A role-playing virtual world for web-based application courses

With the rapid development of the information communication and technology (ICT) infrastructure in the Caribbean, there is an increasing demand for skilled software developers to meet the ICT needs of the region. Consequently, the web-based applications course offered at the University of the West Indies, has been redeveloped. One major part of its upgrading is the use of virtual worlds, such as the negotiate and deal environment (NADE) system, to bridge the disconnect that can occur between the technical/academic skills and the issues associated with developing software in a competitive business environment. NADE is a role-playing virtual environment for teaching the art of creating secure, Java, web-based systems for information processing and backend applications. The system provides an environment where group interactivity and strategic planning are key success factors.     

A web-based platform for biosignal visualization and annotation

With the advent of wearable sensing and mobile technologies, biosignals have seen an increasingly growing number of application areas, leading to the collection of large volumes of data. One of the difficulties in dealing with these data sets, and in the development of automated machine learning systems which use them as input, is the lack of reliable ground truth information. In this paper we present a new web-based platform for visualization, retrieval and annotation of biosignals by non-technical users, aimed at improving the process of ground truth collection for biomedical applications. Moreover, a novel extendable and scalable data representation model and persistency framework is presented. The results of the experimental evaluation with possible users has further confirmed the potential of the presented framework.     

A web-based platform for experimental investigation of electric power auctions

This paper describes the architecture and uses of an Internet-based software platform called PowerWeb. PowerWeb was designed and implemented as a simulation environment for evaluating various power exchange auction markets through experimental investigation. It is designed to host simulations of a competitive ‘day-ahead' electric energy market in which the participants interact by submitting bids or offers into a market via a web-based user interface. The PowerWeb environment is meant to be flexible so as to allow investigation of various market mechanisms. In this paper we describe its interactive, distributed and web-based character.     

A web-based screening tool for near-port air quality assessments

The Community model for near-PORT applications (C-PORT) is a screening tool with an intended purpose of calculating differences in annual averaged concentration patterns and relative contributions of various source categories over the spatial domain within about 10 km of the port. C-PORT can inform decision-makers and concerned citizens about local air quality due to mobile source emissions related to commercial port activities. It allows users to visualize and evaluate different planning scenarios, helping them identify the best alternatives for making long-term decisions that protect community health and sustainability. The web-based, easy-to-use interface currently includes data from 21 seaports primarily in the Southeastern U.S., and has a map-based interface based on Google Maps. The tool was developed to visualize and assess changes in air quality due to changes in emissions and/or meteorology in order to analyze development scenarios, and is not intended to support or replace any regulatory models or programs.     

An innovative web-based collaborative platform for video annotation

Large scale labeled datasets are of key importance for the development of automatic video analysis tools as they, from one hand, allow multi-class classifiers training and, from the other hand, support the algorithms’ evaluation phase. This is widely recognized by the multimedia and computer vision communities, as witnessed by the growing number of available datasets; however, the research still lacks in annotation tools able to meet user needs, since a lot of human concentration is necessary to generate high quality ground truth data. Nevertheless, it is not feasible to collect large video ground truths, covering as much scenarios and object categories as possible, by exploiting only the effort of isolated research groups. In this paper we present a collaborative web-based platform for video ground truth annotation. It features an easy and intuitive user interface that allows plain video annotation and instant sharing/integration of the generated ground truths, in order to not only alleviate a large part of the effort and time needed, but also to increase the quality of the generated annotations. The tool has been on-line in the last four months and, at the current date, we have collected about 70,000 annotations. A comparative performance evaluation has also shown that our system outperforms existing state of the art methods in terms of annotation time, annotation quality and system’s usability.     

DIVE—A platform for multi-user virtual environments

The Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment (DIVE) is an experimental software platform for the development of multi-user virtual reality applications. DIVE uses active replication and reliable multicast protocols to distribute data between participants. The distribution model enables a large number of users and applications to participate and interact in the same virtual environment. The DIVE platform offers a wide range of interaction support and user-related abstractions to ease the task of application and user interface construction.     

