Thesis (Ph.D)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: MacIntyre, Blair; Committee Member: Bolter, Jay; Committee Member: Guzdial, Mark; Committee Member: Mateas, Michael; Committee Member: Mynatt, Elizabeth. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Civil law in digital reality Abstract This thesis deals with the issue of some selected institutes of civil law, such as legal proceedings, ownership or the concept of things, in the context of the technologies of the so-called augmented and virtual reality, ie collectively the so-called digital reality. The thesis analyzes in individual institutes and evaluates and predicts their possible application for augmented and virtual reality technologies. It examines how these two worlds, the legal world and the digital world, interact with each other, how they can interact with each other, and finally whether these worlds are compatible with each other. In the seven chapters of the second part of this thesis, the author analyzes selected institutes of civil and copyright law. Specifically, those institutes that are interesting in the context of these technologies, not all new technologies in general. The first chapter is devoted to legal acts in the context of virtual worlds. In the following three chapters, the author discusses things and rights in rem in the context of virtual ownership and an alternative in the form of intellectual property. Attention is paid here to determining what virtual objects are legally: how the law sees them and what protection applies or does not apply to them. In the fifth chapter,...

In their opinion article, “The Ethics of Realism in Virtual and Augmented Reality,” Slater et al. (2020) raised awareness on themanifold ethical issues arising fromXR developing into a ubiquitous and daily used technology. The article of Slater et al. is true in every aspect. However, there was one further aspect missing, which will likely play a very important role when XR is no longer contained in laboratories and professional applications but a daily used technology: the ubiquitousness of drugs and their influence on perception and cognition in relation to XR.

Auch mit modernster Technik und Maschinen ist der Mensch aus der Produktion nicht wegzudenken. Bediener mit Erfahrung sind elementar wichtig für effiziente Produktionsprozesse und bleiben unersetzbar – so die Theorie. In der Praxis fehlt den Unternehmen allerdings zunehmend gut ausgebildetes Fachpersonal. Lange Stillstandszeiten und hohe Ausschussmengen können die Folge sein. Gemeinsam mit Ihnen und weiteren Vertretern aus Wissenschaft und Industrie wollen wir uns mit neuen Konzepten und Visionen selbstlernender Bediener-Assistenzsysteme auseinandersetzen, - psychologische Aspekte, - die Nutzung von Augmented und Virtual Reality sowie - selbstlernende Systeme (künstliche Intelligenz) vorstellen und anschließend diskutieren.:1. Dr. Peter Golz (VDMA, Frankfurt am Main): Der Mensch im Produktionsumfeld 2. Dr. Romy Müller (TU Dresden, Professur für Ingenieurpsychologie und angewandte Kognitionsforschung): Mensch-Maschine-Kooperation in hochautomatisierten Systemen 3. Andre Schult (Fraunhofer IVV Dresden): Selbstlernendes Bediener-Assistenzsystem 4. Harald Wolf (Hassia Verpackungsmaschinen GmbH, Ranstadt): Mensch-Maschine im internationalen Umfeld 5. Ulf Heinemann (Robotron Datenbank- Software GmbH, Dresden): Störungserkennung durch Motorstromanalysen in Produktionsstraßen 6. Tilman Klaeger (Fraunhofer IVV Dresden): Maschinelles Lernen am Fraunhofer IVV Dresden 7. Patrick Marchion (Dividella AG, Grabs, CH): Augmented Reality für Wartung und Bedienung

Mit der Automatisierung in der Produktion wird oft versucht, den Menschen als mögliche Fehlerquelle zunehmend vom Prozess auszuschließen. Dabei besitzt der Mensch einzigartige und nützliche motorische, sensorische und kognitive Fähigkeiten. Innovative Technologien bieten nun die Grundlage, Automatisierung und menschliche Fähigkeiten ideal zusammenzuführen und somit die Effizienz von Produktionsprozessen deutlich zu steigern. Wir möchten Sie herzlich einladen, diese neuen Möglichkeiten mit uns zu diskutieren. Vertreter aus Forschung und Industrie werden aktuelle Strategien und Entwicklungen vorstellen. In der begleitenden Demo-Session finden Sie Gelegenheit, mit Experten zu sprechen und Technologien auszuprobieren.Ziel ist es, Ihnen einen ersten Einblick zu bieten und dadurch den Grundstein für eigene Anwendungsideen und -projekte zu legen.:1. Andre Schult (Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden): Begrüßung 2. Peter Seeberg (Softing Industrial Automation GmbH): KeyNote: Industrie 4.0 - Revolution durch Maschinelles Lernen 3. Andre Schult (Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden): Selbstlernende Bediener-Assistenzsysteme - Ein Update 4. Dr. Lukas Oehm (Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden): Ideenwerkstatt zukünftiger Projekte 5. Dr. Romy Müller (TU Dresden): Übervertrauen in Assistenzsysteme: Entstehungsbedingungen und Gegenmaßnahmen 6. Diego Arribas (machineering GmbH & Co. KG): Mehr Geschwindigkeit durch Digitales Engineering, Virtuelle Realität und Simulation 7. Sebastian Carsch (Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden): Informationsaustausch im interdisziplinären Entwicklungsprozess 8. Prof. Rainer Groh (TU Dresden): Das menschliche Maß der Interaktion 9. Fanny Seifert (Elco Industrie Automation GmbH): Smart Maintenance - Industrie-Apps als Grundlage für ein durchgängig integriertes Assistenzsystem 10. Markus Windisch (Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden): Cyber Knowledge Systems - Wissensbausteine für die digitalisierte Bauteilreinigung 11. Dr. Marius Grathwohl (MULTIVAC Sepp Hagemüller SE & Co. KG): IoT und Smart Services in agiler Entwicklung – Phasen der digitalen Transformation bei MULTIVAC 12. Andre Schult (Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden): Zusammenfassung und Abschlussdiskussion

