This book focuses on the fundamentals and recent advances in RGB-D imaging as well as covering a range of RGB-D applications. The topics covered include: data acquisition, data quality assessment, filling holes, 3D reconstruction, SLAM, multiple depth camera systems, segmentation, object detection, salience detection, pose estimation, geometric modelling, fall detection, autonomous driving, motor rehabilitation therapy, people counting and cognitive service robots. The availability of cheap RGB-D sensors has led to an explosion over the last five years in the capture and application of colour plus depth data. The addition of depth data to regular RGB images vastly increases the range of applications, and has resulted in a demand for robust and real-time processing of RGB-D data. There remain many technical challenges, and RGB-D image processing is an ongoing research area. This book covers the full state of the art, and consists of a series of chapters by internationally renowned experts in the field. Each chapter is written so as to provide a detailed overview of that topic. RGB-D Image Analysis and Processing will enable both students and professional developers alike to quickly get up to speed with contemporary techniques, and apply RGB-D imaging in their own projects.

The semiotic perspective of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) can give you insight into values, beliefs, and reference systems of the users that often go unnoticed when using traditional HCI approaches. Cross-Cultural Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience Design: A Semiotic Perspective focuses on the semiotic approach in product, services, and system design, and emphasizes the semiotic and linguistic aspects in HCI and user experience (UX). The book shows you how to leverage these insights when creating useful, usable, and appealing user interfaces. The book covers the theoretical background of HCI semiotics with emphasis on the interaction elements present in the user interface, the methodology to work with them to achieve useful insights both for design and evaluation, and the results obtained compared to traditional UX methods. It then examines a cross-cultural study presenting a semiotic method for design and evaluation in a different cultural background, and discusses the resulting insights, which are then structured as guidelines for HCI/UX design for Chinese users. Although extensive research has been done in HCI semiotics and the cultural aspects of HCI, this book differs by exploring how these fields are informed by the linguistic perspective. It presents a novel approach to cross-cultural HCI/UX, covers the latest research in the field, and brings a set of tools and methods to benefit the design process by taking a semiotic perspective. It also supplies a set of design guidelines for developing more usable, useful, and appealing products, services, and systems.

The research described in this book shows that conversation analysis can effectively model dialogue. Specifically, this work shows that the multidisciplinary field of communicative ICALL may greatly benefit from including Conversation Analysis. As a consequence, this research makes several contributions to the related research disciplines, such as conversation analysis, second-language acquisition, computer-mediated communication, artificial intelligence, and dialogue systems. The book will be of value for researchers and engineers in the areas of computational linguistics, intelligent assistants, and conversational interfaces.

"With its accessible presentation style and its focus on 'scientifically sound' practices, this book benefits the public, students, and researchers alike." Prof Lynne Coventry, Director of PactLab, University of Northumbria, UK "This book is a valuable guide to anyone seeking to further explore current thinking in the field." Dr Rachel Harrad, Lecturer in Psychology, Swansea University, UK "This book provides an accessible and engaging introduction to a wide range of key contemporary issues in cyberpsychology." Dr Joanne Lloyd, Senior Lecturer in Cyberpsychology, University of Wolverhampton, UK This comprehensive and accessibly written book brings together in one place for the first time the wealth of debates within cyberpsychology. Is the distinction between so-called digital natives and digital immigrants meaningful in practice? What is the difference between screen time and screen use, and why has one been pathologized while the other has not? Is social media really bad for wellbeing? This book considers these issues and more, in depth, with clear, informed resolutions and conclusions no longer being mediated by jargon-filled articles or misrepresentative media headlines. Key features include: *Real World Applications boxes, signposting why each debate is pertinent and what the implications may be in practice *Take Home Messages boxes, helpfully summarising what students need to know and why Linda K. Kaye is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University, UK and Chair of the BPS Cyberpsychology section. She is known online as The Cyber Doctor, where she regularly blogs for a broad audience, as well as providing public comment for outlets including The Guardian, Stylist, The Telegraph and The Independent on topics such as internet accessibility and inclusivity, zoom fatigue, and last but not least, what your favourite emoji says about you.

