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Qualitative Wissenschaft, künstlerisches Forschen und forschendes Lernen verbinden Erkenntnis aus Praxis und Erfahrung. In der Autoethnographie der eigenen Werkstatt des Hörens wie der Kultur in Studios anderer, wird die noch neue Interdisziplin Sound (Studies) erprobt und vertieft, mit Impulsen für die Praxis und Theorie, von der noch wenig bekannten A/r/t ographie heute, hin zu einer künftig A/R/Tophonie, dem künstlerischen Forschen in der Musik, ebenso wie durch Klang Komposition, Radio Kunst und visuelle Musik.
Monitoring of the molecular structure of lubricant oil using a FT-Raman spectrometer prototype
(2014)
The determination of the physical state of the lubricant materials in complex mechanical systems is highly critical from different points of view: operative, economical, environmental, etc. Furthermore, there are several parameters that a lubricant oil must meet for a proper performance inside a machine. The monitoring of these lubricants can represent a serious issue depending on the analytical approach applied. The molecular change of aging lubricant oils have been analyzed using an all-standard-components and self-designed FT-Raman spectrometer. This analytical tool allows the direct and clean study of the vibrational changes in the molecular structure of the oils without having direct contact with the samples and without extracting the sample from the machine in operation. The FT-Raman spectrometer prototype used in the analysis of the oil samples consist of a Michelson interferometer and a self-designed photon counter cooled down on a Peltier element arrangement. The light coupling has been accomplished by using a conventional 62.5/125μm multi-mode fiber coupler. The FT-Raman arrangement has been able to extract high resolution and frequency precise Raman spectra, comparable to those obtained with commercial FT-Raman systems, from the lubricant oil samples analyzed. The spectral information has helped to determine certain molecular changes in the initial phases of wearing of the oil samples. The proposed instrument prototype has no additional complex hardware components or costly software modules. The mechanical and thermal irregularities influencing the FT-Raman spectrometer have been removed mathematically by accurately evaluating the optical path difference of the Michelson interferometer. This has been achieved by producing an additional interference pattern signal with a λ= 632.8 nm helium-neon laser, which differs from the conventional zero-crossing sampling (also known as Connes advantage) commonly used by FT-devices. It enables the FT-Raman system to perform reliable and clean spectral measurements from the analyzed oil samples.
This paper describes the new Sweaty humanoid adult size robot trying to qualify for the RoboCup 2014 adult size humanoid competition. The robot is built from scratch to eventually allow it to run. One characteristic is that to prevent the motors from overheating, water evaporation is used for cooling. The robot is literally sweating which has given it its name. Another characteristic is, that the motors are not directly connected to the frame but by means of beams. This allows a variable transmission ratio depending on the angle.
Logging information is more precious as it contains the execution of a system; it is produced by millions of events from simple application logins to random system errors. Most of the security related problems in the cloud ecosystem like intruder attacks, data loss, and denial of service, etc. could be avoided if Cloud Service Provider (CSP) or Cloud User (CU) analyses the logging information. In this paper we introduced few challenges, which are place of monitoring, security, and ownership of the logging information between CSP and CU.
Also we proposed a logging architecture to analyze the behaviour of the cloud ecosystem, to avoid data breaches and other security related issues at the CSP space. So that we believe our proposed architecture can provide maximum trust between CU and CSP.
In short-reach connections, large-diameter multimode fibres allow for robust and easy connections. Unfortunately, their propagation properties depend on the excitation conditions. We propose a launching technique using a fibre stub that can tolerate fabrication tolerances in terms of tilts and off-sets to a large extent. A study of the influence of displaced connectors along the transmission link shows that the power distributions approach a steady-state power distribution very similar to the initial distribution established by the proposed launching scheme.
Photonics meet digital art
(2014)
The paper focuses on the work of an interdisciplinary project between photonics and digital art. The result is a poster collection dedicated to the International Year of Light 2015. In addition, an internet platform was created that presents the project. It can be accessed at http://www.magic-of-light.org/iyl2015/index.htm. From the idea to the final realization, milestones with tasks and steps will be presented in the paper. As an interdisciplinary project, students from technological degree programs were involved as well as art program students. The 2015 Anniversaries: Alhazen (1015), De Caus (1615), Fresnel (1815), Maxwell (1865), Einstein (1905), Penzias Wilson, Kao (1965) and their milestone contributions in optics and photonics will be highlighted.
