abstract: Electronic books or eBooks have the potential to revolutionize the way humans read and learn. eBooks offer many advantages such as simplicity, ease of use, eco-friendliness, and portability. The advancement of technology has introduced many forms of multimedia objects into eBooks, which may help people learn from them. To help the readers understand and comprehend a concept that is put forward by the author of an eBook, there is ongoing research involving the use of augmented reality (AR) in education. This study explores how AR and three-dimensional interactive models are integrated into eBooks to help the readers comprehend the content quickly and swiftly. It compares the reading activities of people when they experience these two visual representations within an eBook. This study required participants to interact with some instructional material presented on an eBook and complete a learning measure. While interacting with the eBook, participants were equipped with a set of physiological devices, namely an ABM EEG headset and eye tracker during the experiment to collect biometric data that could be used to objectively measure their user experience. Fifty college students participated in this study. The data collected from each of the participants was used to analyze the reading activities of people by performing an Independent Samples t-test. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2017

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / The present work proposes an algorithm to detect and identify the artifact signals produced by the concrete gestural actions of jaw clench and eyebrows raising in the electroencephalography (EEG) signal. Artifacts are signals that manifest in the EEG signal but do not come from the brain but from other sources such as flickering, electrical noise, muscle movements, breathing, and heartbeat. The proposed algorithm makes use of concepts and knowledge in the field of signal processing, such as signal energy, zero crossings, and block processing, to correctly classify the aforementioned artifact signals. The algorithm showed a 90% detection accuracy when evaluated in independent ten-second registers in which the gestural events of interest were induced, then the samples were processed, and the detection was performed. The detection and identification of these devices can be used as commands in a brain–computer interface (BCI) of various applications, such as games, control systems of some type of hardware of special benefit for disabled people, such as a chair wheel, a robot or mechanical arm, a computer pointer control interface, an Internet of things (IoT) control or some communication system. / Revisión por pares

Weak product cybersecurity is an increasing problem within society, and a growing consumer product is the Virtual Reality (VR) headset. This thesis investigated common vulnerabilities in Internet of Things (IoT) consumer products and performed proof-of-concept exploits on the Meta Quest VR headset. The research method employed in this thesis was black-box penetration testing, a method to find possible vulnerabilities in a system. The method was provided by the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES) and the scope was on network-related attacks on the VR headset. The PTES standard included doing a threat model of the Meta Quest VR headset to find possible vulnerabilities within the scope of this thesis. Furthermore, common vulnerabilities were studied and the findings resulted in the conducted attacks on the VR headset. The attacks were tested on an environment that mimics the situation that the target connects to a public Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) that the adversary created. The result showed that the Meta Quest VR headset had security countermeasures against potential threats. However, among the conducted attacks, a (Domain Name System) DNS spoofing attack was successful where it also was concluded that it could result in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. / Svag cybersäkerhet för produkter är ett ökande problem i samhället, och en växande konsumentprodukt är Virituella Verklighets (VR) glasögon. Den här avhandlingen undersökte vanliga sårbarheter i Sakernas internet (IoT) konsumentprodukter och undersökte om det var möjligt att utnyttja på Meta Quests VR glasögon. Forskningsmetoden som användes i denna avhandling var black-box penetrationstestning, en metod för att hitta möjliga sårbarheter i ett system. Penetrationstestet utfördes enligt The Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES) och omfattningen var på nätverksrelaterade attacker på VR-headsetet. PTES-standarden inkluderade att göra en hot modell av Meta Quest VR-headsetet för att hitta möjliga sårbarheter inom omfattningen av denna avhandling. Vidare studerades vanliga sårbarheter och resultatet resulterade i de utförda attackerna mot VR-headsetet. Attackerna testades i en miljö som efterliknar situationen där offret ansluter till ett offentligt nätverk (WiFi) som förövaren skapat. Resultatet visade att Meta Quest VR headsetet hade motståndskraftiga säkerhetsåtgärder mot potentiella hot. Däremot, bland de utförda attackerna, var en Domännamnssystem (DNS) spoofing attack framgångsrik som också påvisade att attacken kunde resultera i en överbelastnings (DoS) attack.

