While there currently exists a great deal of research in the literature demonstrating various engineering applications for virtual reality (VR) and the benefits of these applications, VR adoption has been slow in part because of the high cost and resources required to setup and maintain the hardware for these applications. However, in the last 5 years, a new generation of VR hardware has emerged with cost and resource requirements which are a small fraction of previous hardware. This work begins with a survey of this newly available hardware summarizing recent advances for providing virtual input to all of the five human senses. The literature review then proceeds to highlight previous research into improving various aspects of the Engineering Design Process by using VR applications. The literature review concludes that given the significantly improved cost to benefit ratio of this new hardware, a tipping point has been reached where companies will see benefits from providing their engineering workforce with general access to VR hardware. From the conclusions drawn in the literature review, this work proceeds to explore and answer two main questions related to connecting and collaborating via this new VR hardware. The first question seeks to understand the trade-offs between cybersickness and disorientation from different styles of moving users in a collaborative VR environment (CVE). Since a CVE can be much larger than the physical world it is sometimes necessary to move the virtual participant which can cause cybersickness and disorientation. Understanding this trade-off is one key to creating a usable CVE. It is found that many users are willing to experience some mild cybersickness to significantly reduce the amount of disorientation experienced in a CVE. However, a second group of users are not willing to make this trade and hence require the ability to customize the CVE for their preferred trade-off between cybersickness and disorientation. The second question seeks to understand how a CVE with support for natural gestures can improve communication about complex 3D data over video conferencing which is the current standard for remote collaboration. It is found that such a CVE implemented with the latest low-cost consumer-grade VR hardware can improve communication speed up to 45% while also improving the accuracy of the communication. In addition, it was found that gestures in the CVE were much more effective and natural than mouse gestures in Skype, 93% of participants preferred the CVE over current video conferencing software, and 86% of participants stated they would like to have access to VR tools in their workplace.

While there currently exists a great deal of research in the literature demonstrating various engineering applications for virtual reality (VR) and the benefits of these applications, VR adoption has been slow in part because of the high cost and resources required to setup and maintain the hardware for these applications. However, in the last 5 years, a new generation of VR hardware has emerged with cost and resource requirements which are a small fraction of previous hardware. This work begins with a survey of this newly available hardware summarizing recent advances for providing virtual input to all of the five human senses. The literature review then proceeds to highlight previous research into improving various aspects of the Engineering Design Process by using VR applications. The literature review concludes that given the significantly improved cost to benefit ratio of this new hardware, a tipping point has been reached where companies will see benefits from providing their engineering workforce with general access to VR hardware. From the conclusions drawn in the literature review, this work proceeds to explore and answer two main questions related to connecting and collaborating via this new VR hardware. The first question seeks to understand the trade-offs between cybersickness and disorientation from different styles of moving users in a collaborative VR environment (CVE). Since a CVE can be much larger than the physical world it is sometimes necessary to move the virtual participant which can cause cybersickness and disorientation. Understanding this trade-off is one key to creating a usable CVE. It is found that many users are willing to experience some mild cybersickness to significantly reduce the amount of disorientation experienced in a CVE. However, a second group of users are not willing to make this trade and hence require the ability to customize the CVE for their preferred trade-off between cybersickness and disorientation. The second question seeks to understand how a CVE with support for natural gestures can improve communication about complex 3D data over video conferencing which is the current standard for remote collaboration. It is found that such a CVE implemented with the latest low-cost consumer-grade VR hardware can improve communication speed up to 45% while also improving the accuracy of the communication. In addition, it was found that gestures in the CVE were much more effective and natural than mouse gestures in Skype, 93% of participants preferred the CVE over current video conferencing software, and 86% of participants stated they would like to have access to VR tools in their workplace.

The common practice in sign language recognition is to first construct individual sign models, in terms of discrete state transitions, mostly represented using Hidden Markov Models, from manually isolated sign samples and then to use them to recognize signs in continuous sentences. In this thesis we use a continuous state space model, where the states are based on purely image-based features, without the use of special gloves. We also present an unsupervised approach to both extract and learn models for continuous basic units of signs, which we term as signemes, from continuous sentences. Given a set of sentences with a common sign, we can automatically learn the model for part of the sign,or signeme, that is least affected by coarticulation effects. We tested our idea using the publicly available Boston SignStreamDataset by building signeme models of 18 signs. We test the quality of the models by considering how well we can localize the sign in a new sentence. We also present the concept of smooth continuous curve based models formed using functional splines and curve registration. We illustrate this idea using 16 signs.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a highly evolving domain and is used in anincreasing number of areas in today's society. Among the technologiesassociated with VR and especially mobile VR, is hand tracking and handgesture recognition. Telemedicine is one of the elds where VR is startingto thrive, and so the concept of adding the use of hand gestures came to bein order to explore the possibilities that can come from it. This researchis conducted with the development of a prototype application that usessome of the most emerging technologies. Manomotion's hand trackingand hand gesture recognition algorithms, and Photon's servers and developerkit, which makes multi-user applications achievable, allowed theconceptual idea of the prototype to become reality. In order to test itsusability and how potential users perceive it, a user study with 24 participantswas made, 8 of which were either studying or working in themedical eld. Additional expert meetings and observations from the userstudy also contributed to ndings that helped show how hand gesturescan aect a doctor consultation in Telemedicine. Findings showed thatthe participants thought of the proposed system as a less costly and timesaving solution, and that they felt immersed in the VR. The hand gestureswere accepted and understood. The participants did not have dicultieson learning or executing them, and had control of the prototype environment.In addition, the data showed that participants considered it to beusable in the medical eld in the future.

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Above-surface interaction is a new and exciting topic in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). It focuses on the design and evaluation of systems that humans can operate by moving their hands in the space above or in front of interactive displays. While many technologies emerge that make such systems possible, much research is still needed to make this interaction as natural and effortless as possible. First this thesis presents a set of guidelines for designing above-surface interactions, a collection of widgets that were designed based on these guidelines, and a system that can approximate the height of hands above a diffused surface illumination (DSI) device without any additional sensors. Then the thesis focuses on interaction techniques for activating graphical widgets located in this above-surface space. Finally, it presents a pair of studies that were conducted to investigate item selection in the space above a multitouch surface. The first study was conducted to elicit a set of gestures for above-table widget activation from a group of users. Several gestures were proposed by the designers to be compared with the user-generated gestures. The follow-up study was conducted to evaluate and compare these gestures based on their performance. The findings of these studies showed that there was no clear agreement on what gestures should be used to select objects in mid-air, and that performance was better when using gestures that were chosen less frequently, but predicted to be better by the designers, as opposed to those most frequently suggested by participants.

Taiwan had been colonized by different regimes and thus experienced several waves of immigration in history. Traditionally, there are two forms of writings in Taiwanese language (not Chinese language) --The Chinese character and the Romanized Taiwanese in different historical perspectives -- as a result , it can be problematic especially in its written form. The establishment of the newspaper Tâi-oân-hú-siâⁿ Kàu-hōe-pò which was founded in 1885 had gradually increased the works of Taiwanese literature. This research analyzes the writing problems of Taiwanese literature in the aspects of Epistemology and Aesthetics. It had different totalitarian rules in modern Taiwan have caused two big controversies in the ways of writing systems in Taiwanese literature. Along the controversies on Taiwanese language and its writings that I quoted, the thinking of the movement of ¡§consistency between speech and writing¡¨was originated from the modern Japanese literature, especially the viewpoint¡§inner man¡¨and¡§scene. On the other hand, language issues in European philosophy already has a very long tradition of reflection, which, at first appearance, considers of philosophy that language as merely a tool to represent thinking. After the linguistic turn and the rise of literature, European philosophy of thinking about language problems, has transformed the thinking about language problems from the appearance from the classical theory into the viewpoint that regards language as the material and the machine to my research. This research embarks from the idea of¡§consistency between speech and writing¡¨in the ¡§scene¡¨ regarding the epistemological mechanism, and the philosophy developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as to body language, body language as an expression of ideas, reflecting on the perception and cognition mechanism of Taiwan philology system, whit which is formd during this ¡§abstract movement¡¨ . And is how the ¡§abstract movement¡¨ becomes as abstract machine? This research employed Gill Deleuze¡¦s concept of ¡§body without organs¡¨ and ¡§machine¡¨ to analyze the writing problems of Taiwanese literature. From the viewpoints of Deleuze and Guattari, the issue about written forms of Taiwanese literature can be considered as a progress from epistemological mechanism into the ¡§machine¡¨, and thus forms a virtual power of aesthetics.

