2021 Immersive and 3D Audio: from Architecture to Automotive (I3DA), 2021
Paraphrasing the title of a well-known paper in the area of HRTF individualisation, this contribu... more Paraphrasing the title of a well-known paper in the area of HRTF individualisation, this contribution focuses on speech perception in Virtual Reality, specifically when creating immersive soundscapes using the binaural spatialisation technique. It is now well established that the use of individually-measured HRTFs can improve not only the realism and immersiveness of the rendering, but also the externalisation of the sound sources and the overall performances when trying to localise them. When individual HRTFs are not available, selection and/or other rendering individualisation strategies can still be valuable choices for improving the quality of the rendering. What is still though not known is how much HRTF choices can influence the performances in terms of speech perception within VR-based Cocktail-Party-like scenarios, therefore when target speech and masking sources are located in different positions around the listener. This contribution looks specifically at this matter. First by presenting the results from a recent study exploring the impact of non-individual HRTF choices on speech-in-noise performances within a synthesized virtual environment. Then by introducing and discussing relevant research questions which could guide future research in this area. Finally, by exploring possible applications of the acquired knowledge in areas such as VR-based social interaction and hearing aids/devices technologies.
This is the public deliverable D7.8 Third Open Access Data Release, of the H2020 project 3D Tune-... more This is the public deliverable D7.8 Third Open Access Data Release, of the H2020 project 3D Tune-In (ICT - 644051). This work was carried out as part of WP7 Project Management.
Virtual trackball techniques are widely used when 3D interaction is performed through interfaces ... more Virtual trackball techniques are widely used when 3D interaction is performed through interfaces with a reduced number of degrees of freedom such as mice and touchscreens. For decades, most implementations fix a vertical axis of rotation, which is a suitable choice when the vertical axis should indeed be fixed, according to some mental model of the user. We conducted an experiment involving the use of a mouse and a touch device to study usability in terms of performance, perceived usability and mental workload when selecting different fixed axes in accordance with the user’s mental model. The results we obtained indicate that the consistency between the axis fixed by the technique and the object’s intrinsic axis has a positive effect on usability. We believe that implementations that allow to select different fixed axis for each specific object should be considered when designing future reduced-DoF interaction interfaces.
Among the 3D interaction techniques designed in the last decades to examine virtual objects using... more Among the 3D interaction techniques designed in the last decades to examine virtual objects using the mouse, virtual trackballs are especially suitable for overall examination of 3D objects. This experimental study focuses on a specific type among the various virtual trackball techniques: Two-Axis Valuator (TAV) with fixed axis. The classical TAV considers rotations around global X- and Y-axis, but for many applications, like 3D modelling, and many web-based 3D viewers, a special variation of the TAV is implemented, where horizontal displacements of the mouse are mapped to rotation around the fixed vertical axis. This technique is known as TAV with fixed up-vector (Bade, 2005) or just fixed trackball (Rybicki, 2016), and achieves transitive rotations. However, for some objects, there can be another intrinsic axis. For instance, objects like the rotor of a turbine have an intrinsic rotation axis, often horizontal (González-Toledo, 2017). In order to work with these objects, we propos...
Advances in Ergonomics of Manufacturing: Managing the Enterprise of the Future, 2017
The manufacturing industry needs to adapt their product-services to meet customer requirements in... more The manufacturing industry needs to adapt their product-services to meet customer requirements in today’s rapidly changing markets. This paper presents how technologies can support knowledge sharing and collaboration during product-service processes. This work was part of the European Union Use-it-Wisely project and summaries demonstration results from the project. Six cluster cases from different industry sectors (energy, machinery, space, office workplace, vehicles, and shipbuilding) were developing their tools and processes during the project. Based on the demonstration evaluations, it seems that the Use-it-Wisely project has enabled companies to improve their product-services by using interactive collaborative environments and new business models. Participants that took part in the demonstrations felt that the new approach makes users’ work easier, provides competitive advantage, facilitates knowledge sharing and decision making, extends the efficient lifecycle of existing machinery and supports sustainable development.
