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Persson, Erik, and Johan Torssell. "Virtual Assistants and Their Performance In Professional Environments." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för elektroteknik och datavetenskap (EECS), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-281870.
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Contributors from the mid 20th century up to now have developed and refined virtual assistants, taking the technology from a set of rules to assistants driven by Artificial Intelligence. Today, virtual assistants can provide value in organisation and support a sustainable society by conducting basic and repetitive tasks, and help reduce inequalities caused by biased advisors on sensitive topics. Despite its prosperity, current research somewhat lack focus on the evaluation of virtual assistants in industrial applications. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate virtual assistants from a technical, economical and organisational perspective, in order to understand their performance and value in an industrial environment. This has been done in collaboration with IBM and a client company which prefers to remain anonymous in this report. In this company, two IBM Watson Assistants are under development; one for the IT Service Desk, and one for the Ethics & Compliance department. To cover all aspects of the virtual assistants’ performance, quantitative and qualitative methods were used by conducting user testings and surveys. In this process, discussions have been conducted with IBM experts and employees of the firm for which the practical implementation has been studied, to gain a general and specific understanding from different perspectives. From this paper, the following can be concluded. First, technological performance can be described using quantitative metrics such as coverage, confidence, precision and helpfulness, and should be complemented using qualitative measures such as user satisfaction and perceived user understanding. Second, specific technological performance is relative and the technical limitations as well as it’s maturity should be used as a complement to the evaluation of the assistants. Third, identified organisational benefits include: • reduced time-to-resolution, • reduced handling time, • all-hour-support, • scalability and • user understanding Conclusions specific for the use cases show that an assistant implemented in a narrower use case, that is the Ethics & Compliance assistant, easier can be implemented and performs relatively well also in less developed environments. A broader use case, such as the IT assistant, requires more effort to perform at a high level but may be even more beneficial than in the narrow use case once sufficiently refined.Från mitten av 1900-talet har virtuella assistenter utvecklats och förfinats där teknologin gått från en mängd regler till assistenter drivna av artificiell intelligens. Idag kan virtuella assistenter tillföra värde till organisationer och bidra till ett hållbart samhälle bland annat genom att utföra enkla och återkommande uppgifter samt minska ojämlikheter orsakad av partiska rådgivare i känsliga frågor. Trots framgången har nuvarande forskning inte fokuserat på evalueringen av virtuella assistenter i industriella sammanhang. Syftet med denna rapport är att utvärdera virtuella assistenter från ett tekniskt, ekonomiskt och organisationellt perspektiv för att förstå dess prestation i industriella miljöer. Arbetet har genomförts i samarbete med IBM och en av deras kunder som föredrar att förbli anonyma. I detta företag är två IBM Watson Assistant under utveckling; en för deras IT Service Desk och en för deras avdelning för Ethics & Compliance. I studien har både kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder använts, däribland användartestning och frågeformulär, för att inkludera alla aspekter av de virtuella assistenternas prestation. I denna process har diskussioner förts med experter inom IBM samt medarbetare på företaget för vilket den praktiska implementationen studerats för att få en förståelse för både generell och specifik kunskap ur olika perspektiv. I denna rapport kan följande slutsatser dras. Ett, den tekniska prestationen kan bestämmas med kvantitativa mätetal så som täckning (coverage), säkerhet (confidence), precision och hjälpsamhet (helpfulness), och kompletteras med kvalitativa mätetal som användarnöjdhet och upplevd förståelse för användaren. Två, specifik teknisk prestation är relativ och de tekniska begränsningarna samt mognad bör användas som komplement till utvärderingen av assistenterna. Tre, identifierade organisationsfördelar inkluderar: • reducerad time-to-resolution, • reducerad hanteringstid, • support ¨öppen dygnet runt, • skalbarhet, och • användarförståelse Slutsatserna i de specifika fallen visar att en virtuell assistent som implementeras inom ett smalare område, som en assistent för Ethics & compliance, enklare kan implementeras samt presterar relativt bra även i en mindre utvecklad miljö. Bredare områden, som en assistent för IT-support, kräver mer arbete för att prestera på en hög nivå men kan vara ännu mer värdefull än assistenten i det smala området när den blivit tillräckligt utvecklad.
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Beaver, Ian. "Automatic Conversation Review for Intelligent Virtual Assistants." Thesis, The University of New Mexico, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10816823.
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When reviewing the performance of Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs), it is desirable to prioritize conversations involving misunderstood human inputs. These conversations uncover error in natural language understanding and help prioritize and expedite improvements to the IVA. As human reviewer time is valuable and manual analysis is time consuming, prioritizing the conversations where misunderstanding has likely occurred reduces costs and speeds improvement. A system for measuring the posthoc risk of missed intent associated with a single human input is presented. Numerous indicators of risk are explored and implemented. These indicators are combined using various means and evaluated on real world data. In addition, the ability for the system to adapt to different domains of language is explored. Finally, the system performance in identifying errors in IVA understanding is compared to that of human reviewers and multiple aspects of system deployment for commercial use are discussed.
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Bergman, Karolina, and Daniela Sundin. "Speaking About Voice : A Study on Communicating Brand Personality Through Virtual Assistants." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-158658.
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Problematization: Earlier research on brand communication emphasize the importance of communicating a brand consistently throughout all marketing channels and media. Virtual assistants (VAs) are a new marketing media and a relatively new technology with which a brand can communicate with customers. However, the theory and knowledge about how to use it as a communication tool for a brand is limited. With human communication attributes being a unique characteristic of VAs as a marketing medium, it is suggested that these can be used to clarify and supplement the traits of a brand’s personality. Research Questions: How is brand personality communicated via integrated marketing communications? How does communication with VAs affect the consumers’ perception of a brand’s personality? Purpose: This report investigates, through theories on integrated marketing communication, brand and communication, how brand personality can be communicated through a voice. The study also shows how human conversation attributes are of importance in conversation with virtual assistants, and how these affect brand personality. Conclusion: The study has shown that virtual assistants could provide the opportunity to augment a brand’s personality as a result of their ability to adopt human communication attributes. If the conversational expectations are not fulfilled, the impression of the VA, and therefore the brand it represents, will be negatively affected. If VAs overcome the communication and social obstacles, of which some are presented in this study, they can become a valuable medium for communicating brand personality. Knowledge Contribution: This study has given an understanding for human-to-brand conversation through voice and what aspects that may be considered when developing a VA for marketing purposes. A theoretical model has been developed to show how brand personality and communication attributes can affect the brand communication through virtual assistants.
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Fernández, Canales Rocío Daniela, and Salvador Gianfranco Monzón. "Implementación de un capacitador virtual para visitadores médicos con integración de un asistente de voz." Bachelor's thesis, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10757/652326.
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La creciente popularidad y las capacidades mejoradas de los asistentes personales inteligentes, como Google Assistant, Siri y Alexa, han permitido su aplicación en numerosos campos, algunos de los cuales son: servicio al cliente, banca y turismo. No obstante, la aplicación de estos asistentes para la capacitación y el aprendizaje de trabajadores profesionales ha sido limitada y no ha sido bien investigada.
El presente documento validará la propuesta de una solución para la capacitación continua y el aprendizaje de los visitadores médicos sobre la información de los medicamentos mediante el uso de un agente de conversación basado en la voz. Esto permitirá que los representantes de ventas farmacéuticas puedan preguntar al agente acerca de las propiedades de los medicamentos y realizar exámenes frecuentes sobre la información disponible para verificar su conocimiento.
Esta validación se realizará a través del seguimiento y aplicación de una metodología de investigación centrada en las soluciones y arquitecturas existentes que brinden una base para iniciar el desarrollo del proyecto.The increasing popularity and enhanced capabilities of intelligent personal assistants, such as Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa, have allowed them to disrupt in many fields, some of which are: customer service, banking, and tourism. Notwithstanding, the application of intelligent personal assistants for training and learning of professional workers has been limited and not well researched. This document will validate the proposal of a solution for the continuous training and learning of the medical visitors on the information of the medications using a voice-based conversation agent. This will allow pharmaceutical sales representatives to ask the agent about the properties of the drugs and conduct frequent reviews of the information available to verify their knowledge. This validation will be carried out through the monitoring and application of a research methodology focused on the existing solutions and architectures that provide a basis to start the development of the project.
Trabajo de investigación
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Vizcarra, Christopher, Gabriel Medina, and Alfredo Barrientos. "Implementation of a Fashion Virtual Assistant with the Use of a Kinect v2 Camera and Image Processing." Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10757/653792.
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El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado.This article is about the problem and development of a fashion virtual assistant proposed by using a Kinect v2 camera and image processing, for fashion retail stores. It comes up mainly as a response to the inability of providing unique experiences during the shopping process through the use of diverse devices. Because of this, similar virtual assistant solutions, oriented to provide clothing recommendations, were analyzed to be able to provide software that could give a more personalized suggestion for the users based on their physical characteristics.
Revisión por pares
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Zecchinato, Aurora <1997>. "Distance Learning and Learner autonomy: a case study on the WAATI virtual program of Italian language assistants." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/21283.
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In the last decade many studies have focused on learner autonomy and its role within the language classroom environment. At the same time, in the last couple of years the Covid-19 health emergency forced many countries all over the world to distance and online learning, with a resulting rediscovery of tools and systems functional for the distance education domain. Up to now, some studies have explored the relation between learner autonomy and distance learning, but the number is still limited. As far as post-pandemic research on this matter is concerned, there is no investigation focusing on these two variables. For these reasons, the present work aims at exploring the relation between learner autonomy and distance learning, by studying the opinions of teachers involved in the WAATI virtual program of language assistants. The program was held in 2021 for the first time virtually due to the pandemic and served as a case study for this research. The methods and instruments used follow the works of Borg and Al Busaidi (2012) and Rinesko and Kurniawan (2020). Despite the fact that in literature there are several studies highlighting the limits and difficulties of distance learning, in this work distance education is seen in a positive light, in particular as an opportunity to foster students’ autonomy. Indeed, the results indicate a positive attitude of teachers towards the relation between learner autonomy and distance learning.
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Osipova, M., Наталія Ігорівна Муліна, Наталия Игоревна Мулина, and Nataliia Ihorivna Mulina. "Voice assistant." Thesis, Sumy State University, 2020. https://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/77845.
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Everyday devices become smarter. Thanks to software agent which is called an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) or intelligent personal assistant we can use our appliances in full. Nowadays there are more than 30 different IVA, but all of them have differences. Popular voice assistants currently include Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Google Now, Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana. Voice assistants are technology-based. Voice assistants are built on artificial intelligence, machine learning and voice recognition technology. These agents can interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices. They are the point of communication between you and all your connected devices.
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Wang, Rui. "Evaluate the effects of shopping assistants with media richness modalities on presence, consumer involvement and behavior in virtual worlds." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2010. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/28958.
