Arturo Nakasone

An Experimental Space for Conducting Controlled Driving Behavior Studies based on a Multiuser Networked 3D Virtual Environment and the Scenario Markup Language

We present a new framework for conducting controlled driving behavior studies based on multiuser networked 3-D virtual environments. The framework supports: 1) the simulation of multiuser immersive driving; 2) the visualization of surrounding traffic; 3) the specification and creation of reproducible traffic scenarios; and 4) the collection of meaningful driving behavior data. We use our framework to investigate the “rubbernecking” phenomenon, which refers to the slowing down of a driver due to an accident on the opposite side of the road, and its effect on the following drivers. The main contribution of the paper is the Scenario Markup Language (SML) framework, which is composed of: 1) the SML as a practical tool to specify dynamic traffic situations (e.g., an accident) and 2) the Scenario Control System to ensure the reproducibility of particular traffic situations, so that traffic engineers can obtain comparable data and draw valid conclusions. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework, we specified the traffic accident scenario in SML and conducted a study about the rubbernecking phenomenon. We report on the results of our study from two viewpoints: 1) the reproducibility of the traffic accident situation (i.e., state variables of interest are recreated successfully in 78% of the cases); and 2) the interactive car-following behavior of human subjects embedded in the traffic situation of the virtual environment.

AgriVillage: 3D multi-language internet game for fostering agriculture environmental awareness

Agriculture has a strong impact in the environment; it has played key role in the development of food security and food safety. In this paper, we are proposing a 3D multilingual Internet game, developed by using the on-line virtual world platform, that lets the player experience the potential effects of agriculture in the environment. The main idea is to foster awareness of agricultures environmental issues, by not only making the player learn the impact of fertilizers and deforestation that affect the sources of water and weather, respectively, but also enhance the importance of food quality. To make players care for these issues, the game creates a direct impact by using the happiness of people that is represent by the villagers. To reduce the language barrier when sharing knowledge across the countries is needed, the game also supports multi-language to make it more understandable to the player. This paper describes details of the game design, the system architecture and the experiment. The experiment conducted with the game showed promising results.

Co-presence, collaboration, and control in environmental studies: A Second Life-based approach

In this paper, we describe a framework for synchronous collaborative visualization and remote control in the agricultural domain. The framework builds on “Second Life” (SL), a popular networked online 3D virtual world, where users are represented as avatars (graphical self-representations). Co-presence in SL takes the form of instant (real-time) two-way interaction among two or more avatars. The aim of our work is to facilitate co-presence for sharing knowledge and exchanging wisdom about environmental practices. In order to establish a realistic simulated context for communication in SL, virtual counterparts of real devices are created in the virtual world. Specifically, we aim to represent field servers that sense and monitor fields such as rice paddies and vineyards. The Twin-World Mediator (TWM) is developed in order to replicate the behavior of real devices in virtual counterparts, and to facilitate seamless communication between real and virtual world. The TWM is an easy-to-use, extensible, and flexible communication framework. A small study demonstrated how the TWM can support collaboration and experience sharing in the agricultural domain.

An Approach to Determine Software Requirement Construction Sequences Based on Use Cases

The majority of software development projects utilize the use cases technique to define software requirements, which are necessary to determine not only the scope of the software itself, but also the sequence in which this software will be constructed. Currently, there are several proposals to define the construction sequence of software requirements, but most of these proposals lack of ease of use from the developerpsilas perspective. This paper presents an approach to determine software construction sequences based on use cases precedence diagrams, which offers some advantages from the developerpsilas point of view. In order to demonstrate the technique, we also present a controlled experiment performed by people who had at least two years of experience in software projects. The results of this experiment show that our proposed technique, unlike other ad hoc techniques used, enables a more precise definition of the construction sequence.