With major intellectual properties there is a long tradition of cross-media value chains -- usually starting with books and comics, then transgressing to film and TV and finally reaching interactive media like video games. In recent years the situation has changed: (1) smaller productions start to establish cross media value chains; (2) there is a trend from sequential towards parallel content production. In this work we describe how the production of a historic documentary takes a cross media approach right from the start. We analyze how this impacts the content creation pipelines with respect to story, audience and realization. The focus of the case study is the impact on the production of a documentary game. In a second step we reflect on the experiences gained so far and derive recommendations for future small-scale cross media productions.
Towards a gamification of industrial production: a comparative study in sheltered work environments
(2015)
Using video game elements to improve user experience and user engagement in non-game applications is called "gamification". This method of enriching human-computer interaction has been applied successfully in education, health and general business processes. However, it has not been established in industrial production so far.
After discussing the requirements specific for the production domain we present two workplaces augmented with gamification. Both implementations are based on a common framework for context-aware assistive systems but exemplify different approaches: the visualization of work performance is complex in System 1 and simple in System 2.
Based on two studies in sheltered work environments with impaired workers, we analyze and compare the systems' effects on work and on workers. We show that gamification leads to a speed-accuracy-tradeoff if no quality-related feedback is provided. Another finding is that there is a highly significant raise in acceptance if a straightforward visualization approach for gamification is used.
With projectors and depth cameras getting cheaper, assistive systems in industrial manufacturing are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. As these systems are able to continuously provide feedback using in-situ projection, they are perfectly suited for supporting impaired workers in assembling products. However, so far little research has been conducted to understand the effects of projected instructions on impaired workers. In this paper, we identify common visualizations used by assistive systems for impaired workers and introduce a simple contour visualization. Through a user study with 64 impaired participants we compare the different visualizations to a control group using no visual feedback in a real world assembly scenario, i.e. assembling a clamp. Furthermore, we introduce a simplified version of the NASA-TLX questionnaire designed for impaired participants. The results reveal that the contour visualization is significantly better in perceived mental load and perceived performance of the participants. Further, participants made fewer errors and were able to assemble the clamp faster using the contour visualization compared to a video visualization, a pictorial visualization and a control group using no visual feedback.
Design approaches for the gamification of production environments: a study focusing on acceptance
(2015)
Gamification is an ever more popular method to increase motivation and user experience in real-world settings. It is widely used in the areas of marketing, health and education. However, in production environments, it is a new concept. To be accepted in the industrial domain, it has to be seamlessly integrated in the regular work processes.
In this work we make the following contributions to the field of gamification in production: (1) we analyze the state of the art and introduce domain-specific requirements; (2) we present two implementations gamifying production based on alternative design approaches; (3) these are evaluated in a sheltered work organization. The comparative study focuses acceptance, motivation and perceived happiness.
The results reveal that a pyramid design showing each work process as a step on the way towards a cup at the top is strongly preferred to a more abstract approach where the processes are represented by a single circle and two bars.
In this work we provide an overview of gamification, i.e. the application of methods from game design to enrich non-gaming processes. The contribution is divided into five subsections: an introduction focusing on the progression of gamification through the hype cycle in the recent years (1), a brief introduction to gamification mechanics (1) and an overview of the state of the art in established areas (3). The focus is a discussion of more recent attempts of gamification in service and production (4). We also discuss the ethical implications (5) and the future perspectives (6) of gamified business processes. Gamification has been successfully applied in the domains education (serious games) and health (exergames) and is spreading to other areas. In recent years there have been various attempts to “gamify” business processes. While the first efforts date back as far as the collection of miles in frequent flyer programs, we will portray some of the more recent and comprehensive software-based approaches in the service industry, e.g. the gamification of processes in sales and marketing. We discuss their accomplishments as well as their social and ethical implicatio. Finally a very recent approach is presented: the application of gamification in the domain of industrial production. We discuss the special requirements in this domain and the effects on the business level and on the users. We conclude with a prognosis on the future development of gamification.