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The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between media
richness, presence, and consumer behavior in virtual shopping
environments.
By designing and testing a conceptual framework, which proposes
relationships between media richness, presence, consumer involvement,
and consumer behavior in online shopping environments, particularly their
acceptance with recommendations made by online the shopping system,
and their desire to stay in an online shopping environment, research
questions will be answered; the main focus of this study is the relationship
between media richness modalities and the level of presence. There are 4
research questions in this study:
RQ1: How do the modalities of media richness of an online store in virtual
worlds affect the level of presence?
RQ2: How does the level of presence affect consumers' involvement in a
virtual shopping environment?
RQ3: How does the level of presence affect consumers' behavior in a virtual
shopping environment, in particular, the acceptance of recommendations
made by a shopping assistant, and their desires to stay in the virtual
shopping environment?
RQ4: How does the level of consumers' involvement affect consumers'
behavior in a virtual shopping environment, in particular, the acceptance of
recommendations made by a shopping assistant, and their desires to stay in
the virtual shopping environment?
To answer those research questions and to test hypotheses, there will be
four different setups in the experiment with only one variable, which is the
modality of media richness. The different setups could show the different
combination of media richness modalities and their efforts. Furthermore,
this study will recruit participants from the virtual world SecondLife, giving
them virtual currency and asking them to buy virtual products rather than
just browsing. By doing these, the results would be more reliable because
the experiment simulates the actual shopping environment in virtual
worlds.
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Lawson-Guidigbe, Clarisse. "Assistant virtuel anthropomorphique pour la confiance dans la conduite automatisée." Thesis, Bordeaux, 2022. http://www.theses.fr/2022BORD0189.
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Ce travail de thèse a été consacré à l’exploration de l’usage de deux technologies qui vont à terme transformer notre quotidien : les assistants virtuels et la voiture autonome.Les assistants virtuels ont déjà une place importante dans nos vies et sont en train de révolutionner notre façon d’interagir avec les systèmes en nous proposant une interaction vocale. Nous pouvons désormais, par une simple phrase, obtenir des informations sur la météo ou mettre de la musique. Les voitures autonomes pour leur part, bien qu’elles ne soient pas encore accessibles au public, portent la promesse d’améliorer le confort de la conduite, de réduire les accidents et de fluidifier la circulation sur les routes. Cependant, l’adoption d’une telle technologie nécessite de la confiance de la part des utilisateurs. Il semble que les assistants virtuels, par la nature même de leur interface anthropomorphique, puissent jouer un rôle dans ce contexte. Nous explorons donc le potentiel des assistants virtuels pour augmenter la confiance dans la conduite autonome.Les questions principales abordées dans ce travail concernent d’une part les choix adaptés pour concevoir un assistant virtuel afin que celui-ci soit perçu comme anthropomorphique et digne de confiance. D’autre part, elles concernent l’impact que peut avoir une telle interface dans un cockpit de véhicule autonome sur la perception d’anthropomorphisme et la confiance des utilisateurs. Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons, dans un premier temps, choisi l’apparence visuelle de l’assistant en évaluant l’impact de différentes représentations visuelles sur la perception d’anthropomorphisme et de confiance. Notre choix s’est porté sur une représentation de type Automate-Humain. Puis, nous avons implémenté cette représentation en trois dimensions et intégré le résultat dans un simulateur de conduite sous la forme d’un hologramme. Pour évaluer l’assistant virtuel, nous avons conduit une expérimentation pour comparer une interface de référence sans assistant virtuel avec deux interfaces intégrant deux versions de l’assistant virtuel. Les résultats montrent que la perception d’anthropomorphisme ne s'accroît pas avec le niveau d’anthropomorphisme. Une corrélation significative vient confirmer l’impact de la perception d’anthropomorphisme sur la confiance. D’autres résultats plus surprenant concernant l’impact de l’assistant virtuel sur la performance ou encore l’impact de l’expérience acquise sur la confiance sont discutésThis thesis work was devoted to exploring the usage of two technologies that will eventually transform our daily lives: virtual assistants and autonomous cars.Virtual assistants already have an important place in our lives and are revolutionizing the way we interact with systems through voice interaction. With a simple sentence, a virtual assistant can get us information about the weather or play music. Autonomous cars, although not yet available to the public, hold the promise of improving driving comfort, reducing accidents, and improving traffic flow on the roads. However, the adoption of such technology requires trust from users. It seems that virtual assistants, by the very nature of their anthropomorphic interface, can play a role in this context. We therefore explore the potential of virtual assistants to increase trust in autonomous driving.The main questions addressed in this work concern, on one hand, the design choices for a virtual assistant so that it is perceived as anthropomorphic and trustworthy. On the other hand, we address the impact that such an interface can have on the perception of anthropomorphism and user trust when included in an autonomous car HMI. To answer these questions, we first chose the visual appearance of the assistant by evaluating the impact of different visual representations on the perception of anthropomorphism and trust. We chose a Mechanical-Human representation. Then, we implemented this representation in three dimensions and integrated the result in a driving simulator as a hologram. To evaluate the virtual assistant, we conducted an experiment which compared a baseline interface without virtual assistant with two interfaces integrating two versions of the virtual assistant. The results show that the perception of anthropomorphism does not increase with the level of anthropomorphism. A significant correlation confirms the impact of perceived anthropomorphism on trust. More surprising results concerning the influence of the virtual assistant on users’ performance or the impact of acquired experience on trust are discussed
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Tran, David, and Jonathan Böcker. "Virtual office assistant on Magic Mirror." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för teknik och samhälle (TS), 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-20231.
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Every second, major companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are col- lecting a great amount of data from users. Photos, voice and texts etc. are stored in the companies massive server parks. With this amount of data, along with technical benefits such as computing power and exceeding algorithms, the companies can train their ma- chine learning models to levels which is hard for a local computing landscape to reach up to.Nowadays, the companies allow developers to use their services and this paper proclaims the benefits of using these. The aim for this thesis is to show how cloud based face recognition and speech recognition can be utilized to create a virtual assistant in Magic Mirror. This new concept opens new possibilities for human-computer interaction.The use case for the assistant was to aid visitors who comes into an office for an appointment with an employee. The prototype of the assistant showed 94% accuracy when identifying faces and fulfilled the task well when the employee name was internationally known, while having difficulties with others, e.g. Swedish names.
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Manniam, Rajagopal Mukund Babu. "Virtual Teaching Assistant to Support Students' Efforts in Programming." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/84550.
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Novice programmers often find learning programming difficult. They suffer from various misconceptions and difficulties in understanding the subject. The overall experience with programming can be negative for many students. They may feel isolated in the programming environment and think that programming is difficult for them.
Many schools use automated grading tools to process student work and provide them with early feedback. Web-CAT, an open-source software system that is widely used by many universities, is an example of such an automated grading tool. We have developed a Virtual Teaching Assistant for Web-CAT, called Maria, who can support the students to help alleviate some of the negative emotions towards programming. We have used an animated pedagogical agent as the virtual assistant as certain characteristics of the agent can help with the students' perception about the virtual teaching assistant.
Often, students have a fixed mindset about programming. But it is easy to master programming with practice. To promote a growth mindset, Maria also provides feedback recognizing the effort of the student in addition to the performance-oriented feedback of the students' programs. Maria can also provide motivating or encouraging comments to continue working on the assignment to get a good score. Maria can also provide information about the various errors displayed in student feedback.Master of Science
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Achenbach, Jascha [Verfasser]. "Generation of Virtual Humans for Virtual Reality, Medicine, and Domestic Assistance / Jascha Achenbach." Bielefeld : Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld, 2019. http://d-nb.info/1189813068/34.
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Онисько, Ольга Олегівна. "Аудіо-модуль веб-сайту для інклюзивної освіти." Bachelor's thesis, КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського, 2021. https://ela.kpi.ua/handle/123456789/43160.
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Одним з актуальних питань сьогодення є проблема людей із вадами слуху, зору або дефекти мовлення. Люди, які народилися з обмеженими можливостями потребують інклюзивного навчання. Головне завдання інклюзії полягає в тому, що кожна людина повинна себе відчувати на рівні з іншими людьми.
За допомогою мобільних телефонів, комп’ютерів, що говорять, можна значно підвищити рівень інклюзивної освіти. На сьогоднішній день один з найефективніших методів створення комп’ютерного озвучування мови є Text To Speech (TTS).
В ході виконання даної роботи було проведено дослідження у сфері синтезу мовлення, розглянуто методи синтезу мовлення, а також основні сфери використання. Проведено аналіз сучасних синтезаторів мовлення вказуючи на переваги та недоліки.
Дана робота пропонується, як рішення для інклюзивного навчального контенту. За допомогою Web Speech API було розроблено веб-застосунок з можливістю перетворення тексту в звук та навпаки. Представлений великий вибір мов для обох варіантів.One of the most pressing issues today is the problem of people with hearing, vision or speech disorders. People born with disabilities need inclusive education. The main task of inclusion is that everyone should feel on equal terms with other people. With the help of mobile phones and talking computers, you can significantly increase the level of inclusive education. Meantime one of the most effective methods of creating computer speech is Text-to-Speech (TTS). During implementation of this work a study was undertaken in the field of the speech synthesis, the methods of speech synthesis, and also basic spheres of the use are considered. The analysis of modern speech synthesizers is conducted pointing their advantages and disadvantages. This work is offered as a solution for inclusive learning content. The Web Speech API has been used to develop a web application that can convert text to sound and vice versa. A large selection of languages for both options is presented.
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Tarabelli, Jari. "ViVi: Progettazione e realizzazione di un voice powered retail assistant nella realtà virtuale." Bachelor's thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2019. http://amslaurea.unibo.it/19635/.
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La realtà virtuale, negli ultimi anni, ha riscosso un crescente successo dovuto alla diminuzione dei costi, e all'aumentare della disponibilità di applicazioni in qualsiasi campo, dall'intrattenimento all'istruzione.
In particolare nell'ambito in oggetto, le applicazioni di shopping immersive sono ancora nello stato sperimentale, e i grandi nomi del settore si stanno preparando all'ingresso della VR nel mercato mainstream.
Un'altra tecnologia che ha raggiunto una discreta utenza e che ha guadagnato una fetta molto ampia di mercato, è lo Smart Assistant.
L'impiego di un assistente virtuale, con cui si interagisce attraverso la voce, che riconosce l'utente, esegue comandi e raccoglie informazioni sulla base delle preferenze dell'utente, è entrato nel quotidiano: molte realtà hanno infatti deciso di integrarlo tra i loro servizi.
