0000000000083313
AUTHOR
Pedro Morillo
An empirical evaluation of two natural hand interaction systems in augmented reality
AbstractHuman-computer interaction based on hand gesture tracking is not uncommon in Augmented Reality. In fact, the most recent optical Augmented Reality devices include this type of natural interaction. However, due to hardware and system limitations, these devices, more often than not, settle for semi-natural interaction techniques, which may not always be appropriate for some of the tasks needed in Augmented Reality applications. For this reason, we compare two different optical Augmented Reality setups equipped with hand tracking. The first one is based on a Microsoft HoloLens (released in 2016) and the other one is based on a Magic Leap One (released more than two years later). Both d…
Providing Full Awareness to Distributed Virtual Environments Based on Peer-to-Peer Architectures
In recent years, large scale distributed virtual environments (DVEs) have become a major trend in distributed applications, mainly due to the enormous popularity of multiplayer online games in the entertainment industry. Since architectures based on networked servers seems to be not scalable enough to support massively multiplayer applications, peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures have been proposed as an efficient and truly scalable solution for this kind of systems. However, the main challenge of P2P architectures consists of providing each avatar with updated information about which other avatars are its neighbors. We have denoted this problem as the awareness problem. Although some proposal…
A Comparison Study of Modern Heuristics for Solving the Partitioning Problem in Distributed Virtual Environment Systems
Fast Internet connections and the widespread use of high performance graphic cards are making Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) systems very common nowadays. However, there are several key issues in these systems that should still be improved in order to design a scalable and cost-effective system. One of these key issues is the partitioning problem. This problem consists of efficiently assigning clients (3-D avatars) to the servers in the system. In this paper, we present a comparison study of different modern heuristics for solving the partitioning problem in DVE systems, as an alternative to the ad-hoc heuristic proposed in the literature. Performance evaluation results show that som…
An Augmented Reality (AR) CAD System at Construction Sites
Augmented Reality (AR) technologies allow computer-generated content to be superimposed over a live camera view of the real world. Although AR is still a very promising technology, currently only a few commercial applications for industrial purposes exploit the potential of adding contextual content to real scenarios. Most of AR applications are oriented to fields such as education or entertainment, where the requirements in terms of repeatability, fault tolerance, reliability and safety are low. Different visualization devices, tracking methods and interaction techniques are described in the literature, establishing a classification between Indoor and Outdoor AR systems. On the one hand, t…
A grid representation for distributed virtual environments
Fast Internet connections and the widespread use of high performance graphic cards are making Distributed Virtual Environments (DVE) very common nowadays. The architecture and behavior of these systems are very similar to new grid computing applications where concepts such as sharing and high scalability are extremely exploited. However, there are several key issues in these systems that should still be improved in order to design a scalable and cost-effective DVE system. One of these key issues is the partitioning problem. This problem consists of efficiently assigning clients (3-D avatars) to the arbiters (servers) in the system. As an alternative to the ad-hoc heuristic proposed in the l…
Implementing Immersive Clustering with VR Juggler
Continuous, rapid improvements in commodity hardware have allowed users of immersive visualization to employ high-quality graphics hardware, high-speed processors, and significant amounts of memory for much lower costs than would be possible with high-end, shared memory computers traditionally used for such purposes. Mimicking the features of a single shared memory computer requires that the commodity computers act in concert—namely, as a tightly synchronized cluster. In this paper, we describe the clustering infrastructure of VR Juggler that enables the use of distributed and clustered computers for the display of immersive virtual environments. We discuss each of the potential ways to syn…
A Distributed Framework for Scalable Large-Scale Crowd Simulation
Emerging applications in the area of Emergency Response and Disaster Management are increasingly demanding interactive capabilities to allow for the quick understanding of a critical situation, in particular in urban environments. A key component of these interactive simulations is how to recreate the behavior of a crowd in real- time while supporting individual behaviors. Crowds can often be unpredictable and present mixed behaviors such as panic or aggression, that can very rapidly change based on unexpected new elements introduced into the environment. We present preliminary research specifically oriented towards the simulation of large crowds for emergency response and rescue planning s…
A comparison study of evolutive algorithms for solving the partitioning problem in distributed virtual environment systems
Fast Internet connections and the widespread use of high performance graphic cards are making Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) systems very common nowadays. However, there are several key issues in these systems that should still be improved in order to design a scalable and cost-effective system. One of these key issues is the partitioning problem. This problem consists of efficiently assigning clients (3D avatars) to the servers in the system. In this paper, we present a comparison study of different modern heuristics for solving the partitioning problem in DVE systems, as an alternative to the ad hoc heuristic proposed in the literature. Performance evaluation results show that some…
The Quality of Service Issue in Virtual Environments
Networked virtual environments (NVEs) have become a major trend in distributed computing, mainly due to the enormous popularity of multi-player online games in the entertainment industry. Nowadays, NVE systems are considered as the supporting technology for many networked and virtual organizations (NVO) (Singhal & Zyda, 1999), especially to those classified within the field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), where networked computer can be seen as a standard to provide the technological means to support the team design (Ott & Nastansky, 1997). These highly interactive systems simulate a virtual world where multiple users share the same scenario. The system renders the im…
