Increasing demand for cage-free eggs arises from goals to provide hens with better welfare, parti... more Increasing demand for cage-free eggs arises from goals to provide hens with better welfare, particularly in terms of natural behavior. However, most laying hens are kept in conventional cages, and cage-free systems can present challenges, such as injuries, floor eggs, and bacterial infections. We proposed using virtual reality (VR) as a feasible means for combining the positive attributes of natural environments while mitigating health risks. To our knowledge, no animal study has provided evidence that VR can trigger biological changes to improve animal health and well-being nor whether VR can affect the gut microbiota. In this study, we used VR technology to simulate a natural environment in laying hen housing. Early-lay White Leghorn hens were placed in pens with (VR) or without (CON) video projections displaying free-range chickens interacting with indoor and outdoor environmental features over 5 days. Using in vitro blood bactericidal assays, VR hens exhibited higher resistance ...
Seeking Travel Replacement Thresholds To reduce the need for business-related air travel and its ... more Seeking Travel Replacement Thresholds To reduce the need for business-related air travel and its associated energy consumption and carbon footprint, the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E is supporting a research project called SCOTTIE Systematic Communication Objectives and Telecommunications Technology Investigations and Evaluations. SCOTTIE tests virtual and augmented reality platforms in a functional comparison with face-to-face (FtF) interactions to derive travel replacement thresholds for common industrial training scenarios. The primary goal of Study 1 is to match the communication effectiveness and learning outcomes obtained from a FtF control using virtual reality (VR) training scenarios in which a local expert with physical equipment trains a remote apprentice without physical equipment immediately present. This application scenario is commonplace in industrial settings where access to expensive equipment and materials is limited and a number of apprentices must travel to ...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2020
Computer-mediated communications (CMC) can be used as a substitute for face-to-face (FtF) meeting... more Computer-mediated communications (CMC) can be used as a substitute for face-to-face (FtF) meetings but their effectiveness is highly context dependent. This paper describes a theoretical framework and initial experimental design for characterizing a travel replacement threshold. This effort begins with a use case of remote engineering maintenance training, conducted in three conditions: side-by-side (physically proximate), teleconference (using off-the-shelf software), and a custom VR/AR system designed to provide the apprentice with a virtual view of both the instructor’s larger scale lab and smaller scale workbench. The research hypotheses, experimental protocol, and dependent measures are described. The task involves an instructor demonstrating a circuit board troubleshooting task to a remote apprentice. The apprentice then completes the trained task independently, and performance and subject preferences are compared across conditions. The details of this paper, the result of ext...
A method based on non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curve, surface, and solid technology is p... more A method based on non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curve, surface, and solid technology is presented for interactive grid generation of three-dimensional flow fields encountered in turbomachinery applications. The method allows construction of several types of multi-block grids including H-, O-, and C-grids for two-dimensional grids, and strict H-grids for three-dimensional grid generation. Automated two-dimensional block construction is facilitated via a traversal method that searches four-sided regions in the initial block structure. A NURBS surface is then constructed on each block by transfinite interpolation of the boundary curves themselves, and various point distribution options may be applied. Three-dimensional grid generation is an extension of the two-dimensional procedure. Tri-parametric hyperpatches (NURBS solids) are constructed from the two-dimensional block surfaces and grids may be generated via several point distribution functions. This method exploits existing...
An efficient algorithm is presented for intersecting vectors with swept solids which represent th... more An efficient algorithm is presented for intersecting vectors with swept solids which represent three-axis numerically controlled (NC) milling tool motions. The intersection calculation proceeds in hierarchical steps through a series of progressively more exact definitions of the shape of the tool swept volume. At each step, results of intermediate calculations are used to determine whether intersection with an exact representation of the solid is possible and, if so, where and how the swept volume model must be refined for the next step. This structure ensures that superfluous intersection calculations are minimized. This intersection technique has been successfully implemented as part of an algorithm for automatic verification of three-axis NC milling programs, and may also be useful for applications in robotics and factory automation.
Volume 1B: 34th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, 2014
This paper presents a comparison of natural feature descriptors for rigid object tracking for aug... more This paper presents a comparison of natural feature descriptors for rigid object tracking for augmented reality (AR) applications. AR relies on object tracking in order to identify a physical object and to superimpose virtual object on an object. Natural feature tracking (NFT) is one approach for computer vision-based object tracking. NFT utilizes interest points of a physcial object, represents them as descriptors, and matches the descriptors against reference descriptors in order to identify a phsical object to track. In this research, we investigate four different natural feature descriptors (SIFT, SURF, FREAK, ORB) and their capability to track rigid objects. Rigid objects need robust descriptors since they need to describe the objects in a 3D space. AR applications are also real-time application, thus, fast feature matching is mandatory. FREAK and ORB are binary descriptors, which promise a higher performance in comparison to SIFT and SURF. We deployed a test in which we match ...
Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 2016
Tracking refers to a set of techniques that allows one to calculate the position and orientation ... more Tracking refers to a set of techniques that allows one to calculate the position and orientation of an object with respect to a global reference coordinate system in real time. A common method for tracking with point clouds is the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm, which relies on the continuous matching of sequential sampled point clouds with a reference point cloud. Modern commodity range cameras provide point cloud data that can be used for that purpose. However, this point cloud data is generally considered as low-fidelity and insufficient for accurate object tracking. Mesh reconstruction algorithms can improve the fidelity of the point cloud by reconstructing the overall shape of the object. This paper explores the potential for point cloud fidelity improvement via the Poisson mesh reconstruction (PMR) algorithm and compares the accuracy with a common ICP-based tracking technique and a local mesh reconstruction operator. The results of an offline simulation are promising.
