Personalizing Web sites with mixed-initiative interaction

Personalization refers to the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to an individual user. Commercial Web sites increasingly employ personalization to help retain customers and reduce information overload. A Web site is personalized if a user can interact with the site in an expressive way to achieve his information-seeking goals. Thus, personalizing the user's interaction is the best way to achieve personalization. The paper discusses mixed initiative interaction and the use of XSLT for personalization.     

Color design for illustrative visualization

Professional designers and artists are quite cognizant of the rules that guide the design of effective color palettes, from both aesthetic and attention-guiding points of view. In the field of visualization, however, the use of systematic rules embracing these aspects has received less attention. The situation is further complicated by the fact that visualization often uses semi-transparencies to reveal occluded objects, in which case the resulting color mixing effects add additional constraints to the choice of the color palette. Color design forms a crucial part in visual aesthetics. Thus, the consideration of these issues can be of great value in the emerging field of illustrative visualization. We describe a knowledge-based system that captures established color design rules into a comprehensive interactive framework, aimed to aid users in the selection of colors for scene objects and incorporating individual preferences, importance functions, and overall scene composition. Our framework also offers new knowledge and solutions for the mixing, ordering and choice of colors in the rendering of semi-transparent layers and surfaces. All design rules are evaluated via user studies, for which we extend the method of conjoint analysis to task-based testing scenarios. Our framework's use of principles rooted in color design with application for the illustration of features in pre-classified data distinguishes it from existing systems which target the exploration of continuous-range density data via perceptual color maps.     

A distributed perception infrastructure for robot assisted living

This paper presents an ambient intelligence system designed for assisted living. The system processes the audio and video data acquired from multiple sensors spread in the environment to automatically detect dangerous events and generate automatic warning messages. The paper presents the distributed perception infrastructure that has been implemented by means of an open-source software middleware called NMM. Different processing nodes have been developed which can cooperate to extract high level information about the environment. Examples of implemented nodes running algorithms for people detection or face recognition are presented. Experiments on novel algorithms for people fall detection and sound classification and localization are discussed. Eventually, we present successful experiments in two test bed scenarios.     

Visual signatures in video visualization

Video visualization is a computation process that extracts meaningful information from original video data sets and conveys the extracted information to users in appropriate visual representations. This paper presents a broad treatment of the subject, following a typical research pipeline involving concept formulation, system development, a path-finding user study, and a field trial with real application data. In particular, we have conducted a fundamental study on the visualization of motion events in videos. We have, for the first time, deployed flow visualization techniques in video visualization. We have compared the effectiveness of different abstract visual representations of videos. We have conducted a user study to examine whether users are able to learn to recognize visual signatures of motions, and to assist in the evaluation of different visualization techniques. We have applied our understanding and the developed techniques to a set of application video clips. Our study has demonstrated that video visualization is both technically feasible and cost-effective. It has provided the first set of evidence confirming that ordinary users can be accustomed to the visual features depicted in video visualizations, and can learn to recognize visual signatures of a variety of motion events.     

A knowledge-based system for visualization design

Vista is a knowledge-based system that helps scientists design visualization techniques. It generates a technique for a given data set and lets users modify the design interactively using a compositional design methodology. To ensure the effectiveness of its designs, Vista uses many rules, mostly heuristic in nature, that were acquired through literature surveys and discussions with visualization experts. In general, Vista's design was based on research in graphical perception. It extends the design methodology of Automatic Presentation Tool (APT) (J.D. Mckinlay, 1986), a presentation tool for 2D graphics, to three dimensions. While Vista's primary function is to automatically generate an effective visualization technique design for a given data set, it also allows users to interactively modify this design and renders the resulting image using a variety of rendering algorithms     

Declarative language design for interactive visualization

We investigate the design of declarative, domain-specific languages for constructing interactive visualizations. By separating specification from execution, declarative languages can simplify development, enable unobtrusive optimization, and support retargeting across platforms. We describe the design of the Protovis specification language and its implementation within an object-oriented, statically-typed programming language (Java). We demonstrate how to support rich visualizations without requiring a toolkit-specific data model and extend Protovis to enable declarative specification of animated transitions. To support cross-platform deployment, we introduce rendering and event-handling infrastructures decoupled from the runtime platform, letting designers retarget visualization specifications (e.g., from desktop to mobile phone) with reduced effort. We also explore optimizations such as runtime compilation of visualization specifications, parallelized execution, and hardware-accelerated rendering. We present benchmark studies measuring the performance gains provided by these optimizations and compare performance to existing Java-based visualization tools, demonstrating scalability improvements exceeding an order of magnitude.     

Task-specific visualization design

This case study in operational weather forecasting demonstrates the principles of task-specific visualization design: defining user needs, implementing that definition, and establishing techniques for different user goals. The current applications can generate visualizations for the Web after an intermediate step of migrating the products to a Web server. This proves advantageous in an operational environment because the forecaster has content control. However, direct generation within a Web browser, which requires a simplified user interface and content, will require further refinement of the task decomposition. The notion of task-driven customization of content and interface has succeeded in weather forecasting, but the idea also applies to other domains. The potential benefits should encourage visualization designers to adopt these principles in their application development     

Visual perception driven collage synthesis

Computational Visual Media - A collage is a composite artwork made from the spatial layout of multiple pictures on a canvas, collected from the Internet or user photographs. Collages, usually made...     