Improving the performance of CAR systems based on mobile phones
Collaborative Augmented Reality (CAR) systems allow multiple users to share a real work environment including computer-generated images in real time. Currently, the hardware features of most mobile phones makes them a natural platform for CAR systems. However, the wide variety of these hardware features can have important effects on the performance of the mobile CAR applications. This thesis proposes a performance characterization and improvement of CAR systems based on mobile phones. The research results, at the time of writing this paper, shows that a CAR system using mobile phones as clients and with a single server can support up to one thousand clients while providing interactive respo…
A new AR authoring tool using depth maps for industrial procedures
Several augmented reality systems have been proposed for different target fields such as medical, cultural heritage and military. However, most of the current AR authoring tools are actually programming interfaces that are exclusively suitable for programmers. In this paper, we propose an AR authoring tool which provides advanced visual effect, such as occlusion or media contents. This tool allows non-programming users to develop low-cost AR applications, specially oriented to on-site assembly and maintenance/repair tasks. A new 3D edition interface is proposed, using photos and Kinect depth information to improve 3D scenes composition. In order to validate our AR authoring tool, two evalua…
On the Characterization of Distributed Virtual Environment Systems
Distributed Virtual Environment systems have experienced a spectacular growth last years. One of the key issues in the design of scalable and cost-effective DVE systems is the partitioning problem. This problem consists of efficiently assigning clients (3-D avatars) to the servers in the system, and some techniques have been already proposed for solving it.
An Easy-to-Use AR Authoring Tool for Industrial Applications
Augmented Reality (AR) applications have been emerged last years as a valuable tool for saving significant costs in maintenance and process control tasks in industry. This trend has been stimulated by the appearance of authoring tools that allow the fast and easy development of AR applications. However, most of current AR authoring tools are actually programming interfaces that are exclusively suitable for programmers, and they do not provide advanced visual effects such as occlusion or object collision detection.
A genetic approach for adding QoS to distributed virtual environments
Distributed virtual environment (DVE) systems have been designed last years as a set of distributed servers. These systems allow a large number of remote users to share a single 3D virtual scene. In order to provide quality of service in a DVE system, clients should be properly assigned to servers taking into account system throughput and system latency. The latter one is composed of both network and computational delays. This highly complex problem is known as the quality of service (QoS) problem. In this paper, we study the implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA) for solving the QoS problem in DVE systems. Performance evaluation results show that, due to its ability of both finding goo…
A Comparison Study of Metaheuristic Techniques for Providing QoS to Avatars in DVE Systems
Network-server architecture has become a de-facto standard for Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) systems. In these systems, a large set of remote users share a 3D virtual scene. In order to design scalable DVE systems, different approaches have been proposed to maintain the DVE system working under its saturation point, maximizing system throughput. Also, in order to provide quality of service to avatars in a DVE systems, avatars should be assigned to servers taking into account, among other factors, system throughput and system latency. This highly complex problem is called quality of service (QoS) problem in DVE systems. This paper proposes two different approaches for solving the QoS…
Analyzing the performance of a cluster-based architecture for immersive visualization systems
Cluster computing has become an essential issue for designing immersive visualization systems. This paradigm employs scalable clusters of commodity computers with much lower costs than would be possible with the high-end, shared memory computers that have been traditionally used for virtual reality purposes. This change in the design of virtual reality systems has caused some development environments oriented toward shared memory computing to require modifications to their internal architectures in order to support cluster computing. This is the case of VR Juggler, which is considered one of the most important virtual reality application development frameworks based on open source code. Thi…
A new system architecture for crowd simulation
Crowd simulation requires both rendering visually plausible images and managing the behavior of autonomous agents. Therefore, these applications need an efficient design that allows them to simultaneously handle these two requirements. Although several proposals have focused on the software architectures for these systems, no proposals have focused on the computer systems supporting them. In this paper, we analyze the computer architectures used in the literature to support distributed virtual environments. Also, we propose a distributed computer architecture which is efficient enough to support simulations of thousand of autonomous agents. This proposal consists of a cluster of interconnec…
Locally constrained synthetic LoDs generation for natural terrain meshes
Terrain representation is a basic topic in the field of interactive graphics. The amount of data required for a good quality of the terrain offers an important challenge to developers of such systems. For users of these applications, the accuracy of geographical data is generally less important than its natural visual appearance. This makes it possible to maintain a limited geographical database for the system and to extend it generating synthetic data. The evaluation of the intrinsic properties of the terrain (i.e. fractal dimension, roughness, etc.) may be used as the basis for generating extra data accomplishing the same patterns discovered in the actual information. However, it is also …