Experiencing flow with instant messaging and its facilitating role on creative behaviors

The goal of this study is to explore how experiencing flow with IM, an Internet-based communication technology, can facilitate an individual’s perception on creativity. We argue that certain capabilities in IM, telepresence and perceived control, provide users a means to experience flow. We further investigate whether flow and its outcomes, positive affect and exploratory behavior have any influence on the perception of creativity of the users. Using an online survey with 207 observations we found that user’s perceived control over the technology and its ability to transport the user to a virtual environment were shown to facilitate the experience of flow. We found that flow in itself does not influence perceived expected creativity in its users but does indirectly influence perceived expected creativity through exploratory behavior and positive affect. From these initial findings we believe that our study provides implications for both users and designers on IT. Furthermore, managers can apply the findings during implementation and use of interactive information technologies for communications in the workplace.     

A private versus a public space: Anonymity and buying decorative symbolic goods for avatars in a virtual world

The virtual world has become a new channel in which people can contact with others, and organizations can provide service to their customers. Selling symbolic virtual goods has also emerged as a new economy in the virtual world. Such symbolic goods cannot facilitate people to accomplish any specific tasks; people buy them simply to decorate their avatars. This study is based on the theories of symbolic consumption, self-presentation, and computer-mediated environment, to investigate why people buy decorative symbolic goods in the virtual world. The results show that people buy symbolic virtual goods for both emotional and social values. While user perceived social presence and telepresence affect both social and emotional value of symbolic goods, individual self-presentation motivation affects only social value. Besides, anonymous users in the virtual world show behaviors that differ with non-anonymous ones.     

临场感测试技术及力觉临场感的实现

本文对临场感的概念作了说明，总结了临场感测试技术的特点。在对人的力觉感知过程分析的基础上，设计了和人手相接口的单自由度力觉临场感测试系统，并从电路二端口网络理论出发对力觉临场感的测试原理和方法作了分析。实验表明了该测试技术的有效性。     

排爆机器人主从手力觉临场感仿真研究

针对排爆机器人手臂抓取爆炸物无力反馈操作人员临场感差,易发生误操作触发爆炸物等问题,设计一种排爆机器人主从机械手系统。该系统由两组相同结构的机械手臂组成,每个机械手上安装力传感器分别检测人员与爆炸物对主从手产生的作用力。对主从手机构建立动力学模型与控制模型,根据所建立的模型利用二种不同质量的爆炸物进行抓取以验证其机构动态性能。仿真结果表明：机械手抓取小质量爆炸物时主从手之间力跟随与延时特性都有较好映射;在抓取大质量爆炸物时从手力的映射出现振荡并产生延时。     

Correlating the effects of flow and telepresence in virtual worlds: Enhancing our understanding of user behavior in game-based learning

Recent research on online learning suggests that virtual worlds are becoming an important environment to observe the experience of flow. From these simulated spaces, researchers may gather a deeper understanding of cognition in the context of game-based learning. Csikszentmihalyi (1997) describes flow as a feeling of increased psychological immersion and energized focus, with outcomes that evoke disregard for external pressures and the loss of time consciousness, issuing in a sense of pleasure. Past studies suggest that flow is encountered in an array of activities and places, including those in virtual worlds. The authors’ posit that flow in virtual worlds, such as Second Life (SL), can be positively associated with degrees of the cognitive phenomenon of immersion and telepresence. Flow may also contribute to a better attitude and behavior during virtual game-based learning. This study tested three hypotheses related to flow and telepresence, using SL. Findings suggest that both flow and telepresence are experienced in SL and that there is a significant correlation between them. These findings shed light on the complex interrelationships and interactions that lead to flow experience in virtual gameplay and learning, while engendering hope that learners, who experience flow, may acquire an improved attitude of learning online.     