Radigost: Interoperable web-based multi-agent platform

Recent improvements of web development technologies, commonly referred to as HTML5, have resulted in an excellent framework for developing a fully-featured, purely web-based multi-agent platform. This paper presents an architecture of such a platform, named Radigost. Radigost agents and parts of the system itself are implemented in JavaScript and executed inside the client's web browser, while an additional set of Java-based components is deployed on an enterprise application server. Radigost is platform-independent, capable of running, without any prior installation or configuration steps, on a wide variety of software and hardware configurations, including personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and modern television sets. The system is standards-compliant and fully interoperable, in the sense that its agents can transparently interact with agents in existing, third-party multi-agent solutions. Finally, performance evaluation results show that the execution speed of Radigost is comparable to that of a non web-based implementation.     

Everything-as-a-service platform for on-demand virtual enterprises

While constructing virtual enterprises, it is crucial to flexibly integrate heterogeneous business resources and processes of different business partners and make them collaborate dynamically. Keeping involved IT systems or components as autonomous and loose-coupled services, the “Everything as a Service” concept supports flexible integration of heterogeneous applications. We adopt this concept and analyze the challenges in virtual enterprise construction, then propose a service platform for on-demand virtual enterprises. The platform supports flexible integration of networked resources, and facilitates virtual enterprise construction with business process utility, trusted service composition and data service centric business collaborations. At the end of the paper, together with a case study, experimental evaluations in contexts of concurrent multi-users are presented, showing the effectiveness and performance of the platform.     

Tutoring writing spelling skills within a web-based platform for children

According to the NMC Horizon Report (Johnson et al. in Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, Publications Office of the European Union, The New Media Consortium, Luxembourg, Austin, 2014 [1]), data-driven learning in combination with emerging academic areas such as learning analytics has the potential to tailor students’ education to their needs (Johnson et al. 2014 [1]). Focusing on this aim, this article presents a web-based (training) platform for German-speaking users aged 8–12.Our objective is to support primary-school pupils—especially those who struggle with the acquisition of the German orthography—with an innovative tool to improve their writing and spelling competencies. On this platform, which is free of charge, they can write and publish texts supported by a special feature, called the intelligent dictionary. It gives automatic feedback for correcting mistakes that occurred in the course of fulfilling a meaningful writing task. Consequently, pupils can focus on writing texts and are able to correct texts on their own before publishing them. Additionally, they gain deeper insights in German orthography. Exercises will be recommended for further training based on the spelling mistakes that occurred. This article covers the background to German orthography and its teaching and learning as well as details concerning the requirements for the platform and the user interface design. Further, combined with learning analytics we expect to gain deeper insight into the process of spelling acquisition which will support optimizing our exercises and providing better materials in the long run.

     

CyberWalk: a web-based distributed virtual walkthrough environment

A distributed virtual walkthrough environment allows users connected to the geometry server to walk through a specific place of interest, without having to travel physically. This place of interest may be a virtual museum, virtual library or virtual university. There are two basic approaches to distribute the virtual environment from the geometry server to the clients, complete replication and on-demand transmission. Although the on-demand transmission approach saves waiting time and optimizes network usage, many technical issues need to be addressed in order for the system to be interactive. CyberWalk is a web-based distributed virtual walkthrough system developed based on the on-demand transmission approach. It achieves the necessary performance with a multiresolution caching mechanism. First, it reduces the model transmission and rendering times by employing a progressive multiresolution modeling technique. Second, it reduces the Internet response time by providing a caching and prefetching mechanism. Third, it allows a client to continue to operate, at least partially, when the Internet is disconnected. The caching mechanism of CyberWalk tries to maintain at least a minimum resolution of the object models in order to provide at least a coarse view of the objects to the viewer. All these features allow CyberWalk to provide sufficient interactivity to the user for virtual walkthrough over the Internet environment. In this paper, we demonstrate the design and implementation of CyberWalk. We investigate the effectiveness of the multiresolution caching mechanism of CyberWalk in supporting virtual walkthrough applications in the Internet environment through numerous experiments, both on the simulation system and on the prototype system.     

Research and development of web-based virtual online classroom

To build a web-based virtual learning environment depends on information technologies, concerns technology supporting learning methods and theories. A web-based virtual online classroom is designed and developed based on learning theories and streaming media technologies. And it is composed of two parts: instructional communicating environment (ICE) and collaborative learning environment (CLE). ICE provides learners with learning materials, lecture videos, and interactive environment etc. CLE supports active learning by providing the environment with learning tools, learning materials and contextual discussion for learners. The environments are designed with event-based synchronous strategies and e-learning technologies standards.     

