Raffaele De Amicis
Oregon State University, EECS, Faculty Member
1 st International Symposium on
Constant improvements in the field of surveying, computing and distribution of digital-content are reshaping the way Cultural Heritage can be digitised and virtually accessed, even remotely via web. A traditional 2D approach for data... more
Constant improvements in the field of surveying, computing and distribution of digital-content are reshaping the way Cultural Heritage can be digitised and virtually accessed, even remotely via web. A traditional 2D approach for data access, exploration, retrieval and exploration may generally suffice, however more complex analyses concerning spatial and temporal features require 3D tools, which, in some cases, have not yet been implemented or are not yet generally commercially available. Efficient organisation and integration strategies applicable to the wide array of heterogeneous data in the field of Cultural Heritage represent a hot research topic nowadays. This article presents a visualisation and query tool (QueryArch3D) conceived to deal with multi-resolution 3D models. Geometric data are organised in successive levels of detail (LoD), provided with geometric and semantic hierarchies and enriched with attributes coming from external data sources. The visualisation and query f...
The world of Geographic Information (GI) Science ha s changed. Today, many of the elements of Digital E arth, meaning as a multiresolution, three-dimensional representation of the planet, are not only available but also used daily by... more
The world of Geographic Information (GI) Science ha s changed. Today, many of the elements of Digital E arth, meaning as a multiresolution, three-dimensional representation of the planet, are not only available but also used daily by hundreds of millions of people worldwide thanks to innovative ways to organ ize and present the data and rapid technological ad vancements. 3D Geobrowsers can provide higher usability and intera c ivity that can facilitate exchange and disseminat ion of spatial information among stakeholders and government agencies. However providing access to harmonized data is only a firs t step towards providing adequate support to environmental management, which requires development of analysis and spatio-tempor al data models functionalities. Many environmental analyses, e.g. monitoring a sequence of earthquakes epicentres, a storm, a forest fire, spread of pollutant etc., cannot be performed without conside ring the evolution, over time, of geographic featur es. A...
Research Interests: Key words and Geobrowser
The recognition of movements and poses of the body is a subject of fundamental importance to create simple, new and effective methods of natural interaction between man and machine. The complete understanding of human gesticulation is the... more
The recognition of movements and poses of the body is a subject of fundamental importance to create simple, new and effective methods of natural interaction between man and machine. The complete understanding of human gesticulation is the crucial base for creating intuitive and easy to use natural interfaces. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the state of the art, illustrating techniques of particular interest for the recognition of stroke, trajectories and 3D or 2D gesture. Moreover, here the implemented methods and techniques used in order to recognize three different types of inputs: simple poses of the hands, fast swipe and complex gestures in 3D space are described. Motion analysis has been made using a depth camera and a skeleton detection algorithm. The complex gestures are compared using an improvement of the technique called Dynamic Time Warping (DTW). This technique was analyzed in a very accurate way, in order to understand which implementation would lead to an...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT
Research Interests:
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulation tool that is being used extensively to study the effects of training and perception. However, several studies have shown that some aspects of perception within VR are not always accurate. The present... more
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulation tool that is being used extensively to study the effects of training and perception. However, several studies have shown that some aspects of perception within VR are not always accurate. The present study investigates the perception of time within a VR environment by asking for retrospective time judgments of the length of VR experiences. These environments varied in both the level of interaction with the VR environment, and also the spatial properties of the environment itself. The judged length of time did not significantly differ between conditions based on the level of activity in the environment. However, the spatial properties of the VR environment did produce significantly different time estimations. This finding suggests that careful attention should be paid to what and how users are trained or evaluated in VR.
