Anders Kalsgaard Møller

Efficient Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations

In the oil and gas industry, the foundations of offshore platforms have, for decades, used the grouted technique. This technology has now been transferred into the offshore wind turbine industry. This paper gives details of the use of the technology in some of the first offshore windfarms in Europe and considers future design possibilities.

Informing Informal Caregivers About Dementia Through an Experience-Based Virtual Reality Game

In 2017 it was believed that nearly 50mio people suffered from dementia. Besides the actual patients, the group that is mostly affected by this disease are informal caregivers. Informal caregivers – people without a formal education in the field of health care – can suffer from severe physical- and mental health issues due to the changing behaviour of the person with dementia. It has been shown that these can be overcome by giving the caregivers information and guidance about dementia at an early stage of the condition. In this paper we present our investigation of an interactive experience-based Virtual Reality game and how it can inform informal caregivers about symptoms of dementia. Our initial exploration demonstrates the potential that such a game holds in supporting informal caregivers.

Evaluation of 3D Positioned Sound in Multimodal Scenarios

Our hearing enables us to locate sound sources, communicate and hear auditory warnings, which plays a significant role in our daily lives. Using binaural techniques the sound pressure at our two ears could be recreated and thereby create or recreate a 3D sound experience. This could be used in situations, where the natural auditory informations are limited but where the need to locate objects and communicate still exists. The objective of the thesis was to identify ways of implementing 3D sound in selected multimodal applications, and evaluate the feasibility of using 3D sound in these applications. The applications are: 1) A teleconference application and 2) A 3D sound system in trucks. The thesis consists of seven papers. Paper A-D deals with experiments with a teleconference application in which one participant is not physically present (the visitor), but interacts with the other meeting participants using different virtual reality technologies, such as stereoscopic video and binaural 3D sound. Paper A-C describes work on a solution called a hear-through device, which is intended to make it possible to play the sounds from the visitor through earphones without attenuating the sound from the other participants. This is done by placing a microphone on the outside of the earphones, that record the sound from the environment and plays it back through the earphones. The results of Paper A and B showed that the auditory information is preserved for frequencies lower than 4-5kHz. In Paper B and C, it was shown that this does not affect the quality of communication and speech-onspeech spatial release from masking, but affects localization ability and the naturalness of the sounds. In Paper D it was evaluated if the visitor’s experience of a teleconference application was affected by the type and quality of the auditory and visual inputs. In the specific situation, with only two other persons sitting in front of the listener, 3D sound did not improve the communication.