A multi-criteria assessment tool for screening preliminary product platform concepts

Platform concept evaluation is a more challenging task than evaluating a single product concept since a platform must effectively support multiple product variants over a prolonged period of time. Existing platform methods develop specific criteria in depth, yet an evaluation of alternative platforms should be based on a broad set of criteria. Based on expert interviews, personal experience, and a literature search we propose a platform assessment tool consisting of 19 criteria for platform evaluation. The criteria are group into six categories: customer satisfaction, variety, after-sale, organization, flexibility, and complexity. The tool is focused on the early platform architecture phase, before proof-of-concept prototyping. However, it can also be used subsequently for platform refinement when more data becomes available. We demonstrate our platform assessment tool through an example with a cordless drill platform.     

Human-assisted virtual reality for a magnetic-haptic micromanipulation platform

This paper deals with the development of a virtual reality interface (VRI) for a magnetic-haptic micromanipulation platform (MHMP) (Mehrtash et?al. in IEEE/ASME Trans Mechatron 16(3):459–469, 2011). Our previously developed MHMP has shown a great deal of promise in non-contact micromanipulations. This micromanipulation platform concerns the integration of magnetic actuation technology and a bilateral macro–micro teleoperation. The MHMP has two separate stations: one magnetic microrobotic station and one haptic. The magnetic microrobotic station manipulates micro-sized objects based on the commands from the haptic station. The haptic station uses bilateral communication with the magnetic microrobotic station to allow a human operator the feeling of a micro-domain environment. In this paper, we report a VRI that enables human operators to improve their skills in using the MHMP, before carrying out an actual dexterous task. The VRI is made up of three main components: a haptic station, a simulation engine, and a display unit. The haptic station provides the operator with the force/torque information from virtual or remote environments, and is also used to recognize the operator’s hand motion command. Dynamical computation and control system modeling have been carried out on the simulation engine. Based on the real-time computation, this engine, as the heart of the system, provides force applied to the operator’s hand and the microrobot’s position for the haptic station and the display unit, respectively. The display unit employs 3D computer graphics to demonstrate the micromanipulation tasks and environments. The VRI is also developed in such a way that it can be separately used in parallel with the MHMP for the 3D visualization of a real task by providing multiple virtual viewports. This paper introduces the configuration of the proposed VRI, and reports the result of a preliminary experiment using micromanipulation investigation for validation.     

JApplet微机接口虚拟实验平台的设计与评估

微型计算机接口实验在计算机专业教学中对帮助学生理解计算机基本概念非常重要.但传统的配置有各种跳线的主机板的实验环境使学生在课堂的有限时间内很难达到预期目标.利用JApplet设计了基于Web方式的微机接口实验软件虚拟平台,实验平台有限地抽象了CPU、总线和相关接口芯片部件及其运算过程,使学生能通过开放的Internet环境访问服务器而进行实验.课题设计的虚拟实验平台已经应用到教育部"21世纪网络课程"项目和四川省精品课程项目.     

An expandable web-based platform for visually analyzing basin-scale hydro-climate time series data

Growing demand from the general public for centralized points of data access and analytics tools coincides with similar, well-documented needs of regional and international hydrology research and resource management communities. To address this need within the Laurentian Great Lakes region, we introduce the Great Lakes Dashboard (GLD), a dynamic web data visualization platform that brings multiple time series data sets together for visual analysis and download. The platform's adaptable, robust, and expandable Time Series Core Object Model (GLD-TSCOM) separates the growing complexity and size of Great Lakes data sets from the web application interface. Although the GLD-TSCOM is currently applied exclusively to Great Lakes data sets, the concepts and methods discussed here can be applied in other geographical and topical areas of interest.     