Product visualization in AR/VR applications requires a largely manual process of data preparation. Previous publications focus on error-free triangulation or transformation of product structure data and display attributes for AR/VR applications. This paper focuses on the preparation of the required geometry data. In this context, a significant reduction in effort can be achieved through automation. The steps of geometry preparation are identified and examined concerning their automation potential. In addition, possible couplings of sub-steps are discussed. Based on these explanations, a structure for the geometry preparation process is proposed. With this structured preparation process, it becomes possible to consider the available computing power of the target platform during the geometry preparation. The number of objects to be rendered, the tessellation quality, and the level of detail (LOD) can be controlled by the automated choice of transformation parameters. Through this approach, tedious preparation tasks and iterative performance optimization can be avoided in the future, which also simplifies the integration of AR/VR applications into product development and use. A software tool is presented in which partial steps of the automatic preparation are already implemented. After an analysis of the product structure of a CAD file, the transformation is executed for each component. Functions implemented so far allow, for example, the selection of assemblies and parts based on filter options, the transformation of geometries in batch mode, the removal of certain details, and the creation of UV maps. Flexibility, transformation quality, and timesavings are described and discussed.

Life science today involves computational analysis of a large amount and variety of data, such as volumetric data acquired by state-of-the-art microscopes, or mesh data from analysis of such data or simulations. The advent of new imaging technologies, such as lightsheet microscopy, has resulted in the users being confronted with an ever-growing amount of data, with even terabytes of imaging data created within a day. With the possibility of gentler and more high-performance imaging, the spatiotemporal complexity of the model systems or processes of interest is increasing as well. Visualisation is often the first step in making sense of this data, and a crucial part of building and debugging analysis pipelines. It is therefore important that visualisations can be quickly prototyped, as well as developed or embedded into full applications. In order to better judge spatiotemporal relationships, immersive hardware, such as Virtual or Augmented Reality (VR/AR) headsets and associated controllers are becoming invaluable tools. In this work we present scenery, a modular and extensible visualisation framework for the Java VM that can handle mesh and large volumetric data, containing multiple views, timepoints, and color channels. scenery is free and open-source software, works on all major platforms, and uses the Vulkan or OpenGL rendering APIs. We introduce scenery's main features, and discuss its use with VR/AR hardware and in distributed rendering. In addition to the visualisation framework, we present a series of case studies, where scenery can provide tangible benefit in developmental and systems biology: With Bionic Tracking, we demonstrate a new technique for tracking cells in 4D volumetric datasets via tracking eye gaze in a virtual reality headset, with the potential to speed up manual tracking tasks by an order of magnitude. We further introduce ideas to move towards virtual reality-based laser ablation and perform a user study in order to gain insight into performance, acceptance and issues when performing ablation tasks with virtual reality hardware in fast developing specimen. To tame the amount of data originating from state-of-the-art volumetric microscopes, we present ideas how to render the highly-efficient Adaptive Particle Representation, and finally, we present sciview, an ImageJ2/Fiji plugin making the features of scenery available to a wider audience.:Abstract Foreword and Acknowledgements Overview and Contributions Part 1 - Introduction 1 Fluorescence Microscopy 2 Introduction to Visual Processing 3 A Short Introduction to Cross Reality 4 Eye Tracking and Gaze-based Interaction Part 2 - VR and AR for System Biology 5 scenery — VR/AR for Systems Biology 6 Rendering 7 Input Handling and Integration of External Hardware 8 Distributed Rendering 9 Miscellaneous Subsystems 10 Future Development Directions Part III - Case Studies C A S E S T U D I E S 11 Bionic Tracking: Using Eye Tracking for Cell Tracking 12 Towards Interactive Virtual Reality Laser Ablation 13 Rendering the Adaptive Particle Representation 14 sciview — Integrating scenery into ImageJ2 & Fiji Part IV - Conclusion 15 Conclusions and Outlook Backmatter & Appendices A Questionnaire for VR Ablation User Study B Full Correlations in VR Ablation Questionnaire C Questionnaire for Bionic Tracking User Study List of Tables List of Figures Bibliography Selbstständigkeitserklärung

