Niall Murray

• PhD, MEng, BE
• Lecturer at Athlone Institute of Technology

Augmented reality (AR) exhibits potential for delivering training instructions. Trainee learning and transfer can be influenced by the different extraneous cognitive loads implicit in text and graphical instruction formats. Our research evaluated this influence using a GoCube™ training procedure delivered in AR. Learning, transfer and user exp...

This study presents an open-source, real-time visualization tool designed to analyse audio-visual attention in 360° video environments under varying sound conditions. Traditional methods, such as static saliency maps and post-hoc analyses, often fail to capture the dynamic and participant-specific nature of attention shifts in immersive environment...

Digital twin (DT) technology has become a cornerstone in the simulation and analysis of real-world systems, offering unparalleled insights into the lifecycle management of physical assets. By providing a real-time synchronized replica of the physical entity, DTs enable predictive maintenance, performance optimization, and lifecycle extension, which...

The emergence of Collaborative Virtual Reality (CVR) technology has transformed team-based interactions across diverse fields, offering immersive and interactive environments that enhance collaborative efforts. However, a critical gap remains in understanding the Quality of Experience (QoE) from a task role-specific perspective within these environ...

In order to understand the sentiments between users as they worked together as part of a collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) task, this research analyzed voice interaction using Assembly AI. The real-time conversations between 11 pairs of users were captured as they performed a joint puzzle task. The users were in separate physical spaces but connec...

Social interactions hold immense significance in the lives of individuals. Children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may face difficulties when engaging in social situations. These challenges often manifest as neurodivergent behaviours and a reduced willingness to engage in social sharing. Sharing is an integral aspect of social i...

This article presents the results of an empirical study that aimed to investigate the influence of various types of audio (spatial and non-spatial) on the user quality of experience (QoE) of and visual attention in 360° videos. The study compared the head pose, eye gaze, pupil dilations, heart rate and subjective responses of 73 users who watched t...

Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) experiences are being developed by a large global community using diverse game engines and frameworks. Each research laboratory or private company is developing its own solutions, and there is a common tendency to re-implementing basic Extended Reality (XR) tools that have already been developed by other people...

Quality of experience (QoE) has become a crucial field of study in recent years as multimedia technology continues to grow in popularity. Accurate and reliable methods of evaluating QoE are necessary, but they can be challenging due to their multidimensional nature. QoE, a comprehensive measure of user satisfaction with multimedia services, is infl...

Synchrony at the physiological level provides an objective measure that can be utilized to examine the collaboration between collaborating partners. When individuals collaborate on a task, their physiological signals can provide valuable insights into their cognitive states, emotions, and overall engagement levels. By analyzing and interpreting the...

Social interactions and communication play a crucial role in people’s lives. Those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially children, may have difficulties participating in social interactions. Such challenges can be characterised by displaying atypical behaviours and limited sharing intention in social settings. Sharing is an important part...

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology that has significant potential as a solution for novel procedure assistance and repeatable procedure training. Instructions are a method to communicate how to perform a procedure for different pedagogical goals ranging from assistance with once-off product assembly to long term learning. The main bar...

This paper addresses the need to understand the social dynamics of multiple users collaborating in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. Specifically, we investigate whether the physiological synchrony between leader-follower task roles in Collaborative Virtual Environments is influenced by the user's previous experience and background. Physiological...

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology that has significant potential as a solution for novel procedure assistance in mass customisation. Procedure assistance is a series of steps or instructions required to aid a person to complete a task. The informational phase of a procedure is the period when a user is trying to understand instructio...

The Digital Twin (DT) in the manufacturing domain is already the everyday tool for visualizing the various industrial systems, equipment, and produced products. When designing a new manufacturing unit or enlarging an existing factory, it is important to do so without affecting the manufacturing process flow itself. There are opportunities through s...

Conceptualization of the Smart Factory started with introducing the Industry 4.0 paradigm and its nine pillars, which it stands. The paradigm itself is automation and robot-centric focused, which means less and less involvement of the humans on the manufacturing shop floor. However, even robots and simulation aspects of the factories are the most c...