Enterprise solutions have emerged as promising tools for integrating and extending business processes across business functions. Supplying a clear and comprehensive introduction to the field, this book provides a detailed description of enterprise information integration from the development of enterprise systems to extended enterprise information integration in supply chain environments.
Enterprise Integration and Information Architecture: A Systems Perspective on Industrial Information Integration explains how to improve industrial information integration through the application of a systems approach. Describing how systems science is impacting current research in industrial information integration, it covers enterprise architecture, information architecture for enterprises, business process/work flow modeling, and enterprise information integration.
Covering the emergence, growth, and extension of integrated enterprise systems, the book provides you with various perspectives of modern enterprise solutions. It introduces the critical concepts of ERP, industry-oriented enterprise resource planning, and entire resource planning. It also provides guidance on how to transition from extended enterprise integration in a supply chain environment to systems-based enterprise architecture, enterprise modeling, and enterprise modeling in a supply chain environment.
The book proposes a new information architecture for enterprise and supply chain management. It presents modeling and integration information flows for enterprise information integration, together with the Internet of Things (IoT). It also explores the theory and methods of industrial information integration including integration approaches and enterprise application integration.
Complete with numerous examples of extended enterprise integration in actual supply chain environments, the book illustrates the critical issues that arise in professional practice and also explores emerging trends in enterprise integration and its information architecture"

The dependence on quality software in all areas of life is what makes software engineering a key discipline for today's society. Thus, over the last few decades it has been increasingly recognized that it is particularly important to demonstrate the value of software engineering methods in real-world environments, a task which is the focus of empirical software engineering. One of the leading protagonists of this discipline worldwide is Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dieter Rombach, who dedicated his entire career to empirical software engineering. For his many important contributions to the field he has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the U.S. National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. This book, published in honor of his 60th birthday, is dedicated to Dieter Rombach and his contributions to software engineering in general, as well as to empirical software engineering in particular. This book presents invited contributions from a number of the most internationally renowned software engineering researchers like Victor Basili, Barry Boehm, Manfred Broy, Carlo Ghezzi, Michael Jackson, Leon Osterweil, and, of course, by Dieter Rombach himself. Several key experts from the Fraunhofer IESE, the institute founded and led by Dieter Rombach, also contributed to the book. The contributions summarize some of the most important trends in software engineering today and outline a vision for the future of the field. The book is structured into three main parts. The first part focuses on the classical foundations of software engineering, such as notations, architecture, and processes, while the second addresses empirical software engineering in particular as the core field of Dieter Rombach's contributions. Finally, the third part discusses a broad vision for the future of software engineering.

Software has become a key component of contemporary life and algorithms that rank, classify, or recommend are everywhere. Building on the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon and the cultural techniques tradition, this book examines the constructive and cumulative character of software and retraces the historical trajectories of a series of algorithmic techniques that have become the building blocks for contemporary practices of ordering. Developed in opposition to centuries of library tradition, these techniques instantiate dynamic, perspectivist, and interested forms of knowing. Embedded in technical infrastructures and economic logics, they have become engines of order that transform how we arrange information, ideas, and people.

