos cronistas e viajantes e se estende as produções literárias do período colonial. Como não poderia ser diferente observamos as aproximações e distanciamentos das produções literárias do período colonial com o indianismo do Romantismo do século XIX. Toda essa análise respalda-se na relação em como o fato histórico e fato estético sustentam a tese de que esses diferentes momentos articulam diferentes representações dos indígenas. Após esse resgate temporal da representação do índio nos voltamos para a obra de Antonio Callado, especificamente, Quarup (1967) nos propondo a analisar como essa obra se difere das anteriores que tratam da temática e indígena, através do projeto do escritor que tinha como intenção ser um instrumento de desalienação e de conscientização de seus leitores diante das injustiças do país. / In this work we aimed to present the literary scene in which the indigenous people were the main characters in Brazilian literature. Thus, we traced a time line, beginning with the first documents from the travellers and chroniclers, up until the literary production of the colonial period. We observed the similarities and differences from the literary production of the colonial period and the Indianism presented in the 19th Century Romanticism. Our analysis, based on the relation between historical and aesthetical facts, supports the thesis that these different moments articulate different representations of indigenous people. After this analysis, we focused on the novel Quarup (1967), by Antonio Callado, trying to observe how this work differs from the previous ones that present the same theme, considering the author’s literary project of being an instrument to increase the reader’s awareness of the injustices of the country.

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2016-05-10T21:39:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DaniellaLagoAlvesBatistaDeOliveiraEustaquio_DISSERT.pdf: 11004689 bytes, checksum: 4b0eee98c2de1f409b955444fa929cfe (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-05-13T21:42:10Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DaniellaLagoAlvesBatistaDeOliveiraEustaquio_DISSERT.pdf: 11004689 bytes, checksum: 4b0eee98c2de1f409b955444fa929cfe (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-13T21:42:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DaniellaLagoAlvesBatistaDeOliveiraEustaquio_DISSERT.pdf: 11004689 bytes, checksum: 4b0eee98c2de1f409b955444fa929cfe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-22 / O presente estudo oferece uma reflex?o acerca do panorama biogr?fico da escritora oitocentista Palmyra Wanderley (1894-1978) e o contexto da produ??o intelectual e liter?ria nos anos 20, no Rio Grande do Norte. Essa rela??o possibilita novo entendimento acerca do imagin?rio cultural dessa escritora, influente nos jornais e no cen?rio liter?rio. Para isso, foram utilizados textos acad?micos de estudiosos e comentadores da obra palmiriana; textos de acervo pessoal, coletado no impresso do Jornal A Rep?blica (1914-1922); e o livro ?Roseira Brava?, autoria de Palmyra (1965, 2? edi??o). A pesquisa tamb?m traz a leitura de imagens po?ticas dessa obra liter?ria, na qual h? poemas l?ricos e descritivos da Cidade do Natal e foram utilizados a fim de suscitar imagens que denotem espa?os on?ricos. A metodologia de an?lise desses poemas est? embasada na fenomenologia do fil?sofo Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), fundamentada nas obras ?A po?tica do espa?o? (2008) e ?A po?tica do devaneio? (2009). Os resultados apontam que a educa??o para as mulheres, durante a transi??o s?culo XIX e XX, no Rio Grande do Norte, possu?a oferta reduzida em rela??o ao g?nero masculino, diminuindo as oportunidades sociais entre as mulheres. E, somente mulheres de fam?lias com disponibilidade de recursos financeiros tinham condi??es de estudar em col?gios particulares e religiosos, como aconteceu com a escritora em quest?o; al?m disso, a maioria dos cr?ticos liter?rios de Palmyra Wanderley tinha elementos sexistas em seus discursos, entre outras caracter?sticas, possibilitando construir quatro categorias de imagin?rio cultural, como: ?discursos elogios?, ?tra?os liter?rios?, ?compara??es masculinas?, ?tra?os religiosos?; os poemas analisados foram relacionados ?s categorias bachelardianas, como ?ninho?, ?casa?, ?espa?os de dor? e ?inf?ncia permanente?. / This study offers a reflection on the biographical panorama of the nineteenth century transition writer for Nine hundred, Palmyra Wanderley (1894-1978) and the context of intellectual and literary production in the 20s, in Rio Grande do Norte. This relationship enables new understanding of the cultural imagination of this writer, influential newspapers and literary scene. In order for the research to take one direction, the following problems were investigated: How can reframe the cultural female imaginary, produced by commentators about Palmyra Wanderley as a woman-poet? The extent to which his writings in newspapers allow to show the feminist approach? From Bachelard reading images, that dream spaces resonate the work ?Roseira Brava?? For this, scholarly essays of scholars and commentators of Palmyra work were used; text personal collection, collected in the printed newspaper A Rep?blica (1914-1922); and the book ?Roseira Brava?, authored by Palmyra (1965, 2nd edition). The survey also brings reading poetic images of this literary work in which there are lyrical and descriptive poems Natal?s City and were used to elicit images denoting dream spaces. The analysis methodology of these poems are grounded in the phenomenology of the philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), based on the works ?The poetics of space? (2008) and ?The poetics of reverie? (2009). The results show that education for women, during the transition nineteenth and twentieth century, in Rio Grande do Norte, had reduced supply compared to males, reducing social opportunities for women. And only women from families with the availability of financial resources could afford to study in private and religious schools, as happened with the writer in question; furthermore, most literary critics of Palmyra Wanderley had sexist elements in his speeches, among other characteristics, enabling build four categories of cultural imagery, such as ?complimentary speech?, ?literary traits?, ?masculine comparisons?, ?religious traits?; the poems analyzed were related to bachelardianas categories such as ?nest?, ?home?, ?pain areas? and ?permanent childhood?.

