Information requirements analysis for holonic manufacturing systems in a virtual environment

Extended-Reality Technologies: An Overview of Emerging Applications in Medical Education and Clinical Care.

Virtual reality (VR) enables the study of visually-guided behavior in situations that are otherwise not amenable to laboratory research. An example is a fire evacuation scenario, in which building occupants have to find their way to safety through smoke and flames, identify safe egress routes, and avoid threats. First, however, it must be determined whether evacuation behavior in VR is comparable to that in a real environment. We are thus initially studying participant responses to a fire alarm in matched virtual and real environments. The present experiment investigates how the decision to evacuate is influenced by visual cues about a neighbor’s behavior. In the Control group, a lone participant is exposed to a fire alarm while performing a bogus task. In the Passive group, a participant performs the same task with a confederate who ignores the fire alarm. In the Active group, the confederate immediately leaves the room when the fire alarm sounds. The gender of the participant is crossed with the gender of the confederate. 75 participants experience the scenario in a real environment (25 per group), and 75 others in a matched virtual environment presented in a wireless head mounted display (HMD), with avatars of the confederates. In the real environment, two-thirds of participants in the Control group evacuated the room. In the Active group, nearly all did so, whereas in the Passive group all but one did. More female than male participants evacuated in the Control group, but there were no other gender effects. Data collection in the virtual environment is in progress, and will be completed by spring. The findings thus far demonstrate a very strong influence of neighbor behavior on a participant’s evacuation decision. The results will provide answers to the much-debated question of whether evacuation behavior is similar in virtual and real environments. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015

To understand the nature of hemispatial attention allocation in virtual reality (VR), a line bisection task (LBT) was administered both in a real environment and a virtual environment to assess the rate of pseudoneglect. The mental construction of real and virtual environments was assumed to increase visuospatial activity in right hemisphere-related cognitive processes; an alteration in the activity that manifests in the direction and rate of line bisection lateral error. In the present study, fifty-one right-handed healthy college students were recruited. They performed a line bisection task in real and virtual environments. The obtained data showed that LBT errors in real and VR environments were correlated and individually consistent. Furthermore, a leftward LBT error was found in the physically real environment, however, in a VR the line bisection bias drifted towards the right hemispace. Participants with a lower right-handedness score showed a lower rate of left LBT bias in a real environment, but in VR, their LBT error showed a stronger rightwards error. Participants showed an individually consistent pattern in both real and VR environments, but VR-induced visuospatial reality construction was associated with rightward LBT bias in a virtual environment.

The Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) Project is an international industrially driven project addressing systemization and standardization, research, pre-competitive development, deployment and support of architectures and technologies for open, distributed, intelligent, autonomous and co-operating systems on a global basis. During its ten-year program, the HMS Project has developed specifications of holonic architectures, a computer-aided environment for the encapsulation, reuse and integration of holonic systems technologies, and libraries of demonstrated, reusable technologies and tools for the construction of holonic manufacturing systems. These next-generation holonic systems are providing the flexibility, agility and robustness necessary for the rapid delivery of custom manufactured products in competitive global markets. By building on the results of Phase 1 of the HMS Project that emphasized the development of generic technologies and their demonstration in specific application areas, Phase 2 will achieve their integration and application at three levels of the manufacturing and supply chain enterprise: Holonic Control Devices, consisting of the technical manufacturing equipment; Holonic Production Sites and Physical Equipment, comprising the manufacturing work cells; Holonic Planning and Execution Systems, providing scheduling and control of the holonic manufacturing system and a virtual test bed environment for holonic system implementations; and Holonic Man-Machine and Emulation Systems, a virtual test-bed environment for holonic system implementations.

