Recognition of Emotions for People with Autism: An Approach to Improve Skills

Autism spectrum disorder refers to a neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by repetitive behavior patterns, impaired social interaction, and impaired verbal and nonverbal communication. The ability to recognize mental states from facial expressions plays an important role in both social interaction and interpersonal communication. Thus, in recent years, several proposals have been presented, aiming to contribute to the improvement of emotional skills in order to improve social interaction. In this paper, a game is presented to support the development of emotional skills in people with autism spectrum disorder. The software used helps to develop the ability to recognize and express six basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear. Based on the theory of facial action coding systems and digital image processing techniques, it is possible to detect facial expressions and classify them into one of the six basic emotions. Experiments were performed using four public domain image databases (CK+, FER2013, RAF-DB, and MMI) and a group of children with autism spectrum disorder for evaluating the existing emotional skills. The results showed that the proposed software contributed to improvement of the skills of detection and recognition of the basic emotions in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Trajectory Tracking of Autonomous Ground Vehicles with Actuator Dead Zones

This paper investigates the trajectory tracking problem of autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs). The dynamics considered feature external disturbances, model uncertainties, and actuator dead zones. First, a novel time-varying yaw guidance law is proposed based on the line of sight method. By a state transformation, the AGV is proved to realize trajectory tracking control under the premise of eliminating guidance deviation. Second, a fixed time dead zone compensation control method is introduced to ensure the yaw angle tracking of the presented guidance. Furthermore, an improved fixed-time disturbance observer is proposed to compensate for the influence of the actuator dead zone on disturbance observation. Finally, the trajectory tracking control strategy is designed, and simulation comparison shows the effectiveness of the compensate method. The CarSim–MATLAB cosimulation shows that the proposed control strategy effectively makes the AGV follow the reference trajectory.

An Inheritance Mode of Rural Cultural Heritage Based on Virtual Museum in China

In China, there is a crisis of rural cultural heritage inheritance due to urbanization. The traditional cultural inheritance modes such as building museums may not satisfy the needs of wide and fast culture transmission, communication, and inheritance. However, the virtual museum may provide new solutions. Nowadays, China has essential social-economic conditions for virtual museum construction but lacks sustainable modes for virtual museums supporting rural cultural heritage inheritance. In this study, we adopted the theoretical analysis method, expert argumentative method, and combined with virtual museum technology analysis to design an appropriate mode for the cultural heritage’s inheritance in rural areas. We built a demonstrational virtual museum for the Mt. Mogan government according to this mode, adopted a comparative analysis and questionnaire survey to verify, and assess the application effects of the mode. Results show that the inheritance mode of rural cultural heritage based on the virtual museum has advantages of larger exhibition scale and wider scope of cultural transmission and communication with less input, and this mode’s operation is steady and sustainable. The inheritance crisis of rural cultural heritage needs reasonable solutions, and our results can be a guideline for building virtual museums in rural areas to promote wide, fast, and sustainable cultural inheritance.

Localization Tools in General Purpose Game Engines: A Systematic Mapping Study

This paper addresses localization from a game development perspective by studying the state of tool support for a localization work in general purpose game engines. Using a systematic mapping study, the most commonly used game engines and their official tool libraries are studied. The results indicate that even though localization tools exists for the game engines included in the study, the visibility, availability, and functionality differ. Localization tools that are user facing, i.e., used to create localization, are scarce while many are tool facing, i.e., used to import localization kits made outside the production pipeline.

Synchronous Remote Rendering for VR

Remote rendering for VR is a technology that enables high-quality VR on low-powered devices. This is realized by offloading heavy computation and rendering to high-powered servers that stream VR as video to the clients. This article focuses on one specific issue in remote rendering when imperfect frame timing between client and server may cause recurring frame drops. We propose a system design that executes synchronously and eliminates the aforementioned problem. The design is presented, and an implementation is tested using various networks and hardware. The design cannot drop frames due to synchronization issues but may on the other hand stall if temporal disturbances occur, e.g., due to network delay spikes or loss. However, experiments confirm that such events can remain rare given an appropriate environment. For example, remote rendering on an intranet at 90 fps with a server located approximately 50 km away yielded just 0.002% stalled frames while rendering with extra latency corresponding to the duration of exactly one frame (11.1 ms at 90 fps). In a LAN without extra latency setting, i.e., with latency equal to locally rendered VR, 0.009% stalls were observed while using a wired Ethernet connection and 0.058% stalls when using 5 GHz wireless IEEE 802.11 ac.

