18176797
User evaluations on form factors of tangible magic lenses
Magic Lens is a small inset window embedded in a large context display, which provides an alternative view to the region of interest selected from the context view. This metaphor is used for 3D visualization in our Augmented Virtual Environment infrastructure, SCAPE (Stereoscopic Collaboration in Augmented and Projective Environments), which is composed of an immersive room display for a high level of detail, life-size virtual world and a workbench display for simplified god-like view to the world. A tangible Magic Lens is used on the workbench display to allow direct and intuitive selection of continuous levels of detail, bridging the gap between the two extreme levels of detail in SCAPE. This paper presents our first step to the user evaluations of tangible Magic Lens. We conducted two sets of user evaluations, one mainly testing the lens aspect ratio, and another for the lens size. For both of the tests, two types of tasks are conducted: information gathering and relating the detailed information with the context. We found that the aspect ratio of a lens plays more important role in user preference for smaller lenses than for larger ones. Meanwhile, the size of a lens is the most important factor that affects the user performance in the two types of tasks.
9965855
SESAME: towards better 3D conceptual design systems
Conceptual design dominates the early stages of most creative design processes. During these stages, the designer makes important decisions about the parameters of a model that are aimed at satisfying a set of design criteria. To do this, the designer produces many sketches of various possible solutions. Meanwhile, computer-aided design (CAD) systems are becoming the dominant visual medium used in design practice. However, these tools evolved as documentation production tools and do not support conceptual thinking. This paper presents a list of guidelines for computer support for conceptual design activities on 3D scenes and presents SESAME (Sketch, Extrude, Sculpt, and Manipulate Easily), a system based on these guidelines. Finally, we present a user study comparing SESAME with a conventional CAD package to demonstrate the effectiveness of SESAME.
16396247
Intelligent Manipulation Techniques for Conceptual 3D Design
One of the main operations in conceptual 3D design is the rearrangement of single and composite objects. This paper presents a new conceptual 3D design system that affords easy manipulation of composite objects. We discuss several alternative manipulation techniques to separate complex parts off an existing model. Then, we present a new way to move such parts in a 3D scene, as well as an algorithm to place parts at arbitrary locations. Finally, we present and discuss the results of a user study of these manipulation techniques.
8407543
A system for desktop conceptual 3D design
In the traditional design process for a 3D environment, people usually depict a rough prototype to verify their ideas, and iteratively modify its configuration until they are satisfied with the general layout. In this activity, one of the main operations is the rearrangement of single and composite parts of a scene. With current desktop virtual reality (VR) systems, the selection and manipulation of arbitrary objects in 3D is still difficult. In this work, we present new and efficient techniques that allow even novice users to perform meaningful rearrangement tasks with traditional input devices. The results of our work show that the presented techniques can be mastered quickly and enable users to perform complex tasks on composite objects. Moreover, the system is easy to learn, supports creativity, and is fun to use.
8366022
A rationality-based modeling for coalition support
We present a game theoretic model for multi-agent resource distribution and allocation where agents in the environment must help each other to survive. Each agent maintains a set of two-tuples T=(A, P) called friendship values representing actual friendship and perceived friendship. The model directly addresses problems in reputation management schemes in multi-agent systems and peer-to-peer distributed systems. We present algorithms for maintaining the friendship values as well as a utility equation used in each agent's decision making. For an application problem, we adapted our formal model to the military coalition support problem in peace-keeping missions. Simulation results show that efficient resource allocation and sharing with minimum communication cost is achieved without centralized control.
739
Cooperative game theory within multi-agent systems for systems scheduling
Research concerning organization and coordination within multi-agent systems continues to draw from a variety of architectures and methodologies. The work presented in this paper combines techniques from game theory and multi-agent systems to produce self-organizing, polymorphic, lightweight, embedded agents for systems scheduling within a large-scale real-time systems environment. Results show how this approach is used to experimentally produce optimum real-time scheduling through the emergent behavior of thousands of agents. These results are obtained using a SWARM simulation of systems scheduling within a high energy physics experiment consisting of 2500 digital signal processors.
206612774
Design of Very Lightweight Agents for reactive embedded systems
Large-scale real-time high-performance data acquisition computing systems often require to be fault-tolerant and adaptive to changes. We consider a multi-agent system based approach to achieve these goals. This research is a part of ongoing research efforts to build a triggering and data acquisition system (known as BTeV) for particle-accelerator-based high energy physics experiments at Fermi National Laboratory. The envisioned hardware consists of pixel detectors and readout sensors embedded in the accelerator, which are connected to specialized FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays). The FPGAs are connected to approximately 2,500 digital signal processors (DSPs). After initial filtering and processing of data by the DSPs, a farm of approximately 2,500 Linux computers are responsible for post-processing a large amount of high speed data input. To support the adaptive fault-tolerance feature, we introduce the notion of very lightweight agents (VLAs), which are designed to be adaptive but small in footprint and extremely efficient. Each digital signal processor will run a very lightweight agent along with a physics application program that collects and processes input data from the corresponding FPGA. Since VLAs can be proactive or reactive, Brooks' subsumption architecture is a good basis for the design. In this paper we present several necessary changes in the original subsumption architecture to better serve the BTeV architecture.
21082870
Environment Organization of Roles Using Polymorphism
In the field of multi-agent systems, there has lately been a growing interest on ways in which the environment can better be exploited to coordinate agent behavior and manage complex problems. This paper describes an environment that is able to organize and adapt agent roles as conditions warrant. Roles are adapted using polymorphism as directed by the environment. The design combines strategies from game theory and other biologically inspired models to address fault mitigation in large-scale, real-time, distributed systems. It is implemented on a prototype of the data acquisition system for BTeV, a High Energy Physics experiment consisting of 2500 digital signal processors. Results show environment organization of roles for the lightweight agents embedded within each of the individual processors.