How can we increase awareness and understanding of other cultures using interactive online digital visualizations of past civilizations? In order to answer the above question, this chapter first questions the success of current virtual environments and asks whether they are capable of producing a platform that supports the experience and understanding of place-inscribed culture. To answer this question, a typology of successful virtual environment applications is suggested. These include online communities, virtual realityVirtual environmentVirtual Reality (VR) travel websites, game engines, virtual reality used for training, and virtual reality used as part of therapeutic means to either relax or divert patients, or to cure phobiasPhobias. Impeding the success of virtual environments in terms of technological constraints, lack of evaluation techniques and results, and a lack of content-specific applications that best utilize desktop computing capabilities and respond to user needs. It suggests that much more work needs to be done on not just usable but also useful content. Specifically, there is a large gap in knowledge on what might constitute useful and appropriate virtual travel environments, and how contextual interaction may affect our cultural understanding in these environments.

The effects of the presence of others during a rowing exercise in a virtual reality environment

The virtual reality Walking Corsi Test

Advances in Virtual Reality (VR) systems, Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Agent Technology make it possible to design and develop Virtual Training Environments (VTEs), where the trainees can immerse themselves and interact directly with the learning domain. This paper presents the Interaction Specification Workspace (ISW) architecture for the specification and design of virtual environments for training purposes. ISW architecture provides the interaction designer with the capability to specify the training interaction with the virtual environment using the Virtual Reality Multi Flow Graph (VR-MFG) as the underlying interaction specification model. ISW implements a design space, where the processes of interaction specification and design of VTEs take place inside a three-dimensional virtual environment, the objects of which are tools by themselves. Inside this workspace, the designer can associate the abstract objects (the components of the VR-MFG) with “actual” objects of the target virtual environment (kept in a “world” database) and apply a number of agent templates with training capabilities.

A review of the evidence on active and passive learning in virtual environments (VEs) suggests that both conditions have shown superiority under some conditions of learning and testing, but there is no consistent outcome pattern. Measures of transfer between virtual and real environments have also revealed a variety of outcomes. Following either active or passive learning in a VE, experiment 1 assessed measures of orientation and distance estimation in that VE and in a real-world equivalent environment. On measures of direct and relative distance, more accurate estimates were found for active than passive VE explorers. A suggestion was also noted for the orientation estimates to benefit from real-world rather than VE testing. With an improvement to the procedure, experiment 2 found similar real versus virtual orientation judgements, suggesting that an opportunity for active learning during the test procedure probably influenced orientation measures in experiment 1. We conclude that the effects of interactivity are unreliable and vary with the measures used, and that testing in virtual and real environments leads to similar outcomes.

This chapter examines virtual environments which usually represent computer simulated environments, otherwise called virtual worlds or virtual reality and its application in physical therapy. Virtual environments present computer-generated three-dimensional (3D) representation of a physical presence of places in the real world as well as in the imaginary world. Users mainly interact with virtual environments using virtual reality headsets. Many of the current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences display either on a computer screens or through other stereoscopic displays. Applications of virtual environments are mainly focused on artificial reality that projects users into a 3D space generated by the computer with some sort of tracking devices which may be the virtual reality headsets worn or another 3D tracking device attached to the body of the user such as the electromagnetic tracker system. Research in virtual environments has made significant impact in the entertainment industry and in the training field such as the flight simulator (Stern, 1995).

The current study concerns the identification of possible differences in perception between the virtual and the real world in terms of the effect on brain activity. For this reason, an EEG device was used to capture participants' brain activity in different brain areas during their exposure to different virtual and real environments. The environments considered in this study portray a classroom environment with a scenario suitable for teacher training and professional development. The first aim of the experiment is to investigate if exposure to a virtual environment can affect motor, cognitive or other function of the users, and the second aim is to test if the graphics content and nature of such an environment can influence the user experience. During the study, the optimum duration of exposure in a virtual environment was also assessed by measuring the time that the brain needs to perceive and adapt to the new state. Our results, consisting of EEG data analyzed in 10 Regions of Interest (ROIs) and responses from an Igroup Presence questionnaire, indicated a significant difference in each brain area, especially in the frontal and occipital region, when a participant was exposed to a non-realistic virtual environment, compared to a realistic one, highlighting the impact of the selected virtual environment design. The results of the experiment can play an important role in defining the characteristics of optimal virtual environments for virtual reality-based training applications.

