This paper designs and develops a computer programming learning system for total beginners and those who have no programming experience. The traditional computer programming learning systems require ...prior knowledge about variables, their types, operators for arithmetic calculations and relational calculations etc., for adopting a wide range of representation of program codes, leading to the burden to them. The proposed system focuses on learning the three basic flows of control: sequential, conditional and iterative controls, for not requiring the prior knowledge, and exploits a path-finding task for confining representation of program codes to a specific task, which is a navigation task where students are asked to organize a sequence of orders for an avatar to move from a given start to a given end on a Manhattan grid map. The previous work employs the path-finding task to foster understanding of the sequence of orders by encouraging students to perform self-tracing process while our proposed system employs it to include that property of understanding for the three basic flows of control which are not covered in the previous work. To add high interactivity and tangibility for student motivation and engagement to learning, the proposed system also employs AR capability. An experiment on feasibility of our system for education is conducted and the results show that our system has the potential for improving students’ understanding of how to make program codes by decrease of the ratio of program codes’ length made by beginners to experts, which is from 2.186 to 1.267, regardless of AR capability such that the ratio decreased from 2.481 to 1.346 without AR capability and it was from 1.974 to 1.206 with it. The results also show that our system significantly leverages their motivation of learning by increase of beginners’ score from 5.00 without AR capability to 6.67 with it for interest and it is from 5.67 to 7.00 for amusement, and even if sacrificing a wide range of representation of program codes that the traditional systems take, a certain stress is significantly given on spending time thinking and building up a program code in proportion to its difficulty and complexity.
This manuscript discusses how familiarization with an experimental driving course in a driving simulator would influence driving behaviors in terms of manipulation of the gas/brake pedal, ability to ...stay in one’s lane, and driving speed. Generally, when conducting an experiment using a driving simulator to gain new findings, an experimental driving course is required and the influence of familiarization with the course affecting the results is inevitable. Traditionally, to remove this influence of familiarization with driving courses from a targeted evaluation criterion, predictable driving courses such as straight-based roads like city roads and expressways, roads with gentle curves like country roads and mountain ones, are employed. However, it is still questionable whether findings from those driving courses would hold for variation of driving courses which play an important role in understanding the findings in reality. This manuscript focuses on the progress of familiarization with a driving course and clarifies what properties of driving behaviors are influenced from it. The findings show that people control speed of a car with fewer presses of the acceleration pedal (the number of counts of pushing the gas pedal decreased by -11.6%) with less pressure applied (degree of pushing decreased by -12.8%), leading to driving more slowly as they drive around 7
∼
9 driving laps. In addition, they manipulate the steering wheel with a smaller operating range (standard deviation of angular position of the steering wheel decreased by -5.7%), so that lane keeping becomes more precise (lateral deviation decreased by -28.7%) as they drive around 4
∼
6 driving laps. Finally, user familiarization with driving courses is dealt with in this manuscript and our ultimate goal is to quantify user familiarization, predict its level, and give drivers feedback on it in real time so that they are warned to be drive carefully. The outcome of this manuscript is a first step and quantify the user familiarization.
This manuscript discusses a new indoor positioning method and proposes a multi-distance function trilateration over k-NN fingerprinting method using radio signals. Generally, the strength of radio ...signals, referred to received signal strength indicator or RSSI, decreases as they travel in space. Our method employs a list of fingerprints comprised of RSSIs to absorb interference between radio signals, which happens around the transmitters and it also employs multiple distance functions for conversion from distance between fingerprints to the physical distance in order to absorb the interference that happens around the receiver then it performs trilateration between the top three closest fingerprints to locate the receiver's current position. An experiment in positioning performance is conducted in our laboratory and the result shows that our method is viable for a position-level indoor positioning method and it could improve positioning performance by 12.7% of positioning error to 0.406 in meter in comparison with traditional methods.
This paper discusses VDT syndrome from the point of view of the viewing distance between a computer screen and user's eyes. This paper conducts a series of experiments to show an impact of the ...viewing distance on task performance. In the experiments, two different viewing distances of 50cm and 350cm with the same viewing angle of 30degrees are taken into consideration. The results show that the long viewing distance enables people to manipulate the mouse more slowly, more correctly and more precisely than the short.
This paper discusses the use of a common computer mouse as a pointing interface for tabletop displays. In the use of a common computer mouse for tabletop displays, there might be an angular distance ...between the screen coordinates and the mouse control coordinates. To align those coordinates, this paper introduces a screen coordinates calibration technique using a shadow cursor. A shadow cursor is the basic idea of manipulating a mouse cursor without any visual feedbacks. The shadow cursor plays an important role in obtaining the angular distance between the two coordinates. It enables the user to perform a simple mouse manipulation so that screen coordinates calibration will be completed in less than a second.
We present a way to correct light distortion of views looking into an aquarium. When we see fish in an aquarium, they appear closer and distorted due to light distortion. In order to correct the ...distortion, light rays travelling in the aquarium directly towards an observer should hit him/her after emerging from the aquarium. In this manuscript, those light rays are captured by a perspective camera at specific positions, not the observer position. And then it is shown that the taken images are successfully merged as a single one that is not affected by light distortion.
This paper mainly introduces the methods of attracting the driver's viewpoint to a specific position in the field of view in the simulation of automobile driving and carries out experiments on these ...methods. The use of a driving simulator can help drivers to become familiar with driving operations and traffic rules. However, because drivers often lack attention during driving and bear a lot of cognition, such as traffic signs, traffic lights, and other objects, it is necessary to provide visual guidance for drivers. Using virtual reality technology for this task is generally considered reasonable. The authors propose four attention prompt methods, namely "Point", "Arrow", "Blur" and "Dusk". To verify these four attention prompt methods' feasibility, the authors use Unity3D to develop a virtual driving simulator. To improve the realism of the simulated driving, the authors also used a Logitech G29 steering wheel as an input device and uses the D2R-test method to conduct experiments and get the results. The experimental results show that, compared with not using any attention prompting method, turning on the attentional prompt method has a significant effect on the experimenter's attention improvement.
This manuscript introduces a pointing interface for a tabletop display with a reflex in eye-hand coordination. The reflex is a natural response to inconsistency between kinetic information of a mouse ...and visual feedback of the mouse cursor. The reflex yields information on which side the user sees the screen from, so that the screen coordinates are aligned with the user's position.
This manuscript introduces the basic idea of a shadow-cursor for calibrating the screen coordinates of tabletop displays. The shadow-cursor is an invisible mouse cursor. We explain how the ...shadow-cursor works to calibrate the screen coordinates and discuss its properties of accuracy, and then show that the shadow-cursor has the potential to align the screen coordinates.
This paper proposes an indoor positioning method using geomagnetic field with less spatial movement and discusses its positioning performance. In the proposed method, the user holds a geomagnetic ...sensor, which is often mounted on common smartphones, with his/her arm extended and turns around 360 degrees at his/her current position without walking which is required for traditional methods. The obtained sequence of change in geomagnetic field is used for acquiring the current position. A series of experiments is conducted on positioning accuracy and the results show that the proposed method works with a positioning error of 3.4 m on average and it also demonstrates the best CDF with the positioning error less than about 1.3 m.
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