Search results

The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of a virtual reality (VR)-based approach to improve teacher education and life-long professional development. Through constant training in real-life based situations but within a safe three-dimensional virtual school environment, teachers are given the opportunity to experience and learn how to react to different types of incidents that may take place in a school environment.

The current paper presents the design cycle that was followed for the implementation of the VR teacher training system. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a case study that aimed to promote teachers’ understanding of student’s problematic situations related to substance use. As part of the experimental investigation, the impact of the VR system on participants’ emotions and mood states is evaluated through Electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements, heart rate (HR) recordings and self-reported data.

Results indicate significant changes to participant’s negative emotional and mood states, suggesting that the scenario and the VR experience had a strong impact on them. Moreover, participants’ HR was increased during the experiment, while the analysis of the EEG signal indicated that the participants experienced a stressful situation that could justify the change in their negative emotions and mood states.

The proposed VR-based approach aims to provide an innovative framework to teacher education and the related training methodology. In the long-term, the proposed VR system aims to form a new paradigm of teacher training, an alternative safe method that will allow user-teachers to learn through trial and error techniques that reflect real-life situations within a three-dimensional school space and without the risk of harming real students. To the best of our knowledge this is one of the first systematic attempts to use a VR-based methodology to address real teachers’ needs. The development of the VR application is linked to both strong theoretical foundations in education derived from the literature but also from real teachers’ problems and requirements derived from an extensive literature analysis, survey and interviews with experts including teachers, school counselors and psychologists. The VR tool addresses specific teachers’ competences as outcome, after an extensive documentation of existing Teachers’ Competence Models and significant guidance by experts who pointed specific competencies of primary importance to teachers.

In the process of robot shell design, it is necessary to match the shape of the input 3D original character mesh model and robot endoskeleton, in order to make the input model fit for robot and avoid collision. So, the purpose of this paper is to find an object of reference, which can be used for the process of shape matching.

In this work, the authors propose an interior bounded box (IBB) approach that derives from oriented bounding box (OBB). This kind of box is inside the closed mesh model. At the same time, it has maximum volume which is aligned with the object axis but is enclosed by all the mesh vertices. Based on the IBB of input mesh model and the OBB of robot endoskeleton, the authors can complete the process of shape matching. In this paper, the authors use an evolutionary algorithm, covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES), to approximate the IBB based on skeleton and symmetry of input character mesh model.

Based on the evolutionary algorithm CMA-ES, the optimal position and scale information of IBB can be found. The authors can obtain satisfactory IBB result after this optimization process. The output IBB has maximum volume and is enveloped by the input character mesh model as well.

To the best knowledge of the authors, the IBB is first proposed and used in the field of robot shell design. Taking advantage of the IBB, people can quickly obtain a shell model that fit for robot. At the same time, it can avoid collision between shell model and the robot endoskeleton.

The INVIDO system is a graphical tool which was designed and implemented for studying user reactions to videotex systems. For different themes, including weather reporting, sport results and winning numbers in lotteries, different visual presentations have been created. As home visual information systems will invade the market in the next few years, it is essential to develop new tools which can give an idea of the user's reaction to this kind of information. The entire methodology (graphics capabilities, implementation and investigation) is presented. Numerous examples are also given.

The purpose of this paper is to present an efficient algorithm for multi-layer garment fitting simulation based on the geometric method to solve the low time cost problem during penetration detection and processing. This is more practical to design a CAD system to preview the multi-layer garment fitting effect in daily life.

The construction of a multi-layer garment based on existing 3D garments is a suitable method because this method is similar to the daily method of multi-layer dressing. The major problem is the penetration phenomenon between different garments because these 3D garment’s geometric shapes are constructed in different situations. In this paper, an efficient algorithm of multi-layer garment simulation is reported. A face-face intersection detection algorithm is designed to detect the penetration region between multi-layer garments fast and a geometric penetration processing algorithm is presented to solve the penetration phenomenon during multi-layer garment simulation.

This method can quickly detect the penetration between faces, and then deal with the penetration for multi-layer garment construction. Experimental results show that this method can not only remove the penetration but basically maintain the trend of wrinkles efficiently. At the same time, the garments used in the experiment have almost more than 5,800 faces, but the resolving time is under five seconds.

The main originalities of the multi-layer garment virtual fitting algorithm based on the geometric method are highly efficient both in terms of time cost and fitting effect. Based on this method, the technology of multi-layer garment virtual fitting can be used to design a novel CAD system to preview the multi-layer garment fitting effect in real time. This is a pressing requirement of virtual garment applications.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.

The purpose of this paper is to present a diagnostic instrument of the maturity of Industry 4.0 technologies adapted to the textile and clothing sector and constructed based on the technological references that support this industrial evolution process.

The proposed methodology began with the systematic literature review using the SciMAT software and then a questionnaire was developed with 49 questions divided into 5 categories – demography, technologies, strategy, digital skills and benefits of the deployment.

The application in 19 different sectors and 72 people in a textile industry showed this sector is still traditional. The diagnosis results pointed that the level of implementation of Industry 4.0 is considered the first level, later advancing in this order to levels of connectivity, visibility, predictability and adaptability of the processes.

Only in one company was applied the developed instrument, in this case study, a factory that makes children's and adult clothing items located in Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Through the use of this assessment instrument, it is possible to perform an internal benchmarking at the company detecting the strong and weak points, as well as involve a multidisciplinary collaborator team.

The comparisons and improvements may be carried out per dimension or sector, which motivates the constant application and assessment of improvements. The instrument to diagnose the maturity of Industry 4.0 technologies in the textile and clothing sector is considered an effective tool for application in a single company or to have its use expanded in a new piece of research to the entire industrial textile segment.

The developed diagnostic tool may be used for both the internal assessment of the company and its placement relative to its competitors, involving several companies from the same sector. It is possible to know about what level of Industry 4.0 maturity the company is and after benchmarking by others and improve.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel coarticulation and speech synchronization framework compliant with MPEG-4 facial animation (FA).

The system the authors have developed uses MPEG-4 FA standard and other development to enable the creation, editing and playback of high-resolution 3D models; MPEG-4 animation streams; and is compatible with well-known related systems such as Greta and Xface. It supports text-to-speech for dynamic speech synchronization. The framework enables real-time model simplification using quadric-based surfaces.

The preliminary experiments show that the coarticulation technique the authors have developed gives overall good and promising results when compared to related techniques.

The coarticulation approach provides realistic and high performance lip-sync animation, based on Cohen-Massaro's model of coarticulation adapted to MPEG-4 FA specification.