Ambient Telepresence is introduced as a method to give someone the feeling that someone else is present while that person is in fact not co-located. In contrast to other telepresence approaches, ambient telepresence is focused on mediating background activity to promote a peripheral sense of presence. A remote person’s handling of everyday objects is mapped to an ambient presentation in the loc...

This paper presents an optical see-through (OST) Augmented Reality (AR) system for the treatment of phobia to small animals. The technical characteristics of the OST system are described, and a comparative study of the sense of presence and anxiety in a non-phobic population (24 participants) using the OST and an equivalent video see-though (VST) system is presented. The results indicate that i...

Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) are becoming more and more popular as an input device for virtual worlds and computer games. Depending on their function, a major drawback is the mental workload associated with their use and there is significant effort and training required to effectively control them. In this paper, we present two studies assessing how mental workload of a P300-based BCI affec...

Previous research has examined the relationship between avatar representation and the sense of presence and co-presence in a shared virtual environment. A positive correlation has been found between the realism of the representation and both categories of presence. However, to our knowledge no research has focused explicitly on the effect of avatar representation in general and connectedness or...

This paper presents an evaluation of the benefits and user acceptance of a multimodal interface in which the user interacts with a game-like interactive virtual reality application “The Enigma of the Sphinx”. The interface consists of a large projection screen as the main display, a “magic wand”, a stereo sound system and the user‘s voice for “casting spells”. We present our conclusions concern...

background: confrontation with the consequences of diabetes causes a crisis in physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions. sometimes the spiritual crisis can be tremendous. since spiritual health coordinates different aspects of human life, this study aimed to identify the spiritual health of patients with defects caused by diabetes. materials and methods: this was a qualitative-phenomenologica...

post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is a disorder of emotional and mental stress occurring as an outcome of injury or severe emotional shock. yoga may be useful in decrease of ptsd symptomology. new studies demonstrate that people suffering from ptsd can find actual relief with yoga. yoga decreases stress-induced allosteric load in three reactive systems of stress: the autonomic nervous syste...

In turning from functional, tool-like systems to ones that should be fun, we open the possibility and need to think carefully about what it means to design experience for human users. Here, I describe my experiences building a set of interactive installations in the domains of interactive computer characters, virtual reality, and affective computing, through which I have tried to support a rich...

The paper summarizes a project to increase the sense of presence within a driving simulator while interacting with autonomous trafŽc. The project sought to model natural variations in ambient trafŽc to emulate identiŽable driving styles for different categories of driver. Probability distributions combined with decision histories were employed to characterize speed choice while providing a mech...

Field-based investigations of haunt-phenomena have revealed that magnetically remarkable signatures may exist in specific locations associated with strange experiences. However, no field-study to date has carried out a detailed assessment of both magnetic frequency and amplitude components present in such environments. In the present study, we carried out a follow-up investigation that further ...