Lucio Tommaso De Paolis

Università del Salento | Unisalento · Department of Engineering for Innovation

Alongside the traditional concept of usability, dealing with the ease of use of a product, over the years the concept of learnability has been introduced, which refers to the possibility of learning to use a system easily and quickly. In contexts characterised by a significant level of user involvement, the traditional concept of usability has evol...

Recent technological innovations have profoundly transformed the approach to surgical training, necessitating a substantial paradigm shift by combining traditional approaches with new tools and methods. The use of simulated and interactive environments through eXtended Reality (XR) technologies, in combination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tech...

A relationship emerged between the progress in performing neurofeedback exercises for emotional regulation and the trend of the \(\mu \)-band power spectral density from the bipolar channel FC4-CP4. The exploratory study involved 3 subjects. As emerged in previous studies on the analysis of the emotional response in the motor cortex, the significan...

This paper presents the partial development and implementation results of an ongoing project aimed at enhancing the accessibility of the Madonna dell’Itri Church in Nociglia (Italy), by means of different smart fruition tools. Thanks to a collaboration between the Department of Engineering for Innovation and the Department of Cultural Heritage of t...

Among all the technologies that make up the Digital Psychology intervention, Virtual Reality (VR) represents a decisive paradigm of innovation since it allows to work in terms of prevention and monitoring of many psychological issues, such as stress, anxiety, depression and burnout. This paper presents ERMES project “Virtual Reality to promote the...

A pilot study aimed to assess the usability of an adaptive multisensory virtual reality (VR) system for emotional self-regulation is presented. The neurofeedback relies on electroencephalography (EEG) and is proposed to participants for strengthening the anxiety regulation capacity, by following the task to down-regulate the high-beta band measured...

This paper introduces an innovative approach to Virtual Reality (VR)-based art therapy for pottery modeling using Hand Gesture Recognition (HGR) technology. Traditional pottery modeling methods have limitations in terms of accessibility and cost, making it challenging for individuals with physical or mental health conditions to engage in this thera...

Mixed Reality has emerged as a valuable tool for the promotion of cultural heritage. In this context, in particular, the metaphor of virtual portals allows the virtual visit of monuments that are inaccessible or no longer exist in their original form, integrating them into the real environment. This paper presents the development of a Mixed Reality...

The current assessment of upper limb apraxia consists in administering tests to patient, using analog instruments. The use of immersive Extended Reality (XR) environments allows the evaluation of such tests in a quantitative manner and not relying solely on the medical observations. The objective of the study is to provide a tool to support the ass...

Augmented Reality (AR) can improve the accuracy of surgical procedures by displaying 3D reconstructions of organs directly on the patient’s body. Moreover, it can improve the surgeon’s level of attention by freeing him from the task of mentally associating information from various sources. A crucial aspect for the reliability of an AR system is the...

An electroencephalography (EEG)-based classification system of three levels of fear of heights is proposed. A virtual reality (VR) scenario representing a canyon was exploited to gradually expose the subjects to fear inducing stimuli with increasing intensity. An elevating platform allowed the subjects to reach three different height levels. Psycho...

Extended Reality (XR) technology represents an innovative tool to address the challenges of the present, as it allows for experimentation with new solutions in terms of content creation and its fruition by different types of users. The potential to modulate the experience based on the target audience’s needs and the project’s objectives makes XR su...

This Special Issue aims to communicate and disseminate recent tools, methodologies, and pipelines related to the collaborative and/or authoring XR-based platforms. The goal is to show how XR can radically transform social interaction in any context. We specifically welcome papers containing original and mature research on XR applications based on c...

Augmented Reality (AR) has become an increasingly used technology to support and enhance the enjoyment of cultural heritage. Particularly relevant is its importance for digital storytelling: by framing a portion of a fresco or painting with a smartphone, an AR mobile application can provide contextually relevant information, also in the form of mul...

Recent developments in IT technologies have enabled new forms of enhancement and dissemination of cultural heritage. In particular, augmented reality is increasingly emerging as a valuable tool to enrich the visitor experience by providing contextually relevant information. This work presents a mobile augmented reality application developed to supp...

The sense of body ownership, i.e., the experience of one’s body as one’s own, and the sense of agency, i.e., the feeling of control over bodily actions, are essential for bodily self-consciousness. Research on EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) has shown that individuals can retain a sense of agency and ownership even when they control virtua...

A visit experience in art museums or galleries can bring significant benefits to people’s health, since it can act on the sense of identity, with a consequent impact on positive emotions and self-esteem. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can represent a useful means of accessibility and daily good practice, for instance for therapeut...

