{"title":"Enhanced human-computer speech interface using wavelet computing","authors":"S. Ayat","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592749","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we design an enhanced human-computer speech interface by wavelet transform. By using a new thresholding algorithm and shrink function, we improve the efficiency of the speech interface. This shrink function tries to decrease sharp time-frequency spectrogram discontinuities by attenuating the wavelet coefficients instead of setting them to zero. This attenuation will be done regarding to the wavelet coefficients distance from the threshold. By applying a lot of tests we evaluated our system for three different languages. The results confirmed the improvement in performances and achievements of our system.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"480 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133631328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An improved procedure for the automatic detection of dermoscopic structures in digital ELM images of skin lesions","authors":"G. D. Leo, C. Liguori, A. Paolillo, P. Sommella","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592778","url":null,"abstract":"Early detection of melanoma is a very critical issue in todaypsilas dermatologic practice. Different diagnostic methods have been proposed which define multiple criteria for the evaluation of the malignancy of a lesion. The paper is devoted to the detection of an important dermatologic structure: the atypical pigmented network. A proposal is described for the application of decision-tree classification techniques to the results of specific image processing algorithms for the estimation of chromatic and structural parameters.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133485974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modeling of flexible needle for haptic insertion simulation","authors":"Xuejian He, Yonghua Chen, L. Tang","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592777","url":null,"abstract":"Needle buckling is commonly observed in the surgical procedure of flexible needle insertion. Unexpected buckling can seriously affect the insertion performances, and it should be avoided because it causes unstable and undesirable motion of the needle, thereby damages surrounding vital tissue structures. Although needle insertion simulation methods using haptic interfaces have been reported, yet no extensive study of needle buckle modeling and its haptic simulation can be found. Therefore, in this paper modeling methods of needle buckling in air, buckling in homogeneous tissue, and buckling in multi-layered tissues are proposed. An energy-based method is used to model the feedback force in the insertion procedure through a haptic interface. An experimental simulation system based on a haptic interface is developed.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122585343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A microcell oriented load balancing model for collaborative virtual environments","authors":"D. Ahmed, S. Shirmohammadi","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592758","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we present a microcell oriented load balancing mechanism in the context of a hybrid MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) architecture. The objective of the proposed approach is to define a fair load balancing model for peer-to-peer MMOGs and virtual environments that minimizes peer-to-peer distortions in the overlays. In the case of an overloaded server, the proposed approach identifies appropriate microcell(s) that reduces overlay maintenance cost and minimizes inter-server communications. The load is relieved by devolving these microcells to the other less loaded servers. The model is justified through extensive simulation.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115334522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
D. Rodríguez-Silva, F. Gil-Castiñeira, F. González-Castaño, R. Duro, F. López-Peña, J. Vales-Alonso
{"title":"Human motion tracking and gait analysis: a brief review of current sensing systems and integration with intelligent environments","authors":"D. Rodríguez-Silva, F. Gil-Castiñeira, F. González-Castaño, R. Duro, F. López-Peña, J. Vales-Alonso","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592774","url":null,"abstract":"Human motion tracking and gait analysis is becoming a topic of great interest in everyday applications generating a large amount of research into systems that can provide this information in real time at a low cost and with the smallest intrusion level possible. In this line different approaches have been proposed following distinct philosophies usually related to the final application of the system. This paper is aimed on one hand at providing a review of non vision based current systems highlighting how distinct and oriented towards particular applications they are. On the other this paper deals with the problem of integrating such different elements into efficient environmental intelligence applications that can be used as a base for home rehabilitation or automatic elderly assistance. This is addressed by implementing a specific device access layer within a novel distributed agent based ambient intelligence architecture called HI3.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115794292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Burlamaqui, S. Azevedo, J. Melo, Rodrigo M. Araujo, Rodrigo Pinheiro, Antonio Cosme, R. Dantas, C. Schneider, J. S. Xavier, L. Gonçalves
{"title":"Indirect group interaction in interpeceptives virtual environments","authors":"A. Burlamaqui, S. Azevedo, J. Melo, Rodrigo M. Araujo, Rodrigo Pinheiro, Antonio Cosme, R. Dantas, C. Schneider, J. S. Xavier, L. Gonçalves","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592759","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a component that can capture a variety of user movements and use that to create information and interaction with computational applications, like electronic games and Interactive Digital TV Programs in a pervasive approach. Some techniques and systems get information from the user, like thoughts and actions, to provide extra functionality but that is done for one user at each time. The component proposed here bases itself on observing the user, thus it is able to detect his thoughts and feelings based on his actions, providing ways for users to interact seamlessly and for the system to change its outputs and states based on whatever the users are doing. Besides that, systems might be created to support multiple inputs from groups of users providing a whole new range of outputs. The events generated through these users observation are referred here as Indirect Group Interaction.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121738954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Pasquale, B. Ionescu, D. Ionescu, V. D. Lecce, Andrea Gurerero
