A High Fidelity Mixed Reality System for Remote Collaboration

<p>This thesis presents a novel system for enabling remote collaboration within a mixed reality environment. Since the increase of virtual and augmented reality headsets, there has been increased interest in improving remote collaboration. Systems have been proposed to use 3D geometry or 360° video for providing remotely collaborating users with a view of the local, real-world environment. However, many systems provide limited interactions in the local environment and target using coupled views of all users, rather than simulating face-to-face interactions, or use virtual environments for the remote user, losing visual realism. The presented system enables a user situated in a remote location to join a local user to collaborate on a task. An omni-directional camera is streamed to the remote user in real-time to provide a live view of the local space. The 360° video is also used to provide believable lighting when compositing virtual objects into the real-world. Remote users are displayed to local users as an abstracted avatar to provide basic body gestures and social presence. Voice chat is also provided for verbal communication. The system has been evaluated for technical performance and user experience. The evaluation found the performance of the system was suitable for real-time collaboration. Remote and local users were also found to have similar satisfaction with the system, experiencing high levels of presence, social presence and tele-presence. Shared cinematic and remote presentations are suggested as possible applications to guide further development of the system.</p>

A High Fidelity Mixed Reality System for Remote Collaboration

<p>This thesis presents a novel system for enabling remote collaboration within a mixed reality environment. Since the increase of virtual and augmented reality headsets, there has been increased interest in improving remote collaboration. Systems have been proposed to use 3D geometry or 360° video for providing remotely collaborating users with a view of the local, real-world environment. However, many systems provide limited interactions in the local environment and target using coupled views of all users, rather than simulating face-to-face interactions, or use virtual environments for the remote user, losing visual realism. The presented system enables a user situated in a remote location to join a local user to collaborate on a task. An omni-directional camera is streamed to the remote user in real-time to provide a live view of the local space. The 360° video is also used to provide believable lighting when compositing virtual objects into the real-world. Remote users are displayed to local users as an abstracted avatar to provide basic body gestures and social presence. Voice chat is also provided for verbal communication. The system has been evaluated for technical performance and user experience. The evaluation found the performance of the system was suitable for real-time collaboration. Remote and local users were also found to have similar satisfaction with the system, experiencing high levels of presence, social presence and tele-presence. Shared cinematic and remote presentations are suggested as possible applications to guide further development of the system.</p>

A secure remote user authentication scheme for 6LoWPAN-based Internet of Things

One of the significant challenges in the Internet of Things (IoT) is the provisioning of guaranteed security and privacy, considering the fact that IoT devices are resource-limited. Oftentimes, in IoT applications, remote users need to obtain real-time data, with guaranteed security and privacy, from resource-limited network nodes through the public Internet. For this purpose, the users need to establish a secure link with the network nodes. Though the IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) adaptation layer standard offers IPv6 compatibility for resource-limited wireless networks, the fundamental 6LoWPAN structure ignores security and privacy characteristics. Thus, there is a pressing need to design a resource-efficient authenticated key exchange (AKE) scheme for ensuring secure communication in 6LoWPAN-based resource-limited networks. This paper proposes a resource-efficient secure remote user authentication scheme for 6LoWPAN-based IoT networks, called SRUA-IoT. SRUA-IoT achieves the authentication of remote users and enables the users and network entities to establish private session keys between themselves for indecipherable communication. To this end, SRUA-IoT uses a secure hash algorithm, exclusive-OR operation, and symmetric encryption primitive. We prove through informal security analysis that SRUA-IoT is secured against a variety of malicious attacks. We also prove the security strength of SRUA-IoT through formal security analysis conducted by employing the random oracle model. Additionally, we prove through Scyther-based validation that SRUA-IoT is resilient against various attacks. Likewise, we demonstrate that SRUA-IoT reduces the computational cost of the nodes and communication overheads of the network.

Conformal Chebyshev chaotic map-based remote user password authentication protocol using smart card

With the rapid advancement and growth of computer networks, there have been greater and greater demands for remote user password authentication protocols. In current ages, smartcard-based authentication protocol has formed the standard with their incredibly insubstantial, user-friendly equipment and low-cost apps. In this study, we proposed an effective robust authentication protocol using the conformable chaotic map, where a conformable calculus is a branch of newly appearing fractional calculus. It has a magnificent property, because it formulates using a controller term. We shall also offer formal proof of smooth execution of the proposed authenticated protocol. Our new protocol is more secure as compared to several comparable protocols.

