Interaction with unmanned ground vehicles have traditionally been done through a lap-top based system. New technology is on the rise which can provide new benefits to operating soldiers, with superimposed information and a more lightweight control unit, namely augmented reality. Designing interfaces for augmented reality systems have seen an improvement but has yet to be widely implemented in various domains. Satisfaction and high user acceptance are aspects that have been identified to be factors for success in the field of human-robot interaction. This thesis intends to explore interface design solutions for interactions with unmanned ground vehicles through augmented reality in head-mounted displays. This has been done through an iterative design process in the form of concept generation and prototyping. The produced prototype has then been evaluated with users to find usability issues and to measure the potential in the prototype to be satisfactory and have a high user acceptance. The evaluation resulted in eight usability issues of which three was critical. The three usability issues are (1) Video module was placed too far down of the user’s view, (2) Difficulties to find modules outside of the view, and (3) Crucial information to distinguish units was non-existent. The prototype did show signs of having potential of being satisfactory and have a high user acceptance, although there are issues which still need to be resolved before this user interface could be used by the military. It is a first step towards integrating augmented reality as a tool when interacting with UGV.

The increasing availability of modern head-mounted displays have spurred interest in social virtual reality (VR) applications, but their immersion-inducing features limit the use of important nonverbal social cues in multiuser contexts. Embodied avatars have proven useful in increasing the social affordances of real-time rendered VR applications but remain underexplored in cinematic virtual reality (CVR). In the present study, three different conditions were evaluated in co-located CVR where participants watched 360° videos together in pairs; one condition had no visual representation of the co-watcher, one condition had a translucent cone representing the co-watcher’s viewing direction, and one condition had both the cone and a set of hands representing the co-watcher. Social presence was measured through the Networked Minds Social Presence Inventory and a semantic differential scale, presence was measured through the iGroup Presence Questionnaire, and participants’ use of implicit and explicit spatial references (i.e., “there” versus “next to the blue house”) was analyzed. The results indicate that simple embodied avatars can increase presence and social presence in CVR, and lead to more face-to-face-like verbal behavior. / Intresset för sociala VR-applikationer har stigit i takt med spridningen av moderna VR-glasögon, men applikationer för två eller fler användare är svåra att realisera i och med att glasögonen blockerar viktiga ickeverbala sociala signaler. I realtidsrenderad VR har de sociala interaktionsmöjligheterna kunnat förbättras genom så kallade embodied avatars men deras effekt har hittills inte undersökts i cinematisk VR (CVR). I den här studien utforskades tre betingelser av embodied avatars i ett CVR-experiment där deltagarpar tittade på 360° filmer tillsammans i ett rum. En betingelse saknade avatar, i en betingelse representerades ens partners blickfång av en halvgenomskinlig kona, och i en betingelse representerades ens partner av både konan samt ett par virtuella händer. Social presence mättes genom the Networked Minds Social Presence Inventory och en semantic differential scale, presence mättes genom the iGroup Presence Questionnaire, och deltagarnas användning av implicita (”där”) och explicita (”bredvid det blå huset”) spatiala uttalanden analyserades. Resultaten visar att enkla embodied avatars kan öka både presence och social presence i CVR, samt leda till verbal kommunikation som liknar den vi använder i när vi interagerar ansikte mot ansikte.

Urbanisation has historically led to issues with property damage and sickness, due to pests such as rats. Traditionally, rats have been exterminated using poison and manually loaded traps. As of late however, more effective and humane means of control have been developed, such as automatic and connected traps. As rats use the sewer system as we use the highway, connecting properties together, it is natural to place traps there. Nomor, a service company that performs pest control among other services, is interested in developing their own automatic mechanical sewer mounted trap for their own specific needs. In this thesis, the fastening mechanism and enclosure for such a trap are developed, with a concept developed in a previous collaboration used as a base. In this concept, a fastening mechanism is used to fasten the trap to the open pipes located in the sewer manholes. Rats passing underneath the trap are executed by the striking of a carbon dioxide driven cylinder. The enclosure surrounds the fastening mechanism and provides an interface between it and the executional unit, which is developed separately. The final prototype, which was made mostly using 3D-printing of PLA parts and some light metalwork, was tested and evaluated using a testing rig made from layered MDF pieces. The rig was constructed with an optimal scenario in mind, with dimensions like those in pipes which Nomor are likely to want to mount the trap in. The main use of the rig was to evaluate the dimensions and fastening abilities of the trap. Tests and analysis of the construction gave that the fastening mechanism and enclosure had potential to meet the requirements from Nomor in a reliable manner, if a more sophisticated method of mounting and a better mechanism for keeping the trap fastened was developed.