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis has been to investigate how companies report non-financial information and specifically volatile subjects such as technology. There are several different new technologies that all have different maturities which can affect how they are reported in annual reports. This thesis aims to understand how reporting of technology is affected by innovation, investments and stakeholder expectations. Theoretical perspectives: Stakeholder theory has been used as a primary theoretical background and framework, in conjunction with agency theory to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of non-financial reporting. Methodology: 30 annual reports from five years (2018-2022) and six tech-companies listed on the Swedish stock market have been content analysed with the use of a variation of keyword frequency analysis. The sample companies represent different segments within the tech-industry to provide the thesis with a wider perspective. Furthermore, the method of this thesis has been a mixture between a positivist ontology with constructivist epistemology and the chosen theories has been used in an abductive manner where findings are reflected against the theories. Additionally, the method of data collection has been a mixture between quantitative and qualitative methods, where qualitative data has been quantified and analysed graphically. Findings: The findings indicate that the sample companies seem to be aware of their stakeholders' perception of them as tech-companies, which affect how they report on technology. It is likely that tech-companies increasingly report on new technologies to maintain their perception as tech-companies. Furthermore, the findings suggest that companies report more heavily on technologies when investments into the given technology have been made. The findings are in line with concepts from both agency theory and stakeholder theory.

Technologien der erweiterten Realität (extended reality, XR) finden im gesamten Produktentwicklungsprozess Anwendung. Insbesondere Systeme zur aktiven Erzeugung und Veränderung digitaler Produktdaten bieten noch viel Potential. Die Erforschung und Entwicklung dieser immersiven Interfaces beruht maßgeblich auf der Evaluation durch Nutzerstudien, denn nur so kann die Einsatztauglichkeit der Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstellen seriös beurteilt und verglichen werden. Bei der Konzeptionierung und Durchführung dieser Nutzerstudien gibt es viel zu beachten. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Leitfaden für das Design von Evaluationen von XR Interfaces für die Produktentwicklung präsentiert. Zu Beginn müssen die Fragestellungen festgelegt werden, welche die Studie beantworten soll. Ausgehend von diesen müssen die zu testenden Versuchsbedingungen, die gestellten Aufgaben, die aufgenommen Metriken, die gewählten Probanden und der geplante Ablauf festgelegt werden. Zusätzlich zu der allgemeinen Darlegung wird das Vorgehen anhand eines Fallbeispiels angewandt. Die Gestaltung einer Nutzerstudie zur Evaluation der Usability und Eignung eines neuartigen Virtual Reality Interfaces zur natürlichen Gestaltung von Vorentwürfen wird vorgestellt.

Alternate realities have fascinated mankind since early prehistory and with the advent of the computer and the smartphone we have seen the rise of many different categories of alternate reality that seek to augment, diminish, mix with or ultimately replace our familiar real world in order to expand our capabilities and our understanding. This thesis presents parallel reality as a new category of alternate reality which further addresses the vacancy problem that manifests in many previous alternate reality experiences. Parallel reality describes systems comprising two environments that the user may freely switch between, one real and the other virtual, both complete unto themselves. Parallel reality is framed within the larger ecosystem of previously explored alternate realities through a thorough review of existing categorisation techniques and taxonomies, leading to the introduction of the combined Milgram/Waterworth model and an extended definition of the vacancy problem for better visualising experience in alternate reality systems. Investigation into whether an existing state of the art alternate reality modality (Situated Simulations) could allow for parallel reality investigation via the Virtual Time Windows project was followed by the development of a bespoke parallel reality platform called Mirrorshades, which combined the modern virtual reality hardware of the Oculus Rift with the novel indoor positioning system of IndoorAtlas. Users were thereby granted the ability to walk through their real environment and to at any point switch their view to the equivalent vantage point within an immersive virtual environment. The benefits that such a system provides by granting users the ability to mitigate the effects of the extended vacancy problem and explore parallel real and virtual environments in tandem was experimentally shown through application to a use case within the realm of cultural heritage at a 15th century chapel. Evaluation of these user studies lead to the establishment of a number of best practice recommendations for future parallel reality endeavours.