In a Semi-autonomic cloud auditing architecture we weaved in privacy enhancing mechanisms [15] by applying the public key version of the Somewhat homomorphic encryption (SHE) scheme from [4]. It turns out that the performance of the SHE can be significantly improved by carefully deriving relevant crypto parameters from the concrete cloud auditing use cases for which the scheme serves as a privacy enhancing approach. We provide a generic algorithm for finding good SHE parameters with respect to a given use case scenario by analyzing and taking into consideration security, correctness and performance of the scheme. Also, to show the relevance of our proposed algorithms we apply it to two predominant cloud auditing use cases.
Covert- and side-channels as well as techniques to establish them in cloud computing are in focus of research for quite some time. However, not many concrete mitigation methods have been developed and even less have been adapted and concretely implemented by cloud providers. Thus, we recently conceptually proposed C 3 -Sched a CPU scheduling based approach to mitigate L2 cache covert-channels. Instead of flushing the cache on every context switch, we schedule trusted virtual machines to create noise which prevents potential covert-channels. Additionally, our approach aims on preserving performance by utilizing existing instead of artificial workload while reducing covert-channel related cache flushes to cases where not enough noise has been achieved. In this work we evaluate cache covert-channel mitigation and performance impact of our integration of C 3 -Sched in the XEN credit scheduler. Moreover, we compare it to naive solutions and more competitive approaches.
This paper explains the realization of a concept for research-oriented photonics education. Using the example of the integration of an actual PhD project, it is shown how students are familiarized with the topic of research and scientific work in the first semesters. Typical research activities are included as essential parts of the learning process. Research should be made visible and tangible for the students. The authors will present all aspects of the learning environment, their impressions and experiences with the implemented scenario, as well as first evaluation results of the students.
Live streaming of events over an IP network as a catalyst in media technology education and training
(2020)
The paper describes how students are involved in applied research when setting up the technology and running a live event. Real-time IP transmission in broadcast environments via fiber optics will become increasingly important in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to create a platform in this area where students can learn how to handle IP infrastructure and fiber optics. With this in mind, we have built a fully functional TV control room that is completely IP-based. The authors present the steps in the development of the project and show the advantages of the proposed digital solutions. The IP network proves to be a synergy between the involved teams: participants of the robot competition and the members of the media team. These results are presented in the paper. Our activities aim to awaken enthusiasm for research and technology in young people. Broadcasts of live events are a good opportunity for "hands on" activities.
Astronomical phenomena fascinate people from the very beginning of mankind up to today. In this paper the authors will present their experience with photography of astronomical events. The main focus will be on aurora borealis, comet Neowise, total lunar eclipses and how mobile devices open up new possibilities to observe the green flash. Our efforts were motivated by the great impact and high number of viewers of these events. Visitors from over a hundred countries watched our live broadcasts.
Furthermore, we report on our experiences with the photography of optical phenomena such as polar lights Fig. 1, comet Neowise with a Delta Aquariids meteor Fig. 11, and lunar eclipses Fig. 12.
This paper describes a comparative study of two tactile systems supporting navigation for persons with little or no visual and auditory perception. The efficacy of a tactile head-mounted device (HMD) was compared to that of a wearable device, a tactile belt. A study with twenty participants showed that the participants took significantly less time to complete a course when navigating with the HMD, as compared to the belt.