Increasing demand for cage-free eggs arises from goals to provide hens with better welfare, parti... more Increasing demand for cage-free eggs arises from goals to provide hens with better welfare, particularly in terms of natural behavior. However, most laying hens are kept in conventional cages, and cage-free systems can present challenges, such as injuries, floor eggs, and bacterial infections. We proposed using virtual reality (VR) as a feasible means for combining the positive attributes of natural environments while mitigating health risks. To our knowledge, no animal study has provided evidence that VR can trigger biological changes to improve animal health and well-being nor whether VR can affect the gut microbiota. In this study, we used VR technology to simulate a natural environment in laying hen housing. Early-lay White Leghorn hens were placed in pens with (VR) or without (CON) video projections displaying free-range chickens interacting with indoor and outdoor environmental features over 5 days. Using in vitro blood bactericidal assays, VR hens exhibited higher resistance ...
Seeking Travel Replacement Thresholds To reduce the need for business-related air travel and its ... more Seeking Travel Replacement Thresholds To reduce the need for business-related air travel and its associated energy consumption and carbon footprint, the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E is supporting a research project called SCOTTIE Systematic Communication Objectives and Telecommunications Technology Investigations and Evaluations. SCOTTIE tests virtual and augmented reality platforms in a functional comparison with face-to-face (FtF) interactions to derive travel replacement thresholds for common industrial training scenarios. The primary goal of Study 1 is to match the communication effectiveness and learning outcomes obtained from a FtF control using virtual reality (VR) training scenarios in which a local expert with physical equipment trains a remote apprentice without physical equipment immediately present. This application scenario is commonplace in industrial settings where access to expensive equipment and materials is limited and a number of apprentices must travel to ...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2020
Computer-mediated communications (CMC) can be used as a substitute for face-to-face (FtF) meeting... more Computer-mediated communications (CMC) can be used as a substitute for face-to-face (FtF) meetings but their effectiveness is highly context dependent. This paper describes a theoretical framework and initial experimental design for characterizing a travel replacement threshold. This effort begins with a use case of remote engineering maintenance training, conducted in three conditions: side-by-side (physically proximate), teleconference (using off-the-shelf software), and a custom VR/AR system designed to provide the apprentice with a virtual view of both the instructor’s larger scale lab and smaller scale workbench. The research hypotheses, experimental protocol, and dependent measures are described. The task involves an instructor demonstrating a circuit board troubleshooting task to a remote apprentice. The apprentice then completes the trained task independently, and performance and subject preferences are compared across conditions. The details of this paper, the result of ext...
A method based on non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curve, surface, and solid technology is p... more A method based on non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curve, surface, and solid technology is presented for interactive grid generation of three-dimensional flow fields encountered in turbomachinery applications. The method allows construction of several types of multi-block grids including H-, O-, and C-grids for two-dimensional grids, and strict H-grids for three-dimensional grid generation. Automated two-dimensional block construction is facilitated via a traversal method that searches four-sided regions in the initial block structure. A NURBS surface is then constructed on each block by transfinite interpolation of the boundary curves themselves, and various point distribution options may be applied. Three-dimensional grid generation is an extension of the two-dimensional procedure. Tri-parametric hyperpatches (NURBS solids) are constructed from the two-dimensional block surfaces and grids may be generated via several point distribution functions. This method exploits existing...
An efficient algorithm is presented for intersecting vectors with swept solids which represent th... more An efficient algorithm is presented for intersecting vectors with swept solids which represent three-axis numerically controlled (NC) milling tool motions. The intersection calculation proceeds in hierarchical steps through a series of progressively more exact definitions of the shape of the tool swept volume. At each step, results of intermediate calculations are used to determine whether intersection with an exact representation of the solid is possible and, if so, where and how the swept volume model must be refined for the next step. This structure ensures that superfluous intersection calculations are minimized. This intersection technique has been successfully implemented as part of an algorithm for automatic verification of three-axis NC milling programs, and may also be useful for applications in robotics and factory automation.
Volume 1B: 34th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, 2014
This paper presents a comparison of natural feature descriptors for rigid object tracking for aug... more This paper presents a comparison of natural feature descriptors for rigid object tracking for augmented reality (AR) applications. AR relies on object tracking in order to identify a physical object and to superimpose virtual object on an object. Natural feature tracking (NFT) is one approach for computer vision-based object tracking. NFT utilizes interest points of a physcial object, represents them as descriptors, and matches the descriptors against reference descriptors in order to identify a phsical object to track. In this research, we investigate four different natural feature descriptors (SIFT, SURF, FREAK, ORB) and their capability to track rigid objects. Rigid objects need robust descriptors since they need to describe the objects in a 3D space. AR applications are also real-time application, thus, fast feature matching is mandatory. FREAK and ORB are binary descriptors, which promise a higher performance in comparison to SIFT and SURF. We deployed a test in which we match ...
Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 2016
Tracking refers to a set of techniques that allows one to calculate the position and orientation ... more Tracking refers to a set of techniques that allows one to calculate the position and orientation of an object with respect to a global reference coordinate system in real time. A common method for tracking with point clouds is the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm, which relies on the continuous matching of sequential sampled point clouds with a reference point cloud. Modern commodity range cameras provide point cloud data that can be used for that purpose. However, this point cloud data is generally considered as low-fidelity and insufficient for accurate object tracking. Mesh reconstruction algorithms can improve the fidelity of the point cloud by reconstructing the overall shape of the object. This paper explores the potential for point cloud fidelity improvement via the Poisson mesh reconstruction (PMR) algorithm and compares the accuracy with a common ICP-based tracking technique and a local mesh reconstruction operator. The results of an offline simulation are promising.
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