The safety case (SC) is one of the railway industry's most important deliverables for creating confidence in their systems. This is the first book on how to write an SC, based on the standard EN 50129:2003. Experience has shown that preparing and understanding an SC is difficult and time consuming, and as such the book provides insights that enhance the training for writing an SC. The book discusses both "regular" safety cases and agile safety cases, which avoid too much documentation, improve communication between the stakeholders, allow quicker approval of the system, and which are important in the light of rapidly changing technology. In addition, it discusses the necessity of frequently updating software due to market requirements, changes in requirements and increased cyber-security threats. After a general introduction to SCs and agile thinking in chapter 1, chapter 2 describes the majority of the roles that are relevant when developing railway-signaling systems. Next, chapter 3 provides information related to the assessment of signaling systems, to certifications based on IEC 61508 and to the authorization of signaling systems. Chapter 4 then explains how an agile safety plan satisfying the requirements given in EN 50126-1:1999 can be developed, while chapter 5 provides a brief introduction to safety case patterns and notations. Lastly, chapter 6 combines all this and describes how an (agile) SC can be developed and what it should include. To ensure that infrastructure managers, suppliers, consultants and others can take full advantage of the agile mind-set, the book includes concrete examples and presents relevant agile practices. Although the scope of the book is limited to signaling systems, the basic foundations for (agile) SCs are clearly described so that they can also be applied in other cases.

Content Management Systems (CMSs) are used in almost every industry by millions of end-user organizations. In contrast to the 90s, they are no longer used as isolated applications in one organization but they support critical core operations in business ecosystems. Content management today is more interactive and more integrative: interactive because end-users are increasingly content creators themselves and integrative because content elements can be embedded into various other applications. The authors of this book investigate how Semantic Technologies can increase interactivity and integration capabilities of CMSs and discuss their business value to millions of end-user organizations. This book has therefore the objective, to reflect existing applications as well as to discuss and present new applications for CMSs that use Semantic Technologies. An evaluation of 27 CMSs concludes this book and provides a basis for IT executives that plan to adopt or replace a CMS in the near future.

This book provides to manufacturers, designers and evaluation professionals the necessary tools for balancing design and the assessment phases during the product lifecycle. It proposes an integrated model of interaction evaluation for a holistic analysis of the user experience by both discussing in details the interaction testing methods, and promoting the involvement of disabled users in human computer interaction evaluation.

Embodied conversational agents (ECA) and speech-based human-machine interfaces can together represent more advanced and more natural human-machine interaction. Fusion of both topics is a challenging agenda in research and production spheres. The important goal of human-machine interfaces is to provide content or functionality in the form of a dialog resembling face-to-face conversations. All natural interfaces strive to exploit and use different communication strategies that provide additional meaning to the content, whether they are human-machine interfaces for controlling an application or different ECA-based human-machine interfaces directly simulating face-to-face conversation. Coverbal Synchrony in Human-Machine Interaction presents state-of-the-art concepts of advanced environment-independent multimodal human-machine interfaces that can be used in different contexts, ranging from simple multimodal web-browsers (for example, multimodal content reader) to more complex multimodal human-machine interfaces for ambient intelligent environments (such as supportive environments for elderly and agent-guided household environments). They can also be used in different computing environments-from pervasive computing to desktop environments. Within these concepts, the contributors discuss several communication strategies, used to provide different aspects of human-machine interaction.

The European Conference on Computer and Network Defense draws contributions and participation both from academia and industry, and addresses security from multiple perspectives, including state-of-the-art research in computer network security, intrusion detection, denial-of-service, privacy protection, security policies, and incident response & management. The conference is organized jointly by the Institute of Computer Science of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) and the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).

This book reports on the latest research and developments in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). It introduces ten outstanding and innovative BCI projects, nominated as finalists for the BCI award 2012 by a jury of established researchers and discusses how each of the nominated projects reflects general worldwide trends in BCI development. At the core of the book, nine of these ten projects are described in detailed individual chapters. These include a focused introduction to each project, an easy to grasp description of the methods and a timely report on the most recent developments achieved since the submission to the award. Hence, this book provides a cutting-edge overview of the newest BCI research trends, from leading experts, in an easy to read format supported by explanatory pictures, graphs and figures.

