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Auditory hallucinations are common and distressing symptoms of the schizophrenia disease. It is commonly treated with pharmacological approaches but, unfortunately, such an approach is not effective in all patients. In the cases in which the use of antipsychotic drugs is not possible or not recommended, psychotherapeutic interventions are used to help patients gain power and control against hearing voices. Recently, virtual reality technologies have been incorporated to this type of therapies. A virtual representation of their voice (avatar) is created in a controlled computer-based environment, and the patient is encouraged to confront it. Unfortunately, the software tools used in these therapies are not described in depth and, even more important, to the best of our knowledge, their usability, utility and intention to use by therapists, and patients have not been evaluated enough. The involvement of end users in the software development is beneficial in obtaining useful and usable tools. Hence, the two contributions of this paper are (1) the description of an avatar creation system and the main technical details of the configuration of auditory hallucination avatars, and (2) its evaluation from both the therapists’ and the patients’ viewpoints. The evaluation does not only focus on usability, but also assesses the acceptance of the technology as an important indicator of the future use of a new technological tool. Moreover, the most important results, the lessons learned and the main limitations of our study are discussed.

People with schizophrenia have difficulty recognizing the emotions in the facial expressions of others, which affects their social interaction and functioning in the community. Static stimuli such as photographs have been used traditionally to examine deficiencies in the recognition of emotions in patients with schizophrenia, which has been criticized by some authors for lacking the dynamism that real facial stimuli have. With the aim of overcoming these drawbacks, in recent years, the creation and validation of virtual humans has been developed. This work presents the results of a study that evaluated facial recognition of emotions through a new set of dynamic virtual humans previously designed by the research team, in patients diagnosed of schizophrenia. The study included 56 stable patients, compared with 56 healthy controls. Our results showed that patients with schizophrenia present a deficit in facial affect recognition, compared to healthy controls (average hit rate 71.6% for patients vs 90.0% for controls). Facial expressions with greater dynamism (compared to less dynamic ones), as well as those presented from frontal view (compared to profile view) were better recognized in both groups. Regarding clinical and sociodemographic variables, the number of hospitalizations throughout life did not correlate with recognition rates. There was also no correlation between functioning or quality of life and recognition. A trend showed a reduction in the emotional recognition rate as a result of increases in Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), being statistically significant for negative PANSS. Patients presented a learning effect during the progression of the task, slightly greater in comparison to the control group. This finding is relevant when designing training interventions for people with schizophrenia. Maintaining the attention of patients and getting them to improve in the proposed tasks is a challenge for today’s psychiatry.

The threshold of detection is the minimum intensity of a signal to be detected by human sense of touch. Touch is a great challenge in virtual reality research. Virtual reality systems are nothing but telepresence systems where the remote environment is a digital simulation, so it can benefit from the haptic technology developed for remote manipulation. The tactile and force information people daily get from their hands in the real world is hard to provide with one single technology. Many projects can be found in literature in which vibro-tactile technology is used to transmit haptic information in different areas. The automotive industry is also benefiting from vibration technology to create warning systems for drivers. Cadillac, for example, has a system of vibro-tactile actuators in the seat that warn the driver of possible road hazards, which are collected through a system of radar, ultrasonic, and vision sensors.

This paper presents the system architecture of a collaborative virtual environment in which distributed multidisciplinary teams involved in space exploration activities come together and explore areas of scientific interest of a planet for future missions. The aim is to reduce the current challenges of distributed scientific and engineering meetings that prevent the exploitation of\ud their collaborative potential, as, at present, expertise, tools and datasets are fragmented. This paper investigates the functional characteristics of a software framework that addresses these challenges following the design science research methodology in the context of the space industry and research.\ud An implementation of the proposed architecture and a validation process with end users, based on the execution of different use cases, are described. These use cases cover relevant aspects of real science analysis and operation, including planetary data visualization, as the system aims at being used in future European missions. This validation suggests that the system has the \ud potential to enhance the way space scientists will conduct space science research in the future.