{"title":"Virtual Data Warehouse architecture for real-time WebGIS","authors":"C. Pasquale, B. Ionescu, D. Ionescu, V. D. Lecce, Andrea Gurerero","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592757","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental monitoring requires that raw data acquired from sensors and/or data repositories be transformed, by scientific analysis, into assessments of current ecosystem conditions and in evolution trends in time and space. The huge data amount produced by different sources, the complexity of the environmental models adopted and the necessary distributed collaboration between scientists and government agencies, require specific applications to process and understand environmental phenomena and validate results. GIS domain received a great deal of attention from the scientific and industrial applications communities. Many algorithms, protocols, and applications have been built through the ears for the collection, investigation, analysis, and synthesis of data obtained from sensors ranging from temperature, pressure, etc. to satellite imaging. Almost all attempts have been made to deal with data obtained from lumped repositories. Little or almost none works are reported about a general and flexible mechanism used to display geo-dependent data as it is generated. In this paper we present a GIS platform whose goal is to efficiently mine, fuse, and exploit environmental data and to synthetically display the results at the pace the data is produces. A virtual data warehouse to use GIS information is proposed to manage and collect data acquired by and from several sources. The proposed platform allows users to access to environmental data collected by different sources, to register, normalize and visualize data for exploring and analyzing complex structure and relationship, to process data using distributed computing resources and web applications. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed prototype, we present a case study related to data fusion of Modis files and Geo-Located real sensor data for air quality monitoring.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124934206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perceptibility of watermarked 3D meshes using a multimodal visuo-haptic interface","authors":"N. Sakr, N. Georganas, Jiying Zhao","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592746","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, a preliminary study is conducted in order to measure and analyze the perceptibility of a watermarked 3D virtual object when (1) visual feedback is present, and when (2) visual and haptic feedback are simultaneously available. More specifically, our experiments are intended to assess whether looking at, and touching a 3D mesh could in fact improve the perceptibility of a watermark as opposed to only performing a visual assessment. Preliminary results obtained revealed that this hypothesis is in fact true, and thus can potentially significantly impact the field of 3D digital watermarking; further experiments are however required in order to confirm this conclusion. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first in the literature to conduct experiments for the analysis of watermark perceptibility of 3D objects while using a multimodal visuo-haptic interface.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129305754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
B. Hariri, S. Shirmohammadi, Mohammadreza Pakravan
{"title":"LOADER: A Location-Aware Distributed Virtual Environment Architecture","authors":"B. Hariri, S. Shirmohammadi, Mohammadreza Pakravan","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592760","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes a new architecture for distributed data management and update massage exchange in massively multi-user virtual environments. The key points in the design of such environments are scalability and QoS-aware message delivery. Therefore it requires robust distributed algorithms in a dynamic peer-to-peer system with frequent node arrivals and departures. Our proposed approach is mainly based on distributed hash tables (DHTs) in order to achieve a decentralized system where any participating node can efficiently retrieve the updates associated with a given object. Therefore, the responsibility of maintaining the mapping from names to values is distributed among the nodes in a way that a change in the set of participants causes a minimal amount of disruption. This allows the design to scale to extremely large number of nodes and to handle continual node arrivals, departures, and failures. The original form of DHT has several deficiencies for multi-user virtual environment application. This work introduces LOADER: a Location Aware Distributed Virtual Environment Architecture, which is the result of a series of efforts in alleviating a number of these problems including lack of location-aware ID assignment. Moreover, efficient multicast is addressed as an inevitable requirement for message exchange in multi-user environments and a solution based on Scribe is proposed.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116352134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Azevedo, J. Melo, R. Dantas, A. Burlamaqui, C. Schneider, J. S. Xavier, L. Gonçalves
{"title":"Issues on interperceptive games","authors":"S. Azevedo, J. Melo, R. Dantas, A. Burlamaqui, C. Schneider, J. S. Xavier, L. Gonçalves","doi":"10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VECIMS.2008.4592762","url":null,"abstract":"The construction of multimodal or even interperceptive applications has becoming an increasing tendency, each time stronger. In this context, we discuss in this paper issues related to the creation of interperceptive games, proposing a general architecture as a solution for its implementation. Experiments show the applicability of the proposed architecture to a table soccer game and indicate the possibility of application to other games.","PeriodicalId":284224,"journal":{"name":"2008 IEEE Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126118616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}