Emergencies that require immediate evacuation should be encountered with effective preparedness. With over 14 billion dollars in damages and 3,000 people killed each year, fire emergency preparedness is of critical importance. Fire drills aim to prepare and educate people on how to react properly, in order to avoid as many casualties possible. Fire drills can be expensive and time consuming to conduct, and in most cases lack the level of realism to properly educate the trainees. In this thesis, a virtual reality (VR) emergency evacuation training platform is presented. With VR, we aim to eliminate the real life constraints that exist, while succesfully training individuals. The application operator can spawn fires in any desired location, and at the same time the user being trained is getting informed about the safest and fastest path available, while being provided with constant feedback. We generate a grid graph on a given floor plan to run a pathfinding algorithm. We use Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) to formulate the existing constraints in our approach.

Currently, games with rich environments allowing a wide range of possible interactions and supporting a large number of physical simulations make use of a large number of scripts and bespoke physical simulations, adapted to fit the needs of the game. This thesis proposes a methodology that can be used to tie together various different physical simulations, both off-the-shelf and bespoke, such as rigid body physics, electrical and magnetic simulations to give something greater than the sum of the individual parts. We present a notation for designing the overall physical simulation and a means for the different parts to interact. Experiments using an implementation of the methodology containing electricity, rigid body simulation, magnetics (including electro-magnetics), buoyancy and sound show that it is possible to model everyday objects such an electric motor or a doorbell. These object work ‘as expected’, without the need for special scripts and new, originally unexpected, interactions are possible without further modification of the experiment setup.

Virtual reality (VR) headsets are becoming more common and will require evolving input mechanisms to support a growing range of applications. Because VR devices require users to wear head-mounted displays, there are accomodations that must be made in order to support specific input devices. One such device, a keyboard, serves as a useful tool for text entry. Many users will require assistance towards using a keyboard when wearing a head-mounted display. Developers have explored new mechanisms to overcome the challenges of text-entry for virtual reality. Several games have toyed with the idea of using motion controllers to provide a text entry mechanism, however few investigations have made on how to assist users in using a physical keyboard while wearing a head-mounted display. As an alternative to controller based text input, I propose that a software tool could facilitate the use of a physical keyboard in virtual reality. Using computer vision, a user€™s hands could be projected into the virtual world. With the ability to see the location of their hands relative to the keyboard, users will be able to type despite the obstruction caused by the head-mounted display (HMD). The viability of this approach was tested and the tool released as a plugin for the Unity development platform. The potential uses for the plugin go beyond text entry, and the project can be expanded to include many physical input devices.

Human-swarm interaction is an important milestone for the introduction of swarm-intelligence based solutions into real application scenarios. One of the main hurdles towards this goal is the creation of suitable interfaces for humans to convey the correct intent to multiple robots. As the size of the swarm increases, the complexity of dealing with explicit commands for individual robots becomes intractable. This brings a great challenge for the developer or the operator to drive robots to finish even the most basic tasks. In our work, we consider a different approach that humans specify only the desired goal rather than issuing individual commands necessary to obtain this task. We explore this approach in a collaborative transport scenario, where the user chooses the target position of an object, and a group of robots moves it by adapting themselves to the environment. The main outcome of this thesis is the design of integration of a collaborative transport behavior of swarm robots and an augmented reality human interface. We implemented an augmented reality (AR) application in which a virtual object is displayed overlapped on a detected target object. Users can manipulate the virtual object to generate the goal configuration for the object. The designed centralized controller translate the goal position to the robots and synchronize the state transitions. The whole system is tested on Khepera IV robots through the integration of Vicon system and ARGoS simulator.

