Advances In Artificial Reality And Tele Existence

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence, ICAT 2006, held in Hangzhou, China in November/December 2006. The 138 revised papers cover anthropomorphic intelligent robotics, artificial life, augmented reality, distributed and collaborative VR system, motion tracking, real time computer simulation virtual reality, as well as VR interaction and navigation techniques.

Within the last few years, devices that are increasingly capable of offering an immersive experience close to reality have emerged. As devices decrease in size, the interest and application possibilities for them increase. In the healthcare sector, there is an enormous potential for virtual reality development, as this technology allows, on the one hand, the execution of operations or processes at a distance, decoupling realities; and on the other hand, it offers the possibility of simulation for training purposes, whenever there are contexts of risk to the patient or to the health professional. However, virtual reality devices and immersion in virtual environments still requires some improvement as complaints such as headaches and nausea are still common among users, and so continuous research and development is critical to progress the technology. Emerging Advancements for Virtual and Augmented Reality in Healthcare synthesizes the trends, best practices, methodologies, languages, and tools used to implement virtual reality and create a positive user experience while also discussing how to implement virtual reality into day-to-day work with a focus on healthcare professionals and related areas. The application possibilities and their impact are transversal to all areas of health and fields such as education, training, surgery, pain management, physical rehabilitation, stroke rehabilitation, phobia therapy, and telemedicine. Covering topics such as mental health treatment and virtual simulations, it is ideal for medical professionals, engineers, computer scientists, researchers, practitioners, managers, academicians, teachers, and students.

The five digital forces (mobility and pervasive computing, cloud, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics, and social media) are poised to bring great academic and industrial breakthroughs. All stakeholders want to understand how to best harness these forces to their advantage. While literature exists for understanding each force independently, there is a lack of knowledge on how to utilize all the forces together to realize future enterprises. Advanced Digital Architectures for Model-Driven Adaptive Enterprises is an essential reference source that explores the potential in unifying the five digital forces to achieve increased levels of agility, efficiency, and scale. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics including socio-technical systems, adaptive architectures, and enterprise modeling, this book is ideally designed for managers, executives, programmers, designers, computer engineers, entrepreneurs, tool builders, digital practitioners, researchers, academicians, ands students at the graduate level.

Virtual Manufacturing presents a novel concept of combining human computer interfaces with virtual reality for discrete and continuous manufacturing systems. The authors address the relevant concepts of manufacturing engineering, virtual reality, and computer science and engineering, before embarking on a description of the methodology for building augmented reality for manufacturing processes and manufacturing systems. Virtual Manufacturing is centered on the description of the development of augmented reality models for a range of processes based on CNC, PLC, SCADA, mechatronics and on embedded systems. Further discussions address the use of augmented reality for developing augmented reality models to control contemporary manufacturing systems and to acquire micro- and macro-level decision parameters for managers to boost profitability of their manufacturing systems. Guiding readers through the building of their own virtual factory software, Virtual Manufacturing comes with access to online files and software that will enable readers to create a virtual factory, operate it and experiment with it. This is a valuable source of information with a useful toolkit for anyone interested in virtual manufacturing, including advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers.

Telexistence is a fundamental concept which refers to the general technology that enables a human being to have the real-time sensation of being at a place other than where he or she actually exists, while being able to interact with the remote environment, which may be real, virtual, or a combination of both. It also refers to an advanced type of teleoperation system that enables an operator at the control to perform remote tasks dexterously with the feeling of existing in a surrogate robot working in a remote environment. Telexistence in the real remote environment through a virtual environment is also possible.This book is the second edition of the original Telexistence; new contents cover recent advancements of the technology in areas such as human augmentation, autostereoscopy, tangible visuo-haptic 3D display, face-to-face communication, and haptic sensations and technologies. Case studies of the mobile mutual telexistence system TELESAR IV and haptic telexistence avatar system TELESAR V are also included. Written by the inventor of the concept of this emerging technology, it introduces the concept of telexistence, explains how this concept can be realized, illustrates precisely real examples of the realization of the concept, and determines its future advancement. Readers will be inspired by the concept, and acquire appropriate knowledge on this emerging technology and the fundamental skills to contribute in further development of telexistence.

The International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC) was formed to p- vide an annual forum dedicated to the emerging and challenging topics in artificial intelligence, machine learning, bioinformatics, and computational biology, etc. It aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from both academia and ind- try to share ideas, problems and solutions related to the multifaceted aspects of intelligent computing. ICIC 2008, held in Shanghai, China, September 15–18, 2008, constituted the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Computing. It built upon the success of ICIC 2007, ICIC 2006 and ICIC 2005 held in Qingdao, Kunming and Hefei, China, 2007, 2006 and 2005, respectively. This year, the conference concentrated mainly on the theories and methodologies as well as the emerging applications of intelligent computing. Its aim was to unify the picture of contemporary intelligent computing techniques as an integral concept that highlights the trends in advanced computational intelligence and bridges theoretical research with applications. Therefore, the theme for this conference was “Emerging Intelligent Computing Technology and Applications”. Papers focusing on this theme were solicited, addressing theories, methodologies, and applications in science and technology.

Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design is a volume of original chapters to introduce the reader to the technology of virtual reality. The research presented in this book examines the impact of the new technology of virtual reality on the field of human factors. The first editor, Barfield, is head of the Human Factor Laboratory at the University of Washington in the USA, and he has assembled contributions from experts in key laboratories around the US to discuss their basic approaches to this new field. Some of the topics discussed are computer graphics, eye tracking, tactile and kinesthetic input, interface design, and applications in medicine and aerospace.