JVRB, 14(2017), no. 3. - We present HOM3R, a novel 3D viewer designed to manage complex industria... more JVRB, 14(2017), no. 3. - We present HOM3R, a novel 3D viewer designed to manage complex industrial product models. The viewer includes a JavaScript API to interface with existing or new browser-based applications. We extend state-of-the art interaction techniques and introduce a novel navigation metaphor to navigate around complex products using constrained trajectories. To address the challenge of discovering and accessing the parts of the complex object, which are not visible, a set of occlusion management techniques have been implemented. The viewer presents other useful features such as hierarchical part selection and linking of information to 3D geometry. A user-centred evaluation of the tool has been carried out and is described in the paper
The manufacturing industry is changing. Driven by a number of concurrent trends, including econom... more The manufacturing industry is changing. Driven by a number of concurrent trends, including economic and political development, technological breakthroughs and social connectivity, the impacts on industry in general are fundamental. Companies need to find ways to adapt to this change in collaboration with actors across their value networks. For long-life industrial assets, i.e., industrial product-service systems, both economically and environmentally sustainable solutions become an imperative supported by new business models-based collaborative value creation. In an EU-funded research project twenty organisations including three research institutes, four universities and thirteen companies studied, developed and demonstrated ways to deal with the dynamics of long-life assets. The main findings are summarised in this book. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the topic and presents the structure of the rest of this book.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Movement Computing, 2017
This paper1. evaluates the use of the Delay Mirror (DM) in the dance studio. The DM is a device t... more This paper1. evaluates the use of the Delay Mirror (DM) in the dance studio. The DM is a device that records a video stream which is rendered immediately on a large screen, but with a delay of a few seconds. A dancer can observe her own movements in the same way she would do so when looking at a normal mirror. However, the delay allows her to observe dynamic movements which cannot usually be observed other than in video. We evaluate whether this device can be useful in the context of a dance class, and whether it complements the normal mirror, while being less intrusive than a normal video recording which is recorded and then re-played, possibly interrupting workflow. Qualitative evaluation was performed in the context of an advanced-level adult ballet course.
Inertial sensors offer the potential for integration into wireless virtual reality systems that a... more Inertial sensors offer the potential for integration into wireless virtual reality systems that allow the users to walk freely through virtual environments. However, owing to drift errors, inertial sensors cannot accurately estimate head and body orientations in the long run, and when walking indoors, this error cannot be corrected by magnetometers, due to the magnetic field distortion created by ferromagnetic materials present in buildings. This paper proposes a technique, called EHBD (Equalization of Head and Body Directions), to address this problem using two head- and shoulder-located magnetometers. Due to their proximity, their distortions are assumed to be similar and the magnetometer measurements are used to detect when the user is looking straight forward. Then, the system corrects the discrepancies between the estimated directions of the head and the shoulder, which are provided by gyroscopes and consequently are affected by drift errors. An experiment is conducted to evalu...
2021 Immersive and 3D Audio: from Architecture to Automotive (I3DA), 2021
Paraphrasing the title of a well-known paper in the area of HRTF individualisation, this contribu... more Paraphrasing the title of a well-known paper in the area of HRTF individualisation, this contribution focuses on speech perception in Virtual Reality, specifically when creating immersive soundscapes using the binaural spatialisation technique. It is now well established that the use of individually-measured HRTFs can improve not only the realism and immersiveness of the rendering, but also the externalisation of the sound sources and the overall performances when trying to localise them. When individual HRTFs are not available, selection and/or other rendering individualisation strategies can still be valuable choices for improving the quality of the rendering. What is still though not known is how much HRTF choices can influence the performances in terms of speech perception within VR-based Cocktail-Party-like scenarios, therefore when target speech and masking sources are located in different positions around the listener. This contribution looks specifically at this matter. First by presenting the results from a recent study exploring the impact of non-individual HRTF choices on speech-in-noise performances within a synthesized virtual environment. Then by introducing and discussing relevant research questions which could guide future research in this area. Finally, by exploring possible applications of the acquired knowledge in areas such as VR-based social interaction and hearing aids/devices technologies.
This is the public deliverable D7.8 Third Open Access Data Release, of the H2020 project 3D Tune-... more This is the public deliverable D7.8 Third Open Access Data Release, of the H2020 project 3D Tune-In (ICT - 644051). This work was carried out as part of WP7 Project Management.
Virtual trackball techniques are widely used when 3D interaction is performed through interfaces ... more Virtual trackball techniques are widely used when 3D interaction is performed through interfaces with a reduced number of degrees of freedom such as mice and touchscreens. For decades, most implementations fix a vertical axis of rotation, which is a suitable choice when the vertical axis should indeed be fixed, according to some mental model of the user. We conducted an experiment involving the use of a mouse and a touch device to study usability in terms of performance, perceived usability and mental workload when selecting different fixed axes in accordance with the user’s mental model. The results we obtained indicate that the consistency between the axis fixed by the technique and the object’s intrinsic axis has a positive effect on usability. We believe that implementations that allow to select different fixed axis for each specific object should be considered when designing future reduced-DoF interaction interfaces.