Ever since its discovery, the applications of Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) can be found across a range of application domains, from structural design to medical technology. This is based upon the unique and inherent characteristics such as thermal Shape Memory Effect (SME) and Superelasticity (or Pseudoelasticity). While thermal SME is used for shape...

This paper presents an evaluation of a deep learning (DL) model to predict the user quality of experience (QoE) from physiological signals using a publicly available multimodal dataset, SoPMD. The subjective scores related to QoE factors, namely, perceptual video quality, immersion level, surrounding awareness, interest in video content and audio c...

Immersive technologies are rapidly gaining traction across a variety of application domains. 360° video is one such technology, which can be captured with an omnidirectional multi-camera arrangement. With a Virtual Reality (VR) Head Mounted Display (HMD), users have the freedom to look in any direction they wish within the scene. While there is a p...

Interest in the applications of Extended Reality is growing across many different domains. Collaborative or shared experiences are seen as a primary use case. However, there is a surprisingly little research efforts on collaborative design tasks not considering social experiences using Virtual Reality (VR). In addition, there are very few research...

This paper contains the research proposal of Sowmya Vijayakumar that was presented at the MMSys 2022 doctorial symposium. Multimedia applications can now be found across many application domains including but not limited to entertainment, communication, health, business, and education. It is becoming more and more important to understand the factor...

One of the most promising technologies that is driving digitalization in several industries is Digital Twin (DT). DT refers to the digital replica or model of any physical object (physical twin). What differentiates DT from simulation and other digital or CAD models is the automatic bidirectional exchange of data between digital and physical twins...

Meeting design characteristics are specified by meeting organizers and participants. The different design characteristics have a direct impact on the quality of the meeting. In this paper, different meeting characteristics are assessed to determine the optimum conditions for effective meetings as perceived by the meeting members. A number of meetin...

In the context of Industry 4.0 and digital factory, digital twin technology is emerging as a key enabling technology to simulate, optimize, maintain, and predict processes and production systems. Digital Twin (DT) refers to the virtual copy or model of any physical entity (physical twin), both interconnected via real-time data exchange. Conceptuall...

Collaborative design systems using Virtual Reality (VR) are gaining significant interest due to their immersive and interactive nature. There is a growing need for immersive remote communication, which has many positive societal impacts, such as reducing environmental pollution and travel costs, supporting rich collaboration by remotely connecting...

Virtual reality (VR) has recently emerged as a platform that can be employed in the context of e-health applications. Even though the majority of VR-based applications focus on visual stimuli as the main content, audio also plays a very important role. If someone has an issue with auditory processing, the comprehension of auditory information is co...

User’s Quality of Experience (QoE) understanding from objective metrics has been increasingly explored in multisensory research. However, capturing physiological data adds a degree of difficulty to an already complex environment composed of software to reproduce content and actuators to deliver sensory effects. In this paper, we introduce the potent...

Augmented reality (AR) is widely regarded as a promising training platform. AR integrates real and virtual information into a single scene. This reduces attention changes between workpiece and instruction. Error correction in the form of instruction verification feedback using computer vision can ensure correct learning during training. AR based tr...

Virtual reality (VR) technology is emerging as a tool for simulating different eating environments to better understand consumer sensory response to food. This research explored the impact of different environmental contexts on participants’ hedonic ratings of two different food products: beef steaks, and milk chocolate, using VR as the context-enh...

Whilst investigating student performance in design and arithmetic tasks, as well as during exams, electrodermal activity (EDA)-based sensors have been used in attempts to understand cognitive function and cognitive load. Limitations in the employed approaches include lack of capacity to mark events in the data, and to explain other variables relati...

Real world virtual world communication and interaction will be a cornerstone of future intelligent manufacturing ecosystems. Human robotic interaction is considered to be the basic element of factories of the future. Despite the advancement of different technologies such as wearables and Augmented Reality (AR), human-robot interaction (HRI) is stil...