A feasibility of Mindfulness-based emotional acceptance in combination with neurofeedback for improving emotion selfregulation is presented. This represents, to our knowledge, an unexplored approach in the emotion regulation literature. The study was performed using a low-cost wearable system designed to perform electroencephalography (EEG) outside...

The work presents Agnano RiVive, an immersive Virtual Reality application developed to be used within the Museum of Preclassical Civilizations of the Southern Murgia in Ostuni, which preserves the findings of the Archaeological and Naturalistic Park of Santa Maria di Agnano. The application gives the user the possibility to explore the Upper Paleol...

This paper concerns the development of an immersive VR application for the enhancement of an inaccessible old Castle in Corsano, a small village in Salento - Italy. Starting from the 3D reconstruction of the building, the project allowed the development of an interaction system aimed at providing the user with the historical information about the C...

The fast development and progressive price reduction of Virtual Reality (VR) devices open a broad range of VR applications. Especially interesting are those applications focused on educational objectives. However, before these VR applications can be extensively presented in the educational system, some main issues to optimize their efficiency in th...

A pilot study to investigate possible differences between a virtual reality-based neurofeedback and a traditional neurofeedback is presented. Neurofeedback training aimed to strengthen the emotional regulation capacity. The neurofeedback task is to down-regulate negative emotions by decreasing the beta band power measured in the midline areas of th...

Recent studies have shown how Virtual Reality is one of the most effective innovative means for acting on the psychological well-being of patients with different health problems, in situations of isolation, burnout, and under high-stress levels. This paper presents the current state of work on the development of the ERMES project, which involves th...

The use of information technology in the field of cultural heritage makes it possible to involve more and more people in the promotion of cultural heritage, fostering social, cultural, economic and community growth. This work stems from the interest in using Virtual Reality (VR) in the field of cultural heritage, creating a tour of the city of Bari...

An extended-reality (XR) platform for real-time monitoring of patients’ health during surgical procedures is proposed. The proposed system provides real-time access to a comprehensive set of patients’ information, which are made promptly available to the surgical team in the operating room (OR). In particular, the XR platform supports the medical s...

This book introduces the concept of cultural routes and itineraries, understood as an innovative tool with which to promote quality sustainable tourism in certain regions of the Adriatic-Ionian area, specifically in Croatia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, and Slovenia. These regions were chosen by the partners of the QNeST project, financed as part of...

For software applications with a significant level of user involvement, the traditional concept of usability has evolved into the more complex idea of user experience, which also covers emotional, cognitive or physical responses. In virtual reality, user experience also depends on the user perception related to some peculiarities of immersive envir...

This work addresses an innovative processing strategy to improve the classification of Steady-State Visually Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs). This strategy resorts to the combined use of fast Fourier transform and Canonical Correlation Analysis in time domain, and manages to outperform by over 5% previous results obtained for highly wearable, single-cha...

Objectives Technology is increasingly being used to help practise mindfulness. Immersive virtual reality-enhanced mindfulness may prove especially effective for a wide range of clinical interventions where traditional mindfulness is currently proving valuable. The current paper provides a preliminary survey of research on this topic, aimed at verif...

Video mapping is defined as a particular form of augmented reality capable of transforming any surface, flat or irregular, into a dynamic surface capable of enriching human sensory perception. Video mapping projections can become a medium to link the historical facts and the location by means of the valorisation of the monument and narration of its...

In the last years, teletherapy has provided the possibility of improving the accessibility to the therapy itself, by means of digital platforms. Of all the technologies that make up e-health, Virtual Reality is the one that creates the sense of presence, using immersive, interactive and collaborative virtual environments. From this perspective, thi...

In recent years we have witnessed a great change in the school and education system, that shifted from a culture of integration to a culture of inclusion, aimed at creating a condition of equal opportunity and making the uniqueness of individual, strength, and enrichment for all. Digital technologies are important to support the social inclusion of...

A highly-wearable single-channel Brain- Computer Interface (BCI) based on Steady-State Visually Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) and Augmented Really (AR) is proposed. The SSVEP elicitation is provided by three AR head-mounted displays (HMD), namely Epson Moverio BT-350, Oculus Rift S, and Microsoft HoloLens. Four flickering stimuli, ranging from 8 Hz to...

Augmented reality (AR) technologies provide new scenarios for analysis and medical data representation, by combining the standard image-based analysis using 2D-slices with 3D virtual models of patient-specific structures of the body overlapped in the view of the real world in real-time. In this paper, we present the development of a generic AR-base...

