This book examines the signal processing perspective in haptic teleoperation systems. This text covers the topics of prediction, estimation, architecture, data compression and error correction that can be applied to haptic teleoperation systems. The authors begin with an overview of haptic teleoperation systems, then look at a Bayesian approach to haptic teleoperation systems. They move onto a discussion of haptic data compression, haptic data digitization and forward error correction.

This volume presents a collection of research studies on sophisticated and functional computational instruments able to recognize, process, and store relevant situated interactional signals, as well as, interact with people, displaying reactions (under conditions of limited time) that show abilities of appropriately sensing and understanding environmental changes, producing suitable, autonomous, and adaptable responses to various social situations. These social robotic autonomous systems will improve the quality of life of their end-users while assisting them on several needs, ranging from educational settings, health care assistance, communicative disorders, and any disorder impairing either their physical, cognitive, or social functional activities. The multidisciplinary themes presented in the volume will be interesting for experts and students coming from different research fields and with different knowledge and backgrounds. The research reported is particularly relevant for academic centers, and Research & Development Institutions.

It is becoming increasingly necessary to systematically take into account human interaction and activity, and new technologies along with the completely renewed social and cultural environments that such digital environments and interfaces are calling for are now capable of delivering. ""Cross-Disciplinary Advances in Human Computer Interaction: User Modeling, Social Computing, and Adaptive Interfaces"" collects over 20 chapters covering the most recent in-depth issues within the field of human computer interaction (HCI). A necessary reference source for those in academia as well as the HCI industry, this book presents useful new approaches and methodologies for analysis, design, and evaluation.

Make-believe plays a far stronger role in both the design and use of interfaces, games and services than we have come to believe. This edited volume illustrates ways for grasping and utilising that connection to improve interaction, user experiences, and customer value. Useful for designers, undergraduates and researchers alike, this new research provide tools for understanding and applying make-believe in various contexts, ranging from digital tools to physical services. It takes the reader through a world of imagination and intuition applied into efficient practice, with topics including the connection of human-computer interaction (HCI) to make-believe and backstories, the presence of imagination in gamification, gameworlds, virtual worlds and service design, and the believability of make-believe based designs in various contexts. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges inherent in applying make-believe as a basis for interaction design, as well as the enactive mechanism behind it. Whether used as a university textbook or simply used for design inspiration, Digital Make-Believe provides new and efficient insight into approaching interaction in the way in which actual users of devices, software and services can innately utilise it.

Mixed Reality is moving out of the research-labs into our daily lives. It plays an increasing role in architecture, design and construction. The combination of digital content with reality creates an exciting synergy that sets out to enhance engagement within architectural design and construction.

State-of-the-art research projects on theories and applications within Mixed Reality are presented by leading researchers covering topics in architecture, design collaboration, construction and education. They discuss current projects and offer insight into the next wave of Mixed Reality possibilities.

This book discusses the design of the new mobility assistive information and communication technologies (ICT) devices for the visually impaired. The book begins with a definition of the space concept, followed by the concept of interaction with a space during mobility and this interaction characteristics. The contributors will then examine the neuro-cognitive basis of space perception for mobility and different theories of space perception. The text presents the existing technologies for space perception (sense recovery with stem and iPS cells, implants, brain plasticity, sensory substitution devices, multi modal technologies, etc.), the newest technologies for mobility assistance design, the way the feedback on environment is conveyed to the end-user. Methods for formative and summative evaluations of the mobility devices will also be discussed. The book concludes with a look to the future trends in research and technology development for mobility assistive information and communication technologies.

