The aim of the study is to contribute to research in the field of maintaining long-term engagingness in chatbots, which is done through rapport building with the help of user and agent specific memory. Recent advances in end-to-end trained neural conversational models (fully functional chit-chat chatbots created by training a neural model) present chatbots that converse well with respect to context understanding with the help of their short-term memory. However, these chatbots do not consider long-term memory, which in turn motivates further research. In this study, short-term memory is developed to allow the chatbot to understand con-text, such as context-based follow-up questions. Long-term memory is developed to re-member information between multiple interactions, such as information about the user and the agent’s own persona/personality. By introducing long-term memory, the chatbot is able to generate long-term memory-based questions, and to refer to the previous conversation, as well as retain a consistent persona. A question answering chatbot and question asking chatbot were initially developed in parallel as individual components and finally integrated into one chatbot system. The question answering chatbot was built in python and consisted of three main components; a generative model using GPT-2, a template structure with a related sentiment memory, and a retrieval structure. The question asking chatbot was built using a framework called Rasa. User tests were performed to primarily measure perceived engagingness and realness. The aim of the user studies was to compare performance between three chatbots; a) individual question asking, b) individual question answering and c) the integrated one. The results show that chatbots perceived as more human-like are not necessarily more engaging conversational partners than chatbots with lower perceived human-likeness. Although, while still not being near human level performance on measures such as consistency and engagingness, the developed chatbots achieved similar scores on these measures to that of chatbots in a related task (Persona-Chat task in ConvAI2). When measuring the effects of long-term memory in question asking, it was found that measures on perceived realness and persona increased when the chatbot asked long-term memory generated questions, referring to the previous interaction with the user.

This report covers a master’s thesis project done at the University Of Utah for the OpenSpace project. OpenSpace is a open-source astronomy visualization software and the thesis focus was to visualize the ever-increasing number of man-made space debris. Two different visualization methods have been used in this thesis. One was a volume rendering and it was evaluated how it works in relation to an orbital trail representation, which was the other method. If the volumetric representation would reduce cluttering, is one of the aspects that will be evaluated, as well as a more open ended exploratory question which is if the volumetric representation can provide any new insights about the data. In short, will a volumetric representation give anything that an orbital representation cannot? A volume rendering can use different types of grids. The thesis evaluates the pros and cons of a cartesian- and spherical grid, as well as the different resolution of the grid and tweaks in the transfer function. An orbital trail representation was previously implemented in OpenSpace (which will be called the individual scene graph node implementation in this report) that had its pros. One con, however, was that it did not scale very well with increasing number of data elements. Visualizing all the data sets containing each trackable piece of space debris simultaneously using this implementation causes the software to slow down significantly. An alternative implementation (which will be called single draw call implementation in this report) was therefore tested in hopes to solve this issue. To see the performance difference, tests were performed where frame time for the whole scene was measured.

I detta kandidatarbete har två medietekniska studenter försökt att ta reda på effektiviteten av att lära sig spelutveckling genom ett digitalt spel som de har utvecklat med två andra medietekniska studenter. För att utveckla detta spelet använde sig av omvärldsanalys, brainstorming, scrumban, moodboards, whiteboxing och lo-fi prototyper för att avsluta på en hi-fi prototyp. Vägen till resultatet har varit väldigt krånglig och ett projekt som redan var stort blev plötsligt svårare när en pandemi svep över världen och studenterna var tvungna att jobba hemifrån med något där kommunikation är det mest väsentliga. Men de fortsatte med att jobba trots omständigheterna. De programmerade, modellerade och designade tills de hade ett digitalt spel som förhoppningsvis nådde målen de hade lagt upp för sig själva. När de kände att spelet var redo för bli testad, skapade de ett formulär för att se om spelet uppnådde det önskade resultatet. När resan är över diskuterar studenterna vad de hade gjort annorlunda om de fick chansen igen.