Lo scopo di questa tesi è di cercare di migliorare diversi aspetti dell'esperienza utente, applicando un approccio che mira ad unire le due tecnologie. Si vedrà come, sfruttando le potenzialità date dall'esperienza d'uso dell'assistente (quali semplicità d'uso e gestione/reperimento delle informazioni), e quelle visive della VR (espressività visiva, immersione ed engagement), sia possibile lasciare più libertà creativa in molti aspetti del retailing ed al contempo alleggerire il contesto visivo, delegando funzioni che normalmente sarebbero a carico dell'interfaccia, direttamente all'assistant.
L'utente verrà agevolato nell'esperienza, come già abituato nei negozi fisici, dove il personale è formato per essere l'addetto a chiarimenti, assistenza e sopratutto suggerimenti.
Nello svolgimento dello studio verranno presentati ideazione, sviluppo, test con partecipanti, e relativa valutazione dell'approccio proposto.
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Finch, Dylan Keifer. "Improving and Evaluating Maria: A Virtual Teaching Assistant for Computer Science Education." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/98573.
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Many colleges face a lack of academic and emotional support for their computer science students. Previous research into this problem produced Maria, a virtual teaching assistant (TA). This initial version of Maria was able to answer student questions, provide error explanations, and praise students for effort on programming assignments. This research continues work on the Maria project with three design goals: (1) reducing obstacles to use of Maria, (2) allowing Maria to provide better academic support, and (3) allowing Maria to provide better emotional support (with less focus on this goal). Improvements were made to the initial version of Maria, including increasing the number of questions that Maria could answer, allowing Maria to suggest questions for students to ask, and adding longer back-and-forth dialogs between Maria and students. Following this, Maria was deployed to students for an evaluation. The evaluation revealed that certain features were popular (including the longer dialogs and easier access to error explanation) and that Maria was unable to provide relevant answers to many questions asked by students. Using data from the evaluation, more improvements were made to Maria to address some of her shortcomings and build on her popular features. Answers to more questions were added for questions about testing, general knowledge questions, questions about many other topics. Many of these new answers used the popular back-and-forth dialog feature. Additionally, this research discusses a system that could be used to automate the creation of new answers for Maria or any virtual teaching assistant using crowdsourcing.Master of Science
Many colleges face a lack of academic and emotional support for their computer science students. Previous research into this problem produced Maria, a virtual teaching assistant (TA). This initial version of Maria was able to answer student questions, provide error explanations, and praise students for effort on programming assignments. This research continues work on the Maria project with three design goals: (1) reducing obstacles to use of Maria, (2) allowing Maria to provide better academic support, and (3) allowing Maria to provide better emotional support (with less focus on this goal). Improvements were made to the initial version of Maria, including increasing the number of questions that Maria could answer, allowing Maria to suggest questions for students to ask, and adding longer back-and-forth dialogs between Maria and students. Following this, Maria was deployed to students for an evaluation. The evaluation revealed that certain features were popular (including the longer dialogs and easier access to error explanation) and that Maria was unable to provide relevant answers to many questions asked by students. Using data from the evaluation, more improvements were made to Maria to address some of her shortcomings and build on her popular features. Answers to more questions were added for questions about testing, general knowledge questions, questions about many other topics. Many of these new answers used the popular back-and-forth dialog feature. Additionally, this research discusses a system that could be used to automate the creation of new answers for Maria or any virtual teaching assistant using crowdsourcing.
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Orwick, Ogden Sherri L. "Agent for Interactive Student Assistance: A Study of an Avatar-Based Conversational Agent's Impact on Student Engagement and Recruitment at BGSU's College of Technology." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1319804597.
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Губарев, А. В., and A. V. Gubarev. "Эффективное управление контентом на основе многоагентных интеллектуальных систем : магистерская диссертация." Master's thesis, б. и, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10995/95072.
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В работе производиться анализ многоагентных интеллектуальных систем, их различия, способы и направления применения. Описываются программы и методы создания аудио управляемого синтеза лица. Также обсуждаются различные цифровые голосовые помощники, виртуальные агенты. Рассматривается гипотеза и перспективы создания визуального виртуального цифрового помощника для средств массовой информации.The paper analyzes multi-agent intelligent systems, their differences, ways and directions of application. Programs and methods for creating audio-controlled face synthesis are described. Various digital voice assistants and virtual agents are also discussed. The hypothesis and prospects of creating a visual virtual digital assistant for mass media are considered.
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Ganrot, William, and Paul Johansson. "Att utveckla en chattbot med Rasa." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa, natur- och teknikvetenskap (from 2013), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-78088.
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Världen blir alltmer digitaliserad och i med det, utvecklas nya metoder för att kunna underlätta arbetet för oss människor med automatiserade system som bland annatkontrolleras av AI (artificiell intelligens). Nya utmaningar står inför dörren för att fåsamhällen att anpassa sig till den nya framtiden. En av dessa metoder är chattbottar sommed hjälp av AI kan automatisera en stor del av det manuella arbetet.Denna uppsats bygger på ett projekt som vi blev tilldelade av CGI, att utvecklaen chattbot som en demoprodukt. Syftet med demoprodukten är att ge CGI möjlighetatt visa för kunder vad en chattbot är för något och vilka användningsområden den kanha. Chattbotten utvecklades med hjälp av ett open source-projekt som kallas för Rasasom är ett ramverk för att utveckla chattbottar med. Resultatet är en demoprodukt i formav en chattbot som kan boka semester och möten samt hjälpa användare att få ett nyttlösenord om de har glömt sitt och svara på vanliga frågor.The world becomes more and more digital and with that, new methods are being deve-loped to ease the work for us humans with automatic systems including those controlledby AI (Artificial Intelligence). New challenges are faced every day to make us moreaccustomed to the new future. One of the methods is chatbots and with the help of AIthey can be used to automate a big chunk of the manual labour.This dissertation is based on an assignment by CGI, to develop a chatbot as ademo. The purpose of the demo is for CGI to show to customers what a chatbot is andwhat use cases a chatbot can have. The development of the chatbot used an open sourceproject called Rasa which is a framework to create chatbots with. The result is a demo inthe shape of a chatbot that can book vacations and meetings as well as help users receivea new password if they forgot theirs and answer frequently asked questions (FAQ).
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Williams, Matthew James. "Segmentation in 3D virtual spine modeling for assistance in surgical planning and guidance." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0010401.
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Strohmann, Timo Verfasser], Susanne [Akademischer Betreuer] Robra-Bissantz, and Jan [Akademischer Betreuer] [Muntermann. "From Assistance to Companionship - Designing Virtual Companions / Timo Strohmann ; Susanne Robra-Bissantz, Jan Muntermann." Braunschweig : Technische Universität Braunschweig, 2021. http://d-nb.info/1225863449/34.
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Örnebjär, Dellner Felix. "Market entry for digital healthcare companies." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för industriell teknik och management (ITM), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-300147.
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As digitalization becomes more pervasive in our society, healthcare is no exception. That new technology promises life-transforming innovations is perhaps of little doubt, but many of these innovations might never reach the market, for a plethora of reasons – many of which are investigated within this thesis. This thesis seeks to codify both industry best practices and extant literature to create a generic roadmap in the form of a framework usable by entrants to facilitate their entry into the Swedish healthcare market. The paper builds on an interpretivist approach and utilizes interviews with experts from the sector, representing companies in all stages of maturity - in addition to providing a micro-level view via survey responses for a specific audience and company in the form of headache sufferers. The paper finds several key obstacles to tackle for a potential entrant, with the primary ones being understanding the reimbursement system, the role and importance of partnerships and the challenge in finding the right talent. Finally, the paper presents a model to navigate the market entry - and codifies the concept of 'pilot death' - failing to scale to any significant degree after a pilot partnership.Den ökade digitaliseringen har medfört nya möjligheter, inte minst inom sjukvård. Ny teknologi för med sig många av dessa möjligheter och bland dessa kan det ibland finnas de som medför omfattande ändringar till våra liv. Många av dessa innovationer når dock aldrig marknaden trots att grundidén har potential att förbättra vårdsystemet. En möjlig förklaring är de hinder som kan uppstå när en produkt eller tjänst lanseras. Denna rapport undersöker därför vad industrin anser vara de viktigaste momenten att tänka på under ett marknadsinträde. Rapporten bygger på intervjuer med experter från olika företag inom svensk sjukvård och ger en djupgående inblick, i form av en fallstudie, i ett företag aktivt inom behandling av kronisk huvudvärk. Rapporten identifierar ett antal utmaningar och hinder – där de mest framstående är vikten av att förstå det ersättningssystem som dominerar svensk sjukvård, utmaningen i att hitta rätt kompetens och rollen som samverkan med existerande bolag spelar. Slutligen presenteras en modell för marknadsinträde och konkretiserar konceptet ’pilotdöd’ – där ett bolags lösning inte lyckas nå någon större användning efter ett pilotsamarbete.
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Ates, Mehmet. "Artificial intelligence in banking : A case study of the introduction of a virtual assistant into customer service." Thesis, Högskolan i Jönköping, Internationella Handelshögskolan, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-41144.
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The usage of artificial intelligence in banking is an important theme within entrepreneurial research. The purpose of the study was to analyse the motivations, challenges and opportunities for Swedish banking institutes to implement artificial intelligence based solutions into their customer service process. The research is based on a case study of the Swedish banking institute Swedbank AB, who introduced an AI based virtual assistant (Nina) to deal with customer requests. For the qualitative study, interviews with Swedish banking customer and experts were conducted. Further, to understand the managerial motivations of Swedbank, a theory of Moore (2008) regarding innovation management was applied. The findings display that Nina improved the service spectrum of Swedbank with the potential of decreasing costs, while maintaining customer satisfaction. Further, the results displayed a high acceptance of new technologies from the customer perspective. This provides the foundation for Swedbank to introduce further artificial intelligence based services. Banking institutes and other service oriented organisations with high customer interaction can use the implications of the thesis when considering to more effectively handle customer requests.
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Essabbah, Mouna. "Assistance à l'interaction Homme-Molécule in virtuo: application au chromosome." Phd thesis, Université d'Evry-Val d'Essonne, 2010. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00534210.