This book presents the technical program of the International Embedded Systems Symposium (IESS) 2009. Timely topics, techniques and trends in embedded system design are covered by the chapters in this volume, including modelling, simulation, verification, test, scheduling, platforms and processors. Particular emphasis is paid to automotive systems and wireless sensor networks. Sets of actual case studies in the area of embedded system design are also included. Over recent years, embedded systems have gained an enormous amount of proce- ing power and functionality and now enter numerous application areas, due to the fact that many of the formerly external components can now be integrated into a single System-on-Chip. This tendency has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the size and cost of embedded systems. As a unique technology, the design of embedded systems is an essential element of many innovations. Embedded systems meet their performance goals, including real-time constraints, through a combination of special-purpose hardware and software components tailored to the system requirements. Both the development of new features and the reuse of existing intellectual property components are essential to keeping up with ever more demanding customer requirements. Furthermore, design complexities are steadily growing with an increasing number of components that have to cooperate properly. Embedded system designers have to cope with multiple goals and constraints simul- neously, including timing, power, reliability, dependability, maintenance, packaging and, last but not least, price.

This book aims to deconstruct ethnography to alert systems designers, and other stakeholders, to the issues presented by new approaches that move beyond the studies of 'work' and 'work practice' within the social sciences (in particular anthropology and sociology). The theoretical and methodological apparatus of the social sciences distort the social and cultural world as lived in and understood by ordinary members, whose common-sense understandings shape the actual milieu into which systems are placed and used. In Deconstructing Ethnography the authors show how 'new' calls are returning systems design to 'old' and problematic ways of understanding the social. They argue that systems design can be appropriately grounded in the social through the ordinary methods that members use to order their actions and interactions. This work is written for post-graduate students and researchers alike, as well as design practitioners who have an interest in bringing the social to bear on design in a systematic rather than a piecemeal way. This is not a 'how to' book, but instead elaborates the foundations upon which the social can be systematically built into the design of ubiquitous and interactive systems.

th It is fitting that there was a World Computer Congress in the 50 anniversary year of IFIP. Within the Learn IT Stream of WCC2010, the conference, Key Competencies in the Knowledge Society (KCKS), brought together some 43 papers from around the world covering many areas of ICT and its role in education. Of the papers presented here, three were selected as key theme papers for the KCKS conference. These papers' by Adams and Tatnall, Tarrago and Wilson, Diethelm and Dorge, are included in these proceedings. We congratulate these authors for the quality of their work that led to selection. The range of issues covered within this volume is too broad to set out here but c- ers, amongst other things, e-examination, Twitter, teacher education, school-based learning, methodological frameworks and human development theories. It has been an exciting and rewarding task to put these papers together. They rep- sent a coming together of great minds and cutting-edge research. We thank our contributors and our reviewers for producing such an impressive body of work."

The recent advances in display technologies and mobile devices is having an important effect on the way users interact with all kinds of devices (computers, mobile devices, laptops, tablets, and so on). These are opening up new possibilities for interaction, including the distribution of the UI (User Interface) amongst different devices, and implies that the UI can be split and composed, moved, copied or cloned among devices running the same or different operating systems. These new ways of manipulating the UI are considered under the emerging topic of Distributed User Interfaces (DUIs). DUIs are concerned with the repartition of one of many elements from one or many user interfaces in order to support one or many users to carry out one or many tasks on one or many domains in one or many contexts of use - each context of use consisting of users, platforms, and environments. The 20 chapters in the book cover between them the state-of-the-art, the foundations, and original applications of DUIs. Case studies are also included, and the book culminates with a review of interesting and novel applications that implement DUIs in different scenarios.

Readers will progress from an understanding of what the Internet is now towards an understanding of the motivations and techniques that will drive its future.

The success of the World Wide Web depends on the ability of users to store, p- cess and retrieve digital information regardless of distance boundaries, languages and domains of knowledge. The universality and ?exibility of the World Wide Web have also enabled the rapid growth of a variety of new services and applications based on human-machine interaction. The semantics of exchanged information and services should be useful not only for human to human communications, but also in that machines would be able to understand and automatically process web content. Semanticsgive well-de?nedmeaningto web content and enable computersand p- ple to work in cooperation. Today, the crucial challenge becomes the development of languages to express information in a machine processable format. Now more than ever, new advanced techniques and intelligent approaches are required to tra- form the Web into a universal reasoning and computing machine. Web intelligence attempts to deal with this challenge by exploiting information technologies and - ti?cial intelligence approaches to design the next generation of web-empowered systems and services.