This report presents the work of our Master´s thesis carried out remotely at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center. In collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Linköping University and Predictive Science Inc. The report presents and evaluates an implementation of an interactive 3D visualization of a Solar Particle Event in OpenSpace, an open source astrovisualization software. Data from a model developed by Predictive Science Inc. was used to implement the visualization. The visualization is done by visualizing fluxes of particles as points and utilizing a volumetric data set by applying 2D textures to geometrical shapes. The goal of these visualizations is to help describe the effect of space weather phenomena to the general public. The research conducted is focused on how to visualize a big Solar Particle Event to emphasize or showcase different aspects, such as the radiation exposure close to Earth. The result of the work is an interactive real-time visualization of a Solar Particle Event designed for public outreach. The project culminated in two live streamed events with AMNH, in collaboration with NASA and Predictive Science Inc.

This thesis describes an application-layer framework for managing network connectivity in the 4th-generation wireless systems, which will consist of overlapping heterogeneous networks. If multiple access networks are present, users will have a choice to access the Internet through the “best” available network. The main problem today is that different wireless networks are not particularly integrated and users are in most cases forced to manually interact with the system when switching between networks. The work presented in this thesis addresses this challenge and describes a framework for managing IP mobility while considering competing connection speeds and pricing models. By using an application-layer mobility scheme, called the Resilient Mobile Socket (RMS), the thesis shows how applications can manage handovers and seamlessly migrate data streams between different networks. Moreover, by using a method called Competition based Soft Handovers (CSHM), the thesis demonstrates how handovers can be automatically triggered to the network currently offering the least packet losses and end-to-end delay. Finally, the thesis proposes bandwidth broker to manage network connectivity and share bandwidth effectively between multiple media within an application. As a proof of concept several prototypes have been built into the commercial e-meeting application Marratech Pro. The thesis presents real-life results from exploratory experiments using these prototypes. / <p>Godkänd; 2004; 20060917 (ysko)</p>

This thesis explores the use of wearable computers as mediators for human to human communication. The user of a wearable computer can deliver live video, audio and commentary from a remote location, allowing local participants to experience it and interact with people on the other side. In this way, knowledge and information can be shared over a distance, passing through the owner of the wearable computer who acts as a mediator. One of the main problems of today is that the virtual world offered by wearable computers can become too immersive, thereby distancing its user from interactions in the real world. At the same time, the very same immersion serves to let the user sense the remote participants as being there, accompanying and communicating through the virtual world. The key here is to get the proper balance between the real and the virtual worlds; remote participants should be able to experience a distant location through the user, while the user should similarly experience their company in the virtual world. / <p>Godkänd; 2004; 20060917 (ysko)</p>

This thesis presents research on wearable computers and their usage in communication. The wearable computer is looked upon as a tool for communication between people but also on how it can be used in communication with the environment. A wearable computer has been built with ordinary computer parts and devices available in well-equipped computer stores. This wearable computer is used in this thesis and has both video and audio capabilities and wireless network for communication with people and equipment over distance. The setup has then been used to study the effect of using wearable computer in activities involving communication with people and other equipment. This thesis presents some ways that a wearable computer can be used when considering communication. The user can become a beacon of knowledge sharing the knowledge of people connected to her through the network with people that are collocated with her. She could also become a tool for other people to explore and experience places where they are not located at the moment so called telepresence. It could be said that this is possible with equipment that is available today, but what differences the usage of wearable computer is the possibility to do these activities while still being active in what happens around the user. As the wearable computer should be easy to wear and interact with, the roll as a knowledge beacon or telepresence provider can become almost invisible for the user and other collocated people. To make these rolls as invisible as possible great care must be taken into the interaction between the wearable computer and the user, but also the interaction the user does through the wearable computer with other equipment. When being active as one or both of these rolls the user will mostly be involved in tasks that do not directly involve the wearable computer. When the wearable computer then needs the attention of the user it may have to interrupt the user's current task. This interruption should be done so that the decrease in performance of the user can be kept to a minimum. It is also of equal importance not to only consider the performance but also the experienced stress, which should also be kept to a minimum. A user study is presented in this thesis that explores some of the possible ways to interrupt a wearable computer and analyses what way is preferred when considering both objective and subjective data. In this thesis a novel interaction method called "Eventcasting" is also presented to decrease the time needed to focus on the wearable computer when doing simple tasks with the environment. This is so that interruption on the primary task can be even more minimized and the rolls as a knowledge beacon and telepresence provider can be as invisible as possible. / <p>Godkänd; 2004; 20060916 (ysko)</p>