Machine learning (ML) has become highly relevant in applications across all industries, and specialists in the field are sought urgently. As it is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring knowledge in computer science, statistics and the relevant application domain, experts are hard to find. Large corporations can sweep the job market by offering high salaries, which makes the situation for small and medium enterprises (SME) even worse, as they usually lack the capacities both for attracting specialists and for qualifying their own personnel. In order to meet the enormous demand in ML specialists, universities now teach ML in specifically designed degree programs as well as within established programs in science and engineering. While the teaching almost always uses practical examples, these are somewhat artificial or outdated, as real data from real companies is usually not available. The approach reported in this contribution aims to tackle the above challenges in an integrated course, combining three independent aspects: first, teaching key ML concepts to graduate students from a variety of existing degree programs; second, qualifying working professionals from SME for ML; and third, applying ML to real-world problems faced by those SME. The course was carried out in two trial periods within a government-funded project at a university of applied sciences in south-west Germany. The region is dominated by SME many of which are world leaders in their industries. Participants were students from different graduate programs as well as working professionals from several SME based in the region. The first phase of the course (one semester) consists of the fundamental concepts of ML, such as exploratory data analysis, regression, classification, clustering, and deep learning. In this phase, student participants and working professionals were taught in separate tracks. Students attended regular classes and lab sessions (but were also given access to e-learning materials), whereas the professionals learned exclusively in a flipped classroom scenario: they were given access to e-learning units (video lectures and accompanying quizzes) for preparation, while face-to-face sessions were dominated by lab experiments applying the concepts. Prior to the start of the second phase, participating companies were invited to submit real-world problems that they wanted to solve with the help of ML. The second phase consisted of practical ML projects, each tackling one of the problems and worked on by a mixed team of both students and professionals for the period of one semester. The teams were self-organized in the ways they preferred to work (e.g. remote vs. face-to-face collaboration), but also coached by one of the teaching staff. In several plenary meetings, the teams reported on their status as well as challenges and solutions. In both periods, the course was monitored and extensive surveys were carried out. We report on the findings as well as the lessons learned. For instance, while the program was very well-received, professional participants wished for more detailed coverage of theoretical concepts. A challenge faced by several teams during the second phase was a dropout of student members due to upcoming exams in other subjects.
The interaction between agents in multiagent-based control systems requires peer to peer communication between agents avoiding central control. The sensor nodes represent agents and produce measurement data every time step. The nodes exchange time series data by using the peer to peer network in order to calculate an aggregation function for solving a problem cooperatively. We investigate the aggregation process of averaging data for time series data of nodes in a peer to peer network by using the grouping algorithm of Cichon et al. 2018. Nodes communicate whether data is new and map data values according to their sizes into a histogram. This map message consists of the subintervals and vectors for estimating the node joining and leaving the subinterval. At each time step, the nodes communicate with each other in synchronous rounds to exchange map messages until the network converges to a common map message. The node calculates the average value of time series data produced by all nodes in the network by using the histogram algorithm. The relative error for comparing the output of averaging time series data, and the ground truth of the average value in the network will decrease as the size of the network increases. We perform simulations which show that the approximate histograms method provides a reasonable approximation of time series data.
We propose in this work to solve privacy preserving set relations performed by a third party in an outsourced configuration. We argue that solving the disjointness relation based on Bloom filters is a new contribution in particular by having another layer of privacy on the sets cardinality. We propose to compose the set relations in a slightly different way by applying a keyed hash function. Besides discussing the correctness of the set relations, we analyze how this impacts the privacy of the sets content as well as providing privacy on the sets cardinality. We are in particular interested in how having bits overlapping in the Bloom filters impacts the privacy level of our approach. Finally, we present our results with real-world parameters in two concrete scenarios.
The Effect of Gamification on Emotions - The Potential of Facial Recognition in Work Environmentsns
(2015)
Gamification means using video game elements to improve user experience and user engagement in non-game services and applications. This article describes the effects when gamification is used in work contexts. Here we focus on industrial production. We describe how facial recognition can be employed to measure and quantify the effect of gamification on the users’ emotions.
The quantitative results show that gamification significantly reduces both task completion time and error rate. However, the results concerning the effect on emotions are surprising. Without gamification there are not only more unhappy expressions (as to expect) but surprisingly also more happy expressions. Both findings are statistically highly significant.
We think that in redundant production work there are generally more (negative) emotions involved. When there is no gamification happy and unhappy balance each other. In contrast gamification seems to shift the spectrum of moods towards “relaxed”. Especially for work environments such a calm attitude is a desirable effect on the users. Thus our findings support the use of gamification.