I3E 2009 was held in Nancy, France, during September 23-25, hosted by Nancy University and INRIA Grand-Est at LORIA. The conference provided scientists andpractitionersofacademia, industryandgovernmentwithaforumwherethey presented their latest ?ndings concerning application of e-business, e-services and e-society, and the underlying technology to support these applications. The 9th IFIP Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, sponsored by IFIP WG 6.1. of Technical Committees TC6 in cooperation with TC11, and TC8 represents the continuation of previous events held in Zurich (Switzerland) in 2001, Lisbon (Portugal) in 2002, Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 2003, Toulouse (France) in 2004, Poznan (Poland) in 2005, Turku (Finland) in 2006, Wuhan (China) in 2007 and Tokyo (Japan) in 2008. The call for papers attracted papers from 31 countries from the ?ve con- nents. As a result, the I3E 2009 programo?ered 12 sessions of full-paper pres- tations. The 31 selected papers cover a wide and important variety of issues in e-Business, e-servicesande-society, including security, trust, andprivacy, ethical and societal issues, business organization, provision of services as software and software as services, and others. Extended versions of selected papers submitted to I3E 2009 will be published in the International Journal of e-Adoption and in AIS Transactions on Enterprise Systems. In addition, a 500-euros prize was awarded to the authors of the best paper selected by the Program Comm- tee. We thank all authors who submitted their papers, the Program Committee members and external reviewers for their excellent

This book covers key topics in the field of intelligent ambient adaptive systems. It focuses on the results worked out within the framework of the ATRACO (Adaptive and TRusted Ambient eCOlogies) project. The theoretical background, the developed prototypes, and the evaluated results form a fertile ground useful for the broad intelligent environments scientific community as well as for industrial interest groups. The new edition provides: Chapter authors comment on their work on ATRACO with final remarks as viewed in retrospective Each chapter has been updated with follow-up work emerging from ATRACO An extensive introduction to state-of-the-art statistical dialog management for intelligent environments Approaches are introduced on how Trust is reflected during the dialog with the system

This book includes a short history of interactive narrative and an account of a small group collaboratively authored social media narrative: Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: After Love Comes Destruction. At the forefront of narrative innovation are social media channels - speculative spaces for creating and experiencing stories that are interactive and collaborative. Media, however, is only the access point to the expressiveness of narrative content. Wikis, messaging, mash-ups, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others) are on a trajectory of participatory story creation that goes back many centuries. These forms offer authors ways to create narrative meaning that reflects our current media culture, as the harlequinade reflected the culture of the 18th century, and as the volvelle reflected that of the 13th century. Interactivity, Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media first prospects the last millennium for antecedents of today's authoring practices. It does so with a view to considering how today's digital manifestations are a continuation, perhaps a reiteration, perhaps a novel pioneering, of humans' abiding interest in interactive narrative. The book then takes the reader inside the process of creating a collaborative, interactive narrative in today's social media through an authoring experience undertaken by a group of graduate students. The engaging mix of blogs, emails, personal diaries , and fabricated documents used to create the narrative demonstrates that a social media environment can facilitate a meaningful and productive collaborative authorial experience and result in an abundance of networked, personally expressive, and visually and textually referential content. The resulting narrative, After Love Comes Destruction, based in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, shows how a generative narrative space evolved around the students' use of social media in ways they had not previously considered both for authoring and for delivery of their final narrative artifact.