This thesis report presents a master’s thesis project in Media Technology by two students from Linköping University, Sweden. The project was implemented in collaboration with the Visualization Center C and Linköping University during the spring of 2021 resulting in the creation and development of two spatiotemporal visualizations featuring air traffic data in the OPENSPACE software. One visualization uses live, real-time, data provided by The OpenSky Network through a Representational State Transfer Application Program-ming Interface (REST API). The other visualization uses a static historical data set covering aviation data during the COVID-19 pandemic that is mined from The OpenSky Network. A major challenge during the implementation was handling the large amount of data in a performant manner to avoid a reduced frame rate in the application. To solve this a mul-tithreaded method is used in order to not interrupt the rendering while new data are be-ing fetched to memory. OPENSPACE uses the Application Programming Interface (API) OpenGL to render graphics, thus also enabling a shader pipeline to be utilized. Multiple shaders are used to create the visualizations. The shaders’ purpose and implementation are explained in detail for both visualizations. The live data visualization features aircraft displayed by an anti-aliased trail of past po-sitions while the historical data visualization animates pathlines that represents aircraft with respect to time. The historical data visualization uses multiple Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs) to render data efficiently and without interruption to allow the animation to play both forward and in reverse. The animation follows the time, time direction, and the speed of which the time plays set by the user in OPENSPACE to play seamlessly. The color of the pathlines are determined by continent to create a clustering effect without any pre-processing or calculations on the Central Processing Unit (CPU). Furthermore, the data can be filtered rapidly and in real-time by using Graphical User Interface (GUI) elements to control the filtering and by performing the actual filtering on the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The two visualizations enables user settings via their respective GUI. These settings include changing the color, opacity, and line width to aid in exploration of the data. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

Detta arbete belyser hur en mobilapplikation kan utformas för att stötta studenter i åldrarna 18-29 år med deras välmående med koppling till rutiner. Vi undersöker hur en applikation kan utformas för att hjälpa till att bidra till välmående för målgruppen samt hur applikationens funktioner kan påverka möjligheten att skapa hälsosamma rutiner. Vi har under arbetets gång jobbat enligt Arvolas användarcentrerade designprocess. Genom enkätundersökningar, en intervju, ett användartest och värdering har vi kommit fram till resultatet. Med brainstormingstekniker utvecklades grunden för designen, varefter en LoFi-prototyp togs fram. Denna omarbetades efter användartest till en HiFi-prototyp. Resultatet av den slutgiltiga värderingen visade att funktionaliteten i vår HiFi-prototyp inte helt uppnådde våra bedömningskriterier, men att designen gjorde det. Appens funktioner ger viss möjlighet att bygga och upprätthålla hälsosamma rutiner, men har utvecklingspotential. Vi kan konstatera att design och tonalitet är mycket viktigt för att förmedla syftet med en applikation av detta slag. Genom analysen framkom det att välmående är subjektivt, medan rutiner är lättare att definiera. För att ordentligt mäta applikationens påverkan på målgruppens välmående och rutiner skulle en studie över längre tid behöva genomföras. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