Video game developers continuously increase the degree of details and realism in games to create more human-like characters. But increasing the human-likeness becomes a problem in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon that predicts negative feelings of people towards artificial entities. We developed an avatar creation system to examine preferences towards parametrized faces and explore in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon how people design faces that they like or reject. Based on the 3D model of the Caucasian average face, 420 participants generate 1341 faces of positively and negatively associated concepts of both gender. The results show that some characteristics associated with the Uncanny Valley are used to create villains or repulsive faces. Heroic faces get attractive features but are rarely and little stylized. A voluntarily designed face is very similar to the heroine. This indicates that there is a tendency of users to design feminine and attractive but still credible faces.
A Gamified and Adaptive Learning System for Neurodivergent Workers in Electronic Assembling Tasks
(2020)
Learning and work-oriented assistive systems are often designed to fit the workflow of neurotypical workers. Neurodivergent workers and individuals with learning disabilities often present cognitive and sensorimotor characteristics that are better accommodated with personalized learning and working processes. Therefore, we designed an adaptive learning system that combines an augmented interaction space with user-sensitive virtual assistance to support step-by-step guidance for neurodivergent workers in electronic assembling tasks. Gamified learning elements were also included in the interface to provide self-motivation and praise whenever users progress in their learning and work achievements.
Nowadays, the wide majority of Europeans uses smartphones. However, touch displays are still not accessible by everyone. Individuals with deafblindness, for example, often face difculties in accessing vision-based touchscreens. Moreover, they typically have few fnancial resources which increases the need for customizable, low-cost assistive devices. In this work-in-progress, we present four prototypes made from low-cost, every-day materials, that make modern pattern lock mechanisms more accessible to individuals with vision impairments or even with deafblindness. Two out of four prototypes turned out to be functional tactile overlays for accessing digital 4-by-4 grids that are regularly used to encode dynamic dot patterns. In future work, we will conduct a user study investigating whether these two prototypes can make dot-based pattern lock mechanisms more accessible for individuals with visual impairments or deafblindness.
Deafblindness, a form of dual sensory impairment, signifcantly impacts communication, access to information and mobility. Inde- pendent navigation and wayfnding are main challenges faced by individuals living with combined hearing and visual impairments. We developed a haptic wearable that provides sensory substitution and navigational cues for users with deafblindness by conveying vibrotactile signals onto the body. Vibrotactile signals on the waist area convey directional and proximity information collected via a fisheye camera attached to the garment, while semantic informa- tion is provided with a tapping system on the shoulders. A playful scenario called “Keep Your Distance” was designed to test the navigation system: individuals with deafblindness were “secret agents” that needed to follow a “suspect”, but they should keep an opti- mal distance of 1.5 meters from the other person to win the game. Preliminary fndings suggest that individuals with deafblindness enjoyed the experience and were generally able to follow the directional cues.
Co-Designing Assistive Tools to Support Social Interactions by Individuals Living with Deafblindness
(2020)
Deafblindness is a dual sensory impairment that affects many aspects of life, including mobility, access to information, communication, and social interactions. Furthermore, individuals living with deafblindness are under a high risk of social isolation. Therefore, we identified opportunities for applying assistive tools to support social interactions through co-ideation activities with members of the deafblind community. This work presents our co-design approach, lessons learned and directions for designing meaningful assistive tools for dual sensory loss.
Interaction and capturing information from the surrounding is dominated by vision and hearing. Haptics on the other side, widens the bandwidth and could also replace senses (sense switching) for impaired. Haptic technologies are often limited to point-wise actuation. Here, we show that actuation in two-dimensional matrices instead creates a richer input. We describe the construction of a full-body garment for haptic communication with a distributed actuating network. The garment is divided into attachable-detachable panels or add-ons that each can carry a two dimensional matrix of actuating haptic elements. Each panel adds to an enhanced sensoric capability of the human- garment system so that together a 720° system is formed. The spatial separation of the panels on different body locations supports semantic and theme-wise separation of conversations conveyed by haptics. It also achieves directional faithfulness, which is maintaining any directional information about a distal stimulus in the haptic input.