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L'une des finalités de la Biologie Moléculaire (BM) est l'étude de l'architecture spatiale (ie. structure 3D) des molécules. Les expérimentations in silico (ie. simulations numériques) permettant la modélisation 3D utilisent le plus souvent des approches automatiques. Or, ces approches présentent certains inconvénients: temps de traitement important, modélisation souvent partielle, modèle 3D généralement figé, etc. L'apport des connaissances des experts, de manière interactive, pendant le processus de modélisation automatique peut pallier certains défauts des méthodes calculatoires usuelles. Il s'agit de placer le biologiste au centre des essais virtuels plutôt qu'en observateur de résultats de simulations. C'est ce que nous appelons l'approche hybride, qui associe les avantages des expérimentations in silico (capacité de calcul) à ceux des Interactions Homme-Machine (IHM) et de la Réalité Virtuelle (RV) : commande naturelle, immersion dans l'environnement virtuel (EV), multimodalité, etc. Le résultat de cette approche est la création d'analyses in virtuo, qui comportent trois phases fondamentales: la modélisation 3D, la visualisation et l'interaction 3D (I3D). Cependant, des domaines complexes tels que la BM sont régis par un ensemble de contraintes qui peuvent être locales (liées aux objets 3D ou aux tâches d'I3D) et globales (liées à l'espace des objets 3D ou au système d'I3D). Par conséquent, l'intervention des experts ne peut pas être réalisée efficacement par des techniques d'I3D classiques, indépendantes de la complexité et des contraintes du domaine. Plus généralement, nous sommes confrontés au problème innovant de l'I3D sous contraintes qui intègre les règles de comportement imposées par l'EV. Pour y répondre, nous formalisons un modèle d'assistance qui associe les contraintes, les tâches d'interaction et des outils d'assistance que sont les guides virtuels. Nous avons appliqué ces deux concepts, d'approche hybride et d'assistance à l'I3D sous contraintes, au problème de la modélisation 3D du chromosome. Les contraintes identifiées sont ici architecturales (ie. données physico-chimiques) et fonctionnelles (ie. modèles biologiques). Ces contraintes issues des lois de la Biologie imposent l'ordonnancement spatial du chromosome. Le système d'interaction Hommme-Molécule in virtuo proposé peut être considéré plus crédible puisqu'il respecte les contraintes environnementales, tant au niveau de la structure 3D qu'au niveau de l'I3D.
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El-Kechaï, Naïma. "Suivi et assistance des apprenants dans les environnements virtuels de formation." Le Mans, 2007. http://cyberdoc.univ-lemans.fr/theses/2007/2007LEMA1014.pdf.
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Nos travaux s'intéressent à la conception des environnements virtuels pour la formation. Les activités d'apprentissage visées concernent la formation des procédures professionnelles à risque et/ou d'urgence. Ces procédures se caractérisent par le respect des consignes/protocoles établis car les erreurs peuvent occasionner de lourdes conséquences. L’objectif de la formation est d'amener l'apprenant à réaliser la procédure sans erreurs et le rôle du formateur consiste à les repérer afin d’y remédier. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à la manière dont pourrait être assisté un formateur dans sa tâche de suivi des apprenants. Nous cherchons à détecter et caractériser les erreurs produites par l'apprenant en faisant une analyse de son activité. Nous proposons une approche en quatre points. 1. Le langage de description de tâches METISSE qui permet de modéliser les procédures prescrites, le but étant de pouvoir exploiter cette modélisation pour faire le diagnostic de l'activité de l'apprenant et de détecter les erreurs observables. 2. La classification des actions erronées de Hollnagel qui nous permet de caractériser ces erreurs observables. 3. Un mécanisme de reconnaissance de plans qui s'appuie sur le modèle METISSE pour inférer les plans de l'apprenant et de détecter ses actions erronées selon la classification de Hollnagel. 4. Un mécanisme qui automatise l’inférence des causes sous-jacentes aux actions erronées de l'apprenant en fournissant les liens causaux. Ces résultats sont ensuite proposés au formateur. Ce mécanisme est fondé sur CREAM, une méthode d’analyse de la fiabilité humaine et est implémenté en utilisant la théorie de l’évidence de Dempster-ShaferThis work relates to the design and development of Virtual Environments for Training. We are interested in Learning By Doing activities that aim at enabling trainees to develop skills related to procedural tasks in the vocational training area. We focus on procedural tasks dealing with issues of safety and risk. These procedures can imply emergency (surgery care procedures), complexity (diagnostic of breakdowns), risks (handling switches on high speed train tracks) etc. Because these activities are strongly and highly involving, they require a great attention from the trainer who monitors the trainees and manages the training sessions. We assume that the trainer rely on the trainees' errors to advise, help, and provide the trainees with appropriate and relevant guidance during the task achievement. To support the trainer and assist her/him in her/his monitoring activity, we make four propositions : 1. The task model METISSE which is used to describe the procedures the learner has to do according to pedagogical goals ; 2. The detection of the trainee's unforeseen behavior by using Hollnagel's classification of erroneous actions ; 3. A recognition process which allows the trainee's erroneous actions to be detected. This process is based on METISSE ; 4. A mechanism which infers the underlying causal that lead to the occurrence of the trainee's erroneous actions. This mechanism is based on CREAM, a second-generation method of Human reliability Analysis. This method remains, as far as we know, a manual method and we propose to automate it. The results produced by this mechanism are then proposed to the trainer. To implement this mechanism we use the Dempster-Shafer theory
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Kefi, Marouene. "Assistance à l'agencement d'environnements virtuels : apport de la programmation par contraintes." Angers, 2012. http://laris.univ-angers.fr/_resources/logo/TheseKefiMarouene.pdf.
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La diversité des problèmes d’agencement a donné naissance à une multitude de travaux et d’applications liés à des domaines différents tels que la conception mécanique, l’urbanisme, l’aménagement d’intérieur, etc. . La résolution des problèmes d’agencement est généralement basée sur le savoir faire et l’expérience des concepteurs et repose sur un processus coûteux et long qui ne répond pas toujours à l’ensemble des contraintes du problème. En outre, dans la plupart des cas, l’agencement est effectué de manière manuelle à l’aide de plans ou des maquettes éventuellement à l’échelle. Dans les cas où des maquettes numériques sont utilisées, peu voir aucune assistance n’est proposée pour aider les concepteurs dans la prise de décision et la réalisation des tâches. Ce travail de thèse repose sur une démarche innovante impliquant une approche interactive générique basée sur l’utilisation conjointe d’outils de formulation et de résolution issus de la programmation par contraintes, et de techniques de réalité virtuelle (visualisation, immersion, et interaction 3D). L’approche proposée offre différents niveaux d’assistance et supporte la prise compte de diverses contraintes. Elle permet également de définir et de résoudre un problème d’agencement complexe de manière automatique. Les assistances offertes permettent de guider le concepteur vers des solutions viables et de prendre en compte ses préférences. Notre approche a été validée à travers différentes expérimentations impliquant la réalisation de tâches d’agencement en environnements virtuels. L’objectif était d’analyser la pertinence de l’approche proposée à travers l’étude de la performance humaine, et d’illustrer les possibilités d’interaction entre l’utilisateur et le système développé. Notre approche est actuellement étendue à différents cas applicatifs impliquant une problématique d’agencementThe diversity of layout problems gave rise to a several applications and related works in different areas such as mechanical design, urban planning, interior design, etc. . Solving layout problems is generally based on the designers expertise and involves a costly and tedious process that do not always satisfies the all problem’s constraints. In most cases, the layout is manually carried out using maps or a mock-ups. In cases where numerical mock-ups are used, no assistance is provided to help users in decision making and during the layout tasks. This manuscript proposes an interactive and generic approach based on the use of formulation and resolution tools from constraint programming, and virtual reality techniques (visualization, immersion and 3D interaction). The proposed approach provides different levels of assistance and supports several kinds of constraints. It also allows to define and automatically solve complex layouts. The various provided assistances can guide the user to possible solutions and take into account his/her preferences. Our approach has been validated through several experiments involving various layout tasks in virtual environments. The objectives were to analyze the relevance of the proposed approach through the study of human performance, and to illustrate the possibilities of interaction between the user and the developed system
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El-Kechaï, Naïma Tchounikine Pierre. "Suivi et assistance des apprenants dans les environnements virtuels de formation." [S.l.] : [s.n.], 2007. http://cyberdoc.univ-lemans.fr/theses/2007/2007LEMA1014.pdf.
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Ullah, Sehat. "Assistance multimodale pour l'interaction 3D collaborative : étude et analyse des performances pour le travail collaboratif." Phd thesis, Université d'Evry-Val d'Essonne, 2011. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00562081.
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Les progrès récents dans le domaine de l'infographie et la capacité des ordinateurs personnels de rendre les scènes 3D réalistes ont permis de développer des environnements virtuels dans lesquels plusieurs utilisateurs peuvent co-exister et travailler ensemble pour atteindre un objectif commun. Ces environnements sont appelés Environnements Virtuels Collaboratifs (EVCs). Les applications potentielles des EVCs sont dans les domaines militaire, medical, l'assemblage, la conception assistee par ordinateur, la teleoperation, l'éducation, les jeux et les réseaux sociaux. Un des problemes liés aux EVCs est la faible connaissance des utilisateurs concernant l'état, les actions et les intentions de leur(s) collaborateur(s). Ceci reduit non seulement la performance collective, mais conduit également à des résultats non satisfaisants. En outre, les tâches collaboratives ou coopératives réalisées sans aide ou assistance, sont plus difficiles et plus sujettes aux erreurs. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous étudions l'influence de guides multi-modaux sur la performance des utilisateurs lors de tâches collaboratives en environnement virtuel (EV). Nous proposons un certain nombre de guides basés sur les modalites visuelle, auditive et haptique. Dans ce contexte, nous étudions leur qualité de guidage et examinons leur influence sur l'awareness, la co-presence et la coordination des utilisateurs pendant la réalisation des tâches. A cette effet, nous avons développé une architecture logicielle qui permet la collaboration de deux (peut être étendue à plusieurs utiliateurs) utilisateurs (distribués ou co-localisés). En utilisant cette architecture, nous avons développé des applications qui non seulement permettent un travail collaboratif, mais fournissent aussi des assistances multi-modales aux utilisateurs. Le travail de collaboration soutenu par ces applications comprend des tâches de type "Peg-in-hole", de télé-manipulation coopérative via deux robots, de télé-guidage pour l'écriture ou le dessin. Afin d'évaluer la pertinence et l'influence des guides proposés, une série d'expériences a ete effectuée au LISA (Laboratoire d'Ingénierie et Systemes Automatisés) à l'Université d'Angers et au Laboratoire IBISC (Informatique, Biologie Integrative et Systemes Complexes) à l'Université d'Evry. Dans ces expériences, les utilisateurs ont été invités à effectuer des tâches variées, dans des conditions différentes (avec et sans guides). L'analyse a été effectuée sur la base du temps de réalisation des tâches, des erreurs et de l'apprentissage des utilisateurs. Pour les évaluations subjectives des questionnaires ont été utilisés. Ce travail contribue de manière signicative au développement de systèmes collaboratifs pour la téléoperation, la simulation d'assemblage, l'apprentissage de gestes techniques, la rééducation, la conception assistée par ordinateur et le divertissement.
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Zou, Ming. "Industrial Decision Support System with Assistance of 3D Game Engine." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för datalogi och datorsystemteknik, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-2082.