Among the 3D interaction techniques designed in the last decades to examine virtual objects using... more Among the 3D interaction techniques designed in the last decades to examine virtual objects using the mouse, virtual trackballs are especially suitable for overall examination of 3D objects. This experimental study focuses on a specific type among the various virtual trackball techniques: Two-Axis Valuator (TAV) with fixed axis. The classical TAV considers rotations around global X- and Y-axis, but for many applications, like 3D modelling, and many web-based 3D viewers, a special variation of the TAV is implemented, where horizontal displacements of the mouse are mapped to rotation around the fixed vertical axis. This technique is known as TAV with fixed up-vector (Bade, 2005) or just fixed trackball (Rybicki, 2016), and achieves transitive rotations. However, for some objects, there can be another intrinsic axis. For instance, objects like the rotor of a turbine have an intrinsic rotation axis, often horizontal (González-Toledo, 2017). In order to work with these objects, we propos...
Advances in Ergonomics of Manufacturing: Managing the Enterprise of the Future, 2017
The manufacturing industry needs to adapt their product-services to meet customer requirements in... more The manufacturing industry needs to adapt their product-services to meet customer requirements in today’s rapidly changing markets. This paper presents how technologies can support knowledge sharing and collaboration during product-service processes. This work was part of the European Union Use-it-Wisely project and summaries demonstration results from the project. Six cluster cases from different industry sectors (energy, machinery, space, office workplace, vehicles, and shipbuilding) were developing their tools and processes during the project. Based on the demonstration evaluations, it seems that the Use-it-Wisely project has enabled companies to improve their product-services by using interactive collaborative environments and new business models. Participants that took part in the demonstrations felt that the new approach makes users’ work easier, provides competitive advantage, facilitates knowledge sharing and decision making, extends the efficient lifecycle of existing machinery and supports sustainable development.
JVRB, 14(2017), no. 3. - We present HOM3R, a novel 3D viewer designed to manage complex industria... more JVRB, 14(2017), no. 3. - We present HOM3R, a novel 3D viewer designed to manage complex industrial product models. The viewer includes a JavaScript API to interface with existing or new browser-based applications. We extend state-of-the art interaction techniques and introduce a novel navigation metaphor to navigate around complex products using constrained trajectories. To address the challenge of discovering and accessing the parts of the complex object, which are not visible, a set of occlusion management techniques have been implemented. The viewer presents other useful features such as hierarchical part selection and linking of information to 3D geometry. A user-centred evaluation of the tool has been carried out and is described in the paper
The manufacturing industry is changing. Driven by a number of concurrent trends, including econom... more The manufacturing industry is changing. Driven by a number of concurrent trends, including economic and political development, technological breakthroughs and social connectivity, the impacts on industry in general are fundamental. Companies need to find ways to adapt to this change in collaboration with actors across their value networks. For long-life industrial assets, i.e., industrial product-service systems, both economically and environmentally sustainable solutions become an imperative supported by new business models-based collaborative value creation. In an EU-funded research project twenty organisations including three research institutes, four universities and thirteen companies studied, developed and demonstrated ways to deal with the dynamics of long-life assets. The main findings are summarised in this book. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the topic and presents the structure of the rest of this book.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Movement Computing, 2017
This paper1. evaluates the use of the Delay Mirror (DM) in the dance studio. The DM is a device t... more This paper1. evaluates the use of the Delay Mirror (DM) in the dance studio. The DM is a device that records a video stream which is rendered immediately on a large screen, but with a delay of a few seconds. A dancer can observe her own movements in the same way she would do so when looking at a normal mirror. However, the delay allows her to observe dynamic movements which cannot usually be observed other than in video. We evaluate whether this device can be useful in the context of a dance class, and whether it complements the normal mirror, while being less intrusive than a normal video recording which is recorded and then re-played, possibly interrupting workflow. Qualitative evaluation was performed in the context of an advanced-level adult ballet course.
Inertial sensors offer the potential for integration into wireless virtual reality systems that a... more Inertial sensors offer the potential for integration into wireless virtual reality systems that allow the users to walk freely through virtual environments. However, owing to drift errors, inertial sensors cannot accurately estimate head and body orientations in the long run, and when walking indoors, this error cannot be corrected by magnetometers, due to the magnetic field distortion created by ferromagnetic materials present in buildings. This paper proposes a technique, called EHBD (Equalization of Head and Body Directions), to address this problem using two head- and shoulder-located magnetometers. Due to their proximity, their distortions are assumed to be similar and the magnetometer measurements are used to detect when the user is looking straight forward. Then, the system corrects the discrepancies between the estimated directions of the head and the shoulder, which are provided by gyroscopes and consequently are affected by drift errors. An experiment is conducted to evalu...
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Papers by Arcadio Reyes-Lecuona