Abstract: In recent years, mobile devices have become very popular within young people. Thanks to developments in mobile technologies, these devices can now do much more than just voice calls and texts. We envision mobile devices as tools for improving the young users’ lifestyle, especially for learning. In this work we present a web authoring system that makes it possible to create a mobile application that supports children in learning a new language in a more pleasant and entertaining way by using Augmented Reality. This application allows pupils to improve their speaking skills turning the language acquisition into a game under the supervision of both teachers and parents. Our contribution is focused on understanding how digital technology can facilitate learning while keeping in mind that it is a wide and interdisciplinary issue.
Authors: F. Sorrentino, L. D. Spano, R. Scateni.
Speaky Notes: Learn languages with augmented reality.
Motivating students with Mobiles (MsM’2015), part of IMCL2015, 146-150.
Salonicco, Grecia, Novembre 2015.
Abstract: The recent development in consumer hardware lowers the cost barrier for adopting immersive Virtual Reality (VR) solutions, which could be an option for classroom use in the near future. In this paper, we introduce RiftArt, a VR tool for supporting the teaching and studying of Art History. Using riftArt the teachers can configure virtual museum rooms, with artwork models inside, and enhance them with multimodal annotation. The environment supports both the teachers during the lesson and the students during rehearsal. The application, implemented completely using Web technologies, can be visualized on large screens and head mounted displays. Via the user test results we can say that the immersive VR visualization increases the motivation of high-school students towards studying Art History.
Abstract: Curve-skeletons are well known shape descriptors, able to encode topological and structural information of a shape. The range of applications in which they are used comprises, to name a few, computer animation, shape matching, modelling and remeshing. Different tools for automatically extracting the curve-skeleton for a given input mesh are currently available, as well as inverse skeletonization tools, where a user-defined skeleton is taken as input in order to build a mesh that reflects the encoded structure. Although their use is broad, an automatically extracted curve-skeleton is usually not well-suited for the next pipeline step in which they will be used. We present a tool for creating, editing and repairing curve-skeletons whose aim is to allow users to obtain, within minutes, curve-skeletons that are tailored for their specific task.
Abstract: We propose a filtering system for occlusion-aware contours. Given a point of view, we use the silhouette of a 3D shape from that point of view, its medial axis and a map of the occluded areas. Our filter is able to select the points of the medial axis which are projections of the curve-skeleton of the 3D shape, discarding all the points affected by occlusions. Our algorithm is easy to implement and works in real time. It can be plugged as is into existing methods for curve-skeleton extraction from 2D images; it can be used to robustly rank silhouettes according to how much they are representative of the 3D shape that generated them and can also be used for shape recognition from images or video sequences.
Abstract: We present here a proof-of-concept of an integrated system for enhancing the shopping experience in a shoes’ shop. The system uses two modules: (i) one internal to the shop using an interactive totem; (ii) one external to the shop based on the customer’s mobile device and the interactive external shop surface. We describe the technical architecture of the two modules and two different scenarios of the user experience.