1st International Conference on eXtended Reality (XR SALENTO 2022) http://www.xrsalento.it

Therapeutic effects of Mindfulness meditation practices in clinical interventions, specifically in the treatment of stress, anxiety, depression, chronic and acute pain are scientifically well founded. Mindfulness is increasingly being supported by technology and among various interventions immersive VR seems rather peculiar due to its ability to im...

The enhancement of the cultural heritage and the promotion of the territory, with a peculiar attention to alternative routes and decentralized places of interest, is receiving more and more attention from the ICT world. In particular, Extended Reality (XR) technology (Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality) is becoming quite pivotal in this process....

This paper discusses the current use of Virtual Reality technology within the Italian museum field. It intends to provide a brief list of the main cases of VR applications developed for Italian museums, by focusing the discussion above the last year scenario. Indeed, during the lockdown period, due to the covid-19 pandemic, the use of technology in...

The intent of this study is to promote and raise awareness of the Basilica of Saint Catherina of Alexandria in Galatina, a church endowed with such beauty as to be defined as astounding. In this article two technologies were used: Spatial Augmented Reality, better known as videomapping, to valorize the monument and narrate its story through images...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the world, and leads to a substantial burden on healthcare services. Effective and timely management of patients with COPD has been essential to alleviate COPD exacerbation, improve the quality of life, and consequently reduce the economic burden. To achieve...

In recent years, increasing evidence of the positive impact of Virtual Reality (VR) on neurofeedback training has emerged. The immersive properties of VR training scenarios have been shown to facilitate neurofeedback learning while leading to cognitive enhancements such as increased working memory performance. However, in the design of an immersive...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2021, held in Italy, in September 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 38 full and 14 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The papers...

Gesture-based touchless devices are becoming a widespread alternative to traditional gaming devices such as joysticks or gamepads. However, the impact of such devices on the user experience has to be evaluated, especially if we consider that most users are more familiar with classical handheld gaming controllers. In virtual reality applications, th...

The fast development and progressive price reduction of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies promotes their implementation in areas beyond gaming. This makes it increasingly applied in other areas such as the development of educational or training applications. However, the development of these applications from scratch can involve a very high time an...

The latest events related to the spread of the Covid-19 virus have seen the rise of new social needs in countries like Italy, especially regarding the most vulnerable individuals. The emergency highlighted the insufficiency of some traditional methods of psychological support for that part of the population concretely facing the risk of social isol...

Recent advances in technology and its applications have impacted fundamentally the tourism industry. Technological progress and innovations have for many years worked in facilitating the development of tourism [23, 31]. More recently, the emergence of new advanced technologies such as multimedia technologies, virtual reality (VR) and augmented real...

Among the techniques for digitalization and 3D modeling of real objects, photogrammetry is assuming an increasing importance due to easy procedures and low costs of hardware and software equipment. Thanks to the advances of the last years in computer vision, photogrammetry software can reconstruct the geometric 3D shape of an object from a series o...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary (COPD) disease is a progressive illness that will intensify over time. Exacerbation are frequent and likely caused by bacterial and viral respiratory infections. The management of COPD includes home assistance by noninvasive ventilation (NIV), but no remote monitoring system is generally applied. In this work a telemed...

The 2-volume set LNCS 12242 and 12243 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2020, held in Lecce, Italy, in September 2020.* The 45 full papers and 14 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions. The papers discuss...

The 2-volume set LNCS 12242 and 12243 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2020, held in Lecce, Italy, in September 2020.* The 45 full papers and 14 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions. The papers discuss...

Within the BRAVO project, we are designing four virtual characters that will interact with children affected by ADHD. In order to assess the quality of the designed characters, we propose a metric to subjectively evaluate the level of intelligibility of the character’s facial expression. The results of a preliminary user study conducted with 23 ind...

The experimentation of new effective visualization techniques provides viable technological solutions for the archaeological heritage fruition and the visitors involvement within cultural places (museums, gallery, archaeological sites).

Natural user interfaces have been widely adopted in several application fields. In particular, they are employed in learning environments to increase the motivation and the engagement of students.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is expressed through different symptoms belonging to three different dimensions: inattention, impulsivity and motor hyperactivity, each of which contributes to the learning and adaptation problems within the different contexts of life. ADHD children have to focus...

Minimally invasive techniques, such as laparoscopy and radiofrequency ablation of tumors, bring important advantages in surgery: by minimizing incisions on the patient’s body, they can reduce the hospitalization period and the risk of postoperative complications. Unfortunately, they come with drawbacks for surgeons, who have a restricted vision of...