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Context. Industrial Decision Support System(DSS) traditionally relies on 2D approach to visualize the scenarios. For some abstract information, like chronological sequence of tasks or data trend, it provides a good visualization. For concrete information, such as location and spatial relationships, 2D visualizations are too abstract. Techniques from Game design, 3D modeling, virtual reality(VR) and animation provides many inspiration to develop a DSS tools for industrial applications. Objectives. The work in our research was to develop a unique prototype for data visualization in wind power systems, and compare it with traditional ones. The product combined 3D VR, 2D graphics, user navigation, and Human Machine Interaction(HMI). It was developed with a game engine, Unity3D. The study explored how much usability can be improved when using applied gamificaion 3D approaches in industrial monitoring and control systems. Methods. The research methods included Literature Review, Commercial Example Analysis, Development, and Evaluation. In the evaluation phase, Systematic Usability Scale(SUS) tests were performed with two independent groups, the testing results were analyzed with statistical method, t-test. Results. The evaluation results showed that an interface developed with 3D virtual reality can provide better usability(include learnability) than traditional 2D industrial interface in wind power system. The difference between them is significant. Conclusions. The study indicates that, compared with the traditional 2D interfaces, the gamification 3D approach in industrial DSS can provide user more comprehensive information visualization, better usability and learnability . It also gives more effective interactions to enhance the user experience.+46 7695 23408
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Dennemont, Yannick. "Une assistance à l'interaction 3D en réalité virutuelle par un raisonnement sémantique et une conscience du contexte." Thesis, Evry-Val d'Essonne, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013EVRY0010/document.
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Les tâches dans les environnements virtuels immersifs sont associées à des techniques et à des dispositifs d’interaction 3D (e.g. la sélection d’objets 3D à l’aide de la main virtuelle via un flystick). Alors que les environnements et les tâches deviennent de plus en plus complexes, les techniques ne peuvent plus être les mêmes pour chaque application, voire pour les différentes situations au sein d’une application. Une solution est d’adapter l’interaction en fonction des besoins de la situation pour améliorer l’utilisabilité. Ces adaptations peuvent être effectuées manuellement par le concepteur ou l’utilisateur, ou automatiquement par le système créant ainsi une interaction adaptative. La formalisation d’une telle assistance automatique nécessite la gestion d’informations pertinentes au vu de la situation. L’ensemble de ces informations fait émerger le contexte de l’interaction. L’assistance adaptative obtenue en raisonnant à partir de ces informations est ainsi consciente du contexte. De nombreuses possibilités existent pour l’obtenir. Notre objectif est une gestion du contexte qui préserve ses degrés élevés d’expressivité et d’évolutivité tout en étant facile à intégrer. Nous proposons une modélisation de ce problème par des graphes conceptuels basés sur une ontologie et gérés par un moteur externe en logique du premier ordre. Le moteur est générique et utilise une base de connaissance contenant des faits et des règles, qui peuvent être changés dynamiquement. Nous avons intégré une notion de confiance, afin d’établir l’adéquation d’une situation à la base de connaissances. La confiance des réactions est comparée à leur impact afin de ne garder que les pertinentes tout en évitant de saturer l’utilisateur. Les applications utilisent des outils qui peuvent être contrôlés par le moteur. Des capteurs permettent d’extraire des informations sémantiques pour le contexte. Des effecteurs permettent d’agir sur l’application et d’obtenir des adaptations. Un jeu d’outils et une base de connaissance pour l’interaction 3D ont été créés. De nombreuses étapes sont introduites dans la base de connaissance pour de bonnes combinaisons et une réflexion indépendante d’outils spécifiques. Nos premières applications illustrent la compréhension de la situation, dont les intérêts et difficultés de l’utilisateur, et le déclenchement d’assistances adaptées. Une étude hors ligne montre ensuite l’accès et l’évolution des étapes du moteur selon la situation. Le raisonnement sémantique générique obtenu est alors expressif, compréhensif, extensif et modifiable dynamiquement. Pour l’interaction 3D, il permet une assistance universelle automatique, ponctuelle ou manuelle à l’utilisateur et des analyses hors-lignes d’activités ou de conceptions pour le concepteurTasks in immersive virtual environments are associated with 3D interaction techniques and devices (e.g. the selection of 3D objects with the virtual hand and a flystick). As environments and tasks become more and more complex, techniques can not remain the same for each application, even for every situations of a single application. A solution is to adapt the interaction depending on the situation in order to increase usability. These adaptations can be done manually by the designer or the user, or automatically by the system thus creating an adaptative interaction. Formalisation of such assistance needs the management of pertinent information regarding the situation. Those items of information make the context emerge from the interaction. The adaptative assistance obtained by reasoning on this information is then context-aware. Numerous possibilities can be used to build one. Our objective is a context management that preserves its high degrees of expressiveness and evolutivity while being easy to plug in. We have built a model for this issue using conceptual graphs based on an ontology and managed externally with a first order logic engine. The engine is generic and uses a knowledge base with facts and rules which can be dynamically changed. We have added a confidence notion, in order to establish a situation similarity to the knowledge base. Reactions’confidences are compared to their impacts so as to keep only the pertinent ones while avoiding user overload. Applications have tools that can be controlled by the engine. Sensors are used to extract semantic information for the context. Effectors are used to act upon the application and to have adaptations. A tools set and a knowledge base have been created for 3D interaction. Numerous steps have been added in the knowledge base to obtain good combinations and a reasoning independent from specific tools. Our first applications shows the situation understanding, including user interests and difficulties, and the triggering of pertinent assistances. An off-line study illustrates the access and evolution of the internal engine steps. The built generic semantic reasoning is expressive, understandable, extensive and modifiable dynamically. For 3D interaction, it allows universal assistances for the user that can be automatic, punctual or manual and off-line activities or conceptions analysis fort he designers
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Lindgren, Jonas. "Analysis of requirements for an automated testing and grading assistance system." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Datorteknik, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-105692.
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This thesis analyzes the configuration and security requirements of an auto-mated assignment testing system. The requirements for a flexible yet powerfulconfiguration format is discussed in depth, and an appropriate configurationformat is chosen. Additionally, the overall security requirements of this systemis discussed, analyzing the different alternatives available to fulfill the require-ments.Framläggningen redan avklarad.
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Yu, Wentao. "Intelligent telerobotic assistance for enhancing manipulation capabilities of persons with disabilities." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2004. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0000479.
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Moratelli, Carlos Roberto. "A lightweight virtualization layer with hardware-assistance for embedded systems." Pontif?cia Universidade Cat?lica do Rio Grande do Sul, 2016. http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/7032.
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O poder de processamento presente nos sistemas embarcados modernos permite a ado??o de t?cnicas de virtualiza??o. Juntamente com os ganhos em redu??o de custo e melhor utiliza??o dos recursos, como por exemplo uma melhor utiliza??o do processador, a virtualiza??o possibilita a co-execu??o de diferentes sistemas operacionais em um processador, sejam eles sistemas operacionais de tempo real (RTOS) e/ou de prop?sito geral (GPOS). A implementa??o da t?cnica de virtualiza??o esta baseada em um m?dulo de software denominado hypervisor. Devido a complexidade de se desenvolver uma nova camada de virtualiza??o especialmente projetada para sistemas embarcados, muitos autores propuseram modifica??es em sistemas de virtualiza??o que s?o largamente empregados em servidores na nuvem para melhor adapta-los ?s necessidades dos sistemas embarcados. Contudo, a utiliza??o de mem?ria e os requisitos temporais de alguns dispositivos embarcados requerem abordagens diferentes daquelas utilizadas em servidores. Al?m disso, a atual tend?ncia de utiliza??o de virtualiza??o nos dispositivos projetados para a internet das coisas (do ingl?s Internet of Things - IoT) aumentou o desafio por hypervisors mais eficientes, em termos de mem?ria e processamento. Estes fatores motivaram o surgimento de diversos hypervisors especialmente projetados para atender os requisitos dos atuais sistemas embarcados. Nesta tese, investigou-se como a virtualiza??o embarcada pode ser melhorada a partir de seu estado atual de desenvolvimento para atender as necessidades dos sistemas embarcados atuais. Como resultado, prop?e-se um modelo de virtualiza??o capaz de agregar os diferentes aspectos exigidos pelos sistemas embarcados. O modelo combina virtualiza??o completa e para-virtualiza??o em uma camada de virtualiza??o h?brida, al?m da utiliza??o de virtualiza??o assistida por hardware. Uma implementa??o baseada neste modelo ? apresentada e avaliada. Os resultados mostram que o hypervisor resultante possui requisitos de mem?ria compat?veis com os dipositivos projetados para IoT. Ainda, GPOSs and RTOS podem ser executados mantendo-se o isolamento temporal entre eles e com o baixo impacto no desempenho.
The current processing power of modern embedded systems enable the adoption of virtualization techniques. In addition to the direct relationship with cost reduction and better resource utilization, virtualization permits the integration of real-time operating systems (RTOS) and general-purpose operating systems (GPOS) on the same hardware system. The resulting system may inherit deterministic time response from the RTOS and a large software base from the GPOS. However, the hypervisor must be carefully designed. Due to the complexity of developing a virtualization layer designed specially for embedded systems from scratch, many authors have proposed modifications of the widely used server virtualization software to better adapt it to the particular needs of embedded system. However, footprint and temporal requisites of some embedded devices require different approaches than those used in server farms. Also, currently virtualization is being adapted for the field of the Internet of Things (IoT), which has increased the challenge for more efficient hypervisors. Thus, a generation of hypervisors focused on the needs of embedded systems have emerged. This dissertation investigated how embedded virtualization can be improved, starting from the current stage of its development. As a result, it is proposed a virtualization model to aggregate different aspects required by embedded systems. The model combines full and para-virtualization in a hybrid virtualization layer. In addition, it explores the newer features of embedded processors that have recently adopted hardware-assisted virtualization. A hypervisor implementation based on this model is presented and evaluated. The results show that the implemented hypervisor has memory requirements compatible with devices designed for IoT. Moreover, general-purpose operating systems and real-time tasks can be combined while keeping them temporally isolated. Finally, the overall virtualization overhead is for most part lower than in other embedded hypervisors.
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Payne, Jeunese Adrienne. "Applied psychology in human-computer interaction : the social impact of a virtual assistant's gender and human-likeness in self-service." Thesis, Abertay University, 2014. https://rke.abertay.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/2a403664-a762-4e68-a6fd-e2cf1f78992f.