The increase in the number of devices equipped with physiological sensors and their low price mean that they can be used in many fields. One of these fields is health-care and home-care for the elderly or people with disabilities. The development of such devices makes it possible to monitor their condition continuously and at all times. A continuous monitoring not only establishes an image of the user’s status, but also detects possible anomalies. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a distributed architecture that allows expert analysts to access the data provided by the sensors at all times and from anywhere. This paper introduces the development and implementation of the concept of distributed architecture, focusing on the minimum requirements needed to carry it out. All the necessary modules are described for different stages: acquisition, communication and processing of physiological signals. The last stage is carried out by a machine learning system. The complete reporting and storage system is also described. Finally, the most important conclusions that have emerged during the development are reported.

The Industry 4.0 paradigm pursues improvements in production rate, flexibility, efficiency, quality, among others, through the use of technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), ambient intelligence and collaborative robots. Robots developing precision tasks, works in hazardous environments or movements of heavy parts, autonomously or in cooperation with workers, offer great advantages. Although collaboration provides great benefits, these technologies should be appropriate for all kind of workers, independently of their technical skills. If this problem is not addressed properly, irruption of robots could lead to social instability and/or rejection of useful advances. In this work, a gesture control system based on wearables oriented to Industry 4.0 robots is tested with real users to validate a novel gesture control system as an intuitive tool.

The brain makes use of multiple visual cues to reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of a scene. Neuroscience studies have demonstrated that motion parallax is one such powerful depth cue. Motion parallax consists in harnessing the motion of the observer, offering a different view of the environment depending on his/her position to get some 3D feeling. This paper introduces a biologically inspired computational model of motion parallax, seeking for a novel application to multiview 3D video conferencing. Indeed, video conference systems have evolved little regarding 3D vision for viewing video apart from using new 3D technology, making use of special glasses and auto-stereoscopic screens. Our challenge is to take advantage of neuronal visual cues that can be used to provide 3D perception apart from stereoscopy. Various composition models (change modes between cameras) have been designed and tested in order to analyze which one provides a better 3D effect.

The use of haptics in virtual reality and video games has received growing attention as a means of enhancing the sensation of immersion in these environments. The sensation of touching virtual objects not only augments the impression of reality but also can improve the performance. However, the design of haptic interactions is not an easy task, and it usually needs a great effort due to the absence of powerful prototyping toolkits. Thus, this article proposes a vibrotactile prototyping toolkit for Eccentric Rotating Mass actuators named VITAKI. The main objective of this platform is to facilitate the prototyping and testing procedures of new vibrotactile interaction techniques for Virtual Reality and video games. A detailed description of the design of the system is provided, presenting the hardware and software elements that make up the VITAKI toolkit. In addition, its application to two different examples to illustrate its use is provided. Finally, a preliminary evaluation of this toolkit is presented. ...

The scope of this research is to evaluate three different haptic feedback methods for texture discrimination in virtual environments. In particular, a Phantom force feedback device, a custom-made vibrotactile dataglove and paper palpable prototypes have been used. This paper describes a new study which corroborates the results of an initial experiment (Martinez et al. in 2011 International Conference on Cyberworlds, pp. 62---68, 2011) and performs a more in-depth evaluation of some results of interest and, in particular, those based on gender. In the experiment expansion, the number of users has been increased, so both genders are even, and the texture identification strategies have been analyzed. Finally, statistical analyses have been conducted to assess the differences between both genders, showing a new path which could be explored with new experiments. In addition, the vibrotactile dataglove has proved to have a notable behavior in the detection of varying grating textures, and it is even useful to identify shapes.

Despite the early demonstrations a couple of decades ago, multimodal interfaces still present several challenges. One of these challenges is the creation of such kind of interfaces, which is currently being tackled by the OpenInterface project. The other challenge is related to the lack of experience of evaluating multimodal interfaces, which raises the question of how to check usability in such interfaces. In this context, this paper presents a new contribution to the OpenInterface project by adding data glove support, which is illustrated by prototyping a viewer for large size images. This application is also presented as a case study for usability evaluation, trying to translate our experience of multiple evaluations conducted at our VR lab.

We introduce the collaborative telepresence workspaces for SPACE operation and science that are under development in the European research project CROSS DRIVE. The vision is to give space mission controllers and scientists the impression of “beaming” to the surface of Mars, along with simulations of the environment and equipment, to step out together where a robot has or may move. We briefly overview the design and describe the state of the demonstrator. The contribution of the publication is to give an example of how collaborative Virtual Reality research is being taken up in space science.