Biophilic design, which incorporates natural elements into the built environment, has received increasing attention in both design and health fields. Epidemiological and experimental studies have provided sufficient evidence that contact with outdoor nature has positive impacts on human health and wellbeing. However, the potential for similar health benefits in indoor biophilic environments remains unclear. We designed a randomized crossover study to examine the physiological and cognitive responses to biophilic indoor environments by using virtual reality (VR) and wearable bio-monitoring sensors. In this study, 28 participants spent time in an indoor environment featuring biophilic design elements and one without, with the order of the visit randomized. In each visit, they experienced the same environment for 5-minutes in reality and virtually by using VR. The indoor biophilic environment was associated with a decrease in participants's blood pressure. The overall differential effects for participants experiencing an indoor environment with biophilic elements versus none was 8.56 (95%CI: 5.60-11.52) mmHg lower systolic and 3.57 (95%CI: 0.36-6.78) mmHg lower diastolic blood pressure. In addition, their skin conductance decreased by 0.18 (95%CI: -0.004-0.36) µS and short-term memory improved by 14% (95%CI: 5.3%-23.2%). Moreover, our findings indicate that participants had similar physiological and cognitive benefits in the virtual environment and actual environment. The results indicate that biophilic environment may be benefitial in reduce stress in indoor settings. Additionally, the parity in results in virtual and real environments provides evidence that using VR can be an effective tool to simulate visual exposures when access to the real environment is not feasible.

In this chapter, desirable features of Holonic Manufacturing System (HMS) development and implementation environments are extracted, and HMS-Shell and JDPS are explained, as examples that provide these features. HMS-Shell is a GUI-based design tool for HMSs based on the Cooperation Domain (CD) that encapsulates cooperation partners and cooperation protocols. JDPS is a HMS implementation and execution environment based on reliable broadcast messaging that achieves complete location and multiplication transparency of entities. These features of HMS-Shell and JDPS make application programs independent of cooperation mechanisms, and enable easy dynamic reconfiguration and incremental development of HMSs while systems are in operation.

BackgroundIt is crucial to use innovative tools to gain clinical reasoning skills through experiential learning in pharmacy education, and one of the most effective tools used in this is virtual reality. However, the lack of research that empirically demonstrates the instructional principles of virtual environment design, especially in the clinical setting, has resulted in a significant gap in the current literature.AimIn this study, it was aimed to determine the instructional design principles of a virtual environment for the clinical pharmacy.MethodThe study was conducted as a design‐based research. The data of the study related to three components of the developed virtual reality environment in pharmacy education (VRPE). These components, scenario development interface‐scenario development interface, virtual environment, and scenario, were collected through interviews, observation, document review, and a system usability scale. Instructional design principles for the VRPE were determined through analysis of the collected data.ResultsThe prominent instructional design principles of the VRPE were revealed as immersion, interaction, diversity, flow, aesthetics‐ergonomic‐universal design, informing, and retest availability. The significance of the study was the adoption of a holistic perspective in the design of a virtual reality environment for pharmacy education. In addition, one of the most critical features of the study was eliminating the expertise barrier in virtual environment design. Thus, it was concluded that the VRPE is an extraordinary tool that can be used for pharmacy education to promote experiential learning.

Pain and discomfort are perceptible during many medical procedures. In the past, drugs have been the conventional means to alleviate pain, but in many instances, medications by themselves do not provide optimal results. Current advances are being made to control pain by integrating both the science of pain medications and the science of the human mind. Various psychological techniques, including distraction by virtual reality environments and the playing of video games, are being employed to treat pain. In virtual reality environments, an image is provided for the patient in a realistic, immersive manner devoid of distractions. This technology allows users to interact at many levels with the virtual environment, using many of their senses, and encourages them to become immersed in the virtual world they are experiencing. When immersion is high, much of the user's attention is focused on the virtual environment, leaving little attention left to focus on other things, such as pain. In this way virtual reality provides an effective medium for reproducing and/or enhancing the distractive qualities of guided imagery for the majority of the population who cannot visualize successfully.