Vesna Brujic-Okretic

Framework for context-aware smartphone applications

This paper presents research and development of a dedicated system architecture, designed to enable its users to interact with each other as well as to access information on points of interest that exist in their immediate environment. This is accomplished through managing personal preferences and contextual information in a distributed manner and in real time. The advantage of this system is that it uses mobile devices, heterogeneous sensors and a selection of user interface paradigms to produce a sociotechnical framework to enhance the perception of the environment and promote intuitive interactions. Representation of the real-world objects, their spatial relations and other captured features are visualised on scalable interfaces, ranging from 2D to 3D models and from photorealism to stylised clues and symbols. The conceptual design and implementation of our location and orientation based algorithm for mobile augmented reality is presented in detail. The framework is fit for use in unknown environments and therefore suitable for ubiquitous operation. The presented prototype is multifaceted and capable of supporting peer-to-peer exchange of information in a pervasive fashion, usable in various contexts. The modalities of these interactions are explored and laid out particularly in the context of entertainment and urban navigation.

Evaluation of Non-photorealistic 3D Urban Models for Mobile Device Navigation

This research presents a user evaluation study examining the effect different rendering styles of 3D virtual city models, as intended for navigational purposes, could potentially have on users with emphasis on non-photorealistically rendered (NPR) stylizations. The purpose of this experiment is to establish whether, particularly for the application area mentioned above, non-photorealistic, expressive rendering could provide alternative, more effective visual styles than the photorealistic representations of urban areas usually opted for by developers today. 50 participants were exposed to a predominably questionnaire-based study assessing various parameters by observation of the models on a UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC). The results of this research could potentially have significant implications on how future pedestrian navigational software should be visualized in the future.

Prototyping a Context-Aware Framework for Pervasive Entertainment Applications

This paper presents research and development of dedicated system architecture, designed to enable its users to interact with each other as well as to access information on Points of Interest that exist in their immediate environment. This is accomplished through managing personal preferences and contextual information in a distributed manner and in real-time. The advantage of this system is that it uses mobile devices, heterogeneous sensors and a selection of user interface paradigms to produce a socio-technical framework to enhance the perception of the environment and promote intuitive interactions. Representation of the real-world objects, their spatial relations and other captured features are visualised on scalable interfaces, ranging from 2D to 3D models and from photorealism to stylised clues and symbols. The framework is fit for use in unknown environments and therefore suitable for ubiquitous operation. The presented prototype is multifaceted and capable of supporting peer-to-peer exchange of information in a pervasive fashion, usable in various contexts. The modalities of these interactions are explored and laid out particularly in the context of entertainment.

Recent Advances in the User Evaluation Methods and Studies of Non-Photorealistic Visualization and Rendering Techniques

While traditional computer graphics research to this day still focuses on the production and assessment of photorealism, a relatively new field, the one of nonphotorealistic rendering (NPR), has produced results that focus on viewer engagement by the use of stylization, abstraction and expressiveness. In this paper we briefly describe some of the techniques used today and then proceed to identify some the most important evaluation studies associated with NPR by categorizing them and outlining the applications they have been used in, their methods and finally the results and their impact on future work in this area.

Prototyping Expressive 3D Social Worlds

D virtual worlds are increasingly popular arenas for social interaction. There are new opportunities and possi- bilities for the style of communication but important aspects present in face-to-face meetings are absent in the artificial environment, including the visual cues of emotion that are provided by facial expressions, and a realistic representation of ones geographical location. Our research attempts to enhance social interaction within virtual worlds by proposing a framework that would enable fully expressive Internet communication with the use of 3D expressive models. The frame- work contains three separate systems that support different aspects of social interaction within virtual worlds. Firstly, the Virtual City Maker creates a believable environment by automatically creating realistic identifiable geo-referenced 3D environments from a variety of aerial and GIS image data. Secondly, an automated 3D head modelling system provides a mechanism for generating and displaying expressions. Thirdly, the Emotion Analyser provides a mechanism for triggering the display of appropriate expressions by automatically identifying emotional words contained in text messages, the per- son to whom the emotional words refer to and the intensity. Each system in the framework is discussed with reference to their contribution to enhancing social interaction within 3D social worlds.

A Framework for the Development of Online, Location-Specific, Expressive 3D Social Worlds

Today social networking sites are emerging as increasingly popular communication spaces where one can see and talk to friends and acquaintances. However, these sites require different methods of offering the additional information that are often useful or essential in human interaction such as, the conveyance of emotion or a realistic representation of one’s geographical or urban location. Our research concentrates on addressing these issues by offering fully expressive Internet communication with the use of 3D expressive models to help provide some of the visual cues that are present in face-to-face interaction. This is achieved via an innovative piece of software called Emotion Analyser that analyses text messages in the Internet communication environment. Moreover, a dedicated 3D facial animation system has been generated that interfaces with the Emotion Analyser in order to translate its output. Finally, the 3D virtual city models for the final interactive virtual world have been produced by using our own semi-automatic urban modeling system called Virtual City Maker.

Intelligent Integration Framework for Smart Transport System

In this paper we propose a framework to acquire, store, manipulate and integrate information to optimize scheduling and traffic control in real-time, in an urban environment. This research concentrates on the architecture that supports this functionality and on the integration of technologies and algorithms to provide data analytics and decision making in real time. An outline of the research is presented together with the results obtained when the framework is applied to the Mermaid Technology company data, for a bus network operation in Copenhagen. The contribution of this work in progress is in offering a two-tier architecture that can deal with both the steady-state regime of the bus operation in an urban environment and with ad hoc, emergency situations.

Self-Adaptive Service Driven Architecture for Intelligent Transport System

Modern transport systems rely on an increasing number of sensors to control their operation including orientation, speed, arrival and departure times, fuel consumption, passenger count etc. These have become important parts of the echo system with their availability and performance playing a key role in daily commuting. However, they produce data in high volume and frequency that need to be processed fast enough so that it can be shared across the network in real-time. Traditional system architectures have been unable to meet transport systems quality requirements scuh as scalability, adaptability, sustainability, extendibility and high availability. Thus, in this work, we propose a novel architecture to acquire, store, manipulate and integrate information from heterogeneous data sources to produce a reliable prediction. It will help transport managers and bus companies to optimize, in real-time, scheduling, stops usage and passenger’s time.