Space exploration missions have produced large data of immense value, to both research and the planning and operating of future missions. However, current datasets and simulation tools fragment teamwork, especially across disciplines and geographical location.

Interaction is gradually moving from desktop computers to the open air thanks to depth sensors such as Kinect, Xtion and Leap Motion. In this new situation, in which the user is no longer holding any device, the simulation of the sense of touch is progressively gaining more interest. This paper describes how VITAKI, a VIbro Tactile prototyping tool Kit for Eccentric Rotating Mass (ERM) actuators, was used to test different hap tic properties of objects in two experiments. VITAKI has been successfully used in the identification of 2D shapes and textures, and 3D shapes. However, there are some hap tic properties of objects that have not been simulated using VITAKI yet. These are hardness, temperature, weight and size. This paper describes how VITAKI is used to assess whether differences in weight and size can be discriminated using vibrotactile technology. To analyze these new features, two different experiments were carried out by 18 participants. The results of the experiments are presented in this paper, and allowed us to successfully validate the introduced techniques with a success rate higher than 88% in the case of the size, and between 78 and 85% in the case of the weight, depending on the method used.

The emergence of off-screen interaction devices is bringing the field of virtual reality to a broad range of applications where virtual objects can be manipulated without the use of traditional peripherals. However, to facilitate object interaction, other stimuli such as haptic feedback are necessary to improve the user experience. To enable the identification of virtual 3D objects without visual feedback, a haptic display based on a vibrotactile glove and multiple points of contact gives users an enhanced sensation of touching a virtual object with their hands. Experimental results demonstrate the capacity of this technology in practical applications.

In this paper a study is conducted in order to evaluate three different strategies of haptic feedback for texture discrimination in virtual environments. Specifically, both force and vibrotactile feedback have been evaluated, as well as the direct use of the sense of touch, to detect different textures. To this end, a force feedback Phantom device, a custom built vibrotactile data glove and paper palpable prototypes, which represent an ideal model of tactile feedback, have been compared. These three methods have been used to detect two types of patterns, one formed by different geometrical shapes, and the other with different grooves width. Results show that the vibrotactile data glove has a notable behaviour in the detection of textures where the frequency of tactile stimuli varies, and it is even useful to detect more complex textures.

A force-feedback Phantom device, a custom-built vibrotactile dataglove, and embossed paper sheets are compared to detect different textures. Two types of patterns are used, one formed by different geometrical shapes, and the other with different grooves width. Evaluation shows that the vibrotactile dataglove performs better in the detection of textures where the frequency of tactile stimuli varies, and it is even useful to detect more complex textures.

In the research community, Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) developers usually refer to the terms awareness and feedback as something necessary to maintain a fluent collaboration when highly interactive task have to be performed. However, it is remarkable that few studies address the effect that including special kind of awareness has on the task performance and the user experience.This paper proposes how to face the implementation of awareness in order to be taken into account early in the development of a CVE. In addition, it is also described an experiment that was carried out to evaluate the effect of providing some visual cues, showing that users tend to make more mistakes when they are not provided.

The development of 3D user interfaces is mostly focused on technology and the ways of using it, and so the main concerns are the selection of hardware, software and interaction techniques. The process of development itself is as important as these issues, but it is usually ignored or poorly documented. This paper introduces the TRES-D methodology, and illustrates its application in the development of three different glove-based interfaces, not only to show the benefits of using these devices, but also the benefits of using such a methodological framework.

With product life-cycles getting shorter and limited availability of natural resources, the paradigm shift towards the circular economy is being impulsed. In this domain, the successful adoption of remanufacturing is key. However, its associated process efficiency is to date limited given high flexibility requirements for product disassembly. With the emergence of Industry 4.0, natural human-robot interaction is expected to provide numerous benefits in terms of (re)manufacturing efficiency and cost. In this regard, vision-based and wearable-based approaches are the most extended when it comes to establishing a gesture-based interaction interface. In this work, an experimental comparison of two different movement-estimation systems—(i) position data collected from Microsoft Kinect RGB-D cameras and (ii) acceleration data collected from inertial measurement units (IMUs)—is addressed. The results point to our IMU-based proposal, OperaBLE, having recognition accuracy rates up to 8.5 times higher than these of Microsoft Kinect, which proved to be dependent on the movement’s execution plane, subject’s posture, and focal distance.