Fysiska biblioteksbesök minskar år för år rapporterar Kungliga Biblioteket (2019) samtidigt som unga läser allt mindre på fritiden (Sveriges Radio, 2019). Rapporten “Unga Berättar” från 2018 har visat att unga har ett intresse av att läsa böcker men att besöka bibliotek lockar desto mindre (Hedemark, 2018). Problemet kan liknas vid det faktum att barn och unga rör på sig mindre och ägnar större delen av sin fritid framför den digitala skärmen. Exempelvis, använder 43% av 6-10-åringar internet i mobilen varje dag (Internetstiftelsen, 2019). ’Pokemon GO’, ett spel vilket lanserades år 2016, var en lösning som motiverade barn att börja röra på sig (Häggström, 2016) genom att kombinera den fysiska världen med den digitala. Spelet gick ut på att gå ut och fånga digitala monster i den verkliga världen via AR, vilket därmed motiverade barn att röra på sig. Den här rapporten syftar till att undersöka hur AR kan användas på fysiska bokomslag för att motivera barn att vilja utforska böcker på biblioteket, och därav motiveras att besöka bibliotek fysiskt. För att undersöka detta har två fiktiva bokomslag designats med möjlighet till AR vilket inbegriper att omslaget, via en digital skärm och applikationen ‘Artivive’, kan komma till liv och röra på sig. De två omslagen har i slutligt skede av arbetet testats av barn i åldern 9–12 år för att kartlägga reaktioner och tankar kring fenomenet. För att ta fram de två fiktiva bokomslagen har teori om design av bokomslag, designprinciper, AR och animation samlats in. De två omslagen har genomgått en designprocess var olika koncept ställts mot varandra i en värderingsmatris med kriterier tagna från tidigare studier kring hur barn ser på omslag och vad för typer av grafiska element de uppskattar. Koncepten har senare färdigställts med bestämda designbeslut, för att sedan visualiseras i en storyboard och animeras enligt storyboardens händelseförlopp. Slutsatsen kring frågan huruvida bokomslag med AR-möjlighet kan komma att motivera barn att vilja besöka bibliotek i större utsträckning drogs från värderingen var barn fick titta på de fiktiva bokomslagen och intervjuas kring användningen. Undersökningen visade att bokomslag med AR-möjlighet kan komma att motivera barn att vilja besöka bibliotek oftare, och visade också att sådana böcker kan komma att intressera barn mer för att läsa boken i fråga. Detta, om AR-möjligheten adderar till det statiska omslaget och bidrar till förståelse för bokens handling. / Physical visits to the library decrease year by year according to a report from Kungliga Biblioteket (2019). At the same time, young people are reading less during their free time (Sveriges Radio, 2019). The report “Unga Berättar” from 2018 has shown that young people do have an interest in reading books but visiting the library is considered less interesting (Hedemark, 2018). The problem can be likened to the fact that children and youngsters move less and spend most of their free time in front of the digital screen. For example, 43% of 6–10-year-olds use the Internet on their phone every day (Internetstiftelsen, 2019). ‘Pokemon GO’, a game launched in 2016, was a solution that motivated children to move (Häggström, 2016) by combining the physical world with the digital. The game involved catching digital monsters in the physical world through AR, which motivated children to move. This report aims to examine how AR can be used on physical book covers to motivate children to explore books in the library, hence motivating them to visit libraries physically. To examine this, two fictional book covers have been designed with the possibility of AR which via a digital screen and the application ‘Artivive’, can come to live and move. The two covers have at its final stage been tested by children between the age of 9-12 to map their reactions and thoughts about the phenomenon. Theory about designing book covers, design principles, AR and animation has been collected to design these two fictional covers. The two covers have undergone a design process where different concepts have been set against each other through a Pugh Chart with criteria taken from earlier studies considering children's view on book covers and what kind of graphic elements they appreciate. The concepts have later been completed with design decisions, been visualized in a storyboard, and then animated according to the storyboard's sequence of events. The conclusion of how book covers with the possibility of AR-interaction can motivate children to visit libraries more was drawn through the evaluation where children looked at the fictional book covers and were interviewed about the usage. The evaluation showed that book covers offering AR interaction could motivate children to visit libraries more often, and also showed that these book covers could encourage children to read the book in question. This, if the AR layer adds to the static cover and contributes to an understanding of the plot of the book. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>