Multisensor Information Fusion-Assisted Intelligent Art Design under Wireless Virtual Reality Environment

Under the background of intelligent technologies, art designers need to use information technology to assist the design of art factors and fully realize the integration of art design and information technology. Multisensor information fusion technology can more intuitively and visually carry out a more comprehensive grasp of the objectives to be designed, maximize the positive effects of art design, and achieve its overall optimization and can also help art designers get rid of the traditional monolithic and obsolete design concepts. Based on multisensor information fusion technology under wireless virtual reality environment, principles of signal acquisition and preprocessing, feature extraction, and fusion calculation, to analyze the information processing process of multisensor information fusion, conduct the model construction and performance evaluation for intelligent art design, and propose an intelligent art design model based on multisensor information fusion technology, we discuss the realization of multisensor information fusion algorithm in intelligent art design and finally carry out a simulation experiment and its result analysis by taking the environment design of a parent-child restaurant as an example. The study results show that using multisensor information fusion in the environmental design of parent-child restaurant is better than using a single sensor for that; at the same time, using force sensors has a better environmental design effect than using vibration sensors. The multisensor information fusion technology can automatically analyze the observation information of several sources obtained in time sequence under certain criteria and comprehensively perform information processing for the completion of the decision-making and estimation tasks required for intelligent art design.

The study of reactive and active modes of educational communication in the process of solving educational tasks by students in a virtual reality environment

Introduction. The introduction of virtual technologies into the vocational training system makes it urgent to solve the task of adjusting communication in a situation where the student is in a virtual reality environment, while the teacher is in the real world. The research purpose is to study the role of two types of educational communication (reactive and active ones) with a student solving an educational task in a virtual reality environment, taking into account the gaming experience and the dominant type of student's perception. Materials and methods. During the laboratory experiment with the use of virtual reality headsets, the skill of hand-eye coordination was worked out on a sample of undergraduate teacher-training students (N=36). The author's questionnaire was used to assess the gaming experience, the dominant type of student's perception was assessed using the VARK Questionnaire (Version 7.8) by N. Fleming and S. Mills. The reliability of the data obtained was assessed using the chi-square test and the Student's t-test. Research results. There are no statistically significant differences between the groups of reactive and active communication in all indicators, with the exception of the experience of getting acquainted with virtual reality. The number of questions regarding the methods and sequence of performing game actions in the reactive group was the greatest (2.28), the same indicator in the group with active communication was insignificant (0.40). In the group with reactive communication, the subjects asked twice as many questions as in the group with active communication (4.78 and 2.44, respectively). Conclusions. The results confirm the hypothesis that the reactive and active modes of educational communication play different roles in the interaction between the teacher and the student. The dominant type of student's perception does not affect the process of organizing educational communication in a virtual reality environment. It is useful to take into account the results obtained at the stage of support of students' educational activities in a virtual reality environment in the context of providing active and reactive assistance by the teacher.

Acute and chronic physical activity improve spatial pattern separation in humans

Physical activity benefits both fitness and cognition. However, its effect on long-term memory is unclear. Successful memory involves not only remembering information over time but also keeping memories distinct and less confusing. The ability to separate similar experiences into distinct memories is one of the main features of episodic memory. In this work, we evaluated the effect of acute and chronic physical activity on a new task to assess spatial pattern separation in a 3D virtual reality environment. We manipulated the load of memory similarity and found that 25 minutes of cycling after encoding - but not before retrieval - was sufficient to improve similar, but not dissimilar memories, 24 hours after encoding. Furthermore, we found that participants who engaged in regular physical activity, but not sedentary subjects, showed memory for the similar condition the next day. Thus, physical activity could be a simple way to improve discrimination of spatial memories in humans.

Brain–computer interfaces for human gait restoration

In this review article, we present more than a decade of our work on the development of brain–computer interface (BCI) systems for the restoration of walking following neurological injuries such as spinal cord injury (SCI) or stroke. Most of this work has been in the domain of non-invasive electroencephalogram-based BCIs, including interfacing our system with a virtual reality environment and physical prostheses. Real-time online tests are presented to demonstrate the ability of able-bodied subjects as well as those with SCI to purposefully operate our BCI system. Extensions of this work are also presented and include the development of a portable low-cost BCI suitable for at-home use, our ongoing efforts to develop a fully implantable BCI for the restoration of walking and leg sensation after SCI, and our novel BCI-based therapy for stroke rehabilitation.

REFERENCE WHITE IN A COMPLEX VIRTUAL REALITY ENVIRONMENT

This study aims to investigate what a reference white really means in a complex scene setting in a virtual environment, specifically whether a reference white is determined by the brightest white object in the entire environment, or is it determined by the brightest white object in the field of view. To achieve the aim, three psychophysical experiments were conducted, one situated in a real room and the other two in virtual reality. Experimental results show that colour appearance in VR is comparable to colour appearance in a real space. Regarding reference white, the brightest white object is not necessarily regarded as the reference white especially when it is located far away from the test colour. The brightest white object needs to be located within the viewing field for the test colour in order to be regarded as the reference white.

The illusion of having a large virtual body biases action-specific perception in patients with mild cognitive impairment

The illusion of having a large body makes us perceive objects as smaller than they really are. This action-specific perception effect occurs because we perceive the property of an object (i.e., size) differently according to our unique action capability (i.e., the affordance of body size). Although the body-ownership illusion contributing to this action-specific perception has been studied, its effects remain unclear in neurological patients. We examined the action-specific perception impairments of MCI patients by means of body-ownership illusion in a non-immersive virtual reality environment. Twenty healthy young adults, 21 healthy older adults, and 15 MCI patients were recruited. We assessed their “original-body action-specific perception” and “enlarged-body action-specific perception” using the original and enlarged sizes of their virtual bodies, respectively. The MCI patients’ original-body action-specific perception was no different than that of the healthy controls (p = 0.679). However, the enlarged-body action-specific perception of the MCI patients was significantly biased (p < 0.001). The inclusion of the enlarged-body action-specific perception provides additional discriminative power for early diagnosis of MCI (89.3% accuracy, 75.0% sensitivity, 100.0% specificity, and 87.5% balanced accuracy).