This book covers challenges and solutions in establishing Industry 4.0 standards for Internet of Things. It proposes a clear view about the role of Internet of Things in establishing standards. The sensor design for industrial problem, challenges faced, and solutions are all addressed. The concept of digital twin and complexity in data analytics for predictive maintenance and fault prediction is also covered. The book is aimed at existing problems faced by the industry at present, with the goal of cost-efficiency and unmanned automation. It also concentrates on predictive maintenance and predictive failures. In addition, it includes design challenges and a survey of literature.

This book is the first resource to provide in-depth coverage on topical areas of assistive, rehabilitative, and health-related applications for haptic (touch-based) technologies. Application topics are grouped into thematic areas spanning haptic devices for sensory impairments, health and well-being, and physical impairments which are illustrated in this book. A diverse group of experts in the field were invited to contribute different chapters to provide complementary and multidisciplinary perspectives. Unlike other books on haptics, which focus on human haptic perception, specific modalities of haptics (e.g., realistic haptic rendering), or broadly cover the subfields of haptics, this book takes an application-oriented approach to present a tour of how the field of haptics has been advanced with respect to important, impactful thematic focuses. Under Theme 1 "Sensory Impairments", haptics technologies to support individuals with sensory impairments is presented which includes: Spatial awareness in sensory impairments through touch; Haptically-assisted interfaces for persons with visual impairments; and Enabling learning experiences for visually impaired children by interaction design. Under Theme 2 "Haptics for Health and Well-Being", haptics technologies aimed at supporting exercise and healthy aging will be covered including: Haptics in rehabilitation, exergames and health; Therapeutic haptics for mental health and well-being; and Applications of haptics in medicine. Under Theme 3 "Haptics for Physical Impairments", haptics technologies for enhancing the quality of life for individuals with weakened/impaired limbs or neurological diseases impacting movement is targeted including: Assistive soft exoskeletons with pneumatic artificial muscles; Haptics for accessibility in rehabilitative hardware; and intelligent robotics and immersive displays for enhancing haptic interaction in physical rehabilitation environments. Engineers, scientists, and researchers working in the areas of haptics, multimedia, virtual/augmented/mixed-reality, human-computer interaction, assistive technologies, rehabilitative technologies, healthcare technologies, and/or actuator design will want to purchase this book. Advanced level students and hobbyists interested in haptics will also be interested in this book.

The key idea of the book is that scientific and practical advances can be obtained if researchers working in traditions that have been assumed to be mutually incompatible make a real effort to engage in dialogue with each other, comparing and contrasting their understandings of a given phenomenon and how these different understandings can either complement or mutually elaborate on each other. This key idea applies to many fields, particularly in the social and behavioral sciences, as well as education and computer science. The book shows how we have achieved this by presenting our study of collaborative learning during the course of a four-year project. Through a series of five workshops involving dozens of researchers, the 37 editors and authors involved in this project studied and reported on collaborative learning, technology enhanced learning, and cooperative work. The authors share an interest in understanding group interactions, but approach this topic from a variety of traditional disciplinary homes and theoretical and methodological traditions. This allows the book to be of use to researchers in many different fields and with many different goals and agendas.

Software effort estimation is a key element of software project planning and management. Yet, in industrial practice, the important role of effort estimation is often underestimated and/or misunderstood. In this book, Adam Trendowicz presents the CoBRA method (an abbreviation for Cost Estimation, Benchmarking, and Risk Assessment) for estimating the effort required to successfully complete a software development project, which uniquely combines human judgment and measurement data in order to systematically create a custom-specific effort estimation model. CoBRA goes far beyond simply predicting the development effort; it supports project decision-makers in negotiating the project scope, managing project risks, benchmarking productivity, and directing improvement activities. To illustrate the method's practical use, the book reports several real-world cases where CoBRA was applied in various industrial contexts. These cases represent different estimation contexts in terms of software project environment, estimation objectives, and estimation constraints. This book is the result of a successful collaboration between the process management division of Fraunhofer IESE and many software companies in the field of software engineering technology transfer. It mainly addresses software practitioners who deal with planning and managing software development projects as part of their daily work, and is also of interest for students or courses specializing in software engineering or software project management.

