During the last half of the twentieth century, psychologists and anthropologists have studied proxemics, or spacing behavior, among people in many contexts. As we enter the twenty-first century, immersive virtual environment technology promises new experimental venues in which researchers can study proxemics. Immersive virtual environments provide realistic and compelling experimental settings ...

This paper describes a working system that can robustly detect and track human faces with unknown sizes and positions in complex backgrounds from color images in real time. Skin color is modeled as and detected by a 3D Gaussian distribution in the RGB color space among di erent persons within the same race. Detected skin pixels are grouped into regions whose centroids and areas are recorded. If...

As design problems become more complex and design lead time more pressing, designers need effective support tools to expand their design space exploration. In this paper, a hierarchical coevolutionary approach is proposed to support designers by automatically generating design concepts based on the designers’ inputs. The approach adopts a zigzag design process in which function structures and t...

Personal space regulation is a key component of effective social engagement. Personal space varies among individuals and with some mental health conditions. Simulated personal space intrusions in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) reveal larger preferred interpersonal distance in that setting. These findings led us to conduct the first test of live interpersonal distance preferences in sympt...

BACKGROUND Personal space is the area individuals maintain around themselves into which others cannot intrude without arousing discomfort. The purpose of this study was to establish whether patients with anxiety disorder and patients with psychotic disorder differ in personal space preferences according to experimenter sex. SUBJECTS AND METHODS 82 patients who met the ICD- criteria for psycho...