Augmented reality plays an important role in cultural heritage and education. The magic effect of 3D animated objects can enhance students’ interest, attention and engagement in school subjects. Moreover, augmented reality can help understand spatial concepts and the working principles of complex mechanical components. In such context, machines des...

In this paper is presented an application of the Augmented Reality technology, for the enhancement of some Apulian archaeological areas, regarding the indigenous population of the Apulia region. The aim is to improve visitors’ knowledge about this population, in order to better understand the archaeological areas of the Museo Diffuso “Castello di A...

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are o...

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are o...

In addition to the current use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in archaeology, oriented to rebuild the historical evolution of an archaeological area by using aerial photogrammetry and relief of archaeological objects, is possible to consider the fruition through augmented reality. By using jointly UAVs and augmented reality, it is possible to explore...

Maxillo-facial surgery is a surgical field where surgical planning and navigation tools are commonly used but there is still a visualization gap among planned surgical activities and those in the operating room. We propose an Augmented Reality platform that includes a planning module and a drill guidance system. Some laboratory tests on 3D printed...

Recent years have seen revolutionary changes in CAS field thanks to the introduction of advanced Augmented Reality technologies. In this brief will be presented the overall study carried out in order to develop an AR application to support the doctor during the surgery. It will be described the way the surgeon can perform a more accurate diagnosis...

Minimally Invasive Surgery is a surgery technique that provides evident advantages for the patients, but also some difficulties for the surgeons. In medicine, the Augmented Reality technology allows surgeons to have a sort of “X-ray” vision of the patient’s body and can help them during the surgical procedures. In this paper is presented an applica...

The 2-volume set LNCS 10324 and 10325 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2017, held in Ugento, Italy, in June 2017. The 54 full papers and 24 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 112 submissions. The papers are organiz...

The paper deals with the development of virtual surgical simulator for microanastomosis developed within the INTERREG (Italy-Greece) MICRO project. Microanastomosis is a surgical technique that involves, under optical magnification, the conjunction of blood vessels of a few millimeters diameter and is used also to support the surgical treatment of...

In this work, the perception of affordances was analysed in terms of cognitive neuroscience during an interactive experience in a virtual reality environment. In particular, we chose a virtual reality scenario based on the Leap Motion controller: this sensor device captures the movements of the user's hand and fingers, which are reproduced on a com...

In this paper the use of augmented reality and cloud computing technology to enrich the scenes of sites with a relevant cultural interest is proposed. The main goal is to develop a mobile application to improve the user’s cultural experience during the sightseeing of a city of art through the integration of digital contents related to specific site...

Usually, during a surgery, an assistant or a nurse operates mouse and keyboard in place of the surgeon and this indirect manipulation may cause a bad image interpretation or communication problems or misunderstandings. More recently the spread of tablets and touchscreen even in hospitals represented a step forward. However, in contexts where it is...

The 2-volume set LNCS 9768 and 9769 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Computer Graphics, AVR 2016, held in Lecce, Italy, in June 2016. The 40 full papers and 29 short papers presented werde carefully reviewed and selected from 131 submissions. The SALENTO AVR 2016 c...

The 2-volume set LNCS 9768 and 9769 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Computer Graphics, AVR 2016, held in Lecce, Italy, in June 2016. The 40 full papers and 29 short papers presented werde carefully reviewed and selected from 131 submissions. The SALENTO AVR 2016 c...

Nowadays, in the digitalization era, it is becoming ever more pertinent to have reasonable use of digital content. This consideration should also apply to cultural heritage, not only conservation. In the context of globalization, smart actions for content use should be carried out to provide sustainability of national identities. In the last decade...

Treatment of deformities, diseases or traumas of the facial skeleton is very important for the functional and aesthetic importance of this structure. Craniofacial surgical techniques have had a great development during last decades. However, some problems still remain regarding the accurate repositioning of skeletal components and in defining margi...

This paper presents a scalable virtual reality-based software for medical visualization. Usable on a desktop, on a head-mounted display or on a CAVE-like system, the application allows the full inspection of CT or MRI images superimposed to the 3D models of the organs built from these images. Additionally full volume rendering functionalities and s...

Augmented Reality allows a more detailed understanding of a learning object. Aim of this work was to analyse embodied cognition of the learning object, when it is presented in 2D or in 3D presentation in AR. Our sample was composed by University Students that differed with respect to the knowledge of plankton (naïve and competent condition). The su...

The military strategy to obtain information superiority is enshrined in the concept of Network Centric Warfare: a modern doctrine based on the interconnection of knowledgeable entities. By increasing the number of commanded platforms, the volume of the data that can be accessed grows exponentially with a high risk to get a state of information over...