Virtuell träning är ett viktigt sätt att utbilda tekniker för att förbereda dem för underhållsarbete i verkligheten. Tekniker som utbildas för att utföra underhållsarbete på JAS 39 Gripen, genomför delar av utbildningen genom programmet Virtual Maintenance Trainer (VMT), som kan återge en detaljerad simulering av flygplanet under drift. Teknikerna kan delta i lektioner med specifika uppgifter som inkluderar att felsöka interna datorer och delar av flygplanet samt utföra underhållsarbete för att åtgärda fel. Programmet är dock skrivbordsbaserat och för att göra utbildningen mer effektiv, finns det en önskan om att utforska möjligheterna i virtual och augmented reality. Denna rapport undersöker alternativen för utbildningsverktyg i virtual reality och augmentedreality genom en teoretisk undersökning. I undersökningen vägs fördelar och nackdelar för nuvarande implementeringar för att tillhandahålla ett optimalt system som kan fungera för att ge tekniker praktisk erfarenhet i en realitisk träningssimulering. Baserat på resultaten från undersökningen och genom att använda spelmotorn Unity, har enprototypsapplikation skapats som kan simulera teknikerutbildning på en modell av JAS 39 Gripen. HTC Vive och Leap Motion användes för att låta användaren kliva in i simuleringsvärlden och för att möjliggöra realistisk interaktion. En tekniker kan lära sig att utföra underhållsåtgärder genom att genomföra olika träningsförfaranden i simuleringen genom att gå runt och interagera med ett fullskaligt Gripen-flygplan. / Virtual training is a vital way of educating technicians to make them prepared for real maintenance work. Technicians that are educated to perform maintenance work on JAS 39 Gripen, complete parts of their training through the application Virtual Maintenance Trainer (VMT), which can provide a detailed simulation of the aircraft during operation. The technicians are able to complete courses and lessons with specific procedures such as debugging internal computers and parts of the aircraft and performing maintenance work to fix errors. However, the application is desktop-based and to make the education even more effective, there is a desire to explore the possibilities in virtual and augmented reality. This report explores the alternatives of education tools in virtual reality and augmented reality through a survey. In the survey, the advantages and disadvantages of current implementations are examined to provide an optimal system which could work to give technicians a realistic practical training simulation experience. Based on the results of the survey and by using the game engine Unity, a prototype application is built which can simulate technician training procedures on a model of JAS 39 Gripen. HTC Vive and Leap Motion were used to immerse the user into the simulation world and to enable realistic interaction. A technician may be able to learn through completing different training procedures in the simulation by walking around and interacting with a full-scaled Gripen aircraft.

Sound is a crucial part of our life. Well-designed acoustic behaviors can lead to significant improvement in both physical and virtual interactions. In computer graphics, most existing methods focused primarily on improving the accuracy. It remained underexplored on how to develop efficient acoustic simulation algorithms for interactive practical applications. The challenges arise from the dilemma between expensive accurate simulations and fast feedback demanded by intuitive user interaction: traditional physics-based acoustic simulations are computationally expensive; yet, for end users to benefit from the simulations, it is crucial to give prompt feedback during interactions. In this thesis, I investigate how to develop efficient acoustic simulations for real-world applications such as immersive media and digital fabrication. To address the above-mentioned challenges, I leverage precomputation and optimization to significantly improve the speed while preserving the accuracy of complex acoustic phenomena. This work discusses three efforts along this research direction: First, to ease sound designer's workflow, we developed a fast keypoint-based precomputation algorithm to enable interactive acoustic transfer values in virtual sound simulations. Second, for realistic audio editing in 360° videos, we proposed an inverse material optimization based on fast sound simulation and a hybrid ambisonic audio synthesis that exploits the directional isotropy in spatial audios. Third, we devised a modular approach to efficiently simulate and optimize fabrication-ready acoustic filters, achieving orders of magnitudes speedup while maintaining the simulation accuracy. Through this series of projects, I demonstrate a wide range of applications made possible by efficient acoustic simulations.