Scientific sketching for collaborative VR visualization design

We present four studies investigating tools and methodologies for artist-scientist-technologist collaboration in designing multivariate, virtual reality (VR) visualizations. Design study 1 identifies the promise of 3D drawing-style interfaces for VR design and also establishes limitations of these tools with respect to precision and support for animation. Design study 2 explores animating artist-created visualization designs with scientific 3D fluid flow data. While results captured an accurate sense of flow that was advantageous as compared to the results of study 1, the potential for visual exploration using the design tools tested was limited. Design study 3 reveals the importance of a new 3D interface that overcomes the precision limitation found in study 1 while remaining accessible to artist collaborators. Drawing upon previous results, design study 4 engages collaborative teams in a design process that begins with traditional paper sketching and moves to animated, interactive, VR prototypes "sketched" by designers in VR using interactive 3D tools. Conclusions from these four studies identify important characteristics of effective artist-accessible VR visualization design tools and lead to a proposed formalized methodology for successful collaborative design that we expect to be useful in guiding future collaborations. We call this proposed methodology Scientific Sketching.     

生物体间关系可视化系统设计与实现

在生物信息学中,生物体间的关系常常以网络的方式予以呈现。生物数据自身的复杂性使得如何迅速高效地构建生物关系网络,分析生物关系网络成为一个难题。近些年来,生物可视化技术的不断深入使得这个难题得以进一步解决。此可视化系统基于MVC软件架构思想,以JAVA语言,JSP网页和Servlet技术开发,并对开发过程中如何设置节点布局,开发数据库接口等具体功能予以设计。     

An object-oriented approach for mechanical components design and visualization

In this paper, development of shape modeling tools for engineering design, analysis, simulation, and visualization is presented. The approach based on the idea of function-based shape modeling is combined with the power and versatility of the object-oriented programming (OOP). An OOP code, initially developed as a teaching and learning tool for educational use in an undergraduate Modeling and Simulation course, to generate mechanism components is presented. Different parametric, explicit, and implicit functions or their combination are used to generate mechanical components shapes. Using a blending process, sophisticated shapes have been generated on the graphical interface. However, the ideas and concept of the OOP mechanical components design presented in this paper can be applied to other application areas.     

Data visualization optimization via computational modeling of perception

We present a method for automatically evaluating and optimizing visualizations using a computational model of human vision. The method relies on a neural network simulation of early perceptual processing in the retina and primary visual cortex. The neural activity resulting from viewing flow visualizations is simulated and evaluated to produce a metric of visualization effectiveness. Visualization optimization is achieved by applying this effectiveness metric as the utility function in a hill-climbing algorithm. We apply this method to the evaluation and optimization of 2D flow visualizations, using two visualization parameterizations: streaklet-based and pixel-based. An emergent property of the streaklet-based optimization is head-to-tail streaklet alignment. It had been previously hypothesized the effectiveness of head-to-tail alignment results from the perceptual processing of the visual system, but this theory had not been computationally modeled. A second optimization using a pixel-based parameterization resulted in a LIC-like result. The implications in terms of the selection of primitives is discussed. We argue that computational models can be used for optimizing complex visualizations. In addition, we argue that they can provide a means of computationally evaluating perceptual theories of visualization, and as a method for quality control of display methods.     

Visual data mining modeling techniques for the visualization of mining outcomes

The visual senses for humans have a unique status, offering a very broadband channel for information flow. Visual approaches to analysis and mining attempt to take advantage of our abilities to perceive pattern and structure in visual form and to make sense of, or interpret, what we see. Visual Data Mining techniques have proven to be of high value in exploratory data analysis and they also have a high potential for mining large databases. In this work, we try to investigate and expand the area of visual data mining by proposing new visual data mining techniques for the visualization of mining outcomes.     

Controller design for human-robot interaction

Many robotics tasks require a robot to share the same workspace with humans. In such settings, it is important that the robot performs in such a way that does not cause distress to humans in the workspace. In this paper, we address the problem of designing robot controllers which minimize the stress caused by the robot while performing a given task. We present a novel, data-driven algorithm which computes human-friendly trajectories. The algorithm utilizes biofeedback measurements and combines a set of geometric controllers to achieve human friendliness. We evaluate the comfort level of the human using a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensor. We present results from a human tracking task, in which the robot is required to stay within a specified distance without causing high stress values.

MAPGEN: mixed-initiative planning and scheduling for the Mars Exploration Rover mission

The Mars Exploration Rover mission is one of NASA's most ambitious science missions to date. Launched in the summer of 2003, each rover carries instruments for conducting remote and in site observations to elucidate the planet's past climate, water activity, and habitability. Science is MER's primary driver, so making best use of the scientific instruments, within the available resources, is a crucial aspect of the mission. To address this criticality, the MER project team selected MAPGEN (mixed initiative activity plan generator) as an activity-planning tool. MAPGEN combines two existing systems, each with a strong heritage: the APGEN activity-planning tool from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Europa planning and scheduling system from NASA Ames Research Center. We discuss the issues arising from combining these tools in this mission's context. MAPGEN is the first AI-based system to control a space platform on another planet's surface.     

Inside-reachable and see-through augmented reality Shell for 3D visualization and tangible interaction

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Augmented reality (AR) is considered as one of the most essential technologies for providing 3D information visualization superimposed in the physical object....     

Algorithms for the analysis and visualization of high dynamic range images based on human perception

High dynamic range images are used to store and transfer an extended range of intensities to render them on a display. To reproduce such images on displays with a lower range, tone mapping algorithms are used. The tone mapping algorithm described in this paper is a modification of the globally optimized linear windowed tone mapping algorithm. This modification is based on the human vision system model; it makes it possible to improve the results produced by the algorithm and replaces the nonintuitive parameters with a number of intuitively clear ones the variation of which in a high range does not visually distort the image. The high quality of the results produced by the algorithm is confirmed by the high TMQI index and the low value of the DRIM metric.