This book offers a timely report on an emerging topic in the field of wearable assistive technology: the design and development of robotic extra fingers. After a concise review of the state of the art and a description of earlier prototypes, it discusses the authors' efforts to address issues such as portability and wearability of the devices, including strategies to reduce fatigue and to integrate the motion of the extra fingers with that of the human hand. The book also explores optimized control algorithms and the design of wearable sensorimotor interfaces, and presents a set of tests carried out on healthy subjects and chronic stroke patients. Merging concepts from robotics, biomechanics, human factors and control theory and offering an overview of supernumerary robotic fingers, including the challenges, this book will inspire researchers involved in the development of wearable robotic devices and interfaces based on the principles of wearability, safety, ergonomics and user comfort.

Participatory design is about the direct involvement of people in the co-design of the technologies they use. Its central concern is how collaborative design processes can be driven by the participation of the people affected by the technology designed. Embracing a diverse collection of principles and practices aimed at making technologies, tools, environments, businesses, and social institutions more responsive to human needs, the International Handbook of Participatory Design is a state-of-the-art reference handbook for the subject. The Handbook brings together a multidisciplinary and international group of highly recognized and experienced experts to present an authoritative overview of the field and its history and discuss contributions and challenges of the pivotal issues in participatory design, including heritage, ethics, ethnography, methods, tools and techniques and community involvement. The book also highlights three large-scale case studies which show how participatory design has been used to bring about outstanding changes in different organizations. The book shows why participatory design is an important, highly relevant and rewarding area for research and practice. It will be an invaluable resource for students, researchers, scholars and professionals in participatory design.

This book discusses the CAPTCHA (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart), an artificial-intelligence-based test commonly used on websites for preventing security attacks, covering its foundations, the main trends and challenges, as well as innovative features and research aspects. It focuses on the recently proposed CAPTCHAs, introducing research approaches for analyzing of the usability of the CAPTCHA test for Internet users. The book enables readers to become familiar with the CAPTCHA technology from the user's perspective, from the basic concepts underlying the test to more advanced concepts. It is intended for students as well as graduates wanting to gain insights into new CAPTCHA designs as well as new research directions.

As computers proliferate and as the field of computer graphics matures, it has become increasingly important for computer scientists to understand how users perceive and interpret computer graphics. Experimental Design: From User Studies to Psychophysics is an accessible introduction to psychological experiments and experimental design, covering the major components in the design, execution, and analysis of perceptual studies.

The book begins with an introduction to the concepts central to designing and understanding experiments, including developing a research question, setting conditions and controls, and balancing specificity with generality. The book then explores in detail a number of types of experimental tasks: free description, rating scales, forced-choice, specialized multiple choice, and real-world tasks as well as physiological studies. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each type and provides examples of that type of experiment from the authors own work. The book also covers stimulus-related issues, including popular stimulus resources. It concludes with a thorough examination of statistical techniques for analyzing results, including methods specific to individual tasks.

During the past 20 years, behavioral and social scientists following advances in physics and mathematics have shown an increasing interest in complex, adaptive, self-organizing, dynamic systems. The appeal of this perspective is fueled by the fact that there are a handful of properties that are common to all dynamic systems that can be used to explain the spontaneous emergence of novel forms, the mechanisms of continuity and change, and the dynamics of a large number of interacting factors. From animal population dynamics to human neural processes, there is growing evidence that human individual and social interactions may be understood as a dynamic system. In the field of psychology, there was a flurry of books during the early 1990s that explored the dynamic human system. These titles, and those that have been published since, fall into two general categories: those that integrate dynamic systems ideas into psychological theories and those that provide methods of modeling dynamic human systems (see list of competitive titles below).

Despite the enrichment that dynamic systems principles have afforded psychological theories, the methods provided to test these theoretical assumptions have not been readily adopted. The reason is that, unlike the physical scientists, social scientists are not as familiar with the mathematical formulations (i.e., differential and difference equations) required for these methods, nor are their data particularly amenable to such manipulations or models. Furthermore, the psychological relevance of some of the parameters extracted from these methods (i.e., Lyupanov exponents, chaotic attractors) is very difficult to interpret. What is needed is a methodological middle road to bridge theory and analysis. The proposed book on the state space grid method is perfectly poised to provide that bridge.

