The aim with this study was to further understand the art of character design, in order to get a better understanding of how visual attributes - especially shape - can be purposely used in order to communicate aspects of a character's personality. The first step was to investigate the subject of character design through relevant material and literature. From this investigation, a total of four character designs have been developed - two"good" and two "evil" - within two different game titles of different graphical styles: One that is more cartoony/stylized and one that is more realistic. Prior to the production a number of work processes - production pipelines - used by artists in the game and movie industry were investigated. From this, the pipeline for the study was compiled. To end the study a survey was conducted, in order to obtain outside feedback for the character designs regarding their style and what personality traits they were associated with. The results show that the majority of the participants perceived the characters in the way that was intended, while the perception of graphical style was a lot more varied.

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AbstraktInledning Det råder en omfattande hälsoproblematik idag och fysisk inaktivitet är en bidragande orsak. Stillasittandet har ökat i västvärlden och för att fånga även dessa individer erbjuder Tv-spelsmarknaden fysiskt aktiva spel. Handkontroll och stillasittande byts ut mot individens kroppsrörelser. Det finns till och med spel som räknar individens kaloriförbrukning under spelets gång.Syfte Syftet med studien är att se om det råder en signifikant skillnad gällande kaloriförbrukning mellan Your shape och indirekt kalorimetri samt hur Your shape förhåller sig mot Nintendo Wii boxing utifrån de fysiologiska variabler hjärtfrekvens och kaloriförbrukning.Metod En experimentell studiedesign genomfördes på 12 deltagare (7 kvinnor och 5 fem män med en medelvärdeskaraktärisering på 22.2 år, 67,9 kg, 171,3 cm och 23,0 BMI) med hjälp av indirekt kalorimetri i form av en portabel Oxycon Mobile Pro. VO2 och HF uppmättes under testet för att därefter räkna ut testpersonernas kaloriförbrukning. Spelkonsolen bestod av Microsoft xbox 360 med tillhörande kinect samt AVG-spelet Your shape. Av de fyra träningspassen som Your shape erbjuder valdes konditionsboxning ut till denna studie. Den statistiska beräkningen sattes till P = 0.05 och ett parat T-test genomfördes i SPSS.Resultat En signifikant skillnad existerade (P = 0.03) gällande kaloriförbrukning mellan Your shape och Oxycon Mobile Pro. Medelvärdet för testet gällande tid var 32 min och Your shape resulterade i ett medelvärdet på 139.7 kcal och Oxycon Mobile Pro 157.8. En skillnad på 12 %. Your shape underestimerar kaloriförbrukningen jämfört mot Oxycon Mobile Pro.Your shape redovisade högre resultat för både kcal/min och HF jämfört mot Nintendo Wii boxing.Slutsats Det finns en signifikant skillnad mellan Your shape och Oxycon Mobile Pro, nämligen en underskattning från Your shape med 12 %. Vilket ger en god uppskattning av kalorimätaren. Your shape är ett modernare AVG-spel jämfört mot Wii boxing men kräver liknande fysisk påfrestning.

Cell shape is important to understanding the mechanics of three-dimensional (3D) cell aggregates. When an aggregate of embryonic cells is compressed between parallel plates, the cell mass and the cells of which it is composed flatten. Over time, the cells typically move past one another and return to their original, spherical shapes, even during sustained compression, although the profile of the aggregate changes little once plate motion stops. Although the surface and interfacial tensions of cells have been attributed to driving these internal movements, measurements of these properties have largely eluded researchers. Here, an existing 3D finite element model, designed specifically for the mechanics of cell-cell interactions, is enhanced so that it can be used to investigate aggregate compression. The formulation of that model is briefly presented and enhancements made to its rearrangement algorithms discussed. Simulations run using the model show that the rounding of interior cells is governed by the ratio between the interfacial tension and cell viscosity, whereas the shape of cells in contact with the medium or the compression plates is dominated by their respective cell-medium or cell-plate surface tensions. The model also shows that as an aggregate compresses, its cells elongate more in the circumferential direction than the radial direction. Since experimental data from compressed aggregates are anticipated to consist of confocal sections, geometric characterization methods are devised to quantify the anisotropy of cells and to relate cross sections to 3D properties. The average anisotropy of interior cells as found using radial cross sections corresponds more closely with the 3D properties of the cells than data from series of parallel sections. A basis is presented for estimating cell-cell interfacial tensions from the cell shape histories they exhibit during the cell reshaping phase of an aggregate compression test.

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is still in its early stages, although several attempts have been made to solve or minimize challenges associated with it. CBIR techniques use such visual contents as color, texture, and shape to represent and index images. Of these, shapes contain richer information than color or texture. However, retrieval based on shape contents remains more difficult than that based on color or texture due to the diversity of shapes and the natural occurrence of shape transformations such as deformation, scaling and orientation. This thesis presents an approach for fusing several shape-based image retrieval techniques for the purpose of achieving reliable and accurate retrieval performance. An extensive investigation of notable existing shape descriptors is reported. Two new shape descriptors have been proposed as means to overcome limitations of current shape descriptors. The first descriptor is based on a novel shape signature that includes corner information in order to enhance the performance of shape retrieval techniques that use Fourier descriptors. The second descriptor is based on the curvature of the shape contour. This invariant descriptor takes an unconventional view of the curvature-scale-space map of a contour by treating it as a 2-D binary image. The descriptor is then derived from the 2-D Fourier transform of the 2-D binary image. This technique allows the descriptor to capture the detailed dynamics of the curvature of the shape and enhances the efficiency of the shape-matching process. Several experiments have been conducted in order to compare the proposed descriptors with several notable descriptors. The new descriptors not only speed up the online matching process, but also lead to improved retrieval accuracy. The complexity and variety of the content of real images make it impossible for a particular choice of descriptor to be effective for all types of images. Therefore, a data- fusion formulation based on a team consensus approach is proposed as a means of achieving high accuracy performance. In this approach a select set of retrieval techniques form a team. Members of the team exchange information so as to complement each other’s assessment of a database image candidate as a match to query images. Several experiments have been conducted based on the MPEG-7 contour-shape databases; the results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed fusion scheme is superior to that achieved by any technique individually.

