The immersion cycle: Understanding immersive experiences through a cyclical model

The present work introduces a cyclical model which showcases the process of immersion during Immersive Technological Experiences (ITEs) such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. This model is based on the identified concepts around immersion and immersive environments across 30 years. The concepts' similarities were used...

Concept evaluation of a new aircraft passenger privacy bubble using virtual prototyping: A Human-Centered Design framework

BACKGROUND: The Human-Centered Design methodology advocates VR prototyping, as an effective tool to evaluate concepts in a cost-efficient, time-saving way. It is the question of whether it works in the development of a product intended to increase privacy while flying. OBJECTIVE: The current study aims at the application of virtual reality on...

Two-way Augmented Reality Co-location Under Telemedicine Context

The medical care responsibilities are often on the shoulders of nonprofessionals such as captains who are equipped with forty hours of designated training every five years. However, this training is neither enough for the captains to handle medical incidents nor releases their stress during the treatment. Currently, captains have very limited...

Influence of uncertainty on performance of opportunistic maintenance strategy for offshore wind farms

The increasing capacity of offshore wind energy around the world brings challenges in Operation and Maintenance (O&M) management. Over the past years, many studies have focused on developing sound maintenance strategies in order to minimize maintenance cost or maximize availability. One of the promising maintenance strategies is...

Proficiency From Immersion: A Human-Centered Design in Cross-Cultural Surgical Training

Ensuring surgeons are well-trained in various skills is of paramount importance to patient safety. Surgical simulators were introduced to laparoscopy training during the last 2 decades for basic skills training. The main drawback of current simulation-based laparoscopy training is their lack of true representation of the intro-operative...

Virtual Operating Room Simulation Setup (VORSS) for Procedural Training in Minimally Invasive Surgery: a Pilot Study

Virtual reality (VR) training is widely used in several minimal invasive surgery (MIS) training curricula for procedural training. However, VR training in its current state lack immersive training environments, such as using head-mounted displays that is implemented in military or aviation training and even entertainment. The virtual...

Analysing usability and presence of a virtual reality operating room (VOR) simulator during laparoscopic surgery training

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) laparoscopy simulation is emerging to enhance the attractiveness and realism of surgical procedural training. This study analyses the usability and presence of a Virtual Operating Room (VOR) setup via user evaluation and sets out the key elements for an immersive environment during a laparoscopic procedural...

Validation of Motion Tracking Software for Evaluation of Surgical Performance in Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy

Motion tracking software for assessing laparoscopic surgical proficiency has been proven to be effective in differentiating between expert and novice performances. However, with several indices that can be generated from the software, there is no set threshold that can be used to benchmark performances. The aim of this study was to identify...

An opportunistic maintenance strategy for offshore wind turbine system considering optimal maintenance intervals of subsystems

Operation and maintenance (O&M) costs account for a large proportion of the total costs for offshore wind energy. Performing a reasonable maintenance strategy is an effective approach to reduce O&M costs and gain more profits. In this paper, an opportunistic maintenance strategy for offshore wind turbine systems considering...

Comparison of Questionnaire Based and User Model Based Usability Evaluation Methods

The usability now serves as a fundamental quality of a computational device, e.g. smartphone. Moreover, the smartphone has firmly embedded into our daily life as an indispensable part, so the context and style that user may interact with them are largely different from a decade ago. Nowadays, testing usability with end user has become a...

Structural similarity regularization scheme for multiparameter seismic full waveform inversion

We introduce a new regularization scheme for multiparameter seismic full-waveform inversion (FWI). Using this scheme, we can constrain spatial variations of parameters which are having a weak sensitivity with the one that having a good sensitivity to the measurement, assuming that these parameters have similarities in their structures. In...

Tyre - Road Noise, Surface Characteristics and Material Properties

Noise levels due to road traffic have reached intolerable high levels in and around many urban areas all around the world. Because of health reasons and reasons of well- being these noise levels have to be reduced. The noise produced from the interaction between the rolling tyre and road surface is one of the most important contributions in the...

Influence of changes in surface layer properties on tire/pavement noise

This paper investigates changes in tire/pavement noise caused by variations in the road surface characteristics. This research is based on the analysis of noise and surface characteristics collected from sections with 25 mm thickness thin layer surfacings in the Netherlands. Investigations are first performed on the measured noise levels in 1...

Characterization of distributed damage and self-healing in cementitous materials based on time-dependent 3-D x-ray computed microtomography (Micro-CT)

Concrete cracking is inevitable, and can be the result of one or a combination of factors such as dry shrinkage, thermal contraction, fatigue, and embedded steel corrosion. The presence of cracks leads to further deterioration, service life reduction of concrete infrastructure, and frequent maintenance and repairs. These challenges can be...

Sky cruiser and future air travel; in-flight transfer, door to door travel and the promise of improved efficiency

Compact collimators for high brightness blue LEDs using dielectric multilayers

A novel method is presented to inject the light of millimeter-sized high-brightness blue LEDs into light guides of submillimeter thickness. Use is made of an interference filter that is designed to pass only those modes that will propagate in the light guide by total internal reflection. Other modes are reflected back to the LED cavity and...

Robustness Analysis of Road Networks: A Framework with Combined DTA Models

Network robustness is the ability of a road network functioning properly facing unpredictable and exceptional incidents. A systematical framework with combined dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) models is designed for the analysis of road network robustness. With this framework, network performance considering travelers' (route) choice behavior...

Self-doping caused by oxygen displacements in heavy-ion-irradiated Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x crystals