Smartphones are used today to accomplish a variety of different tasks, but it has some issues that might be solved with new technology. Augmented Reality is a developing technology that in the future can be used in our daily lives to solve some of the problems that smartphones have. Before people will adopt the new augmented technology it is important to have an intuitive method to interact with it. Hand gesturing has always been a vital part of human interaction. Using hand gestures to interact with devices has the potential to be a more natural and familiar method than traditional methods, such as keyboards, controllers, and computer mice. The aim of this thesis is to explore whether hand gesture recognition in an Augmented Reality head-mounted display can provide the same interaction possibilities as a smartphone touchscreen. This was done by implementing an application in Unity that mimics an interface of a smartphone, but uses hand gestures as input in AR. The Leap Motion Controller was the device used to perform hand gesture recognition. To test how practical hand gestures are as an interaction method, text typing was chosen as the task to be used to measure this, as it is used in many applications on smartphones. Thus, the results can be better generalized to real world usage.Five different keyboards were designed and tested in a pilot study. A controlled experiment was conducted, in which 12 participants tried two hand gesturing keyboards and a touchscreen keyboard. This was done to compare how hand gestures compare to touchscreen interaction. In the experiment, participants wrote words using the keyboards, while their completion time and accuracy was recorded. After using a keyboard, a questionnaire was completed by the participants to measure the usability.  The results consists of an implementation of five different keyboards, and data collected from the experiment. The data gathered from the experiment consists of completion time, accuracy, and usability derived from questionnaire responses. Statistical tests were used to determine statistical significance between the keyboards used in the experiment. The results are presented in graphs and tables. The results show that typing with pinch gestures in augmented reality is a slow and tiresome way of typing and affects the users completion time and accuracy negatively, in relation to using a touchscreen. The lower completion time, and higher usability, of the touchscreen keyboard could be determined with statistical significance. Prediction and auto-completion might help with fatigue as fewer key presses are needed to create a word. The research concludes that hand gestures are reasonable to use as input technique to accomplish certain tasks that a smartphone performs. These include simple tasks such as scrolling through a website or opening an email. However, tasks that involve typing long sentences, e.g. composing an email, is arduous using pinch gestures. When it comes to typing, the authors advice developers to employ a continuous gesture typing approach such as Swype for Android and iOS.

The current push from the industry for Head-Mounted Display based wearable computers to the masses for everyday use suggests that academia's goals of a tight human and computer integration is achievable. Although promising, many interaction challenges remain to achieve a deep integration. Primarily that of active cognitive support in the form of focusing user attention. This thesis investigates to what degree a system can unobtrusively, perhaps even subliminally, guide attention of a user by directing their gaze from a current point to a selected point in a virtual environment. A subjective evaluation is made regarding the characteristics of visual sensory stimuli in order to possibly achieve an unobtrusive (or even subliminal) gaze guidance. The attention guidance system developed is deployed in a controlled experiment with 30 participants. Participants are asked to fire a longbow at targets in a virtual reality environment while their point of gaze is monitored with an eye-tracker. The experiment produced interesting results, but no conclusive evidence that the system was able actively guide a user's attention nor influence their choice could be observed. The conclusion of this thesis is that further development is needed towards a system that is capable of objectively calibrating the stimuli characteristics for each individual participant.

Food, water and energy are three essential resources for human well-being, poverty reduction and sustainable development. These resources are very much linked to one another, meaning that the actions in any one particular area often can have effects in one or both of the other areas. At the same time, an economy's shift towards climate neutrality requires a massive expansion of energy production from renewable sources. Among these ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) and biomass will be expanded massively to meet the clean energy generation goal, simultaneously influence regional water and food availability and supply security. It is crucial to understand Food-Water-Energy Nexus (FWE) nexus during the energy transition. However, current studies have limitation both methodically (qualitative assessments) and spatially (aggregated data on a national level is more available). Firstly, a consistent share input data set in geographical format was created with the resolution of building/field. An energy simulation platform (SimStadt) was then extended with new workflows on biomass potential, ground-mounted PV potential, food demand/potential, and urban water demand. Combining with existing workflows on urban building heating/electricity demand and roof PV potential, the dissertation created a complete simulation environmental covering most-relating FWE topics in energy transition with consistent input and output structures at a fine resolution. Secondly, the most representative inter-linkage between ground-mounted PV and biomass on hinterland is investigated in details with the new tools. The output data of each field from ground-mounted PV and biomass workflows are linked and ranked according to the scenarios emphasizing PV yield, feasibility, profit, or biomass. The assessment and scenarios are applied at three representative German counties with distinguished land-use structures and geometries as case studies. Results show that current policies does not guarantee the technically efficient allocation of fields. The optimal technical strategy is to follow the individual market profit drive, which is very likely, at the same time for the social good, to achieve high PV yields with limited biomass losses and more significant crop water-saving effects. The local food, water, and energy demands are also included as a metric for resource allocation on the potential side. Besides focusing on the biomass-PV tradeoff simulation and analysis, pioneer works have also been done to test the transferability of the method in cases outside Germany, and the complement of urban solid waste to agricultural biomass is explored to achieve energy autarky.