There is a looming shortage of well-trained professionals in the wood construction workforce. To challenge this shortage, we developed a simulated learning environment that leverages a novel Virtual Reality (VR) system to train novice... more
There is a looming shortage of well-trained professionals in the wood construction workforce. To challenge this shortage, we developed a simulated learning environment that leverages a novel Virtual Reality (VR) system to train novice workers in wooden wall construction. A comprehensive task analysis was first used to best identify training requirements. Then, a virtual building site was modeled and a 3D video tutorial was implemented using a VR Head-Mounted Display (HMD). To evaluate the effectiveness of this tool, participants who learned via the VR training tool were compared with participants who instead only had simple 2-D instructional video training. VR training resulted in better retention, task performance, learning speed, and engagement than the video training counterpart, maintaining system usability. This demonstrates that VR is a viable training tool for the construction sector and can produce benefits beyond those of traditional video training.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... As solution to the aforementioned problems, we present Spacedesign: a low-cost, PC-based, integrated VR application for aestetic and ergonomic modelling. Spacedesign supports in a very simple way design tasks, like creation,... more
... As solution to the aforementioned problems, we present Spacedesign: a low-cost, PC-based, integrated VR application for aestetic and ergonomic modelling. Spacedesign supports in a very simple way design tasks, like creation, visualization and editing of surfaces. ...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This paper presents a novel method for efficient boundary based shapes matching and retrieval in presence of occlu- sion. In this method, the geometric and topological informa- tion of boundary curves are encoded in the form of... more
ABSTRACT This paper presents a novel method for efficient boundary based shapes matching and retrieval in presence of occlu- sion. In this method, the geometric and topological informa- tion of boundary curves are encoded in the form of longest common subcurves (LCS) graphs and their similarity is es- timated by graph matching. B-Spline is used for approxi- mating the original boundary, then inflection points are de- tected to split such a B-spline to convex/concave segments. The characteristic string is constructed based on these seg- ments' canonical frame. After LCS candidates are found, their graphs which are constructed by using its segments as vertices and the weighted walkthrough (WW) between two segments as edges are compared to obtain the optimal match. Thorough experimental results and comparisons demonstrate that our method outperforms traditional LCS or dynamic pro- gramming based methods in shape matching and enhances the quality of inexact shape retrieval, in particular in the presence of occlusions and affine transformation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Geographic datasets such as international telecommunications traffic, financial flows, trading patterns, and national migration patterns describe the movement of entities between geographical locations. In spatial relations... more
ABSTRACT Geographic datasets such as international telecommunications traffic, financial flows, trading patterns, and national migration patterns describe the movement of entities between geographical locations. In spatial relations analyses the exact route of the connections is not important. Hence, one of the most preferred methods for its depiction is a graph representation with data nodes layered over a geographical surface (such as a flat map or a virtual globe). However, a large number of arcs can produce dense visual clutters that make difficult the extraction of information from: occluded geographical surfaces, occluded nodes and occluded arcs. In this work we present a novel focus+context technique for 3D virtual environments that interactively distorts and filters arcs layouts, revealing underneath information about the three aforementioned visual elements: nodes, arcs and geographical surface. Moreover, changing the camera does not affect the geographical focus of the lens. In our use cases, we observed that such technique is an advantage for tasks that include the exploration of geographical networks.
This work presents a novel approach to author multimodal interaction dialogue of a VR system according to each users specific preferences. We will show how modalities can be bound together via a bidirectional graph in an authoring tool to... more
This work presents a novel approach to author multimodal interaction dialogue of a VR system according to each users specific preferences. We will show how modalities can be bound together via a bidirectional graph in an authoring tool to allow the specification of application-specific domain commands without hardwiring them to the application. As a result we provide a persistent definition
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT The field of Geographical Information Systems has assisted to a substantial growth within the last years, both in terms of quantity and quality of available data and at the same time, a number of standards for geospatial and... more
ABSTRACT The field of Geographical Information Systems has assisted to a substantial growth within the last years, both in terms of quantity and quality of available data and at the same time, a number of standards for geospatial and location based services has been developed and adopted to improve the access to this information. As data becomes publicly available, the development of effective visualization applications, from simple virtual sight-seeing also known as geo-browsers to more complex solutions combining data with smart services, has opened the door for new opportunities to improve the general quality of life. Applications such as personal navigators, virtual globes, social networking and mobile review portals are only a small example set. This field, until recently restricted to high-end workstations and personal computers, is rapidly expanding to mobile devices to ensure seamless access to geospatial information to be used on the go. For this reason, one of the new challenges has become the visualisation of such information within these smartphones and their combination with their advanced hardware and connectivity equipment in order to create innovative smart services to improve the quality of life. This work illustrates the research work which has led to a lightweight three dimensional framework for geospatial visualization, running on Android enabled devices and how this technology has been used for intelligent urban mobility in the context of a European project as an example of its potential. The system makes use of hardware acceleration, complies with several standards typical of the geospatial domain, is customizable through a layer-based architecture and is used as a basis for daily intelligent multimodal routing. After a brief overview of the protocols and technologies adopted, the paper presents the system, the results of an extended test phase, some practical example of how the framework can be customized for a real urban mobility scenario, the problems tackled and the limitations to be faced.
