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.

Abstract In March 2010, BusinessNext magazine examined Taiwan¡¦s top 100 most popular website, and virtual community websites occupied approximately 25% of the spots. The social networking site ¡§Facebook¡¨ is particularly notable because although it was the first time it entered the rankings, Facebook placed second. Virtual community websites are this year¡¦s most popular type of website. Among 15 to 20 year-olds, network utilization ratios reached as high as 98.3% (BusinessNext, 2010). This majority of this age group studies in high school, and regardless of their course of study, interpersonal relationships, or physical and mental development, this age cohort has an inseparable connection to the Internet. Therefore, we call them the ¡§e-generation¡¨. This research utilizes the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as its theoretical foundation; TAM predicts that a high-school student¡¦s loneliness will affect that student¡¦s use of virtual community websites. This study utilizes stratified sampling in questionnaire among 500 Kaohsiung high school students from the ages of 15 to 19, and the UCLA Loneliness Scale Version Three (Russell, 1996) is used in the survey to measure loneliness. Using this methodology, the hope is to confirm the hypothesis that the students¡¦ loneliness is positively linked to their participation in virtual communities. Using SPSS 15.0 for Windows and Amos 7.0 to analyze the survey data and conduct a path analysis for a casual relationship, loneliness has a strong influence on students¡¦ use of virtual community websites, which supports TAM as a theoretical construct. And aims at the different social group type website to implement the AMOS female community the coalition analysis. The data do not show a particular variance in usage among different types of virtual community websites. The implications of this research are helpful to the families, the military, and the managers of virtual community websites, who all benefit from a better understanding of high-school students participation in virtual communities.

As the progress of computer, virtual reality has become a more and more widespread technology and is applied extensively in entertainment, training, or medical science. To increase the interaction and reality of the virtual technology, the development of haptic feedback improves rapidly in recent years. This paper focuses on judgment existing collision detection algorithms, virtual wall models, and friction models from the view point of man-machine interface. A virtual environment interface with force feedback by using a joystick for computer game as a haptic device is established. A virtual environment is also built by employing the DirectX, a 3D computer graphic software developed by Microsoft Corp. Three virtual wall models are compared and four operational experiments are conducted to explore the influence of force feedback on operation task in virtual environment.

Social network analysis is used to find all relationships from the group, dig out the prominent patterns, and observe how information flows between dyads. By social network analysis approaches, users can know how information flows through network ties, how people acquire information and resources, and how cleavages and coalitions operate. In this research, we develop a useful social network analysis system to facilitate teams¡¦ collaboration. The system can draw a social network in ego-centered or whole network layout, and provide information of social network attributes of all users. Both team leaders and general members can make use of it to understand relations and interaction patterns of their team. We also generalize social network attributes to analyze task-based teams at different team development stages for discovering the interaction patterns of different groups in groups¡¦ life cycles. Interaction patterns of members in the team and roles that users play have high influence on a virtual team¡¦s development. With these discoveries, team leaders can obtain concise information about their teams¡¦ performance, and community managers can capture stereotypes of virtual teams in the community. From these evaluation results, we confirm that social network analysis is a useful means to analyze the knowledge activities conducted by virtual teams.

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One of the fundamental aspects of a virtual environment is the virtual agents that inhabit them. In many applications, virtual agents are required to perceive input information from their environment and make decisions appropriate to their task based on their programmed reaction to those inputs. The research presented in this thesis focuses on the reactive behaviour of the agents. We propose a new control architecture to allow agents to behave autonomously in navigation tasks in unknown environments. Our behaviour-based architecture uses fuzzy logic to solve problems of agent control and action selection and which can coordinate conflicts among different operations of reactive behaviours. A Fuzzy Associative Memory (FAM) is used as the process of encoding and mapping the input fuzzy sets to the output fuzzy set and to optimise the fuzzy rules. Our action selection algorithm is based on the fuzzy α-level method with the Hurwicz criterion. The main objective of the thesis was to implement agent navigation from point to point by a coordination of planning, sensing and control. However, we believe that the reactive architecture emerging from this research is sufficiently general that it could be applied to many applications in widely differing domains where real-time decision making under uncertainty is required. To illustrate this generality, we show how the architecture is applied to a different domain. We chose the example of a computer game since it clearly demonstrates the attributes of our architecture: real-time action selection and handling uncertainty. Experimental results are presented for both implementations which show how the fuzzy method is applied, its generality and that it is robust enough to handle different uncertainties in different environments. In summary, the proposed reactive architecture is shown to solve aspects of behaviour control for autonomous virtual agents in virtual environments and can be applied to various application domains.

Brummett’s ontological view of epistemic rhetoric frames a world in which reality is truly only shaped once it is communicated. This reality creation is uniquely performed within online spaces that are separated from the physical world by means of programming code and internal culture. These spaces are constructed of language and constitute new realities (Chesebro ) which are fundamentally rhetorical. However, the study of these tools lack shared terminology with which to classify and understand their potential as educational spaces. This study explores connections between communication mechanics of multi-user social technologies and their effectiveness as teaching tools. The study focuses on virtual worlds (defined as WAN-based, persistent, multi-user spaces which include avatars), such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, as examples of multi-user social technologies because these tools converge mechanics and communication tools found separately elsewhere. Communication mechanics are operationalized as facets found through the application of Shiyali Ranganathan’s Faceted Classification method. The facets of seventy worlds are first identified. These facets are then used to describe typical uses of the facets through Activity Theory (Engeström) and Genre Ecology Models (Spinuzzi). Finally, a framework is suggested for selecting virtual worlds and the most effective activities within them by ensuring coordination among the strategic, tactical, and operational goals and activities of the tool, the course/instructor, and student. / Incommensurate terms, incommensurate practices -- Background and current state of virtual world technology -- Classification of virtual worlds -- Using activity theory and genre ecology models to connect facets with motivations in virtual world education -- Implications, limitations and further study. / Department of English

Darbo tikslas yra pateikti ir ištirti e-vyriausybės projektų kūrimo modelį, grindžiamą virtualių komandų kūrimu ir bendradarbiavimu virtualioje erdvėje. Siekiant šio tikslo atliekami uždaviniai: 1.Pateikti ir išanalizuoti e – vyriausybės projektų sampratą bei galimus elektroninės vyriausybės paslaugų kūrimo modelius. 2.Išanalizuoti realių projektų patirtis. 3.Ištirti virtualių komandų kolaboravimo procesus. 4.Pasiūlyti e-vyriausybės projektų kūrimo modelį, kuris padėtų panaudoti informacinių technologijų galimybes, įvairių sričių specialistų bei institucijų kompetencijas ir išteklius, kad būtų sukurtos ir efektyviai tiekiamos e-valdžios paslaugos. 5.Eksperimentiškai patikrinti šio modelio funkcionavimo ypatumus, panaudojant virtualių bendradarbiavimo projektų duomenis. Darbe yra sprendžiama mokslinė problema – koks modelis sudarytų galimybes efektyviai išspręsti elektroninės valdžios projektų kūrimo problemas. Darbo objektas – elektroninės vyriausybės projektai. Darbą sudaro įvadas, trys pagrindinės dalys ir išvados. Šio darbo rezultatai galės būti panaudoti realizuojant virtualaus bendradarbiavimo komandų metodą IT projektams kurti ir realizuoti, kuriant e-vyriausybės paslaugas. Darbą sudaro 67 puslapiai, 18 lentelių ir 28 paveikslėliai. Priede pateikiamas autorės rašytas ir publikuotas straipsnis. / The main purpose of this article is to present and research e – government project creation model, which is based on virtual team creation and communication in virtual space. The tasks of this article is to present e – government project definition and also to analyze projects experience, to research virtual teams collaboration processes, and to check by experiments offered model functional peculiarity, using virtual collaboration project information. The article is written based on analyzing research method – all the literature was analyzed and important information was systematized. Also process modeling method was used for process description and abstract method for final conclusions. It was two real virtual projects analyzed in this article, qualitative and quantitative analyses were made for both projects and structure models were drawn for them either. Functional possibilities of suggested model were summarized. There is offered e - government project creation model based on various competence specialist teams’ virtual collaboration using virtual collaboration tools. It is summarized real projects experience in the article using e – government creation six levels model and also the components of these projects. The article consists of 67 pages, 18 tables and 28 pictures.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, August 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-137).

Zugl.: Wien, Univ., Diss., 2006. / Also available in print.