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) will be a crucial component of smart factories of the future (FoF). This demo presents a reliable and cost-effective HRI system based on Augmented Reality (AR). In this demonstration, we offer concepts and methods currently being developed to enable high-level human-robot collaboration and interaction. The user interac...

MulseMedia technology enables operation with multimodal data sets that requires their complex representation. In this paper, we propose a mathematical background of MulseMedia data representation. The application of both Algebraic System of Aggregates and Multi-Image Concept allows efficient representation and processing of MulseMedia data in compu...

Augmented reality (AR) has been identified as a key technology to enhance worker utility in the context of increasing automation of repeatable procedures. AR can achieve this by assisting the user in performing complex and frequently changing procedures. Crucial to the success of procedure assistance AR applications is user acceptability, which can...

Recent developments in wearable technology have led to increased research interest in using peripheral physiological signals for emotion recognition. The non-invasive nature of peripheral physiological signal measurement via wearables enables ecologically valid long-term monitoring. These peripheral signal measurements can be used in real-time in m...

Augmented reality (AR) is a key technology to enhance worker effectiveness during increasing automation of repetitive jobs in the workplace. AR will achieve this by assisting the user to successfully perform complex and frequently changing procedures. The design of AR applications for these roles is critical to their acceptability and utility. User...

Gait analysis is a technique that is used to understand movement patterns and, in some cases, to inform the development of rehabilitation protocols. Traditional rehabilitation approaches have relied on expert guided feedback in clinical settings. Such efforts require the presence of an expert to inform the re-training (to evaluate any improvement)...

The availability of affordable head-mounted display technology has facilitated new, potentially more immersive, interactive multimedia experiences. These technologies were traditionally focused on entertainment; however, academia and industry are now exploring applications in other domains such as health, learning and training. Key to the success o...

Gait analysis is the measurement, processing and systematic interpretation of biomechanical parameters that characterize human locomotion. It supports the identification of movement limitations and development of rehabilitation procedures. Accurate Gait analysis is important in sports analysis, medical field, and rehabilitation. Although Gait analy...

Augmented reality (AR) can support a user in performing an expert task by overlaying real world objects with the domain specific information required to complete the task. Understanding how users can process and use such information is very important for informing the design of AR technologies and applications. In this paper, the results of a quali...

Eye-based information channels include the pupils, gaze, saccades, fixational movements, and numerous forms of eye opening and closure. Pupil size variation indicates cognitive load and emotion, while a person's gaze direction is said to be congruent with the motivation to approach or avoid stimuli. The eyelids are involved in facial expressions th...

Motion analysis is a technique used by clinicians (among many others) that quantifies human movement by using camera-based systems. Marker-based motion analysis systems have been used across a variety of application domains, from Interactive 3D Tele-Immersion (i3DTI) environments to the diagnosis of neuromuscular and musculoskeletal diseases. Altho...

Teleoperation applications are designed to assist humans in operating complex mechanical systems. Interfaces to teleoperation systems have always been challenging. Recently the potential of virtual reality (VR) has been a topic of interest, particularly with the availability of head mounted displays and interaction controller devices. As a result,...

Problem solving is an important element of engineering and technology disciplines and spatial ability contributes to learners' success in problem solving in these areas (Wai, et al., 2009). As excessive cognitive load can impede an individual's capacity to process information (Kirschner, Paas & Kirschner, 2009) it is posited that higher levels of s...

The healthcare products market is a diverse market supplying critical care products ranging from pharmaceutical products to biologics to medical devices. The regulation and best practices associated with the manufacture of such devices is very well documented in ISO standards, AAMI Technical, European and US Pharmacopeia. As part of Good Manufactur...

A key challenge that Immersive applications have to overcome is cybersickness. Cybersickness is particularly prevalent in dynamic applications such as vehicles simulators. The work presented here aims to understand the cause of cybersickness symptoms in an assistive technology (AT) application, the virtual wheelchair training simulator. This evalua...

The¹ key aim of various assistive technology (AT) systems is to augment an individual's functioning whilst supporting an enhanced quality of life (QoL). In recent times, we have seen the emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) based assistive technology systems made possible by the availability of commercially available Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). The...

