Papers from an October 2001 conference explore technologies and applications of enhanced environments, with a focus on the specific areas of virtual heritage, immersive art and creative technology, and virtual design in industry, architecture, and medicine. Topics include visualizing archaeological reconstruction, cemetery preservation and laser scanning, interactive TV, and a stereo vision-based augmented reality system with marker and natural feature tracking. Other topics include modeling electronic arts and ubiquitous computing in a virtual environment, design considerations for an oxygen flute, character- driven story generation in interactive storytelling, and the role of place in cyberspace. This work lacks a subject index. c. Book News Inc.

The essential guide to solving algorithmic and networking problems in commercial computer games, revised and extended Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games, Second Edition is written from the perspective of the computer scientist. Combining algorithmic knowledge and game-related problems, it explores the most common problems encountered in game programing. The first part of the book presents practical algorithms for solving “classical” topics, such as random numbers, procedural generation, tournaments, group formations and game trees. The authors also focus on how to find a path in, create the terrain of, and make decisions in the game world. The second part introduces networking related problems in computer games, focusing on four key questions: how to hide the inherent communication delay, how to best exploit limited network resources, how to cope with cheating and how to measure the on-line game data. Thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded to reflect the many constituent changes occurring in the commercial gaming industry since the original, this Second Edition, like the first, is a timely, comprehensive resource offering deeper algorithmic insight and more extensive coverage of game-specific networking problems than ordinarily encountered in game development books. Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games, Second Edition: Provides algorithmic solutions in pseudo-code format, which emphasises the idea behind the solution, and can easily be written into a programming language of choice Features a section on the Synthetic player, covering decision-making, influence maps, finite-state machines, flocking, fuzzy sets, and probabilistic reasoning and noise generation Contains in-depth treatment of network communication, including dead-reckoning, local perception filters, cheating prevention and on-line metrics Now includes 73 ready-to-use algorithms and 247 illustrative exercises Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games, Second Edition is a must-have resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking computer game related courses, postgraduate researchers in game-related topics, and developers interested in deepening their knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of computer games and in learning new approaches to game design and programming.

Describing the history and state-of-the-art of the thermo-hydrous manipulation of wood, this book provides either a desk reference or a field manual of wood science. It examines the polymeric components of wood and its multilevel hierarchical structure that confer its unique general-purpose character and faculty for transformation. Exceeding all other material in its capacity to deform under controlled conditions and for a proscribed outcome, wood, under thermo-hydrous conditions, permits a multitude of industrial processes. Discussing the processes at work and the industrial applications, this book is a must for all interested in the manipulation of wood.

As our heritage deteriorates through erosion, human error or natural disasters, it has become more important than ever to preserve our past – even if it is in digital form only. This highly relevant work describes thorough research and methods for preserving cultural heritage objects through the use of 3D digital data. These methods were developed via computer vision and computer graphics technologies. They offer a way of passing our heritage down to future generations.

This book presents the proceedings of the 2nd EAI International Conference on Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education (TIE' 2018), which took place at Ravensbourne University London, London, UK, on September 4, 2018. The central theme of the conference is emerging technologies in relation to business, education, social and political needs that make modern society flourish. The proceedings feature papers from a cross-disciplinary audience that explore the process of creativity and innovation. The goal is that the various disciplines can learn from each other and see how they might benefit from the cross-fertilization of practices.

Research into the methods and techniques used in simulating crowds has developed extensively within the last few years, particularly in the areas of video games and film. Despite recent impressive results when simulating and rendering thousands of individuals, many challenges still exist in this area. The comparison of simulation with reality, the realistic appearance of virtual humans and their behavior, group structure and their motion, and collision avoidance are just some examples of these challenges. For most of the applications of crowds, it is now a requirement to have real-time simulations – which is an additional challenge, particularly when crowds are very large. Crowd Simulation analyses these challenges in depth and suggests many possible solutions. Daniel Thalmann and Soraia Musse share their experiences and expertise in the application of: · Population modeling · Virtual human animation · Behavioral models for crowds · The connection between virtual and real crowds · Path planning and navigation · Visual attention models · Geometric and populated semantic environments · Crowd rendering The second edition presents techniques and methods developed since the authors first covered the simulation of crowds in 2007. Crowd Simulation includes in-depth discussions on the techniques of path planning, including a new hybrid approach between navigation graphs and potential-based methods. The importance of gaze attention – individuals appearing conscious of their environment and of others – is introduced, and a free-of-collision method for crowds is also discussed.

Soft computing, intelligent robotics and control are in the core interest of contemporary engineering. Essential characteristics of soft computing methods are the ability to handle vague information, to apply human-like reasoning, their learning capability and ease of application. Soft computing techniques are widely applied in the control of dynamic systems, including mobile robots. The present volume is a collection of 20 chapters written by respectable experts of the fields, addressing various theoretical and practical aspects in soft computing, intelligent robotics and control. The first part of the book concerns with issues of intelligent robotics, including robust xed point transformation design, experimental verification of the input-output feedback linearization of differentially driven mobile robot and applying kinematic synthesis to micro electro-mechanical systems design. The second part of the book is devoted to fundamental aspects of soft computing. This includes practical aspects of fuzzy rule interpolation, subjective weights based meta learning in multi criteria decision making, swarm-based heuristics for an area exploration and knowledge driven adaptive product representations. The last part addresses different problems, issues and methods of applied mathematics. This includes perturbation estimates for invariant subspaces of Hessenberg matrices, uncertainty and nonlinearity modelling by probabilistic metric spaces and comparison and visualization of the DNA of six primates.

This Proceedings contains the papers presented at the IFAC Symposium on Manufacturing, Modeling, Management and Control (MIM 2000), held in Patras, Greece, on 12-14 July 2000. MIM is a long-running series of IFAC meetings featuring the best work on the development, comparison and classification of manufacturing systems. In this Proceedings, key engineering topics, such as agile manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing, are presented alongside more management-related issues as well as some of the fundamental control theory applicable to these areas. Altogether, over 90 papers are presented.

This book consists of papers presented at Automation 2017, an international conference held in Warsaw from March 15 to 17, 2017. It discusses research findings associated with the concepts behind INDUSTRY 4.0, with a focus on offering a better understanding of and promoting participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Each chapter presents a detailed analysis of a specific technical problem, in most cases followed by a numerical analysis, simulation and description of the results of implementing the solution in a real-world context. The theoretical results, practical solutions and guidelines presented are valuable for both researchers working in the area of engineering sciences and practitioners looking for solutions to industrial problems.