State space grids were first developed by Marc Lewis and colleagues (Lewis, Lamey, and Douglas, 1999) to depict sequences of infant attention and distress. This technique has since been applied to the study of parent-child interactions (Granic & Lamey, 2002; Granic, Hollenstein, Dishion, & Patterson, 2003; Hollenstein, Granic, Stoolmiller, & Snyder, 2005; Hollenstein & Lewis, under review; Lewis, Zimmerman, Hollenstein, & Lamey, 2004), and peer interactions (Dishion, Nelson, Bullock, & Winter, 2005; Martin, Fabes, Hanish, & Hollenstein, 2005). At this time, there are projects in progress that extend this work into the study of marital interactions, young adult group drinking patterns, eye gaze and eye contact in response to questioning, diary studies, and peer pressure dynamics.
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This volume contains the invited papers presented at the IUTAM Symposium on Multibody Dynamics and Interaction Control in Virtual and Real Environments held in Budapest, Hungary, June 7 11 2010.

The symposium aimed to bring together specialists in the fields of multibody system modeling, contact/collision mechanics and control of mechanical systems.

The offered topics included modeling aspects, mechanical and mathematical models, the question of neglections and simplifications, reduction of large systems, interaction with environment like air, water and obstacles, contact of all types, control concepts, control stability and optimization.

Discussions between experts in these fields made it possible to exchange ideas about the recent advances in multibody system modeling and interaction control, as well as about the possible future trends. The presentations of recent scientific results may facilitate the interaction between scientific areas like system/control engineering and mechanical engineering.

Papers on dynamics modeling and interaction control were selected to cover the main areas: mathematical modeling, dynamic analysis, friction modeling, solid and thermomechanical aspects, and applications.

A significant outcome of the meeting was the opening towards applications that are of key importance to the future of nonlinear dynamics.

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The Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design covers basic human factors issues relating to screen design, input devices, and information organization and processing, as well as addresses newer features which will become prominent in the next generation of Web technologies. These include multimodal interfaces, wireless capabilities, and agents that can improve convenience and usability. Written by leading researchers and/or practitioners in the field, this volume reflects the varied backgrounds and interests of individuals involved in all aspects of human factors and Web design and includes chapters on a full range of topics.
Divided into 12 sections, this book addresses:
*historical backgrounds and overviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE);
*specific subfields of HFE;
*issues involved in content preparation for the Web;
*information search and interactive information agents;
*designing for universal access and specific user populations;
*the importance of incorporating usability evaluations in the design process;
*task analysis, meaning analysis, and performance modeling;
*specific Web applications in academic and industrial settings;
*Web psychology and information security;
*emerging technological developments and applications for the Web; and
*the costs and benefits of incorporating human factors for the Web and the state of current guidelines.
The Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design is intended for researchers and practitioners concerned with all aspects of Web design. It could also be used as a text for advanced courses in computer science, industrial engineering, and psychology.