ABSTRACT An increasing amount of attention is being paid by local public administrations, national and federal governments as well as by international institutions, such as the European Commission, to improve personal mobility within... more
ABSTRACT An increasing amount of attention is being paid by local public administrations, national and federal governments as well as by international institutions, such as the European Commission, to improve personal mobility within urban environments through the use of public transports. Improving mobility through increased use of public transportation is strategic to reduce energy consumption, to lower emissions and pollution levels, to improve public safety and to dramatically reduce congestions and road traffic. Reducing private transportation clearly brings significant benefits not only to citizens' quality of life and public health but it also results in a more efficient urban system as a whole, with consequent substantial economic benefits at the wider societal level. At the same time, it is difficult to change human habits and people using public transports should have an efficient and user friendly way to access the best travel options suitable for their needs. Based on this assumption, this paper presents a prototype for an ambient intelligent urban personal mobility assistant, i.e. a software for smartphones and tablets which promotes use of public transport by helping user to identify the best travel option across a multi-modal transport network, through a user-friendly interface that intelligently adjusts to user preferences, and behavior.
ABSTRACT The field of Geographical Informat ion Systems has assisted to a substantial gro wth in the last years, both in terms of quality and quantity of data available. As these data become publicly availab le, it is essential to develop... more
ABSTRACT The field of Geographical Informat ion Systems has assisted to a substantial gro wth in the last years, both in terms of quality and quantity of data available. As these data become publicly availab le, it is essential to develop effective visualizat ion applications, fro m simple virtual sight-seeing or "geobrowsing" to more comp lex solutions for urban planning or scientific visualizat ion. This field is rapidly expanding to mobile devices to ensure ubiquitous access to geospatial informat ion. This work illustrates the research work which has brought to a lightweight 3D geospatial application for the Android mobile operative system. The system makes use of hardware accelerat ion, it co mplies with several standards typical of the geospatial domain and it is customizable through a layer-based architecture. After a brief overview of the protocols and technologies adopted, the paper presents the system, the results of a test phase, the problems tackled and limitat ion to be faced.
This paper discusses elementary, and secondary (K-12) teachers’ perceptions of cross-reality (XR) tools for data visualization and use of sensor data from the built environment in classroom curricula. Our objective was to explore the use... more
This paper discusses elementary, and secondary (K-12) teachers’ perceptions of cross-reality (XR) tools for data visualization and use of sensor data from the built environment in classroom curricula. Our objective was to explore the use of sensor-informed XR in the built environment and civil engineering (BECE) field to support K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experiential learning and foster BECE-related career awareness. We conducted surveys and informal questionnaires with 33 primary and secondary teachers attending an annual two-day university-based teacher professional development workshop as part of a statewide STEM afterschool program serving students in rural communities. We assessed teachers’ familiarity with, knowledge about, and appraisal of using cross-reality platforms and sensor data in classrooms and after school curricula. Findings show that, while all teachers reported relatively high interest in learning about sensor applications and i...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The internet, where much of the information has reference to location, together with the latest generation of geographical web services, represent a very large information space that can be used for planning and design. The wealth of... more
The internet, where much of the information has reference to location, together with the latest generation of geographical web services, represent a very large information space that can be used for planning and design. The wealth of information accessible, which requires new forms of interaction and management of the data available, has brought in recent year to the growth of
Research Interests: Information Retrieval, Visual Analytics, Modeling, Localization, Future Internet, and 15 moreTown planning, Planning, Virtual Reality, Interoperability, Information Access, Urban Design, Information Space, World Wide Web, Web Service, Availability, Geographic Information, Large Scale, On, Internet, and Geographic Information System
Int J Interact Des Manuf (2007) 1:115126 DOI 10.1007/s12008-007-0010-8 ... IMPROVE: An innovative application for collaborative mobile ... Pedro Santos · André Stork · Thomas Gierlinger · Alain Pagani · Céline Paloc · Inigo Barandarian... more
Int J Interact Des Manuf (2007) 1:115126 DOI 10.1007/s12008-007-0010-8 ... IMPROVE: An innovative application for collaborative mobile ... Pedro Santos · André Stork · Thomas Gierlinger · Alain Pagani · Céline Paloc · Inigo Barandarian · Giuseppe Conti · Raffaele de Amicis · ...