There is Always a Way: Organizing VR User Tests with Remote and Hybrid Setups during a Pandemic—Learnings from Five Case Studies

(1) COVID-19 pandemic restrictions caused a dramatic shift in research activities, forcing the adoption of remote practices and methods. Despite the known benefits of remote testing, there is limited knowledge on how to prepare and conduct such studies in the industrial context where the target users are experts and company employees. (2) In this article, we detail how we organized VR user tests in five industrial cases during the pandemic, focusing on practicalities and procedures. We cover both on-site testing, including disinfecting and other safety protocols, as well as remote and hybrid setups where both remote and on-site participants were involved. Subject matter experts from eight countries were involved in a total of 22 tests. (3) We share insights for VR user test arrangements relevant to the pandemic, remote and hybrid setups, and an industrial context, among others. (4) Our work confirms that with careful planning it is possible to organize user tests remotely. There are also some limitations in remote user testing, such as reduced visibility and interaction with participants. Most importantly, we list practical recommendations for organizing hybrid user tests with safety and disinfecting procedures for on-site VR use.

Research and Design of Distributed Fire Alarm System of Indoor Internet of Things Based on LoRa

In order to comprehensively improve the sensitivity of fire warning and effectively shorten the warning time, this paper proposes and implements an indoor distributed fire alarm system based on low power wide area network. The system is mainly composed of three parts: a multisensor acquisition node based on LoRa technology, a distributed edge gateway, and a remote user monitoring system. The multisensor collection node obtains environmental parameters such as indoor temperature, smoke concentration, and air quality and then transmits the sensing data to edge gateway by LoRa after preprocessing. The edge gateway is based on an embedded Linux platform and is deployed in distributed state to collect and store data from multiple collection nodes. Besides, edge gateway forwards valid data to the remote user monitoring system by standard MQTT protocol. The user monitoring system displays current deployment area parameters to users in real time and provides early warning prompts based on relevant preset indicators to help the administrator make more accurate decisions on corresponding measures. The system has been deployed and tested in Nanjing Institute of Technology. By sensor calibration experiments, LoRa communication experiments, and system tests in different environments, the experimental results show that the average received signal strength in a small interference space is -104.12 dBm, and the average received signal strength in a noisy signal environment is -57.5 dBm. By setting the optimal transmitting power for each distance, the packet receiving rate can reach more than 95%, and the alarm accuracy can reach 100% under premise of ensuring the lowest power consumption. Finally, this paper conducts a comprehensive performance analysis on the wireless communication performance of environmental collection nodes, multisensor data fusion algorithm, distributed LoRa edge gateway deployment performance, and remote system early warning accuracy.

Telepresence Robots in the Classroom

This study used the concept of shared affordance space to explore students’ perceptions of the use of a telepresence robot in a face-to-face classroom. Results from this qualitative pilot study suggest the telepresence robot has the potential to provide enough autonomy and agency for both the remote user and the in-class students to perceive a shared affordance space. Robot users and classmates use human pronouns to describe the robot user and discuss a process of adjusting to its presence. The physical configuration of the classroom can either facilitate or hinder this process. The research provides greater understanding of the experiences of students in a face-to-face classroom that includes remote students attending class using a telepresence robot. It can help educators design and implement these experiences in a way that creates a beneficial classroom experience for both in-class and remote learners.

Tactowel: A Subtle Sports Performance Display for Giving Real-Time Performance Feedback in Tennis

Sports technology enhances athletes’ performance by providing feedback. However, interaction techniques of current devices may overwhelm athletes with excessive information or distract them from their performance. Despite previous research, design knowledge on how to interact with these devices to prevent such occasions are scarce. To address this gap, we introduce subtle displays as real-time sports performance feedback output devices that unobtrusively present low-resolution information. In this paper, we conceptualize and apply subtle displays to tennis by designing Tactowel, a texture changing sports towel. We evaluate Tactowel through a remote user study with 8 professional tennis players, in which they experience, compare and discuss Tactowel. Our results suggest subtle displays could prevent overwhelming and distracting athletes through three distinct design strategies: (1) Restricting the use excluding duration of performance, (2) using the available routines and interactions, and (3) giving an overall abstraction through tangible interaction. We discuss these results to present design implications and future considerations for designing subtle displays.