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This research applies psychological theory to human-computer interaction and the creation of a virtual assistant (VA) for use in self-‐service checkouts (SSCOs). Existing research investigating the impact of interface agents and avatars in virtual shopping, gaming, and teaching environments presents a range of findings, yet there is comparatively little investigating the impact of a VA in kiosk-based applications. Based on the premise that human-computer interaction resembles human-human interaction, the potential cognitive and social benefits of implementing a visually present VA in SSCOs are examined. Further, this research addresses how the impact of VAs is affected by its gender and human‐likeness. To this end, this thesis brings together two lines of research: human-likeness (in the human-computer interaction literature) and gender (in the psychology literature). Through four studies, it is demonstrated that a VA's similarity to the user, in terms of gender and human-likeness, has an impact on performance with, attitudes towards, and willingness to use a VA. The first study showed automatic orienting to onscreen locations indicated by the gaze of an animated human-like virtual character. Observers could also respond to this cue based on their own knowledge and goals (unlike peripheral cues or a static virtual character). In the second study, women strongly preferred to gender-match with their VAs, but this did not affect their reaction times in a visual search task; men showed no overall preference for gender but were sometimes slower to respond when a female VA was on screen. The tendency to gender-match in males steadily decreased with age, such that the majority of younger males preferred to gender-match whilst the majority of older males preferred to interact with a female VA. Both men and women preferred more realistic VAs, resulting in faster reaction times. The third study focussed on the development of a questionnaire for measuring perceived VA usability and credibility, and, after reliability and validity testing, offered a new measure for assessing these perceptions. This measure consisted of four sub-constructs: warmth and capacity (sub-constructs of credibility) and usefulness and ease-of-use (sub-constructs of usability). Responses to items evaluated in Study 3, in parallel with Study 4, showed that similar agents tend to be perceived as warmer, higher in capacity, and more useful – but only when participants were assigned a gender-matched, humanoid VA. When participants chose their VA, similarity had no impact on the newly developed scales for measuring perceived usability and credibility. Moreover, the positive ratings of similar VAs that had been assigned to participants did not impact willingness to take its advice; in direct contrast, when participants had chosen their VA, positive ratings of the VA (regardless of similarity) correlated with willingness to take its advice. Finally, consistent with the findings of Chapter 4, female participants who chose their VAs tended to gender-‐match (to the equal exclusion of the male and non-human VAs) and half the male participants tended to choose a male VA. Unexpectedly, this was followed by a preference for the non-human, non-gendered VA rather than for the female VA, attributed to its novelty. In general, participants tended to choose a VA taking human form, rating these options more attractive and likable. Overall, the results suggest a preference for and performance-based benefit of human-like VAs. Preferences for VA gender can be interpreted in terms of differential social networking strategies employed by men and women. The research also shows that the perceptions, preferences, and behaviours induced by a VA that is matched to the user (in terms of gender and human- likeness) are not always in line. Thus, retailers should weigh the importance of each of these outcomes (e.g. perceptions of usability or checkout speed) before choosing VA gender and its level of human-likeness, or should allow users to make their own decisions about the appearance of their VA.
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Muhammad, W. "Assistance à l'Abstraction de Composants Virtuels pour la Vérification Rapide de Systèmes Numériques." Phd thesis, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, 2008. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00454617.
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De nos jours la conception des IP (IP: Intellectual Property) peut bénéficier de nouvelles techniques de vérification symbolique: abstraction de donnée et analyse statique formelle. Nous pensons qu'il est nécessaire de séparer clairement le Contrôle des Données avant toute vérification automatique. Nous avons proposé une définition du contrôle qui repose sur l'idée intuitive qu'il a un impact sur le séquencement de données. Autour de cette idée, le travail a consisté à s'appuyer sur la sémantique des opérateurs booléens et proposer une extension qui exprime cette notion deséquencement. Ceci nous a mené à la conclusion que la séparation parfaite du contrôle et des données est illusoire car les calculs dépendent trop de la représentation syntaxique. Pour atteindre notre objectif, nous nous sommes alors basés sur la connaissance fournie par le concepteur: séparation a priori des entrées contrôle et des entrées données. De cela, nous avons proposé un algorithme de slicing pour partitionner le modèle. Une abstraction fut alors obtenue dans le cas où le contrôle est bien indépendant des données. Pour accélérer les simulations, nous avons remplacé le traitement de données, défini au niveau bit par un modèle d'exécution fonctionnel, tout en gardant inchangé la partie contrôle. Ce modèle intègre des aspects temporels qui permet de se greffer sur des outils de model checking. Nous introduisons la notion de significativité support des données intentionnelles dans les modèles IP. La significativité est utilisée pour représenter des dépendances de données booléennes en vue de vérifier formellement et statiquement les lots de données. Nous proposons plusieurs approximations qui mettent en oeuvre cette nouvelle notion.
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Muhammad, Waseem. "Assistance à l'abstraction de composants virtuels pour la vérification rapide de systèmes numériques." Nice, 2008. http://www.theses.fr/2008NICE4047.
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De nos jours la conception des IP (IP: Intellectual Property) peut bénéficier de nouvelles techniques de vérification symbolique: abstraction de donnée et analyse statique formelle. Nous pensons qu'il est nécessaire de séparer clairement le Contrôle des Données avant toute vérification automatique. Nous avons proposé une définition du «contrôle» qui repose sur l'idée intuitive qu'il a un impact sur le séquencement de données. Autour de cette idée, le travail a consisté à s'appuyer sur la sémantique des opérateurs booléens et proposer une extension qui exprime cette notion de séquencement. Ceci nous a menè à la conclusion que la séparation parfaite du contrôle et des données est illusoire car les calculs dépendent trop de la représentation syntaxique. Pour atteindre notre objectif, nous nous sommes alors basés sur la connaissance fournie par le concepteur: séparation a priori des entrées contrôle et des entrées données. De cela, nous avons proposé un algorithme de «slicing» pour partitionner le modèle. Une abstraction fut alors obtenue dans le cas où le contrôle est bien indépendant des données. Pour accélérer les simulations, nous avons remplacé le traitement de données, défini au niveau bit par un modèle d'exécution fonctionnel, tout en gardant inchangé la partie contrôle. Ce modèle intègre des aspects temporels qui permet de se greffer sur des outils de model checking. Nous introduisons la notion de 'significativité' support des données intentionnelles dans les modèles IP. La significativité est utilisée pour représenter des dépendances de données booléennes en vue de vérifier formellement et statiquement les flots de données. Nous proposons plusieurs approximations qui mettent en oeuvre cette nouvelle notionHardware verification has become challenging due to ever-growing complexity of today's designs. We aim at assisting verification of hardware intellectual property (IP) modules at register transfer level (RTL) by means of data abstraction and static formal analysis techniques. We believe that before applying data abstraction, it is necessary to clearly define and separate the 'Control' and 'Data processing' of modules. The consideration of control and data in hardware has previously been a subjective judgment of the designer, based on the syntax. We intuitively define the 'Control' as an entity responsible for the timings of the data operations in IP modules. The proposed definition was envisaged for separating Control and Data, independent of the subjective choice or the specific syntax. We have worked around a few semantic issues of the definition and demonstrated by reasoning, that an ideal separation of control and data is not achievable according to the proposed definition due to the syntax dependent boolean computations. We therefore, separate the Control and Data based on designer's knowledge. A control-data slicing algorithm is proposed to split the module into a 'control slice' and a 'data slice'. An abstraction is achieved in case of slicing with data-independent control. The bit accurate RTL data slice is replaced by a functional data computation model for fast simulations. The control slice being critical entity with timing information, remains intact during this process. This provides us a way of abstracting the data processing and considering only the timing information for formal verification. We have proposed the notion of 'Significance' to represent the intentional data in IP modules. Significance is used to represent boolean data dependencies in modules for formal verification of the data flows. Approximations to data dependencies in IP modules have been realized with demonstration of their correctness. The verification technique based on significance is realized which enables to formally verify properties related to the datapaths
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Morris, Mark K. "Virtual cloud computing effects and application of hastily formed networks (HFN) for humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) missions." Thesis, Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/5476.
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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.-edge technology while testing performance capabilities of virtualized systems. The information gathering and research phase of this thesis directly applies elements of information systems analysis.
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Almajano, Pablo. "Assisted Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environments." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/285805.
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The blending of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, interactive systems, 3D interfaces and the Internet is enabling new services for users. In particular, Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environments (VE) provide users with a collaborative space not only for entertainment and socialization but also for developing “serious” applications such as e-learning, e-government and e-commerce.
This thesis focuses on Hybrid Structured 3D VE, which are persistent multiuser systems where participants (both human users and software agents) develop “serious” activities. In these systems the 3D interface graphically represents the system and facilitates human participation, and an Organisation Centred Multi-Agent System (OCMAS) structures participants’ interactions. To do so, the OCMAS specifies the roles that participants can enact, the activities where complex tasks can be accomplished, and communication protocols that enable the prosecution of such tasks.
Nevertheless, participating in these systems is not a straight-forward process. Specifically, when the system speci.cation is complex, participants have to perform intricate reasoning processes to understand their applicable regulations at current system state; and they do not have access to information about what happened before they entered the system, neither can further process this information. Moreover, software agents speak a computer-based language, which is usually hard to use by human users. Then, as human users interact with staff agents (software agents devoted to support the system activities) to complete tasks, human-agent interaction style becomes a key issue.
In order to overcome these limitations, this work proposes Assisted Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environments, where both human users and software agents participation in the system is improved by both assistance and humanagent interaction mechanisms. The system is formalised as a two layered infrastructure. The Organisational Layer structures the interactions of participants, and the Assistance Layer is populated by a set of Personal Assistants in charge of providing with a set of Assistance services to a system participant. There are four types of Assistance services: i) an Information service that processes data about the organisation specification, the participant current state, and the organisational historical execution states; ii) a Justi.cation service that can be triggered once a participant tries to execute a non-valid or prohibited action; iii) an Estimation service that processes whether an action can be performed at current state prior to its execution or not and, if it is actually the case, then it also provides the next system state; and iv) an Advice service, which provides participants with a sequence of actions (i.e. plans) to achieve their goals.
Moreover, this work implements and evaluates v-mWater, a virtual market based on trading water, modelled as an Assisted Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environment. The usability evaluation results of v-mWater show that it is perceived as a useful and powerful application that could facilitate everyday tasks in the future. Users like its learnability, its immersiveness, and how scenario settings facilitate task accomplishment. In general, users completed the proposed task well and they were able to go to the right destination in the scenario. After doing the test, users improved their opinion about 3D virtual environments. In addition, the overall opinion of the human-agent interaction was positive. Nevertheless, those users less familiar with new technologies experimented problems when using a command-based system to interact with staff agents.
To support assistance services in the system, this work designs and evaluates an Assistance Architecture where the Information service is implemented for software agents; and the Justi.cation, Estimation and the planning Advice service for human users. Nonetheless, these four services could be offered interchangeably for both humans and software agents, since they all simplify the reasoning process as well as the cognitive load required to participate in these complex structured systems.