This book provides an overview of the latest developments in the fast growing field of tangible user interfaces. It presents a new type of modeling environment where the users interact with geospatial data and simulations using 3D physical landscape model coupled with 3D rendering engine. Multiple users can modify the physical model, while it is being scanned, providing input for geospatial analysis and simulations. The results are then visualized by projecting images or animations back on the physical model while photorealistic renderings of human views are displayed on a computer screen or in a virtual reality headset. New techniques and software which couple the hardware set-up with open source GRASS GIS and Blender rendering engine, make the system instantly applicable to a wide range of applications in geoscience education, landscape design, computer games, stakeholder engagement, and many others. This second edition introduces a new more powerful version of the tangible modeling environment with multiple types of interaction, including polymeric sand molding, placement of markers, and delineation of areas using colored felt patches. Chapters on coupling tangible interaction with 3D rendering engine and immersive virtual environment, and a case study integrating the tools presented throughout this book, demonstrate the second generation of the system - Immersive Tangible Landscape - that enhances the modeling and design process through interactive rendering of modeled landscape. This book explains main components of Immersive Tangible Landscape System, and provides the basic workflows for running the applications. The fundamentals of the system are followed by series of example applications in geomorphometry, hydrology, coastal and fluvial flooding, fire spread, landscape and park design, solar energy, trail planning, and others. Graduate and undergraduate students and educators in geospatial science, earth science, landscape architecture, computer graphics and games, natural resources and many others disciplines, will find this book useful as a reference or secondary textbook. Researchers who want to build and further develop the system will most likely be the core audience, but also anybody interested in geospatial modeling applications (hazard risk management, hydrology, solar energy, coastal and fluvial flooding, fire spread, landscape and park design) will want to purchase this book.

This book is a result of a workshop, the 8th of the successful TopoInVis workshop series, held in 2019 in Nykoeping, Sweden. The workshop regularly gathers some of the world's leading experts in this field. Thereby, it provides a forum for discussions on the latest advances in the field with a focus on finding practical solutions to open problems in topological data analysis for visualization. The contributions provide introductory and novel research articles including new concepts for the analysis of multivariate and time-dependent data, robust computational approaches for the extraction and approximations of topological structures with theoretical guarantees, and applications of topological scalar and vector field analysis for visualization. The applications span a wide range of scientific areas comprising climate science, material sciences, fluid dynamics, and astronomy. In addition, community efforts with respect to joint software development are reported and discussed.

Now, more than ever, professionals can benefit from the power of location data, maps, and analytics in healthcare. Health professionals see the importance of the who, what, when, and where of data analytics. The "where" adds a crucial element because good healthcare begins locally and understanding the impacts of place leads to better health. Health professionals recognize the insights gained from visualizing and analyzing location data. Maps, dashboards, apps, and charts can serve as location analytic tools to quantify problems, make predictions, improve operations, assess infrastructure, and make better decisions overall. GIS Jump Start for Health Professionals is a concise workbook that introduces location analytics available in geographic information systems (GIS) to health professionals, medical students, residents, fellows, nursing students, medical researchers, and others interested in health IT and informatics, health-care administration, and health policy. GIS Jump Start for Health Professionals provides hands-on tutorials that introduce the ArcGIS tools and shows how to use web-based data, storytelling apps, and much more. The book includes concepts and short video lectures to improve learning outcomes. Focused lessons get health professionals up and running quickly and experiencing first hand the value of location data, maps, and analytics. Written by Kristen S. Kurland, an award-winning professor at Carnegie Mellon University and co-creator of the GIS Tutorial series, this book can be used as a short course or incorporated into another course. It is also valuable to self-learners who want location technology experience.

A collection of works authored by leading scientists from the US and Russia, Human-Computer Interaction and Operators' Performance: Optimizing Work Design with Activity Theory describes applied and systemic-structural activity theory as it is used to study human-computer interaction, aviation, design, and training. Important from a theoretical and practical perspective, the book describes new analytical and experimental methods in the study of human work. The book facilitates the exchange of ideas between scientists working in ergonomics, human factors, human-computer interaction, industrial/organizational psychology, economics, management training, and other related areas. Drawing on their theoretical perspectives, the authors provide a comparative analysis of the various schools working in activity theory and a new approach to the study of human work derived from applied and systemic-structural activity theory. They cover special topics such as functional analysis of attention and classification of professions developed utilizing applied activity theory methods. In addition the book presents comparative analysis of work activity theory and applications. Representing the next significant step in the development of applied and systemic-structural activity theory, the book offers a balanced picture of theoretical and applied issues in the study of human work from general, applied, and systemic-structural activity theory points of view. It provides state-of-the art information and emphasizes its application to the study of human work while interacting with advanced technology.