Teaching Method for Software Measurement Process Based on Gamification or Serious Games: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Software process improvement programs are partly founded on software measurement. However, despite their importance, it has been pointed out in the literature that many students are leaving the academic world without the necessary skills to conduct this kind of process. This can be understood by people’s attitudes to this process which is regarded as time-consuming and difficult to understand—factors that explain the lack of interest in it during a student’s academic life. In light of this, the application of serious games or gamification can show useful alternative ways of meeting this need, because the strategies they involve are well accepted by students and have a motivational and engaging effect on them. The objective of this work is to discover different approaches to the teaching of software measurement and software process improvement through gamification projects and serious games. This involves carrying out a systematic review of the literature, which is aimed at characterizing the state-of-the-art on the use of methods related to gamification and serious games in the abovementioned subjects. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to identify primary studies that address the use, planning, or evaluation of gamification, serious games, their features, and game mechanics in software engineering. We located 137 primary studies, published between 2000 and 2019. Although the use of serious games and gamification in software engineering is not recent, there still remains a large area to be explored, especially in software process improvement and software measurement. The study expands and advances the research on how serious games and gamification proposals can be used for teaching software measurement in the context of software process improvement programs by conducting a systematic review of the literature.

Team Sports for Game AI Benchmarking Revisited

Sport games are among the oldest and best established genres of computer games. Sport-inspired environments, such as RoboCup, have been used for AI benchmarking for years. We argue that, in spite of the rise of increasingly more sophisticated game genres, team sport games will remain an important testbed for AI benchmarking due to two primary factors. First, there are several genre-specific challenges for AI systems that are neither present nor emphasized in other types of games, such as team AI and frequent replanning. Second, there are unmistakable nonskill-related goals of AI systems, contributing to player enjoyment, that are most easily observed and addressed within a context of a team sport, such as showing creative and emotional traits. We analyze these factors in detail and outline promising directions for future research for game AI benchmarking, within a team sport context.

A Study of Physical Fitness and Enjoyment on Virtual Running for Exergames

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has advanced forward in everyday life where virtual fitness is possible through physically moving around in the real world. Exergame is a video game for exercise aimed at making exercise more fun. VR exergame applies these trends together for virtual fitness with immersive game play. The VR locomotion is traveling in VR, which is commonly used in adventure role-playing games (RPG). Virtual running can be applied as a locomotion technique for VR exergames. The design of virtual running in VR exergames should be considered as an exercise for fitness and also for enjoyment. This paper proposed two motion-based locomotion techniques: ArmSwing and Squat for virtual running, which are considered as aerobic and strength exercise. These two postures were used to study how physical exertion affected players while interacting in the test scene. Usability, motion sickness, and enjoyment were assessed to analyze the differences of each posture. The results showed that motion sickness and enjoyment of ArmSwing and Squat were not different, while usability was different where ArmSwing was rated higher than Squat. The results from the interviews suggest that most players preferred aerobic exercise (ArmSwing) more than strength exercise (Squat) for a long period of exercise. However, for a short period of exercise, players preferred strength exercise more than aerobic exercise. The adventure-based RPG for exercise needs a solution design appropriate for virtual running in VR, and our results can be a guideline for developers in order to handle motion-based locomotion for VR exergames.

Comparative Effectiveness of Simulation versus Serious Game for Training Nursing Students in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: A Randomized Control Trial

Background. The proper implementation of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is crucial in saving patients. Purpose. This study was aimed at evaluating the difference in educating nursing students on CPR when using the traditional simulation training with a mannequin versus a more novel serious game training on the smartphone platform. Methods. This randomized control trial was conducted in 2018-2019. Through purposive sampling, 56 nursing students were selected and randomly assigned to three groups: a simulation-based CPR training, CPR training using a serious game on the smartphone platform, and a control group that received no CPR training. Each student was evaluated pre- and posttraining on CPR knowledge and skill. Results. Both the simulation and serious game training groups increased CPR abilities two weeks after training. The control group did not show improvement in skill or knowledge of CPR. The simulation and serious game intervention groups demonstrated better scores on the knowledge questionnaire and on the CPR skill demonstration in comparison to the control group. However, the simulation group and the serious game group showed no significant difference in knowledge ( 9.55 ± 2.81 vs. 7.77 ± 2.46 ; p = 0.065 ) or CPR skill demonstration ( 27.17 ± 2.81 vs. 25.72 ± 3.98 ; p = 0.988 ). The overall scores for CPR knowledge did not meet minimum expectations (70% score) in either the simulation (47.75%) or serious game (38.85%) group. However, both groups demonstrated adequate CPR skill on demonstration (simulation 87.64% and serious game 83.06%). Conclusions. Both the simulation and serious game training groups were found to increase CPR skill. CPR training would likely benefit from a multimodal approach to education.

An Improved 3D Registration Method of Mobile Augmented Reality for Urban Built Environment

3D registration plays a pivotal role in augmented reality (AR) system. The existing methods are not suitable to be applied directly in the mobile AR system for the built environment, with the reasons of poor real-time performance and robustness. This paper proposes an improved 3D registration method of mobile AR for built environment, which is based on SURFREAK and KLT. This method increases the building efficiency of algorithm descriptors and maintains the robustness of the algorithms. To implement and evaluate the registration method, a smart phone-based mobile AR system for built environment is developed. The experimental result shows that the improved method is endowed with higher real-time performance and robustness, and the mobile AR 3D registration can realize a favorable performance and efficiency in the complex built environment. The mobile AR system could be used in building recognition and information augmentation for built environment and further to facilitate location-based games, urban heritage tourism, urban planning, and smart city.