Překládaná práce přináší finanční analýzu developerského objektu. Jedná se o projekt výstavby Regionální centra Olomouc v rozsahu cca 20.000 m2. V rámci analýzy byl vedle výběru kritéria pro investiční rozhodování, proveden návrh metod pro výpočet alternativního nákladu a popis teorie pro statistické a pravděpodobnostní výpočty související s analýzou citlivosti. Součásti praktické části bylo zpracování profilu projektu a prognózy kladných a záporných hotovostních toků (klíčová část a z pohledu celé diplomové práce nejsložitější). Vybrané rizika a chování projektu v čase a jejich vliv na výslednou hodnotu projektu byl odhadnut v oddíle analýzy citlivosti projektu.

abstract: Mixed reality mobile platforms co-locate virtual objects with physical spaces, creating immersive user experiences. To create visual harmony between virtual and physical spaces, the virtual scene must be accurately illuminated with realistic physical lighting. To this end, a system was designed that Generates Light Estimation Across Mixed-reality (GLEAM) devices to continually sense realistic lighting of a physical scene in all directions. GLEAM optionally operate across multiple mobile mixed-reality devices to leverage collaborative multi-viewpoint sensing for improved estimation. The system implements policies that prioritize resolution, coverage, or update interval of the illumination estimation depending on the situational needs of the virtual scene and physical environment. To evaluate the runtime performance and perceptual efficacy of the system, GLEAM was implemented on the Unity 3D Game Engine. The implementation was deployed on Android and iOS devices. On these implementations, GLEAM can prioritize dynamic estimation with update intervals as low as 15 ms or prioritize high spatial quality with update intervals of 200 ms. User studies across 99 participants and 26 scene comparisons reported a preference towards GLEAM over other lighting techniques in 66.67% of the presented augmented scenes and indifference in 12.57% of the scenes. A controlled lighting user study on 18 participants revealed a general preference for policies that strike a balance between resolution and update rate. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2018

La réalité augmentée (RA) mobile consiste à faire coexister en temps-réel des mondes virtuel et réel. La mobilité est facilitée par l'utilisation de nouveaux dispositifs de types smartphones, et mini-PC embarquant un certain nombre de capteurs (visuels, inertiels,…). Ces dispositifs disposent toutefois d'une puissance de calcul limitée, qui peut s'avérer critique au vu des applications envisagées. L'une des solutions est de recourir à des mécanismes de distributions pour répartir les calculs sur un ensemble hétérogène de machines (serveurs ou autre terminaux mobiles). L'objectif de cette thèse est de concevoir une architecture logicielle dédiée à la réalité augmentée distribuée et plus particulièrement aux applications distribuées capable de fonctionner sur des réseaux ad-hoc constitués de terminaux hétérogènes déployées au travers d'un réseau dans un premier temps. Dans un deuxième temps, il conviendra de démontrer l'applicabilité de la solution proposée à des applications concrètes et d'explorer différentes possibilités d'exploitation originales de la distribution dans les applications de Réalité Augmentée en mettant l'accent sur la plus value apportée en terme de fonctionnalités ou d'opérations possibles en comparaison avec une solution de Réalité Augmentée classique (non distribuée) et en comparaison avec les performances des environnements dédiés à la RA existants offrant la possibilité de créer des applications distribuées. / Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) consists in achieving to make co-existing virtual and real worlds in real time. Mobility is made easier by the use of new devices such as smartphones and wearable computers or smart objects (ex. Glasses) involving sensors (inertial, visual...). These devices have lower computation capabilities that can be critical to some Augmented Reality applications. One of the solutions is to use distribution mechanisms to distribute processing on several and heterogeneous machines. The goal of this thesis is to design a software architecture dedicated to distributed Augmented Reality and more precisely to distributed applications that can run on ad-hoc networks including heterogeneous terminals deployed in a network. The second part of the thesis is to prove the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed architecture on real AR applications and explore different original uses of distribution for AR applications. Focusing on the added value in terms of features and possible opérations compared to non-distributed AR applications and compared to existing frameworks offering distributed AR components.

With the increasingly rapid adoption of vehicles with autonomous features, concerns over human driver and passenger safety in such vehicles have greatly increased, especially in regards to autonomous driving features such as Tesla’s Autopilot. In order to improve current