The main aim of this thesis was to evaluate the performance of the contrast sensitivity clock (CSC), a new screening device for measuring contrast sensitivity (CS) and glare. This device allows CS without glare, with glare and disability glare scores to be recorded. After initial data collection the design of the CSC was slightly amended improving the performance of the device. The amended design of the CSC was shown to be a valid, discriminative and repeatable measure for purpose. The CSC is also a quick test to perform and is relatively cheap to produce. If all these factors are considered it shows potential to become the test of choice for the assessment of visual glare. A head-mounted display system was also evaluated in terms of the glare effects it may cause. The monocular display screen of the device significantly reduced the CS of the eye directly exposed but also had an effect on binocular performance, reducing amounts of binocular summation. Electronic devices, including head-mounted displays and satellite navigation systems can seriously affect CS at low luminance levels, similar to those found when driving at night.

I denna artikel undersöks HoloLens 2 som verktyg för att förmedla LEGO-bygginstruktioner genom att använda Augmented Reality (AR). Traditionella instruktionsmetoder såsom text, bilder och video har börjat få konkurrens av AR-tekniken. AR har potentialen att förbättra inlärning och effektivisering av instruktions processen genom att lägga till digitalt innehåll i den fysiska verkligheten.  I artikeln diskuteras både fördelar och nackdelar med att använda sig av AR-instruktioner jämfört med traditionella medier, såsom pappersinstruktioner och framhäver AR’s potential inom områden som exempelvis utbildning, sjukvård och tillverkning. Tidigare studier har visat ökat engagemang, effektivitet och minskad ansträngning hos användare som använder sig av AR-instruktioner. Ibáñez m.fl. (2014) genomförde en undersökning där de använde sig av AR bland studenter och fick positiv feedback vad gäller användning av AR i ett lärandesammanhang.  Artikeln inriktar sig specifikt på användningen av AR Head Mounted Display (HMD), som i detta fall kommer vara en HoloLens 2 för att förmedla LEGO-bygginstruktioner. Med hjälp av HoloLens 2 får användaren en tydligare uppfattning om monteringsprocessen och visualisera de olika komponenterna i 3D. Detta blir fördelaktigt för undersökningen när det gäller att hantera små LEGO-komponenter för att placera dem på rätt plats.  Slutresultatet för undersökningen av att använda HoloLens 2 som verktyg för att förmedla LEGO-bygginstruktioner, visade sig ha både fördelar och nackdelar som kommer att diskuteras senare i artikeln.

Virtual reality is a technology that has seen unprecedented growth since the turn of the century with increasing applications within business, entertainment, and educational applications. As virtual reality technologies continue to develops and markets expand, the world may see an increased demand for virtual classrooms: virtual environments (VEs) that students may access through immersive virtual reality technologies to receive guided instruction, conduct simulations, or perform tasks typical in a classroom setting. While many studies document how virtual reality is beneficial to educational processes, there is little discussion on how virtual environments should be architecturally designed. Thus one may hypothesize that physical design strategies translated to virtual environments may have similar results. This thesis investigates virtual environments for education by creating several virtual classrooms embedded within a selective digital twin of the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The design of the virtual classrooms was influenced by current architectural trends in classroom design while capturing unique abilities present within a virtual context. A physical teaching module was also designed to create a platform for educators within the university to deliver instruction within the virtual campus.

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is a relatively more accurate and reliable alternative to solution of Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equations in simulating complex turbulent flows at a lesser computational cost than a direct numerical simulation (DNS). However, LES of wall-bounded flows still requires a very high grid resolution in the inner wall layer making its widespread use difficult. Different attempts have been made in the past time to overcome this problem by modeling the near wall turbulence instead of resolving it. One such approach is a two-layer wall model that solves for a reduced one-dimensional equation in the inner wall layer, while solving for the filtered Navier-Stokes equations in the outer layer. The use of such a model allows for a coarser grid resolution than a wall resolved LES. This work validates the performance of a two-layer wall model developed for an arbitrary body fitted non-orthogonal grid in the flow over a wall mounted hump at Reynolds number 9.36x105. The wall modeled large eddy simulation (WMLES) relaxes the grid requirement compared to a wall resolved LES (WRLES) by allowing the first off-wall grid point to be placed at a y+ of approximately 20-40. It is found that the WMLES results are general good agreement with WRLES and experiments. Surface pressure coefficient, skin friction, mean velocity profiles, and the reattachment location compare very well with experiment. The WMLES and WRLES exhibit some under prediction of the peak values in the turbulent quantities close to the reattachment location, with better agreement with the experiment in the separated region. In contrast, a simulation that did not employ the wall model on the grid used for WMLES failed to predict flow separation and showed large discrepancies with the experimental data. In addition to the relaxation of the grid requirement in the wall normal direction, it was also observed that the wall model allowed a reduction in the number of computational cells in the span-wise direction by half. However an LES calculation on a grid with reduced number of cells in span-wise direction turned unstable almost immediately, thereby highlighting the effectiveness of the wall model. Besides reducing the number of grid points in the spatial domain, the relaxed grid resolution for the WMLES also permitted the use of a larger time step. This resulted in an order of magnitude reduction in the total CPU time relative to WRLES. / Master of Science