Towards Environment-to-Environment (E2E) multimedia communication systems

We present an approach to connect multiple remote environments over web for natural interaction among people and objects. Focus of current communication and telepresence systems severely restrict user affordances in terms of movement, interaction, peripheral vision, spatio-semantic integrity and even information flow. These systems allow information transfer rather than experiential interaction. We propose Environment-to-Environment (E2E) as a new paradigm for communication which allows users to interact in natural manner using text, audio, and video by connecting environments. Each Environment is instrumented using as many different types of sensors as may be required to detect presence and activity of objects. This object position and activity information is used by a scalable event-based multimodal information system called EventServer to share the appropriate experiential information with other environments as well as to present incoming multimedia information on right displays and speakers. This paper describes the design principles for E2E communication, discusses system architecture, and gives our experience in implementing prototypes of such systems in telemedicine and office collaboration applications. We also discuss the research challenges and a road-map for creating more sophisticated E2E applications in near future.

An Integrated Telepresence Environment for Collaboration in Construction

For construction projects involving transient ‘virtual organisations’ composed of non-collocated team-members, the adoption of concurrent engineering principles is seen as vital. An important aspect of concurrent engineering in construction is the need for an effective communications infrastructure between team members. Traditionally, such communication has been handled through person-to-person meetings, however the complexity of construction projects has grown and, as a result, reliance on new information and communications technologies is becoming increasingly necessary. Hence, within a concurrent engineering setting, there is the need for an integrated information and collaboration environment that will create a persistent space to support interaction between project personnel throughout all phases of construction projects. This joint initiative between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Loughborough University, British Telecommunications plc. (BT) and Kajima Corporation explores computer-supported mechanisms for enhancing distributed engineering collaboration. The goal of this paper is to develop a set of requirements, a system architecture and a system prototype to facilitate computer-supported collaboration among distributed teams. The prototype consists of a comprehensive working collaborative system built from the integration of complementary standalone applications. These applications are the CAIRO system, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Telepresence system developed by Loughborough University and BT.     

Visual–haptic perception of compliant objects in artificially generated environments

Perception of compliant objects through a human system interface with visual–haptic feedback was investigated. Participants had to explore virtual cubes at different compliances by squeezing them with their fingers and observing them visually and haptically. The cubes were rendered by admittance control. Perception of compliance was analyzed using an adaptive staircase method. Results showed that visual–haptic perception of compliant environments is less accurate than perception of position and force stimuli. Furthermore, due to the important role of the visual feedback cross-modal comparisons are more difficult than bimodal comparisons.

Robots in the classroom: Differences in students’ perceptions of credibility and learning between “teacher as robot” and “robot as teacher”

Advancements in technology are bringing robotics into interpersonal communication contexts, including the college classroom. This study was one of the first to examine college students’ communication-related perceptions of robots being used in an instructional capacity. Student participants rated both a human instructor using a telepresence robot and an autonomous social robot delivering the same lesson as credible. However, students gave higher credibility ratings to the teacher as robot, which led to differences between the two instructional agents in their learning outcomes. Students reported more affective learning from the teacher as robot than the robot as teacher, despite controlled instructional performances. Instructional agent type had both direct and indirect effects on behavioral learning. The direct effect suggests a potential machine heuristic in which students are more likely to follow behavioral suggestions offered by an autonomous social robot. The findings generally support the MAIN model and the Computers are Social Actors paradigm, but suggest that future work needs to be done in this area.     

远程呈现视频会议技术应用研究

近年来,随着视频会议技术的迅速发展和广泛应用,人们对视频会议的效果要求越来越高,简单的看得清已不能完全满足用户的需求,人们更加注重完美的视觉效果和逼真的感官体验。远程呈现(Telepresence)就是在这一背景下与会议系统相结合,应用到了视频会议领域。文章对远程呈现视频会议室设计、高清视频显示、音视频编解码等关键技术进行了阐述,结合电力调度会商系统项目建设实际,对系统结构、会议室设计、音视频设备、会议模式进行了详细说明。实际运行表明,远程呈现视频会议技术先进、系统运行稳定,在电力调度工作中发挥了日益重要的作用。