Research shows that young children, typically developing with no developmental delays, hearing impairments or visual impairments, can acquire sign language to communicate their wants or needs prior to their ability to communicate through spoken language. However, much of the research reviewed focused on whether it was normative for young children to use signs or symbolic gestures to represent objects, make requests, or to express other wants or needs. In addition, many of the studies reviewed lacked scientific rigor and were primarily anecdotal in that much of the data relied on parent reports of his/her child's production of signs or symbolic gestures. The present study expanded upon the procedures of Thompson, McKerchar, and Dancho (2004) by teaching more complex signing repertoires using different training procedures. This study examined the acquisition of functional sign language by typically developing infants, ranging in age from 10 months to 14 months, using a training program which consisted of three components. The three components of intervention included a 30 minute group class once per week, an intensive or "booster" 1:1 session twice per week, and parent led training in the participant's home environment. During intervention a variety of concept items such as toys, pictures, books, and real objects were presented to represent the signs were utilized. A multiple baseline design across pairs of behaviors was employed to assess experimental changes in signing repertoires during the intervention conditions. All participants demonstrated zero rates of signing during baseline and showed an increase in their signing repertoires during intervention phases.

Speech errors have been utilized since the beginning of the last century to learn more about how speech is produced, both physically and cognitively. Collection of speech errors has progressed from writing down naturally occurring speech errors to recording experimentally induced speech errors to current studies, which are using instrumentation to record acoustic and kinematic information about experimentally induced speech errors. One type of instrumentation being used in articulatory research is ultrasound. Ultrasound is gaining popularity for use by those interested in learning how speech is physically produced because of its portability and noninvasiveness. Ultrasound of the tongue during speech provides visual access to the articulatory movements of the tongue. This study utilizes ultrasound recordings of speech errors in two ways. In Experiment 1, ultrasound images of participants’ tongues were recorded while they read tongue twisters designed to elicit speech errors. The tongue twisters were CVC words or CV syllables with onset velar or alveolar stops. Within the ultrasound video, the angle of the tongue blade and elevation of the tongue dorsum were measured during the onset stop closure. Measurements of tongue twisters were compared to baseline production measures to examine the ways in which erroneous productions differ from normal productions. It was found that an error could create normal productions of the other category (i.e., categorical errors) or abnormal productions that fell outside the normal categories (i.e., gradient errors). Consonant productions extracted from ultrasound video were presented auditory only to naïve listeners in Experiment 2. Listeners heard a variety of normal, gradient error, and categorical error productions. Participants were asked to judge what they heard as the onset sound. Overwhelmingly, the participants heard normal productions as well as gradient error productions as the target sound. Categorical error productions were judged to be different from the target (e.g., velar for alveolar). The only effect of erroneous production appears to be a slight increase in reaction time to respond with a choice of percept, which may suggest that error tokens are abnormal in some way not measured in this study.

Motor response selection is the process by which an intention to act is transformed into an action; this multifaceted process occurs at the interface between cognitive and motor systems. Despite the importance of response selection, the nature and neural implementation of this process is still a subject of debate (Thompson-Schill et al, 1997; Botvinick et al., 2001; Rushworth et al., 2004; Nachev et al., 2007). While previous research has demonstrated that the selection of finger movements relies on a distributed network involving premotor and prefrontal areas, the specific contribution of these regions, however, remains unclear. It is also unclear if the selection of words engages similar processes as the selection of finger movements, that is, if response selection is a domain-general or a domain-specific process. In order to address these issues, a set of four complementary studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was developed in which different factors affecting response selection were examined: selection mode, response type (words vs. oral movements), attention and response competition (conflict). / The results of these studies provide new insights into the neural architecture of response selection by uncovering the respective contribution of premotor areas (pre-SMA and PMA) and prefrontal areas (DLPFC and IFG). A preliminary two-stage model of response selection is proposed, in which the PMA is generating a set of response alternatives from which the pre-SMA performs selection using one of two different mechanisms (response facilitation and response inhibition). In general, these findings do not support the hypothesis of a medio-lateral gradient of control (Goldberg, 1985) but confirm the fundamental role of the lateral (PMA) and medial (pre-SMA) premotor areas in the process of selecting motor responses. / Importantly, the results also demonstrate that selection is a domain-general (response-independent) process. Uncovering the general, multifaceted nature of brain mechanisms is essential to reveal the basic units of control in the central nervous system; this knowledge is fundamental to broaden current understanding of the basic brain operations that are used to produce language. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.