Tactile Navigation with Checkpoints as Progress Indicators?: Only when Walking Longer Straight Paths
(2020)
Persons with both vision and hearing impairments have to rely primarily on tactile feedback, which is frequently used in assistive devices. We explore the use of checkpoints as a way to give them feedback during navigation tasks. Particularly, we investigate how checkpoints can impact performance and user experience. We hypothesized that individuals receiving checkpoint feedback would take less time and perceive the navigation experience as superior to those who did not receive such feedback. Our contribution is two-fold: a detailed report on the implementation of a smart wearable with tactile feedback (1), and a user study analyzing its effects (2). The results show that in contrast to our assumptions, individuals took considerably more time to complete routes with checkpoints. Also, they perceived navigating with checkpoints as inferior to navigating without checkpoints. While the quantitative data leave little room for doubt, the qualitative data open new aspects: when walking straight and not being "overwhelmed" by various forms of feedback in succession, several participants actually appreciated the checkpoint feedback.
Wow, You Are Terrible at This!: An Intercultural Study on Virtual Agents Giving Mixed Feedback
(2020)
While the effects of virtual agents in terms of likeability, uncanniness, etc. are well explored, it is unclear how their appearance and the feedback they give affects people's reactions. Is critical feedback from an agent embodied as a mouse or a robot taken less serious than from a human agent? In an intercultural study with 120 participants from Germany and the US, participants had to find hidden objects in a game and received feedback on their performance by virtual agents with different appearances. As some levels were designed to be unsolvable, critical feedback was unavoidable. We hypothesized that feedback would be taken more serious, the more human the agent looked. Also, we expected the subjects from the US to react more sensitively to criticism. Surprisingly, our results showed that the agents' appearance did not significantly change the participants' perception. Also, while we found highly significant differences in inspirational and motivational effects as well as in perceived task load between the two cultures, the reactions to criticism were contrary to expectations based on established cultural models. This work improves our understanding on how affective virtual agents are to be designed, both with respect to culture and to dialogue strategies.
Deafblindness, also known as dual sensory loss, is the combination of sight and hearing impairments of such extent that it becomes difficult for one sense to compensate for the other. Communication issues are a key concern for the Deafblind community. We present the design and technical implementation of the Tactile Board: a mobile Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device for individuals with deafblindness. The Tactile Board allows text and speech to be translated into vibrotactile signs that are displayed real-time to the user via a haptic wearable. Our aim is to facilitate communication for the deafblind community, creating opportunities for these individuals to initiate and engage in social interactions with other people without the direct need of an intervener.
The TriRhenaTech alliance presents a collection of accepted papers of the cancelled tri-national 'Upper-Rhine Artificial Intelligence Symposium' planned for 13th May 2020 in Karlsruhe. The TriRhenaTech alliance is a network of universities in the Upper-Rhine Trinational Metropolitan Region comprising of the German universities of applied sciences in Furtwangen, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, and Offenburg, the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Loerrach, the French university network Alsace Tech (comprised of 14 'grandes écoles' in the fields of engineering, architecture and management) and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. The alliance's common goal is to reinforce the transfer of knowledge, research, and technology, as well as the cross-border mobility of students.
OVVL (the Open Weakness and Vulnerability Modeller) is a tool and methodology to support threat modeling in the early stages of the secure software development lifecycle. We provide an overview of OVVL (https://ovvl.org), its data model and browser-based UI. We equally provide a discussion of initial experiments on how identified threats in the design phase can be aligned with later activities in the software lifecycle (issue management and security testing).
Threat Modelling is an accepted technique to identify general threats as early as possible in the software development lifecycle. Previous work of ours did present an open-source framework and web-based tool (OVVL) for automating threat analysis on software architectures using STRIDE. However, one open problem is that available threat catalogues are either too general or proprietary with respect to a certain domain (e.g. .Net). Another problem is that a threat analyst should not only be presented (repeatedly) with a list of all possible threats, but already with some automated support for prioritizing these. This paper presents an approach to dynamically generate individual threat catalogues on basis of the established CWE as well as related CVE databases. Roughly 60% of this threat catalogue generation can be done by identifying and matching certain key values. To map the remaining 40% of our data (~50.000 CVE entries) we train a text classification model by using the already mapped 60% of our dataset to perform a supervised machine-learning based text classification. The generated entire dataset allows us to identify possible threats for each individual architectural element and automatically provide an initial prioritization. Our dataset as well as a supporting Jupyter notebook are openly available.