Speci.cally, the Information service has been extended to help sellers to set the price in their transactions. The tests performed compare the values that different agent satisfaction parameters and system goals take when agents request for different information services, using as a base-line a con.guration without enabling assistance services. The experiments show that system performance and agent satisfaction (and thus, the quality of assistance service) increase with the addition of the information service. Furthermore, individual agents following alternative strategies can request di.erent information as a useful decision support tool. The planning Advice service is the most sophisticated one and makes use of the rest of services to provide a plan that has into account other participants actions and, executed at current system state, will lead to the user’s goal. It is implemented as an extension of A*, namely Plan-eA. Evaluation results indicate that assistance impacts positively in usability measures of efficiency, efficacy and satisfaction.
Related to human-agent interaction, this work integrates a new conversational mechanism within VIXEE, an execution infrastructure for Hybrid Structured 3D Virtual Environments. This new mechanism includes a task-oriented conversational system, which allows staff agents to dialogue with human users using natural language conversations. To do so, this work proposes an extension of the well-known AIML language, namely Task-Oriented AIML, for dealing with task-oriented conversations, which are based on activities’ specification and current system state. Test results give good usability measures of efficiency, efficacy and user satisfaction for the conversational approach.
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Gudipati, Radhika. "GENTLE/A : adaptive robotic assistance for upper-limb rehabilitation." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2299/13895.
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Advanced devices that can assist the therapists to offer rehabilitation are in high demand with the growing rehabilitation needs. The primary requirement from such rehabilitative devices is to reduce the therapist monitoring time. If the training device can autonomously adapt to the performance of the user, it can make the rehabilitation partly self-manageable. Therefore the main goal of our research is to investigate how to make a rehabilitation system more adaptable. The strategy we followed to augment the adaptability of the GENTLE/A robotic system was to (i) identify the parameters that inform about the contribution of the user/robot during a human-robot interaction session and (ii) use these parameters as performance indicators to adapt the system. Three main studies were conducted with healthy participants during the course of this PhD. The first study identified that the difference between the position coordinates recorded by the robot and the reference trajectory position coordinates indicated the leading/lagging status of the user with respect to the robot. Using the leadlag model we proposed two strategies to enhance the adaptability of the system. The first adaptability strategy tuned the performance time to suit the user’s requirements (second study). The second adaptability strategy tuned the task difficulty level based on the user’s leading or lagging status (third study). In summary the research undertaken during this PhD successfully enhanced the adaptability of the GENTLE/A system. The adaptability strategies evaluated were designed to suit various stages of recovery. Apart from potential use for remote assessment of patients, the work presented in this thesis is applicable in many areas of human-robot interaction research where a robot and human are involved in physical interaction.
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Ullah, Sehat. "Multi-modal assistance for collaborative 3D interaction : study and analysis of performance in collaborative work." Thesis, Evry-Val d'Essonne, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011EVRY0003.
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Les progrès récents dans le domaine de l'infographie et la capacité des ordinateurs personnels de rendre les scènes 3D réalistes ont permis de développer des environnements virtuels dans lesquels plusieurs utilisateurs peuvent co-exister et travailler ensemble pour atteindre un objectif commun. Ces environnements sont appelés Environnements Virtuels Collaboratifs (EVCs). Les applications potentielles des EVCs sont dans les domaines militaire, médical, l'assemblage, la conception assistée par ordinateur, la téléopération, l'éducation, les jeux et les réseaux sociaux. Un des problèmes liés aux EVCs est la faible connaissance des utilisateurs concernant l'état, les actions et les intentions de leur(s) collaborateur(s). Ceci réduit non seulement la performance collective, mais conduit également à des résultats non satisfaisants. En outre, les tâches collaboratives ou coopératives réalisées sans aide ou assistance, sont plus difficiles et plus sujettes aux erreurs. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous étudions l'influence de guides multi-modaux sur la performance des utilisateurs lors de tâches collaboratives en environnement virtuel (EV). Nous proposons un certain nombre de guides basés sur les modalités visuelle, auditive et haptique. Dans ce contexte, nous étudions leur qualité de guidage et examinons leur influence sur l'awareness, la co-présence et la coordination des utilisateurs pendant la réalisation des tâches. A cette fin, nous avons développé une architecture logicielle qui permet la collaboration de deux (peut être étendue a plusieurs utilisateurs) utilisateurs (distribués ou co-localisés). En utilisant cette architecture, nous avons développé des applications qui non seulement permettent un travail collaboratif, mais fournissent aussi des assistances multi-modales aux utilisateurs. Le travail de collaboration soutenus par ces applications comprend des tâches de type "Peg-in-hole", de télé-manipulation coopérative via deux robots, de télé-guidage pour l'écriture ou le dessin. Afin d'évaluer la pertinence et l'influence des guides proposés, une série d'expériences a été effectuée au LISA (Laboratoire d'Ingénierie et Systèmes Automatisés) à l'Université d'Angers et au Laboratoire IBISC (Informatique, Biologie Intégrative et Systèmes Complexes) d'Evry. Dans ces expériences, les utilisateurs ont été invités à effectuer des tâches variées, dans des conditions différentes (avec et sans guides). L'analyse a été effectuée sur la base du temps de réalisation des tâches, des erreurs et de l'apprentissage des utilisateurs. Pour les évaluations subjectives des questionnaires ont été utilisés. Ce travail contribue de manière significative au développement de systèmes collaboratifs pour la téléopération, la simulation d'assemblage, l'apprentissage de gestes techniques, la rééducation, la conception assistée par ordinateur et le divertissementThe recent advancement in the field oh high quality computer graphics and the capability of inexpensive computers to render realistic 3D scenes have made it possible to develop virtual environments where two more users can co-exist and work collaboratively to achieve a common goal. Such environments are called Collaborative Virtual Environnment (CVEs). The potential application domains of CVEs are many, such as military, medical, assembling, computer aided designing, teleoperation, education, games and social networks etc.. One of the problems related to CVEs is the user's low level of awareness about the status, actions and intentions of his/her collaborator, which not only reduces user's performance but also leads to non satisfactory results. In addition, collaborative tasks without using any proper computer generated assistance are very difficult to perform and are more prone to errors. The basic theme of this thesis is to provide assistance in collaborative 3D interactiion in CVEs. In this context, we study and develop the concept of multimodal (audio, visual and haptic) assistance of a user or group of users. Our study focuses on how we can assist users to collaboratively interact with the entities of CVEs. We propose here to study and analyze the contribution of multimodal assistance in collaborative (synchronous and asynchronous) interaction with objects in the virtual environment. Indeed, we propose and implement various multimodal virtual guides. Theses guides are evaluated through a series of experiments where selection/manipulation task is carried out by users both in synchronous and asynchronous mode. The experiments were carried out in LISA (Laboratoire d'Ingénierie et Systèmes Automatisés) lat at University of Angers and IBISC (Informatique, Biologie Intégrative et Systèmes complexes) lab at University of Evry. In these experiments users were asked to perform a task under various conditions (with and without guides). Analysis was done on the basis of task completion time, errors and users' learning. For subjective evaluations questionnaires were used. The findings of this research work can contribute to the development of collaborative systems for teleopreation, assembly tasks, e-learning, rehabilitation, computer aided design and entertainment
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Kasnakoglu, Cosku. "Developments on a Virtual Environment System for Intelligent Vehicle Applications." The Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1197307990.
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Lohmann, Kris [Verfasser], and Christopher [Akademischer Betreuer] Habel. "Verbal Assistance with Virtual Tactile Maps : a Multi-Modal Interface for the Non-Visual Acquisition of Spatial Knowledge / Kris Lohmann. Betreuer: Christopher Habel." Hamburg : Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1036729672/34.
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Aiteanu, Dorin [Verfasser]. "Virtual and Augmented Reality Supervisor for a New Welding Helmet : Computerised assistance and online feedback of seam quality at manual welding / Dorin Aiteanu." Aachen : Shaker, 2006. http://d-nb.info/1186584882/34.
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Lohmann, Kris Verfasser], and Christopher [Akademischer Betreuer] [Habel. "Verbal Assistance with Virtual Tactile Maps : a Multi-Modal Interface for the Non-Visual Acquisition of Spatial Knowledge / Kris Lohmann. Betreuer: Christopher Habel." Hamburg : Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1036729672/34.
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Ubeda, Castro Ricardo Andrés. "Estudio de factibilidad técnica y económica de servicios de secretarias virtuales." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2012. http://www.repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/111408.
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Magíster en Gestión y Dirección de EmpresasEl objetivo de este trabajo es el desarrollo, evaluación y análisis de un plan de negocio que se orienta a la prestación del servicio de secretarias virtuales en Chile, enfocado a trabajadores por cuenta propia y emprendedores. Desde ya hace un tiempo una de las afirmacion que sabemos es que lo unico constante es el cambio, por lo cual los servicios virtuales prestan una gran utilidad frente a esta afirmacion, en primer lugar el cliente opta por esta modalidad porque le significa una disminucion en sus costos fijos en un inicio, segundo, porque presenta la ventaja de no requierir de un lugar físico para su relacion con los clientes y por ultimo una adaptibilidad en su gestion dependiendo del proceso o proyecto que este la empresa. La creación de Office Assistance pretende solucionar los problemas que vive día a día un trabajador independiente preocupado por mantener sus costos fijos bajos y rapida adaptibilidad a los tiempo , apoyado por un equipo que mantenga la confidencialidad en sus datos, lo cual será un sello distintivo de esta empresa. Según un estudio de Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) de la UDD ,En Chile de la población económicamente activa más del 23,7% son personas emprendedoras, aumentando cada año, lo que no sólo genera nuevas formas de respuesta a la alternativa laboral, sino también el emprendimiento como respuesta a la existencia de más oportunidades. Las oportunidades que se aprecian es precisamente la de prestar servicios a aquellos emprendedores que requieren sobrepasar la dificultad del emprendimiento con pocos recursos sobre todo en sus inicios. En una primera etapa se realizo un levantamiento de encuesta, para así determinar la demanda, necesidad, ventajas y desventajas del servicio, generando un estudio de mercado caracterizando y definiendo a todos los que participan en este negocio, tanto clientes como trabajadores. Finalmente nuestras metas son ambiciosas, se estima alcanzar unos 6.000 clientes aproximadamente al final del proyecto, los cuales podrán optar por 3 diferentes planes , en donde los ingresos estimados serán de $191.935.110 al final del quinto año, recuperando la inversión al quinto año con una VAN (12%) positivo de $7.800.648 y TIR de 17%.
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Tell, Pontus. "How Could a Virtual Assistant Facilitate Daily Product Design Work? : By presenting key method and standard content; more specifically related to the mechanical product development area." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Interaktiva och kognitiva system, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-168501.
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The usage of virtual assistants is starting to appear within a wide range of application areas. This thesis has been conducted in collaboration with Volvo Cars and more specifically the CAD & Mechanical Development department. It examines how a virtual assistant could facilitate daily product design work at Volvo Cars. This is done by creating a deep understanding of how Design Engineers currently use Volvo Cars CAD Methods or VM’s. The Volvo Cars CAD Methods are instructional documents where Design Engineers find guidance when encountering design related problems. This thesis focuses primarily on the mechanical design aspects of Volvo Cars CAD Methods. The final prototype presented in the thesis is a result of interviews, affinity diagram analysis, requirement analysis, survey, and design iterations. This thesis and the final prototype have shown the interaction design possibilities, limitations, use-cases, and future potential of a virtual assistant Volvo Cars.
