Papers from an October 2001 conference explore technologies and applications of enhanced environments, with a focus on the specific areas of virtual heritage, immersive art and creative technology, and virtual design in industry, architecture, and medicine. Topics include visualizing archaeological reconstruction, cemetery preservation and laser scanning, interactive TV, and a stereo vision-based augmented reality system with marker and natural feature tracking. Other topics include modeling electronic arts and ubiquitous computing in a virtual environment, design considerations for an oxygen flute, character- driven story generation in interactive storytelling, and the role of place in cyberspace. This work lacks a subject index. c. Book News Inc.

Describing the history and state-of-the-art of the thermo-hydrous manipulation of wood, this book provides either a desk reference or a field manual of wood science. It examines the polymeric components of wood and its multilevel hierarchical structure that confer its unique general-purpose character and faculty for transformation. Exceeding all ot

This handbook provides an overview on wood science and technology of unparalleled comprehensiveness and international validity. It describes the fundamental wood biology, chemistry and physics, as well as structure-property relations of wood and wood-based materials. The different aspects and steps of wood processing are presented in detail from both a fundamental technological perspective and their realisation in industrial contexts. The discussed industrial processes extend beyond sawmilling and the manufacturing of adhesively bonded wood products to the processing of the various wood-based materials, including pulp and paper, natural fibre materials and aspects of bio-refinery. Core concepts of wood applications, quality and life cycle assessment of this important natural resource are presented. The book concludes with a useful compilation of fundamental material parameters and data as well as a glossary of terms in accordance with the most important industry standards. Written and edited by a truly international team of experts from academia, research institutes and industry, thoroughly reviewed by external colleagues, this handbook is well-attuned to educational demands, as well as providing a summary of state-of-the-art research trends and industrial requirements. It is an invaluable resource for all professionals in research and development, and engineers in practise in the field of wood science and technology.

The essential guide to solving algorithmic and networking problems in commercial computer games, revised and extended Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games, Second Edition is written from the perspective of the computer scientist. Combining algorithmic knowledge and game-related problems, it explores the most common problems encountered in game programing. The first part of the book presents practical algorithms for solving “classical” topics, such as random numbers, procedural generation, tournaments, group formations and game trees. The authors also focus on how to find a path in, create the terrain of, and make decisions in the game world. The second part introduces networking related problems in computer games, focusing on four key questions: how to hide the inherent communication delay, how to best exploit limited network resources, how to cope with cheating and how to measure the on-line game data. Thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded to reflect the many constituent changes occurring in the commercial gaming industry since the original, this Second Edition, like the first, is a timely, comprehensive resource offering deeper algorithmic insight and more extensive coverage of game-specific networking problems than ordinarily encountered in game development books. Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games, Second Edition: Provides algorithmic solutions in pseudo-code format, which emphasises the idea behind the solution, and can easily be written into a programming language of choice Features a section on the Synthetic player, covering decision-making, influence maps, finite-state machines, flocking, fuzzy sets, and probabilistic reasoning and noise generation Contains in-depth treatment of network communication, including dead-reckoning, local perception filters, cheating prevention and on-line metrics Now includes 73 ready-to-use algorithms and 247 illustrative exercises Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games, Second Edition is a must-have resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking computer game related courses, postgraduate researchers in game-related topics, and developers interested in deepening their knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of computer games and in learning new approaches to game design and programming.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Workshops on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, EvoApplications 2010, held in Istanbul, Turkey, in April 2010 colocated with the Evo* 2010 events. Thanks to the large number of submissions received, the proceedings for EvoApplications 2010 are divided across two volumes (LNCS 6024 and 6025). The present volume contains contributions for EvoCOMNET, EvoENVIRONMENT, EvoFIN, EvoMUSART, and EvoTRANSLOG. The 47 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 86 submissions. This volume presents a careful selection of relevant EC examples combined with a thorough examination of the techniques used in EC. The papers in the volume illustrate the current state of the art in the application of EC and should help and inspire researchers and professionals to develop efficient EC methods for design and problem solving.

As our heritage deteriorates through erosion, human error or natural disasters, it has become more important than ever to preserve our past – even if it is in digital form only. This highly relevant work describes thorough research and methods for preserving cultural heritage objects through the use of 3D digital data. These methods were developed via computer vision and computer graphics technologies. They offer a way of passing our heritage down to future generations.

This book consists of papers presented at Automation 2017, an international conference held in Warsaw from March 15 to 17, 2017. It discusses research findings associated with the concepts behind INDUSTRY 4.0, with a focus on offering a better understanding of and promoting participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Each chapter presents a detailed analysis of a specific technical problem, in most cases followed by a numerical analysis, simulation and description of the results of implementing the solution in a real-world context. The theoretical results, practical solutions and guidelines presented are valuable for both researchers working in the area of engineering sciences and practitioners looking for solutions to industrial problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Motion in Games, held in Rennes, France, in November 2012. The 23 revised full papers presented together with 9 posters and 5 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on planning, interaction, physics, perception, behavior, virtual humans, locomotion, and motion capture.

Predicting the future is a risky game, and can often leave egg on one’s face. However when the organizers of the Intelligent Virtual Environments workshop at the European Conference on AI predicted that the field of Intelligent Virtual Agents would grow and mature rapidly, they were not wrong. From this small workshop spawned the successful one on Intelligent Virtual Agents, held in Manchester in 1999. This volume comprises the proceedings of the much larger third workshop held in Madrid, September 10 11, 2001, which successfully achieved the aim of taking a more international focus, bringing together researchers from all over the world. We received 35 submissions from 18 different countries in America, Asia, and Africa. The 16 papers presented at the conference and published here show the high quality of the work that is currently being done in this field. In addition, five contributions were selected as short papers, which were presented as posters at the workshop. This proceedings volume also includes the two prestigious papers presented at the workshop by our keynote speakers: Daniel Thalmann, Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne and Director of the Computer Graphics Lab., who talked about The Foundations to Build a Virtual Human Society. Jeff Rickel, Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, who debated about Intelligent Virtual Agents for Education and Training: Opportunities and Challenges.