Well-designed and informative product presentations can support consumers in making purchase decisions. There are plenty of facts and details about a product of interest. However, also emotions are an important aspect for the purchase decision. The unique visualization opportunities of virtual reality (VR) can give users of VR applications the feeling of being there (telepresence). The applications can intensely engage them in a flow experience, comprising the four dimensions of enjoyment, curiosity, focused attention and control. In this work, we claim that VR product presentations can create subjective product experiences for consumers and motivate them to reuse this innovative type of product presentation in the future, by immersing them in a virtual world and causing them to interact with it. To verify the conceptual model a study was conducted with 551 participants who explored a VR hotel application. The results indicate that VR product presentations evoke positive emotions among consumers. The virtual experience made potential customers focus their attention on the virtual world and aroused their curiosity about getting more information about the product in an enjoyable way. In contrast to the theoretical assumption, control did not influence the users’ behavioral intentions to reuse VR product presentation. We conclude that VR product presentations create a feeling of telepresence, which leads to a flow experience that contributes to the behavioral intention of users to reuse VR product presentations in the future.
This work discusses several use cases of post-mortem mobile device tracking in which privacy is required e.g. due to client-confidentiality agreements and sensibility of data from government agencies as well as mobile telecommunication providers. We argue that our proposed Bloomfilter based privacy approach is a valuable technical building block for the arising General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements in this area. In short, we apply a solution based on the Bloom filters data structure that allows a 3rd party to performsome privacy saving setrelations on a mobiletelco’s access logfile or other mobile access logfile from harvesting parties without revealing any other mobile users in the proximity of a mobile base station but still allowing to track perpetrators.
This paper describes the concept and some results of the project "Menschen Lernen Maschinelles Lernen" (Humans Learn Machine Learning, ML2) of the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg. It brings together students of different courses of study and practitioners from companies on the subject of Machine Learning. A mixture of blended learning and practical projects ensures a tight coupling of machine learning theory and application. The paper details the phases of ML2 and mentions two successful example projects.
The TriRhenaTech alliance universities and their partners presented their competences in the field of artificial intelligence and their cross-border cooperations with the industry at the tri-national conference 'Artificial Intelligence : from Research to Application' on March 13th, 2019 in Offenburg. The TriRhenaTech alliance is a network of universities in the Upper Rhine Trinational Metropolitan Region comprising of the German universities of applied sciences in Furtwangen, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, and Offenburg, the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Loerrach, the French university network Alsace Tech (comprised of 14 'grandes écoles' in the fields of engineering, architecture and management) and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. The alliance's common goal is to reinforce the transfer of knowledge, research, and technology, as well as the cross-border mobility of students.
Art and Photonics
(2019)
In this paper we report on our continuous efforts to apply optics and photonics in art. This results in interdisciplinary projects which sometimes lead to concrete art installations.
We presented some of these projects at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, at the opening ceremony of the International Year of Light and the inaugural ceremony of the International Day of Light.
Some newer projects, such as “A Maze: Ingenious Pipes” and “The Power of Your Eyes,” are also presented in this paper.
We present our twenty years of experience in the live broadcasting of astronomical events, with the main focus on total lunar eclipses. Our efforts were motivated by the great impact and high number of viewers of these events. Visitors from over a hundred countries watched our live broadcasts. Our viewer record was set on July 27, 2018, with the live transmission of the total lunar eclipse from the Feldberg, the highest mountain in the Black Forest, attracting nearly half a million viewers in five hours.
An especially challenging activity was the live observing of the Mercury transit on 9 May 2016, which we presented as ‘live astronomy’ with hands-on telescope. The main goal of this event was to awake our students enthusiasm for optics and astronomy.
Furthermore, we report on our experiences with the photography of optical phenomena such as polar lights and green flash.