Within Gällö skog there is an increasing need for meetings in the forest at a distance. This is because many landowners do not live at or close to their forest property. The aim of this work was therefore to find a 3D conference solution for Gällö skog. The work has been carried out using the design process and Pugh's relative decision matrix. First, a requirement specification was made for both hardware and software selection. Then the Facebook Spaces, Rumii and AltSpaceVR software were investigated against this. When none of the aforementioned software was sufficiently satisfactory for this work, it was decided to develop a software. The developed software is based on a website and was developed by modifying an existing project from github.com. Through the modification made in the project, all requirements in the specification could ultimately be achieved. However, with some restrictions. The software works best in the Mozilla Firefox browser, and is not compatible with the iPhone. The user friendliness of Gällö skog also has development potential. The hardware in this work was chosen by comparing the VR glasses HTC Vive and Oculus Rift against each other and the developed requirement specification. As a result, HTC Vive was bought for the project. This because it fulfilled most of the work requirements, and that it had other features that enabled the headset to be used in future work. Finally, The conclusion of this work was that until this technology has come further, this solution may be insufficient. The idea is good, the solution is good, but the technology needs to come further for fully satisfactory results. When the VR technololgy have advanced further, a solution like this could be something that could be useful to companies. This because the inertaction of a 3D conference is improved compared to today's video chat. / Inom Gällö skog finns ett ökande behov av att hålla möten i skogen på distans. Detta eftersom många markägare inte bor på, eller vid sin skogsfastighet. Målet med detta arbete var därför att hitta en 3D-konferenslösning åt Gällö skog. Arbetet har genomförts med hjälp av designprocessen samt Pughs relativa beslutsmatris. Först togs en kravspecifikation fram både för val av hårdvara och mjukvara. Efter det undersöktes mjukvarorna Facebook Spaces, Rumii och AltSpaceVR mot denna. När ingen av de nämnda mjukvarorna var tillräckligt tillfredsställande för detta arbete så valdes att ta fram en egen mjukvara. Den framtagna mjukvaran baseras på en webbplats och togs fram genom att modifiera ett befintligt projekt från github.com. Genom den modifikation som gjordes i projektet så kunde alla krav i kravspecifikationen till slut uppnås. Dock med vissa restriktioner. Mjukvaran fungerar bäst i webbläsaren Mozilla Firefox, och är ej kompatibel med Iphone. Även användarvänligheten för Gällö skog har utvecklingspotential. Hårdvaran i detta arbete togs fram genom att jämföra VR-glasögonen HTC Vive och Oculus Rift mot varandra och den framtagna kravspecifikationen. Resultatet av detta blev att HTC Vive köptes in till projektet. Detta för att de uppfyllde flest av arbetets krav, samt att de hade övriga funktioner som gjorde att de kan användas även i framtida arbeten. Slutsatsen av detta arbete blev till slut att tills dess att tekniken kring detta har hunnit längre så blir denna lösning möjligtvis otillräcklig. Tanken är god, lösningen bra, men tekniken behöver komma längre för fullt tillfredsställande resultat. När VR-tekniken kommit längre skulle en lösning likt denna kunna vara något som kan bli användbart för fler företag. Detta eftersom interaktionen i en 3D-konferens förbättras jämfört med dagens videochattar.

The presented master’s thesis deals with the acoustics, specifically with the selected characteristics of the sound. It focuses on the anatomy of the auditory system and its function. The work describes the testing approaches for an evaluation of the auditory organ function and introduces modern methods used for the hearing tests, especially pure tone audiometry. A part of the thesis is dedicated to a concept of an audiometer for pure tone audiometry, which is presented in a detailed block diagram along with a description of its working components. Included chapters describe the partial circuits of the audiometer supplemented by the calcuations of its individual elements. The concluding part of the thesis deals with the evaluation of the device’s functionality.

During face-to-face meetings, humans use multimodal information, including verbal information, visual information, body language, facial expressions, and other non-verbal gestures. In contrast, during computer-mediated-communication (CMC), humans rely either on mono-modal information such as text-only, voice-only, or video-only or on bi-modal information by using audiovisual modalities such as video teleconferencing. Psychologically, the difference between the two lies in the level of the subjective experience of presence, where people perceive a reduced feeling of presence in the case of CMC. Despite the current advancements in CMC, it is still far from face-to-face communication, especially in terms of the experience of presence. This thesis aims to introduce new concepts, theories, and technologies for presence design where the core is actions for creating presence. Thus, the contribution of the thesis can be divided into a technical contribution and a knowledge contribution. Technically, this thesis details novel technologies for improving presence experience during mediated communication (video teleconferencing). The proposed technologies include action robots (including a telepresence mechatronic robot (TEBoT) and a face robot), embodied control techniques (head orientation modeling and virtual reality headset based collaboration), and face reconstruction/retrieval algorithms. The introduced technologies enable action possibilities and embodied interactions that improve the presence experience between the distantly located participants. The novel setups were put into real experimental scenarios, and the well-known social, spatial, and gaze related problems were analyzed. The developed technologies and the results of the experiments led to the knowledge contribution of this thesis. In terms of knowledge contribution, this thesis presents a more general theoretical conceptual framework for mediated communication technologies. This conceptual framework can guide telepresence researchers toward the development of appropriate technologies for mediated communication applications. Furthermore, this thesis also presents a novel strong concept – presence through actions - that brings in philosophical understandings for developing presence- related technologies. The strong concept - presence through actions is an intermediate-level knowledge that proposes a new way of creating and developing future 'presence artifacts'. Presence- through actions is an action-oriented phenomenological approach to presence that differs from traditional immersive presence approaches that are based (implicitly) on rationalist, internalist views.