In critical domains, assurance corresponds to the set of activities to provide confidence that a system can be deemed dependable, e.g., safe and secure. This essential systems and software engineering process are usually conducted according to standards. For novel applications running at the edge and containing artificial intelligence, and for their corresponding platforms, how to conduct assurance in a systematic way is still undefined. This paper introduces the work in the large-scale REBECCA EU project to contribute to filling this gap. A new assurance framework will be defined, addressing the management of compliance, assurance cases, and assurance evidence. The assurance framework will be based on the results of a systematic study to characterize Edge-AI assurance needs, and four systems will be used to validate the framework via case study research. The assurance framework will provide guidance about what needs to be considered for safety and security assurance of Edge-AI applications, and how.

Despite pilots’ training and technology aids, mid-air collisions can occur and do occur, especially near airfields and in non-controlled airspaces where different kinds of aircraft fly. Technology typically helps pilots in the form of a flat display in the cockpit that shows nearby air traffic. New airliners are now fitted with see-through displays (HUD) to present information right in front of the pilot, and modern military fighters mount that kind of displays in the pilot’s helmet to help them no matter what direction they are looking in. This technology, however, could reach light and sport aviation in the next years thanks to new light and affordable Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, such as the ones targeting applications in urban mobility. Looking ahead to that moment, in this work we rely on Virtual Reality (VR) -in particular, Cardboard VR- to prototype and test different AR interfaces for air traffic alert. Firstly, we proposed and tested four different head-mounted display (HMD) AR interfaces with four pilots in our own VR aircraft-proximity simulator. Then, the two best-scored interfaces were selected for a second evaluation, and they were compared against another proposal (Circular HUD by Alce et al.) and a fixed-mounted (FM) conventional HUD radar (FMHUD Radar), tested by four additional pilots. Overall, pilots showed preference for our AR proposals. Interestingly, pilots with more experience preferred the more conventional, radar-like designs, while those with less flight hours were more open to a different, novel design (HMD 3D Arrow).

Facial affect recognition is a critical skill in human interactions that is often impaired in psychiatric disorders. To address this challenge, tests have been developed to measure and train this skill. Recently, virtual human (VH) and virtual reality (VR) technologies have emerged as novel tools for this purpose. This study investigates the unique contributions of different factors in the communication and perception of emotions conveyed by VHs. Specifically, it examines the effects of the use of action units (AUs) in virtual faces, the positioning of the VH (frontal or mid-profile), and the level of immersion in the VR environment (desktop screen versus immersive VR). Thirty-six healthy subjects participated in each condition. Dynamic virtual faces (DVFs), VHs with facial animations, were used to represent the six basic emotions and the neutral expression. The results highlight the important role of the accurate implementation of AUs in virtual faces for emotion recognition. Furthermore, it is observed that frontal views outperform mid-profile views in both test conditions, while immersive VR shows a slight improvement in emotion recognition. This study provides novel insights into the influence of these factors on emotion perception and advances the understanding and application of these technologies for effective facial emotion recognition training.

The recognition of facial expression of emotions in others is essential in daily social interactions. The different areas of the face play different roles in decoding each emotion. To find out which ones are more important, the traditional approach has been to use eye-tracking devices with static pictures to capture which parts of the face people are looking at when decoding emotions. However, the ecological validity of this approach is limited because, unlike in real life, there is no movement in the face that can be used to identify the emotion. The use of virtual reality technology opens the door to new experiences in which the users perceive that they are in front of dynamic virtual humans. Therefore, our main aim is to investigate whether the user's immersion in a virtual environment influences the way dynamic virtual faces are visually scanned when decoding emotions. An experiment involving 74 healthy participants was carried out. The results obtained are consistent with previous works. Having confirmed the correct functioning of our solution, it is our intention to study whether emotion recognition deficits in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders are related to the way they visually scan faces.

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 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. 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 potential to enhance the way space scientists will conduct space science research in the future.

This paper presents a mixed reality (MR) system that results from the integration of a telepresence system and an application to improve collaborative space exploration. The system combines free viewpoint video with immersive projection technology to support nonverbal communication (NVC), including eye gaze, interpersonal distance, and facial expression. Importantly, these features can be interpreted together as people move around the simulation, maintaining a natural social distance. The application is a simulation of Mars, within which the collaborators must come to agreement over; for example, where the Rover should land and go. The first contribution is the creation of an MR system supporting contextualization of NVC. Two technological contributions are prototyping a technique to subtract a person from a background that may contain physical objects and/or moving images and a lightweight texturing method for multiview rendering, which provides balance in terms of visual and temporal quality. A practical contribution is the demonstration of pragmatic approaches to sharing space between display systems of distinct levels of immersion. A research tool contribution is a system that allows comparison of conventional authored and video-based reconstructed avatars, within an environment that encourages exploration and social interaction. Aspects of system quality, including the communication of facial expression and end-to-end latency are reported.

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.

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 haptic 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 haptic 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 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. This evaluation is divided into two main stages. On one hand, a study of Olsen’s criteria is performed to analyze its general capabilities. On the other hand, a comparison with previously presented proposals is included too. These two analyses, together with other experiments where the devices created with the toolkit were tested by end users, highlight its main features and its advantages over other proposals.

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.

This paper analyses the Spatial Model of Interaction, a model that rules the possible interactions among two objects and that has been widely accepted and used in many CVE systems. As a result of this analysis, some deficiencies are revealed and a new model of interaction is proposed. Additionally, a prototype illustrating some of the best features of this model of interaction is detailed.

In the research community, developers of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) usually refer to the terms awareness and feedback as something necessary to maintain a fluent collaboration when highly interactive tasks have to be performed. However, it is remarkable that few studies address the effect that including special kinds of feedback has on user awareness and task performance. This work follows a preliminary experiment where we already studied awareness in CVEs, evaluating the effect of visual cues in the performance of collaborative tasks and showing that users tend to make more mistakes when such feedback is not provided, that is, they are less aware. These early results were promising and encouraged us to continue investigating the benefit of improving awareness in tasks that require close collaboration between users, but this time analyzing more types of awareness and experimenting with visual, audio and vibrotactile feedback cues.

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.