This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND license. It addresses the most recent developments in cloud computing such as HPC in the Cloud, heterogeneous cloud, self-organising and self-management, and discusses the business implications of cloud computing adoption. Establishing the need for a new architecture for cloud computing, it discusses a novel cloud management and delivery architecture based on the principles of self-organisation and self-management. This focus shifts the deployment and optimisation effort from the consumer to the software stack running on the cloud infrastructure. It also outlines validation challenges and introduces a novel generalised extensible simulation framework to illustrate the effectiveness, performance and scalability of self-organising and self-managing delivery models on hyperscale cloud infrastructures. It concludes with a number of potential use cases for self-organising, self-managing clouds and the impact on those businesses.

This book gives recommendations on which interactive decision aids to offer in webstores. Interactive decision aids are tools that help online shoppers to compare and evaluate product information. Consumers can, for instance, exclude products that do not meet certain criteria, they can highlight certain information or they can assign ratings of different kinds. Interactive decision aids are important, because finding the preferred product in a short amount of time increases both the customers' satisfaction and, in turn, the sales volume.This book includes a detailed description of decision aids, closely studies how decision aids are related to the decision behavior of customers, and develops a comprehensive system of decision aids, which is very flexible, increases both customer satisfaction and confidence, and can be used intuitively. The close link between typical behaviors and the decision aids allows webstores to learn about customers' decision-making behavior by using a simple click stream analysis. The book is written in an easy-to-read style and provides both practical recommendations and knowledge about consumer behavior

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Agile software development has become an umbrella term for a number of changes in how software developers plan and coordinate their work, how they communicate with customers and external stakeholders, and how software development is organized in small, medium, and large companies, from the telecom and healthcare sectors to games and interactive media. Still, after a decade of research, agile software development is the source of continued debate due to its multifaceted nature and insufficient synthesis of research results. Dingsoyr, Dyba, and Moe now present a comprehensive snapshot of the knowledge gained over many years of research by those working closely with or in the industry. It shows the current state of research on agile software development through an introduction and ten invited contributions on the main research fields, each written by renowned experts. These chapters cover three main issues: foundations and background of agile development, agile methods in practice, and principal challenges and new frontiers. They show the important results in each subfield, and in addition they explain what these results mean to practitioners as well as for future research in the field. The book is aimed at reflective practitioners and researchers alike, and it also can serve as the basis for graduate courses at universities.

This book presents the proceedings of International Conference on Emerging Research in Computing, Information, Communication and Applications, ERCICA 2016. ERCICA provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers, professional engineers and scientists, educators, and technologists to discuss, debate and promote research and technology in the upcoming areas of computing, information, communication and their applications. The book discusses these emerging research areas, providing a valuable resource for researchers and practicing engineers alike.

This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the control of marine vehicles, from fundamental to advanced concepts, including robust control techniques for handling model uncertainty, environmental disturbances, and actuator limitations. Starting with an introductory chapter that extensively reviews automatic control and dynamic modeling techniques for ocean vehicles, the first part of the book presents in-depth information on the analysis and control of linear time invariant systems. The concepts discussed are developed progressively, providing a basis for understanding more complex techniques and stimulating readers' intuition. In addition, selected examples illustrating the main concepts, the corresponding MATLAB (R) code, and problems are included in each chapter. In turn, the second part of the book offers comprehensive coverage on the stability and control of nonlinear systems. Following the same intuitive approach, it guides readers from the fundamentals to more advanced techniques, which culminate in integrator backstepping, adaptive and sliding mode control. Leveraging the author's considerable teaching and research experience, the book offers a good balance of theory and stimulating questions. Not only does it provide a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students; it will also benefit practitioners who want to review the foundational concepts underpinning some of the latest advanced marine vehicle control techniques, for use in their own applications.