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Tammana, Rohit. "Development and Testing of a Haptic Interface to Assist and Improve the Manipulation Functions in Virtual Environments for Persons with Disabilities." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2003. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0000170.
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Vizcarra, Casas Christopher Alonso, and Quevedo Gabriel Alejandro Medina. "Implementación de un asistente virtual de modas con el uso de una cámara Kinect v2 y procesamiento de imágenes." Bachelor's thesis, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10757/653659.
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Este artículo trata sobre la problemática y el desarrollo de un asistente virtual de moda propuesto mediante el uso de una cámara Kinect v2 y procesamiento de imágenes, para tiendas minoristas de moda. Surge principalmente como una respuesta a la incapacidad de proporcionar experiencias únicas durante el proceso de compra mediante el uso de diversos dispositivos. Debido a esto, se analizaron soluciones de asistente virtual similares orientadas a proporcionar recomendaciones de vestimenta para poder proporcionar un software que podría dar una sugerencia más personalizada para los usuarios basándose en sus características físicas. La validación del modelo se realizará a través de la experiencia de un grupo de usuarios en el momento del uso del asistente virtual y expertos en el área de evaluación de moda.This article is about the problematic and development of a fashion virtual assistant proposed by using a Kinect v2 camera and image processing, for fashion retail stores. It comes up mainly as a response to the inability of providing unique experiences during the shopping process through the use of diverse devices. Because of this, similar virtual assistant solutions oriented to provide clothing recommendations were analysed to be able to provide a software that could give a more personalized suggestion for the users basing in their physical characteristics. The model validation will be done through the experience of a group of users at the moment of use of the virtual assistant and experts in the fashion assessment area.
Trabajo de investigación
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Chinaei, Hamid Reza. "Learning Dialogue POMDP Model Components from Expert Dialogues." Thesis, Université Laval, 2013. http://www.theses.ulaval.ca/2013/29690/29690.pdf.
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Un système de dialogue conversationnel doit aider les utilisateurs humains à atteindre leurs objectifs à travers des dialogues naturels et efficients. C'est une tache toutefois difficile car les langages naturels sont ambiguës et incertains, de plus le système de reconnaissance vocale (ASR) est bruité. À cela s'ajoute le fait que l'utilisateur humain peut changer son intention lors de l'interaction avec la machine. Dans ce contexte, l'application des processus décisionnels de Markov partiellement observables (POMDPs) au système de dialogue conversationnel nous a permis d'avoir un cadre formel pour représenter explicitement les incertitudes, et automatiser la politique d'optimisation. L'estimation des composantes du modelé d'un POMDP-dialogue constitue donc un défi important, car une telle estimation a un impact direct sur la politique d'optimisation du POMDP-dialogue.
Cette thèse propose des méthodes d'apprentissage des composantes d'un POMDPdialogue basées sur des dialogues bruités et sans annotation. Pour cela, nous présentons des méthodes pour apprendre les intentions possibles des utilisateurs à partir des dialogues, en vue de les utiliser comme états du POMDP-dialogue, et l'apprendre un modèle du maximum de vraisemblance à partir des données, pour transition du POMDP. Car c'est crucial de réduire la taille d'état d'observation, nous proposons également deux modèles d'observation: le modelé mot-clé et le modelé intention. Dans les deux modèles, le nombre d'observations est réduit significativement tandis que le rendement reste élevé, particulièrement dans le modele d'observation intention. En plus de ces composantes du modèle, les POMDPs exigent également une fonction de récompense. Donc, nous proposons de nouveaux algorithmes pour l'apprentissage du modele de récompenses, un apprentissage qui est basé sur le renforcement inverse (IRL). En particulier, nous proposons POMDP-IRL-BT qui fonctionne sur les états de croyance disponibles dans les dialogues du corpus. L'algorithme apprend le modele de récompense par l'estimation du modele de transition de croyance, semblable aux modèles de transition des états dans un MDP (processus décisionnel de Markov). Finalement, nous appliquons les méthodes proposées à un domaine de la santé en vue d'apprendre un POMDP-dialogue et ce essentiellement à partir de dialogues réels, bruités, et sans annotations.Spoken dialogue systems should realize the user intentions and maintain a natural and efficient dialogue with users. This is however a difficult task as spoken language is naturally ambiguous and uncertain, and further the automatic speech recognition (ASR) output is noisy. In addition, the human user may change his intention during the interaction with the machine. To tackle this difficult task, the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) framework has been applied in dialogue systems as a formal framework to represent uncertainty explicitly while supporting automated policy solving. In this context, estimating the dialogue POMDP model components is a signifficant challenge as they have a direct impact on the optimized dialogue POMDP policy. This thesis proposes methods for learning dialogue POMDP model components using noisy and unannotated dialogues. Speciffically, we introduce techniques to learn the set of possible user intentions from dialogues, use them as the dialogue POMDP states, and learn a maximum likelihood POMDP transition model from data. Since it is crucial to reduce the observation state size, we then propose two observation models: the keyword model and the intention model. Using these two models, the number of observations is reduced signifficantly while the POMDP performance remains high particularly in the intention POMDP. In addition to these model components, POMDPs also require a reward function. So, we propose new algorithms for learning the POMDP reward model from dialogues based on inverse reinforcement learning (IRL). In particular, we propose the POMDP-IRL-BT algorithm (BT for belief transition) that works on the belief states available in the dialogues. This algorithm learns the reward model by estimating a belief transition model, similar to MDP (Markov decision process) transition models. Ultimately, we apply the proposed methods on a healthcare domain and learn a dialogue POMDP essentially from real unannotated and noisy dialogues.
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Qian, Yang. "Conception et Commande d’un Robot d’Assistance à la Personne." Thesis, Ecole centrale de Lille, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013ECLI0005/document.
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Ce travail s’inscrit dans le cadre de la conception et réalisation d’un robot d’assistance à la personne. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons particulièrement à la conception, à la modélisation et à la commande d’un robot manipulateur mobile. La conception mécanique couplée à un outil de simulation dynamique multi-corps nous a permis d’obtenir un modèle virtuel très réaliste. Le modèle cinématique du système a été obtenu en utilisant la méthode D-H modifiée. L’approche Bond graph et la méthode de Lagrange ont permis de construire le modèle dynamique. Un algorithme hybride qui combine la pseudoinverse du jacobien et la méthode RRT a été proposé pour la planification de mouvement d’un manipulateur redondant et rechercher de configurations continues, stables et sans collision. Un contrôleur basé sur les réseaux de neurones a été introduit pour la commande coordonnée d’un manipulateur mobile. Cette méthode ne nécessite pas un modèle précis du robot. Les paramètres inconnus sont identifiés et compensés en utilisant des réseaux de neurones RBF. Un algorithme de contrôle similaire est présenté pour la commande force/position d’un manipulateur mobile qui est soumis à des contraintes holonomes et nonholonomes. L’étude de la main robotique a été effectuée séparément avant d’être couplée au reste du système. Les modèles cinématique et dynamique du système main-objet ont été obtenus en utilisant les approches mathématiques et bond graph. Un algorithme est proposé afin d’assurer une prise ferme, éviter les dérapages et suivre les mouvements désirés. Les validations des modèles et des différentes lois de commande ont été effectuées grâce à la co-simulation Matlab/modèle virtuelThe purpose of this thesis is to design, model and control of a personal assistant robot used for domestic tasks. In order to make the robot’s design more efficient, a virtual simulation system is built using dynamic simulation software. The kinematic model is set up based on modified D-H principle. The dynamic model is built using the Lagrange theorem and elaborated in Matlab. We also employ an energy-based approach for modeling and its bond graph notation ensures encapsulation of functionality, extendibility and reusability of each element of the model. A hybrid algorithm of combining the Jacobian pseudoinverse algorithm with Rapidly-Exploring Random Tree method is presented for collision-free path planning of a redundant manipulator. An intelligent robust controller based on neural network is introduced for the coordinated control of a mobile manipulator. This method does not require an accurate model of the robot. Unknown dynamic parameters of the mobile platform and the manipulator are identified and compensated in closed-loop control using RBF neural network. A similar control algorithm is presented for coordinated force/motion control of a mobile manipulator suffering both holonomic and nonholonomic constraints. Kinematics and dynamics of a dexterous hand manipulating an object with known shape by rolling contacts are derived. A computed torque control algorithm is presented to ensure firm grip, avoid slippage and well track a given motion imposed to the object. The validation of models and different control laws were made by the co-simulation Matlab / virtual model
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Ferreira, Luís Filipe Colvier de Assunção. "Plano de comunicação integrada de marketing para a empresa Extra Time Solutions, Lda." Master's thesis, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/11620.
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Mestrado em MarketingNeste trabalho é apresentado o plano de comunicação integrada de marketing para uma empresa em fase de constituição, que irá prestar serviços de assistência pessoal virtual em contexto Business-to-Consumer, atualmente a serem prestados pela fundadora como trabalhadora independente. O plano traça uma linha orientadora de ações operacionais e táticas de marketing para a fase de arranque e desenvolvimento da empresa, sendo os principais objetivos: (i) a angariação de novos clientes particulares e (ii) a construção e aumento de base de dados de potenciais clientes particulares. Com baixo orçamento para investimento em marketing, a estratégia passa principalmente pela comunicação online, em canais que requeiram menor investimento inicial, mas altamente mensuráveis. No seguimento desta estratégia, foi realizado um estudo, complementar ao projeto, sobre promoção através de cupões/ vouchers. O objetivo deste estudo é entender a atitude do consumidor face à utilização de cupões e desta forma avaliar a viabilidade do uso de cupões no plano de marketing. Estão ainda incluídos neste plano a monitorização, as métricas para controlo, avaliação e correção, sendo o principal indicador o número de pedidos efetuados no website da empresa.
This research presents the integrated communication marketing plan for a company being set up, which will provide virtual personal assistance services in business-to-consumer context, already being provided by the founder, as an independent worker. The plan outlines a guideline of operational and tactical marketing activities for start-up and development of the company with the main objectives: (i) achieving notoriety and (ii) acquire new clients on services destined to individuals. With a low budget marketing investment, the strategy focuses on online communication channels that require lower initial investment, but highly measurable. Following this strategy, a study on promotion through coupons / vouchers was conducted to complement the project. The objective of this study is to understand the consumer attitude towards using coupons and thus assess the feasibility of using coupons in the marketing plan. Monitoring, metrics, evaluation and correction are also included in this plan where the main indicator is the number of orders placed on the company website.