Speech has been a widely used modality in the field of affective computing. Recently however, there has been a growing interest in the use of multi-modal affective computing systems. These multi-modal systems incorporate both verbal and non-verbal features for affective computing tasks. Such multi-modal affective computing systems are advantageous...

Research on modelling user quality of experience (QoE) to date has primarily focused the combination of traditional media components; audio and video, or the individual influence of each. However, multisensory experiences have recently gained significant traction in the research community as a novel method to enhance QoE beyond what is possible wit...

This chapter introduces olfaction-enhanced multimedia synchronization and focuses on two key aspects: the specification of olfaction-enhanced multimedia, including the temporal relations between the media components; and secondly, the implementation of synchronized delivery of olfaction-enhanced multimedia. The relevance of this topic is supported...

Affective computing research traditionally focused on labeling a person's emotion as one of a discrete number of classes e.g. happy or sad. In recent times, more attention has been given to continuous affect prediction across dimensions in the emotional space, e.g. arousal and valence. Continuous affect prediction is the task of predicting a numeri...

In recent times, there has been significant interest in the machine recognition of human emotions, due to the suite of applications to which this knowledge can be applied. A number of different modalities, such as speech or facial expression, individually and with eye gaze, have been investigated by the affective computing research community to eit...

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a promising Future Internet architecture to support content distribution. Its inherent addressless routing paradigm brings valuable characteristics to improve the transmission robustness and efficiency, e.g. users are enabled to download content from multiple providers concurrently. However, multipath transmission NDN...

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a promising Future Internet architecture to support content distribution. Its inherent addressless routing paradigm brings valuable characteristics to improve the transmission robustness and efficiency, e.g. users are enabled to download content from multiple providers concurrently. However, multipath transmission NDN...

The elderly population is growing every year in Brazil. Consequently, health risks in elderly is a concern for public health system. During the aging process, the mobility is affected, and falls are more frequent causing injuries and even death, whose causes can be prevented, with reduction of financial costs. Therefore, a low-cost inertial sensor-...

Affective computing research traditionally focused on labeling a person's emotion as one of a discrete number of classes e.g. happy or sad. In recent times, more attention has been given to continuous affect prediction across dimensions in the emotional space, e.g. arousal and valence. Continuous affect prediction is the task of predicting a numeri...

Recent research efforts have reported findings on user Quality of Experience (QoE) of immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences. Truly immersive multimedia experiences also include multisensory components such as factional, tactile etc., in addition to audiovisual stimuli. In this context, this paper reports the results of a user QoE study of an o...

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications are gaining significant attention in industry and academia as potential avenues to support truly immersive and interactive multimedia experiences. Understanding the user perceived quality of immersive multimedia experiences is critical to the success of these technologies. However, this i...

Recently, multimedia researchers have added several so-called new media to the traditional multimedia components (e.g., olfaction, haptic, and gustation). Evaluating multimedia user-perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) is already non-trivial and the addition of multisensorial media components increases this challenge. No standardized methodology e...

Multiview video supports observing a scene from different viewpoints. The Joint Video Team (JVT) developed H.264/MVC to enhance the compression efficiency for multiview video, however, MVC encoded multiview video (MVC video) still requires the high bitrates for transmission. This paper investigates live MVC video streaming over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) n...

Multiview video supports observing a scene from different viewpoints. The Joint Video Team (JVT) developed H.264/MVC to enhance the compression efficiency for multiview video, however, MVC encoded multiview video (MVC video) still requires high bitrates for transmission. This paper investigates live MVC video streaming over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) netwo...

In recent times, there has been significant interest in the machine recognition of human emotions, due to the suite of applications to which this knowledge can be applied. A number of different modalities, such as speech or facial expression, individually and with eye gaze, have been investigated by the affective computing research community to eit...

The availability of affordable head-mounted displays has resulted in renewed interest in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). This in turn has led to research into users’ perceptions of quality in AR and VR environments. In this paper, the authors report the results of an experimental study that compared the user quality of experience (...