After the successful International Year of Light 2015, the idea of sustainability became increasingly imminent. After a preparatory year on 16 May 2018, the International Day of Light was launched for the first time. This event was celebrated with a public celebration in Paris at the UNESCO headquarters. In this paper we will present our projects dedicated to the International Day of Light in Paris. Together with a group of students from our university, we had the special opportunity to be integrated in the program of the opening ceremony at UNESCO in Paris. With our interdisciplinary projects we have tried to build a bridge between optics, photonics, art and media installations.
The authors explain a developed concept for research-oriented education in optics and photonics. It is presented which goals are to be achieved, which strategies have been developed and how these can be implemented in a blended learning scenario. The goal of our education is the best possible qualification of the students on the basis of a strong scientific and research-oriented education, which also includes the acquisition of important interdisciplinary competences. All phases of a research process are to be mapped in the learning process and offer students an insight into current research topics in optics and photonics.
Increased knowledge transfer through the integration of research projects into university teaching
(2019)
This paper describes the integration of the research project "Characterization of Color Vision using Spectroscopy and Nanotechnology: Application to Media Photonics" into an engineering course in the field of media technology. The aim is to develop the existing learning concept towards a more research-oriented teaching. Involving students in research projects as part of the learning process provides a deeper insight into current research topics and the key elements of scientific work. This makes it easier for students to recognize the importance of the acquired theoretical knowledge for the practice, which enables them to derive new insights of their own.
Walking interfaces offer advantages in navigation of VE systems over other types of locomotion. However, VR helmets have the disadvantage that users cannot see their immediate surroundings. Our publication describes the prototypical implementation of a virtual environment (VE) system, capable of detecting possible obstacles using an RGB-D sensor. In order to warn users of potential collisions with real objects while they are moving throughout the VE tracking area, we designed 4 different visual warning metaphors: Placeholder, Rubber Band, Color Indicator and Arrow. A small pilot study was carried out in which the participants had to solve a simple task and avoid any arbitrarily placed physical obstacles when crossing the virtual scene. Our results show that the Placeholder metaphor (in this case: trees), compared to the other variants, seems to be best suited for the correct estimation of the position of obstacles and in terms of the ability to evade them.
Protecting software from illegal access, intentional modification or reverse engineering is an inherently difficult practical problem involving code obfuscation techniques and real-time cryptographic protection of code. In traditional systems a secure element (the "dongle") is used to protect software. However, this approach suffers from several technical and economical drawbacks such as the dongle being lost or broken.
We present a system that provides such dongles as a cloud service, and more importantly, provides the required cryptographic material to control access to software functionality in real-time.
This system is developed as part of an ongoing nationally funded research project and is now entering a first trial stage with stakeholders from different industrial sectors.
Blockchain frameworks enable the immutable storage of data. A still open practical question is the so called "oracle" problem, i.e. the way how real world data is actually transferred into and out of a blockchain while preserving its integrity. We present a case study that demonstrates how to use an existing industrial strength secure element for cryptographic software protection (Wibu CmDongle / the "dongle") to function as such a hardware-based oracle for the Hyperledger blockchain framework. Our scenario is that of a dentist having leased a 3D printer. This printer is initially supplied with an amount of x printing units. With each print action the local unit counter on the attached dongle is decreased and in parallel a unit counter is maintained in the Hyperledger-based blockchain. Once a threshold is met, the printer will stop working (by means of the cryptographically protected invocation of the local print method). The blockchain is configured in such a way that chaincode is executed to increase the units again automatically (and essentially trigger any payment processes). Once this has happened, the new unit counter value will be passed from the blockchain to the local dongle and thus allow for further execution of print jobs.
The development of secure software systems is of ever-increasing importance. While software companies often invest large amounts of resources into the upkeeping and general security properties of large-scale applications when in production, they appear to neglect utilizing threat modeling in the earlier stages of the software development lifecycle. When applied during the design phase of development, and continuously throughout development iterations, threat modeling can help to establish a "Secure by Design" approach. This approach allows issues relating to IT security to be found early during development, reducing the need for later improvement – and thus saving resources in the long term. In this paper the current state of threat modeling is investigated. This investigation drove the derivation of requirements for the development of a new threat modelling framework and tool, called OVVL. OVVL utilizes concepts of established threat modeling methodologies, as well as functionality not available in existing solutions.