Piezoelectric actuators are well suited for high precision mechanical and electrical engineering applications. However, its performance in regulator configurations has been limited due to hysteresis. The hysteresis in these actuators means that multiple input states can result in the same output, which introduces a further design variable (initial state) in the regulation problem. It is proposed that certain initial states result in better regulation performance based on the structure of the Preisach model. These initial states are called “neutral states”. In this thesis, hysteresis and piezoelectric actuators are introduced as background information. The Preisach model is used in this work to describe the hysteresis behaviour of a customized shape control unit SS15 due to its convenient general structure and ability to model hysteresis. The representation tests are performed and a Preisach model is subsequently constructed and verified by comparing simulation and experimental results to ensure that the hysteresis inherent in the piezoceramic actuators of the SS15 is suitably described by this model. In order to evaluate the regulation performance for a given desired output, uniformly-distributed noise is injected at the input side of the SS15 in open- and closed-loop tests. It is demonstrated, by both simulation and experimental results, that the system output drifts less when it starts from the neutral state in open-loop tests. A PI regulator is implemented in the closed-loop tests. When the system is driven from the neutral state, both simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the system requires less control effort for closed-loop regulation.

This report presents an algorithm for locating the cut points for and separatingvertically attached traffic signs in Sweden. This algorithm provides severaladvanced digital image processing features: binary image which representsvisual object and its complex rectangle background with number one and zerorespectively, improved cross correlation which shows the similarity of 2Dobjects and filters traffic sign candidates, simplified shape decompositionwhich smoothes contour of visual object iteratively in order to reduce whitenoises, flipping point detection which locates black noises candidates, chasmfilling algorithm which eliminates black noises, determines the final cut pointsand separates originally attached traffic signs into individual ones. At each step,the mediate results as well as the efficiency in practice would be presented toshow the advantages and disadvantages of the developed algorithm. Thisreport concentrates on contour-based recognition of Swedish traffic signs. Thegeneral shapes cover upward triangle, downward triangle, circle, rectangle andoctagon. At last, a demonstration program would be presented to show howthe algorithm works in real-time environment.

Cell shape is important to understanding the mechanics of three-dimensional (3D) cell aggregates. When an aggregate of embryonic cells is compressed between parallel plates, the cell mass and the cells of which it is composed flatten. Over time, the cells typically move past one another and return to their original, spherical shapes, even during sustained compression, although the profile of the aggregate changes little once plate motion stops. Although the surface and interfacial tensions of cells have been attributed to driving these internal movements, measurements of these properties have largely eluded researchers. Here, an existing 3D finite element model, designed specifically for the mechanics of cell-cell interactions, is enhanced so that it can be used to investigate aggregate compression. The formulation of that model is briefly presented and enhancements made to its rearrangement algorithms discussed. Simulations run using the model show that the rounding of interior cells is governed by the ratio between the interfacial tension and cell viscosity, whereas the shape of cells in contact with the medium or the compression plates is dominated by their respective cell-medium or cell-plate surface tensions. The model also shows that as an aggregate compresses, its cells elongate more in the circumferential direction than the radial direction. Since experimental data from compressed aggregates are anticipated to consist of confocal sections, geometric characterization methods are devised to quantify the anisotropy of cells and to relate cross sections to 3D properties. The average anisotropy of interior cells as found using radial cross sections corresponds more closely with the 3D properties of the cells than data from series of parallel sections. A basis is presented for estimating cell-cell interfacial tensions from the cell shape histories they exhibit during the cell reshaping phase of an aggregate compression test.

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is still in its early stages, although several attempts have been made to solve or minimize challenges associated with it. CBIR techniques use such visual contents as color, texture, and shape to represent and index images. Of these, shapes contain richer information than color or texture. However, retrieval based on shape contents remains more difficult than that based on color or texture due to the diversity of shapes and the natural occurrence of shape transformations such as deformation, scaling and orientation. This thesis presents an approach for fusing several shape-based image retrieval techniques for the purpose of achieving reliable and accurate retrieval performance. An extensive investigation of notable existing shape descriptors is reported. Two new shape descriptors have been proposed as means to overcome limitations of current shape descriptors. The first descriptor is based on a novel shape signature that includes corner information in order to enhance the performance of shape retrieval techniques that use Fourier descriptors. The second descriptor is based on the curvature of the shape contour. This invariant descriptor takes an unconventional view of the curvature-scale-space map of a contour by treating it as a 2-D binary image. The descriptor is then derived from the 2-D Fourier transform of the 2-D binary image. This technique allows the descriptor to capture the detailed dynamics of the curvature of the shape and enhances the efficiency of the shape-matching process. Several experiments have been conducted in order to compare the proposed descriptors with several notable descriptors. The new descriptors not only speed up the online matching process, but also lead to improved retrieval accuracy. The complexity and variety of the content of real images make it impossible for a particular choice of descriptor to be effective for all types of images. Therefore, a data- fusion formulation based on a team consensus approach is proposed as a means of achieving high accuracy performance. In this approach a select set of retrieval techniques form a team. Members of the team exchange information so as to complement each other’s assessment of a database image candidate as a match to query images. Several experiments have been conducted based on the MPEG-7 contour-shape databases; the results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed fusion scheme is superior to that achieved by any technique individually.