Giuliana Ucelli

Learning using augmented reality technology: multiple means of interaction for teaching children the theory of colours

Augmented Reality technology permits the concurrent interaction with the real environment and computer-generated virtual objects, thus making it an interesting technology for developing educational applications that allows manipulation and visualization. The work described extends the traditional concept of book with rendered graphics to help children understand fundamentals of the theory of colours. A three-dimensional virtual chameleon shows children how, from the combination of primary colours, it is possible to get secondary colours and viceversa. The chameleon responds to childrens actions changing appearance according to the colours of the surroundings. Our tangible interface becomes an innovative teaching tool conceived for supporting school learning methods, where the child can learn by playing with the virtual character, turning over the pages of the book and manipulating the movable parts. The main scientific contribution of this work is in showing what the use of augmented reality-based interfaces can bring to improve existing learning methods.

DentroTrento: a virtual walk across history

This paper illustrates the results of the DentroTrento project which promotes historical, artistic and cultural heritage in the area of Trentino through the use of Virtual Reality technologies. The projects goal was to implement an user friendly system which could be used by visitors of an archeological site thus fostering a process of cultural enrichment. The importance of the project, commissioned by the authority for Cultural Heritage, partially resides in the peculiarity of the sites premises, located below a square in Trento among the theatres foundations. The interface developed allows users speaking different languages to share simultaneously the experience of virtual tour across time.

Real Teaching and Learning through Virtual Reality

This paper addresses an articulated vision of Virtual Reality, which lends itself to design collaboration in teaching, learning and communication of architectural design ideas among students, design professionals and client bodies during the early stages of the design process. Virtual Reality (VR) has already acquired a new degree of complexity through development of network-based virtual communities and the use of avatars. A key intrinsic quality of VR technology is to support collaborative design experience. The design tools developed for this experiment are capable of creating 3D objects in a shared VR environment, thus allowing the design and its evolution to be shared. The choice of programming language (JavaTM) reflects the desire to achieve scalability and hardware independence, which in turn allows for the creation of a VR environment that can co-exist between high-end supercomputers and standard PCs. The prototype design environment was tested using PC workstations and an SGI system running in a Reality Centre.

“Verba Volant Scripta Manent” a false axiom within virtual environments. A semi-automatic tool for retrieval of semantics understanding for speech-enabled VR applications

Abstract Traditional interaction with virtual environments (VE) via widgets or menus forces users to rigidly sequential interactions. Previous research has proved that the adoption of speech recognition (SR) allows more flexible and natural forms of interaction resembling the human-to-human communication pattern. This feature though requires programmers to compile some human supplied knowledge in the form grammars. These are then used at runtime to process spoken utterances into complete commands. Further speech recognition (SR) must be hard-coded into the application. This paper presents a completely automatic process to build a body of knowledge from the information embedded within the application source code. The programmer in fact embeds, throughout the coding process, a vast amount of semantic information. This research work exploits this semantic richness and it provides a self-configurable system, which automatically adapts its understanding of human commands according to the content and to the semantic information defined within the applications source code.

JCAD-VR:: a collaborative design tool for architects

The research reported in this paper describes the development and application of a tool that aims to increase the opportunity for architects to design and collaborate within virtual worlds and enable effective and transparent information exchange.The objective was to provide a Virtual Reality (VR) tool that is capable of creating 3D shapes in a shared VR environment, thus allowing the early design and its evolution to be shared by professional and client body. The system has been implemented using Java™ and Java3D™ and it has been tested on PCs workstations as well as an Sgi system running a Reality Centre.

Automatic extraction of semantic information for a context sensitive multimodal framework for VR

The capability of processing spoken commands is one of the most important features of modern multimodal AR/VR environments. This feature requires programmers to compile some human supplied knowledge in the form of grammars which are used at runtime to process spoken utterances into complete commands. Further speech recognition (SR) must be hard-coded into the application. This time-consuming, error-prone process is repeated every time modifications to the code are introduced. This paper presents a completely automatic process to build a body of knowledge from the information embedded within the application source code. The programmer in fact often embeds, throughout the coding process, a vast amount of semantic information by defining classes, reference names, or through method definitions. This research work exploits this semantic richness and it provides a self-configurable system, which automatically adapts its understanding of human commands according to the semantic information within the applications source code