Submitted by PPG Ci?ncia da Computa??o (ppgcc@pucrs.br) on 2018-09-13T13:02:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ESTEVAO SMANIA TESTA_DIS.pdf: 3237172 bytes, checksum: d5aadd66e71bcae6b9ef00c5c31e0e5a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Sheila Dias (sheila.dias@pucrs.br) on 2018-09-14T19:04:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ESTEVAO SMANIA TESTA_DIS.pdf: 3237172 bytes, checksum: d5aadd66e71bcae6b9ef00c5c31e0e5a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-14T19:26:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ESTEVAO SMANIA TESTA_DIS.pdf: 3237172 bytes, checksum: d5aadd66e71bcae6b9ef00c5c31e0e5a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-15 / Planos de evacua??o t?m sido historicamente usados como uma medida de seguran?a para a constru??o de edif?cios. Os simuladores existentes requerem ambientes 3D totalmente modelados e tempo suficiente para preparar e simular cen?rios. Uma vez que a quantidade de pessoas pode mudar ao longo do tempo, v?rias simula??es s?o frequentemente necess?rias para gerar um plano de evacua??o otimizado. Neste documento ? apresentado uma nova abordagem para estimar os dados resultantes de um dado cen?rio de evacua??o sem simula-lo de fato. Para tal o ambiente ? dividido o ambiente em salas modulares com configura??es diferentes, em um estilo divis?o e conquista. Em seguida, uma rede neural artificial ? treinada para estimar os dados desejados de uma sala sozinha. Ap?s coletar os dados estimados de cada sala, uma heur?stica capaz de agregar informa??es por sala ? desenvolvida para que o ambiente completo possa ser devidamente estimado. Esse m?todo apresenta erros dentro da margem de 30% quando comparado o tempo de evacua??o em um ambiente real e complexo. Al?m disso, n?o ? necess?rio modelar o ambiente 3D, aprender como configurar um simulador de multid?es e o tempo computacional para estimar ? instant?neo quando comparado ao melhor caso de um simulador de multid?es. / Evacuation plans have been historically used as a safety measure for the construction of buildings. The existing simulators require fully-modeled 3D environments and enough time to prepare and simulate scenarios. Since the amount of people in a given simulated scenario can change over time, several simulations are often required in order to generate an optimal evacuation plan. With that in mind, we present in this paper a novel approach to estimate the resulting data of a given evacuation scenario without actually simulating it. For such, we divide the environment into modular rooms with different configurations, in a divide-and-conquer fashion. Next, we train an artificial neural network to estimate all required data regarding the evacuation of a single room. After collecting the estimated data from each room, we developed a heuristic capable of aggregating per room information so the full environment can be properly evaluated. Our method presents errors within the 30% margin when compared to evacuation time in a real and complex environment. In addition, it is not necessary to model the 3D environment, learn how to use and configure a crowd simulator, and the computational time to estimate is instantaneous when compared to a best case real-time crowd simulator.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / This thesis investigates the modelling and animation of virtual humans for real-time sign language visualisation. Sign languages are fully developed natural languages used by Deaf communities all over the world. These languages are communicated in a visual-gestural modality by the use of manual and non-manual gestures and are completely di erent from spoken languages. Manual gestures include the use of hand shapes, hand movements, hand locations and orientations of the palm in space. Non-manual gestures include the use of facial expressions, eye-gazes, head and upper body movements. Both manual and nonmanual gestures must be performed for sign languages to be correctly understood and interpreted. To e ectively visualise sign languages, a virtual human system must have models of adequate quality and be able to perform both manual and non-manual gesture animations in real-time. Our goal was to develop a methodology and establish an open framework by using various standards and open technologies to model and animate virtual humans of adequate quality to e ectively visualise sign languages. This open framework is to be used in a Machine Translation system that translates from a verbal language such as English to any sign language. Standards and technologies we employed include H-Anim, MakeHuman, Blender, Python and SignWriting. We found it necessary to adapt and extend H-Anim to e ectively visualise sign languages. The adaptations and extensions we made to H-Anim include imposing joint rotational limits, developing exible hands and the addition of facial bones based on the MPEG-4 Facial De nition Parameters facial feature points for facial animation. By using these standards and technologies, we found that we could circumvent a few di cult problems, such as: modelling high quality virtual humans; adapting and extending H-Anim; creating a sign language animation action vocabulary; blending between animations in an action vocabulary; sharing animation action data between our virtual humans; and e ectively visualising South African Sign Language. / South Africa

Curtin Universitys Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) combine an MPEG-4 compliant Facial Animation Engine (FAE), a Text To Emotional Speech Synthesiser (TTES), and a multi-modal Dialogue Manager (DM), that accesses a Knowledge Base (KB) and outputs Virtual Human Markup Language (VHML) text which drives the TTES and FAE. A user enters a question and an animated ECA responds with a believable and affective voice and actions. However, this response to the user is normally marked up in VHML by the KB developer to produce the required facial gestures and emotional display. A real person does not react by fixed rules but on personality, beliefs, previous experiences, and training. This thesis details the design, implementation and pilot study evaluation of an Affective Personality Model for an ECA. The thesis discusses the Email Agent system that informs a user when they have email. The system, built in Curtins ECA environment, has personality traits of Friendliness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. A small group of participants evaluated the Email Agent system to determine the effectiveness of the implemented personality system. An analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results from questionnaires is presented.

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A framework for understanding the social responses to virtual humans suggests that human-like characteristics (e.g., facial expressions, voice, expression of emotion) act as cues that lead a person to place the agent into the category "human" and thus, elicit social responses. Given this framework, this research was designed to answer two outstanding questions that had been raised in the research community (Moon&Nass, 2000): 1) If a virtual human has more human-like characteristics, will it elicit stronger social responses from people? 2) How do the human-like characteristics interact in terms of the strength of social responses? Two social psychological (social facilitation and politeness norm) experiments were conducted to answer these questions. The first experiment investigated whether virtual humans can evoke a social facilitation response and how strong that response is when participants are given different cognitive tasks (e.g., anagrams, mazes, modular arithmetic) that vary in difficulty. They did the tasks alone, in the company of another person, or in the company of a virtual human that varied in terms of features. The second experiment investigated whether people apply politeness norms to virtual humans. Participants were tutored and quizzed either by a virtual human tutor that varied in terms of features or a human tutor. Participants then evaluated the tutor's performance either directly by the tutor or indirectly via a paper and pencil questionnaire. Results indicate that virtual humans can produce social facilitation not only with facial appearance but also with voice recordings. In addition, performance in the presence of voice synced facial appearance seems to elicit stronger social facilitation (i.e., no statistical difference compared to performance in the human presence condition) than in the presence of voice only or face only. Similar findings were observed with the politeness norm experiment. Participants who evaluated their tutor directly reported the tutor's performance more favorably than participants who evaluated their tutor indirectly. In addition, this valence toward the voice synced facial appearance had no statistical difference compared to the valence toward the human tutor condition. The results suggest that designers of virtual humans should be mindful about the social nature of virtual humans.

Le domaine de la réalité virtuelle offre de formidables opportunités tout le long de la conception d’assemblage complexe. L’un des avantages est la possibilité de mettre en situation écologique des utilisateurs dès les premières étapes de conception. Ceci est d’autant plus important dans la conception d’installation industrielle complexe. Il est possible de valider rapidement des tâches d’accessibilité, d’assemblage, de maintenance, voire de démantèlement. L’obtention de la validité écologique des études réalisées en environnement virtuel demande cependant que les interfaces homme-machine soient capables de transmettre des informations réalistes. À l’heure actuelle, les systèmes virtuels ne sont pas capables de fournir une interaction haptique complète, notamment les contacts/collisions entre l’utilisateur et les objets virtuels de l’environnement ne résultent pas en un retour haptique. Ceci peut devenir la cause de comportement inapproprié par rapport à la réalité. L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer un moyen de renforcer la compréhension spatiale en environnement virtuel. Plus particulièrement, nous souhaitons substituer les informations kinesthésiques par des informations tactiles pour augmenter la conscience spatiale et la cohérence visuo-proprioceptive. Nous avons développé une plateforme vibrotactile capable de fournir des informations spatiales sur l’environnement. Nous avons également commencé à interroger le rôle de la représentation du corps en environnement virtuel. Plusieurs études expérimentales ont été réalisées de manière à valider les développements que nous avons mis en avant. / The virtual reality field offers astounding opportunities throughout the design of complex assembly. One of the advantages is the possibility of immerse users in an ecological situation in the early stages of design. It’s even more important during the design of complex industrial plant. It allows to validate accessibility, assembly, maintenance or even dismantling tasks. The ecological validity of the studies carried out in a virtual environment, requires the human-machine interfaces capable of transmitting and rendering realistic information. At present, virtual systems are not capable of providing a complete haptic interaction, in particular contact/collision between the user and virtual objects in the environment do not result in haptic feedback. This can become the cause of inappropriate behavior compared to reality. The aim of this thesis is to propose a way to reinforce spatial awareness in virtual environment. More specifically, we wish to substitute kinesthetic information with tactile information to increase spatial awareness and visuo-proprioceptive consistency. We developed a vibrotactile platform capable of providing spatial information on the environment. We also studied the role of the representation of the body in a virtual environment. Several experimental studies have been carried out in order to validate the developments we proposed.

I denna studie kartläggs hur tre verksamheter vid ett sjukhus i norra Sverige arbetar med frågor rörande hur digital teknik kan användas för att stötta, upprätthålla eller utveckla kunskaper på arbetsplatsen, samt de organisatoriska förutsättningar som finns för att upprätta och upprätthålla ett sådant arbete. Studien baserades på en intervjustudie med sex respondenter i olika utsträckning verksamma med arbetsplatslärande vid ett större sjukhus i norra Sverige, och ämnade undersöka vilka redskap och organisatoriska strukturer som finns för att förbättra och fördjupa de anställdas förutsättningar för IKT-stött arbetsplatslärande samt hur verksamheten arbetar med frågor som rör IKT-stött arbetsplatslärande i dagsläget. Genom att applicera begrepp från pedagogisk forskning och forskning inom human resource development identifierades bristande organisatoriska strukturer som ett återkommande tema i verksamheternas arbete. I studien framkom att förutsättningarna för att arbeta med ett IKT-stött lärande är begränsade i fråga om tillgänglig tid och resurser, brister hos tillgängliga IKT-verktyg samt bristande organisatoriska stödstrukturer. Två sätt att hantera problemet med bristande organisatoriska strukturer identifierades: Att iscensätta ett aktivt arbete med att skapa mål och riktlinjer för hur digital teknik ska användas för att stötta, upprätthålla eller utveckla kunskaper på arbetsplatsen, samt att utnyttja nyckelpersoner med specifika kompetenser som relaterar till hur digital teknik kan användas för att stötta, upprätthålla eller utveckla kunskaper på arbetsplatsen.

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