Arnold Depickere

Raising information security awareness in digital ecosystem with games - a pilot study in Thailand

Success of digital ecosystem depends on a reliable supporting infrastructure that offers and transports services and information thereby empowers the business system to function properly. This implies the utmost importance to maintain the reliability, confidentiality and integrity of the network and communication systems. This paper reports an initial pilot study on the use of a simulation game called CyberCIEGE for raising the awareness and knowledge on Information Security among a small group of Thai students. The paper provides an overview of the software, the experiment and results, and, a discussion on the next phase of this proposed project.

An Analysis of Man-Machine Interaction in Instant Messenger

The availability of multiple media channels through the Internet has added new dimensions of communication between people or communities who are geographically separated. In the environment of informal communication on the Internet, chat applications are popular in which a user may be represented only by a nickname or an alias. This suggests that a person may be able to communicate more freely when his or her identity is concealed. Popular chatting or instant messaging (IM) systems such as Microsoft MSN Messenger, America Onlines Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and GoogleTalk have changed the way that a user may communicate with friends, acquaintances, and business colleagues. Once limited to desktop personal computers (PCs) or laptops, popular instant messaging systems are finding their way onto handheld devices and mobile phones. This allows a user to chat from virtually anywhere. Nowadays, IM is found on almost every personal PC connected to the Internet as well as on many corporate desktops.

An Embodied Conversational Agent for Intelligent Web Interaction on Pandemic Crisis Communication

In times of crisis, an effective communication mechanism is paramount in providing accurate and timely information to the community. In this paper we study the use of an intelligent embodied conversational agent (ECA) as the front end interface with the public for a crisis communication network portal (CCNet). The proposed system, CCNet, is an integration of the intelligent conversation agent, AINI, and an automated knowledge extraction agent (AKEA). The AKEA retrieves first hand information from relevant sources such as government departments and news channels. In this paper, we compare the interaction of AINI against two popular search engines, two question answering systems and two conversational systems

Embodied Conversational Agents for H5N1 Pandemic Crisis

This paper presents a novel framework for modeling embodied conversational agent for crisis communication focusing on the H5N1 pandemic crisis. Our system aims to cope with the most challenging issue on the maintenance of an engaging while convincing conversation. What primarily distinguishes our system from other conversational agent systems is that the human-computer conversation takes place within the context of H5N1 pandemic crisis. A Crisis Communication Network, called CCNet, is established based on a novel algorithm incorporating natural language query and embodied conversation agent simultaneously. Another significant contribution of our work is the development of a Automated Knowledge Extraction Agent (AKEA) to capitalize on the tremendous amount of data that is now available online to support our experiments. What makes our system differs from typical conversational agents is the attempt to move away from strictly task-oriented dialogue.

Static and dynamic difficulty level design for edutainment game using artificial neural networks

When designing a game, one of the major tasks is to design a game of exciting and challenging difficulty levels to maintain the interest level of a player throughout the game. This is especially important when designing an educational game. This paper proposes the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), specifically the Backpropagation Neural Networks (BPNNs) for handling the gaming experience. The BPNNs can provide targeted learning experience for the user or the student. This will achieve personalized learning that is an important issue for student relationship management. The proposed frameworks will provide motivation for the student as the difficulty level progresses and adjusts to suit individual users.

iThaiSTAR --- A Low Cost Humanoid Robot for Entertainment and Teaching Thai Dances

Development of humanoid and dance robots has improved greatly due to rapid advancement of electronics, computer, mechatronics and control technologies. While humanoid robots such as Honda ASIMO, Fujita HOAP-3 and Sony QRIO have dazed the public with their amazing capabilities, such robots are in very limited supply and they are also extremely expensive. On the other hand, the low cost toy robot, WowWees Robosapien (RS), has become very popular. It has also expanded its functionalities in later models since its line of products were first launched in 2004. The most important aspect of such robot is its cost is only a fraction of the highly sophisticated robots. This study investigates the feasibility of using low cost robots such as RS for the purposes of entertainment and teaching Thai dances. Informal feedbacks and comments have shown a high degree of acceptance and keen interest. This demonstrates the potential of low cost robots for training, entertainment and edutainment purposes.

A knowledge management platform for the promotion of modern rural energy services in ASEAN countries

Modern rural energy service (MRES) has been developed and implemented for years. It offers lots of advantage such as efficient energy and clean environment. However, MRES is used only in a particular group due to the lack of knowledge end promotion. This paper proposes the design end development of a knowledge management platform for promotion of MRES in ASEAN countries. The proposed system employs Web service technologies for enhancing and distribution the utilization of MRES.

Project Management in Student Information Technology Projects

Universities teach project management to information technology (IT) students. The project management principles that students previously have learned often are put into practice in a project course that is intended to give final-year students the experience of applying their knowledge to real or simulated projects. This article reports on research that investigated the use and usefulness of project management in student IT projects. The results show that there was a wide range in the application of project management practices, with students being more likely to produce the initial documentation associated with some of the project management knowledge areas than to make use of it throughout the project to monitor the project’s progress. The results also showed that the number of project management guidelines applied in student projects was not linked to IT project success. However, there was a strong relationship between project management plan quality and obtaining a good software product.

Intelligent Object Locality Naming Model in an Object-Based Distributed System for Engineering Applications

Complex engineering applications demand powerful computing resources. An object based distributed system is suitable for such applications due to the inherent parallelism nature in the object based computing model. As the model is based on message passing, which in turns relies on location transparent object names, an efficient name translation system is therefore required to map the object names to the corresponding physical addresses dynamically. In this paper, we propose a heuristic distributed search algorithm, the hierarchy random walker (HRW), to take advantage of the locality of object communications thereby increasing the overall system performance. Analysis of the simulation results from a number of benchmark programs have demonstrated that the benefits of the proposed algorithm are in terms of flexibility and efficient to locate the most used objects. The approach will be applied to intelligent techniques for engineering problems.

Design and implementation of a pivotal unit in a games technology degree

This paper reports the development and running of the first Games Development and Programming unit at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Unlike other Games courses which have been repackaged or re-modeled from existing multimedia courses, the proposed course and units are focused on meeting the needs of the industry and high level of academic standard. As such, great demands have been placed on the students. The unit objectives, structure and examples of assignments from the first batch of students are described in this paper. Experience has shown that the students were able to perform well with positive encouragement. Ability to work in a team also proved to be an important factor. This has shown to be related to the standard of the students’ work and it is also an essential attribute expected by the industry.