This thesis involves systems for virtual presence in remote locations, a field referred to as telepresence. Recent image-based representations such as Google map's street view provide a familiar example. Several areas of research are open; such image-based representations are huge in size and the necessity to compress data efficiently for storage is inevitable. On the other hand, users are usually located in remote areas, and thus efficient transmission of the visual information is another issue of great importance. In this work, real-world images are used in preference to computer graphics representations, mainly due to the photorealism that they provide as well as to avoid the high computational cost required for simulating large-scale environments. The cubic format is selected for panoramas in this thesis. A major feature of the captured cubic-panoramic image datasets in this work is the assumption of static scenes, and major issues of the system are compression efficiency and random access for storage, as well as computational complexity for transmission upon remote users' requests. First, in order to enable smooth navigation across different view-points, a method for aligning cubic-panorama image datasets by using the geometry of the scene is proposed and tested. Feature detection and camera calibration are incorporated and unlike the existing method, which is limited to a pair of panoramas, our approach is applicable to datasets with a large number of panoramic images, with no need for extra numerical estimation. Second, the problem of cubic-panorama image dataset compression is addressed in a number of ways. Two state-of-the-art approaches, namely the standardized scheme of H.264 and a wavelet-based codec named Dirac, are used and compared for the application of virtual navigation in image based representations of real world environments. Different frame prediction structures and group of pictures lengths are investigated and compared for this new type of visual data. At this stage, based on the obtained results, an efficient prediction structure and bitstream syntax using features of the data as well as satisfying major requirements of the system are proposed. Third, we have proposed novel methods to address the important issue of disparity estimation. A client-server based scheme is assumed and a remote user is assumed to seek information at each navigation step. Considering the compression stage, a fast method that uses our previous work on the geometry of the scene as well as the proposed prediction structure together with the cubic format of panoramas is used to estimate disparity vectors efficiently. Considering the transmission stage, a new transcoding scheme is introduced and a number of different frame-format conversion scenarios are addressed towards the goal of free navigation. Different types of navigation scenarios including forward or backward navigation, as well as user pan, tilt, and zoom are addressed. In all the aforementioned cases, results are compared both visually through error images and videos as well as using the objective measures. Altogether free navigation within the captured panoramic image datasets will be facilitated using our work and it can be incorporated in state-of-the-art of emerging cubic-panorama image dataset compression/transmission schemes.

In this thesis, we present a tool that is an extension of the NAVIRE Framework and used in remote environment exploration and navigation. It is available for end users on everyday devices such as desktops and mobile devices. The tool offers the characteristic of being cross-platform and easy to use and manipulate. Cubic panoramas that are generated by the NAVIRE Framework are loaded in the tool and rendered in 3D space on the user’s device. The 3D panoramas are interactive by allowing the user to view the scene in all direction, move from one scene to another or through interaction with augmented objects. The tool is geared to be interactive in the most natural and intuitive fashion using the inputs available in the different devices of the end-user.

From pioneer times of C. W. Ceram on, many media-archaeology scholars' attention was attracted by on of the most monumental apparatuses - a panorama. Like in a case of many other optical toys, the panorama contains several phenomena of film medium a long time before its invention. In addition to that, the panorama is considered to be the first form of mass entertainment ever. All of its characteristics were defined already by Robert Barker, a British painter and an inventor of the panoramic painting. Contrary to an original way of its commercial exhibiting, a group of panoramas of the late 19th century was produced in a context of nationalist movements in Central Europe. This very group of panoramas is the main object of this thesis. Its main goal is to define an emancipatory-patriotic panorama as a specific media genre. Furthermore, related problems of media constancy, collective identity, and memory spaces are examined.

Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has been substantially improved and become more readily available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to adopt and streamline its utilization. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of the built environment for different purposes such as building design and occupant behavior studies in the post construction stage – i.e., Human Building Interaction. This research has investigated a workflow for different alternatives of reality-capturing-based technologies that have been tested to generate a more realistic representation of the built environment regarding HBI. One of these alternatives considered was 360-image based IVEs. This alternative in particular was tested and compared by the means of a preliminary user study in order to evaluate whether it is an adequate representation of the built environment regarding HBI, and how it is compared to commonly used benchmarked Graphical based IVEs. Ultimately, participants of this user study reported a strong feeling of immersion and presence in the 360-image based IVE and showed a better performance in cognitive tasks such as reading speed and comprehension. In contrast, participants showed a better performance in object identification and finding in the Graphical based IVE. The results of our preliminary user study indicate that 360-image based IVEs could potentially be an adequate representation in the study of Human Building Interaction based on these metrics. Further research with a larger sample size should be done in performed in order to generalize any findings. / Master of Science / Virtual Reality has been growing in popularity and demand as technology has substantially improved and become more available to the general public in the recent years. Similarly, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industries have benefited from these advances and extensive research has been performed to utilize this technology. An example of this adoption has been the use of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) as a representation of a building for different purposes such as design and understanding of the way occupants interact with a building. IVEs rely on using special digital goggles (called head mounted displays or HMDs) that help users immerse in a virtual environment and experience it. For this reason, our research has sought to explore different alternatives to possibly generate a more realistic immersive virtual environment that relies on immersive image-based technologies to test how humans behave, respond, and interact with a building. One of these alternatives considered was 360-degree cameras and their associated images. We sought to study whether these technologies provide an improved experience for users compared to the environments that are created through computer graphics. This thesis explains the processes that were investigated to understand the creation of an IVE, and the different alternatives available in the market to generate a 360-degree image based IVE. Then, one of these alternatives was tested and compared to a classic IVE through an experiment in order to evaluate whether 360-degree image based IVEs can be an adequate representation for building occupant interaction studies.