A Specialized Pipeline for Efficient and Reliable 3D Semantic Model Reconstruction of Buildings from Indoor Point Clouds.

Recent advances in laser scanning systems have enabled the acquisition of 3D point cloud representations of scenes, revolutionizing the fields of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC). This paper presents a novel pipeline for the automatic generation of 3D semantic models of multi-level buildings from indoor point clouds. The architectural components are extracted hierarchically.

Perception of Line Attributes for Visualization.

Line attributes such as width and dashing are commonly used to encode information. However, many questions on the perception of line attributes remain, such as how many levels of attribute variation can be distinguished or which line attributes are the preferred choices for which tasks. We conducted three studies to develop guidelines for using stylized lines to encode scalar data.

Perceptually Uniform Construction of Illustrative Textures.

Illustrative textures, such as stippling or hatching, were predominantly used as an alternative to conventional Phong rendering. Recently, the potential of encoding information on surfaces or maps using different densities has also been recognized. This has the significant advantage that additional color can be used as another visual channel and the illustrative textures can then be overlaid.

Experimental Analysis of Commercial Optical Methods for Foot Measurement.

Due to the increasing trend of online shopping, shoes are more and more often bought without being tried on. This leads to a strong increase in returns, which results in a high financial as well as ecological burden. To prevent this, feet can be measured either in the store or at home by various systems to determine the exact dimensions of the foot and derive an optimal shoe size.

The MPI facial expression database--a validated database of emotional and conversational facial expressions.

The ability to communicate is one of the core aspects of human life. For this, we use not only verbal but also nonverbal signals of remarkable complexity. Among the latter, facial expressions belong to the most important information channels.

Dynamic information for the recognition of conversational expressions.

Communication is critical for normal, everyday life. During a conversation, information is conveyed in a number of ways, including through body, head, and facial changes. While much research has examined these latter forms of communication, the majority of it has focused on static representations of a few, supposedly universal expressions.

The contribution of different facial regions to the recognition of conversational expressions.

The human face is an important and complex communication channel. Humans can, however, easily read in a face not only identity information but also facial expressions with high accuracy. Here, we present the results of four psychophysical experiments in which we systematically manipulated certain facial areas in video sequences of nine conversational expressions to investigate recognition performance and its dependency on the motions of different facial parts.

Spatial updating in virtual reality: the sufficiency of visual information.

Robust and effortless spatial orientation critically relies on "automatic and obligatory spatial updating", a largely automatized and reflex-like process that transforms our mental egocentric representation of the immediate surroundings during ego-motions. A rapid pointing paradigm was used to assess automatic/obligatory spatial updating after visually displayed upright rotations with or without concomitant physical rotations using a motion platform. Visual stimuli displaying a natural, subject-known scene proved sufficient for enabling automatic and obligatory spatial updating, irrespective of concurrent physical motions.

Processing of facial identity and expression: a psychophysical, physiological, and computational perspective.

A deeper understanding of how the brain processes visual information can be obtained by comparing results from complementary fields such as psychophysics, physiology, and computer science. In this chapter, empirical findings are reviewed with regard to the proposed mechanisms and representations for processing identity and emotion in faces. Results from psychophysics clearly show that faces are processed by analyzing component information (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.

Slot: a research platform for investigating multimodal communication.

In this article, we present the spatial logistics task (SLOT) platform for investigating multimodal communication between 2 human participants Presented are the SLOT communication task and the software and hardware that has been developed to run SLOT experiments and record the participants' multimodal behavior. SLOT offers a high level of flexibility in varying the context of the communication and is particularly useful in studies of the relationship between pen gestures and speech. We illustrate the use of the SLOT platform by discussing the results of some early experiments.

Gaze-eccentricity effects on road position and steering.

The effects of gaze eccentricity on the steering of an automobile were studied. Drivers performed an attention task while attempting to drive down the middle of a straight road in a simulation. Steering was biased in the direction of fixation, and deviation from the center of the road was proportional to the gaze direction until saturation at approximately 15 degrees gaze-angle from straight ahead.