基于虚拟机的高职学生Linux实践平台的构建

介绍了虚拟机技术、虚拟机平台的搭建、VmwareWorkstation虚拟网络设备等,重点讨论了通过VMware构建虚拟实验平台以解决Linux实践教学中真实实验环境欠缺的问题,以做到教学演示与学生实践的同步,为Linux实践教学提供一种有效的辅助工具。     

一种虚拟式的自动控制原理实验平台设计

目前多用MATLAB进行自动控制原理的各类仿真,而它所需编写代码繁琐且界面不够灵活。鉴于此,提供了利用基于G语言的LABVIEW设计的自动控制原理虚拟实验平台。从模块组成上介绍了虚拟平台所完成的设计及分析功能,并以频域响应分析、频率法校正为例详细阐述了平台设计、分析系统的原理,最后经过与MATLAB仿真结果的对比验证,表明该平台系统分析的准确性与可靠性。     

A platform for virtual collaboration spaces and educational communities: the case of EVE

This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of EVE Community Prototype, which is an educational virtual community aiming to meet the requirements of a Virtual Collaboration Space and to support e-learning services. Furthermore, this paper describes the design and implementation of an integrated platform for Networked Virtual Environments, called EVE Platform, which supports the afore-mentioned educational community. This platform supports stable event sharing and creation of multi-user three dimensional (3D) places, H.323-based voice over IP services integrated in 3D spaces as well as multiple concurrent virtual worlds. Christos Bouras obtained his Diploma and PhD from the Department Of Computer Engineering and Informatics of Patras University (Greece). He is currently an Associate Professor in the above department. Also he is a scientific advisor of Research Unit 6 in Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (CTI), Patras, Greece. His research interests include Analysis of Performance of Networking and Computer Systems, Computer Networks and Protocols, Telematics and New Services, QoS and Pricing for Networks and Services, e-Learning Networked Virtual Environments and WWW Issues. He has extended professional experience in Design and Analysis of Networks, Protocols, Telematics and New Services. He has published 200 papers in various well-known refereed conferences and journals. He is a co-author of seven books in Greek. He has been a PC member and referee in various international journals and conferences. He has participated in R&D projects such as RACE, ESPRIT, TELEMATICS, EDUCATIONAL MULTIMEDIA, ISPO, EMPLOYMENT, ADAPT, STRIDE, EUROFORM, IST, GROWTH and others. Also he is member of experts in the Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET), Advisory Committee Member to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Member of WG3.3 and WG6.4 of IFIP, Task Force for Broadband Access in Greece, ACM, IEEE, EDEN, AACE and New York Academy of Sciences. Eleftheria Giannaka obtained her Diploma from the Informatics Department of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and her Masters Degree from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University. She is currently a PhD Candidate of the Department of Computer Engineer and Informatics of Patras University. Furthermore, she is working as an R&D Computer Engineer at the Research Unit 6 of the Computer Technology Institute in Patra (Greece). Her interests include Computer Networks, Virtual Networks, System Architecture, Internet Applications, Electronic Commerce, Database Implementation and Administration, Virtual Reality applications, Performance Evaluation and Programming. Alexandros Panagopoulos was born in Pyrgos, Greece, 1981. He obtained his Diploma, from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University (Greece). In 2000 he became a member of Research Unit 6 of the Computer Technology Institute (CTI). His interests include Computer Networks, Multiuser Virtual Environments, Telematics, and C/C++ and Java programming. Dr. Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos obtained his Diploma, his Master's Degree and his PhD from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University (Greece). He is currently an R&D Computer Engineer at the Research Unit 6 of Computer Technology Institute, Patras, Greece. His research interests include Computer Networks, Telematics, Distributed Systems, Networked Virtual Environments, Multimedia and Hypermedia. More particular he is engaged in Distant Education with the use of Computer Networks, Real Time Protocols and Networked Virtual Environments. He has published nine papers in journals and 30 papers in well-known refereed conferences. He has participated in R&D projects such as OSYDD, RTS-GUNET, ODL-UP, VES, ODL-OTE, INVITE, VirRAD and EdComNet.     

A web-based screening model for climate risk to water supply systems in the northeastern United States

The aim of this study is to describe the development and application of a web-based decision support tool (ViRTUE) for performing climate risk evaluations of water supply systems. The tool is designed for small-scale water utilities in the northeastern United States that may lack the resources for detailed climate change risk investigations. Development of this tool demonstrates a relatively new approach to web application development using the Shiny framework for the R programming language to create an interactive environment for stakeholders and water managers to explore climate vulnerabilities. Using a decision-scaling framework, the tool allows the user to perform a climate stress test to evaluate the performance and vulnerability to water supply shortfalls of local reservoir systems over a wide range of potential climate change scenarios using a generic systems model. Probabilities of future climate conditions derived from climate projections then help inform utility operators of impending risk.