Design of open source framework for traffic and travel simulation

For the evaluation, design, and planning of traffic facilities and measures, traffic simulation packages are the de facto tools for consultants, policy makers, and researchers. However, the available commercial simulation packages do not always offer the desired work flow and flexibility for academic research. In many cases, researchers resort to designing and building their own dedicated models, without an intrinsic incentive (or the practical means) to make the results available in the public domain. To make matters worse, a substantial part of these efforts pertains to rebuilding basic functionality and, in many respects, reinventing the wheel. This problem not only affects the research community but adversely affects the entire traffic simulation community and frustrates the development of traffic simulation in general. For this problem to be addressed, this paper describes an open source approach, OpenTraffic, which is being developed as a collaborative effort between the Queensland University of Technology, Australia; the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo; and the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. The OpenTraffic simulation framework enables academics from geographic areas and disciplines within the traffic domain to work together and contribute to a specific topic of interest, ranging from travel choice behavior to car following, and from response to intelligent transportation systems to activity planning. The modular approach enables users of the software to focus on their area of interest, whereas other functional modules can be regarded as black boxes. Specific attention is paid to a standardization of data inputs and outputs for traffic simulations. Such standardization will allow the sharing of data with many existing commercial simulation packages.

ISRST: GENERATING INTERESTING MULTIMEDIA STORIES ON THE WEB

Interactive storytelling (IS) models, either implicitly or explicitly, have had to deal with three major aspects in their implementations, regardless of their technology: (1) how to define story events, i.e., the pieces of information that constitutes the content of any story; (2) how to present story events, i.e., the algorithm that is used to convey this content to the user; and (3) how the user is to interact with the story, i.e., the variables that the user can modify in order to change the presentation of the events in content or in order. The majority of IS implementations encode in their definition of story event timing information (the range of time specified in terms of the story timeline in which the event must be presented) and interaction variables associated with that predefined timing. This approach is convenient for story presentation, but presents several restrictions in terms of story understanding and story dynamism. To overcome these restrictions, we developed interactive storytelling model using rhetorical structure theory (ISRST), our proposal for a storytelling model based on the organization of generally defined events using a subset of rhetorical relations proposed by the RST and the application of narrative principles and user interaction through interest to generate appealing stories. This presentation of ISRST will be complemented by a critical discussion about technical and usability issues of its implementation. We also conducted an empirical study using a real full-fledged story, which suggests that a users story satisfaction can be associated with the presentation of a story outcome that emphasizes the users empathetically preferred character(s).

ISRST: an interest based storytelling model using rhetorical relations

Most storytelling model approaches consider stories formed by sequences of a particular type of event. These sequences are mostly constructed using the inherent temporal characteristic of each linked event and this limitation makes it difficult to adapt the models to other kinds of events. In order to develop a more generic model to create storytelling applications, we need to organize events using not only temporal relations, but also relations determined by the rhetorical context of those events. In this paper, we present ISRST, our proposal for a generic storytelling ontology model based on the organization of events using a subset of relations proposed by the Rhetorical Structure Theory and how narrative principles and user interest are applied to these relations to generate coherent stories.

Fostering Agriculture Environmental Awareness

Agriculture is important to any society, but its activity often has negative impact in the environment. We propose a game, implemented in the on-line virtual world platform Open-Simulator, that gives the opportunity to players to experience the potential effects of agriculture in the environment. The game was built with the purpose of promoting the awareness of agriculture issues, such as, the impact of fertilization in sources of fresh water, the problems related to deforestation and impact on the weather, and the importance of producing food with good quality. To make players care about these issues we explored the peoples factor and created direct impact on a population of villagers that the player must satisfy in order to succeed in the game. A small pilot study was performed that showed signs of good acceptance by the players.

SRST: a storytelling model using rhetorical relations

Storytelling models are usually constrained to the applications they are implemented in because of the particular characteristics of the data used to define story events and the way those events are linked. In order to develop a more generic model to create storytelling applications, we need to focus the solution not on the data itself, but on the manner this data, in the form of events, is organized and conveyed to the user. In this paper, we present SRST (Storytelling RST), our proposal for a generic storytelling ontology model based on the organization of events using the relations proposed by the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and how narrative principles are applied to these RST relations to generate coherent stories.

Creating interactive driver experiences with the scenario markup language

Serious games became an important device for increasing the awareness of issues that are important to society. One such issue is the environmental impact of driving. To support the training and wide promotion of eco-friendly driving, an appropriate platform and tools are needed. In this paper, we present the Scenario Markup Language (SML), a simple yet expressive language for authoring realistic traffic situations. This effort is part of a novel framework for automatically generating complex scenarios in the transport domain. In particular, SML facilitates the scripting of behavioral driver studies in multi-user online three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds.