Paulo Dias

University of Aveiro | UA · Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics

Texture mapping can be defined as the colorization of a 3D mesh using one or multiple images. In the case of multiple images, this process often results in textured meshes with unappealing visual artifacts, known as texture seams, caused by the lack of color similarity between the images. The main goal of this work is to create textured meshes free...

Augmented Reality (AR) has tremendous capacity to assist scenarios of remote collaboration in the context of Industry 4.0, where distributed team-members with different expertise need to achieve shared targets. Solutions using AR enable integration of virtual and real-world content, empowering individuals with a common ground that improves understa...

Augmented Reality (AR) has been explored to assist scenarios of remote collaboration. Most studies use Handheld Devices to assist on-site members requiring help. However, the most suitable way to use such devices has not been examined, due to most efforts being put in the development of the technology itself. This work explored three distinct setup...

Mixed Reality (MR) has significant potential to support scenarios of remote collaboration, where distributed team-members need to establish a common understanding. However, most efforts have been devoted to explore one-to-one use-cases. This work describes a one-to-many user study with 16 participants, aimed at under- standing how an on-site team-m...

Virtual reality shows great potential as an alternative to traditional therapies for motor rehabilitation given its ability to immerse the user in engaging scenarios that abstract them from medical facilities and tedious rehabilitation exercises. This paper presents a virtual reality application that includes three serious games and that was develo...

Although Mixed Reality (MR) has been explored to support scenarios of remote collaboration, the majority of studies reported in literature have focused on synchronous use-cases, where all team-members can interact in real-time. Hence, an opportunity exist to explore asynchronous situations, in which collaborative actions take place at different tim...

Pervasive Augmented Reality (AR) has been explored to provide experiences that are continuous in space and time, while incorporating layers of contextual information. While most research efforts have been devoted to explore serious games, museums and smart environments, we argue that another interesting area of application is assistive production,...

The region interpolation methods proposed in the moving objects databases literature impose restrictions that can have a significant impact on the representation of the evolution of moving regions, in particular, when a rotation occurs between two observations. In this paper, we propose a data model for moving regions that allows moving segments to...

Augmented Reality (AR) has been applied in Industry 4.0 contexts for training, assistance, maintenance, assembly or quality control. This work describes the use of Pervasive AR to support human operators in a shop floor through pervasive experiences, while performing logistics operations. A Human-Centered Design methodology with partners from the i...

Texture mapping of 3D models using multiple images often results in textured meshes with unappealing visual artifacts known as texture seams. These artifacts can be more or less visible, depending on the color similarity between the images. The main goal of this paper is to produce seamlessly textured meshes from indoor scenarios through a process...

This work proposes an augmented reality serious game (ARSG) for supporting individuals with motor disabilities while controlling robotic wheelchairs. A racing track was used as the game narrative; this included restriction areas, static and dynamic virtual objects, as well as obstacles and signs. To experience the game, a prior configuration of the...

Virtual Reality (VR) has enormous potential to support training sce- narios in the most diverse areas of application. In industry scenarios, it can allow operators to acquire new skills and higher levels of confidence before moving to real-world activities. Trainees must immerse themselves within the task space, which means using a Head-Mounted Dis...

Collaboration is essential in industrial, medical, and educational contexts, among others. It can be described as the process of interdependent activities performed to achieve a common goal between co-located or remote collaborators. One major issue of remote collaboration is the fact that collaborators don't share a common space/world. In this vei...

Augmented Reality (AR) solutions are emerging in multiple scenarios of application as Industry 4.0 takes shape. In particular, for remote collaboration, flexible mechanisms such as authoring tools can be used to generate instructions and assist human operators as they experience increased complexity in their daily tasks. In addition to the traditio...

An important issue in smart cities is intelligent mobility. In this line, the ATLASCAR project started in 2009 as a challenge to transpose to a real car many perception and navigation techniques developed for small scale vehicles in robotic competitions. Among many others, that challenge brought the need to use multiple sensors from different modal...

Situated Visualization (SV), encompassing all the visualizations that change their appearance based on context, by considering the visualizations that are relevant to the physical context in which they are displayed, has been recognized as a method with potential in many situations, as is the case of supporting decision making. Augmented and Mixed...

Augmented Reality (AR) is a powerful tool for supporting remote scenarios. Despite the broad adoption of Hand-Held Devices (HHDs), one common assumption is that Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) may revolutionize such activities, since collaborators can visualize situated instructions given by remote experts, while in a 'hands-free' setting. This claim...

Literature shows that Extended Reality (XR) technology is a powerful tool for supporting collaboration among distributed team-members. Most of the research efforts have focused on exploring the enabling technology to support one-to-one remote scenarios. This means group size has not been a topic of interest in recent years and only limited research...

This work describes an Augmented Reality Serious Game (ARSG) focused on facilitating the process of acquiring new skills in individuals with motor disabilities. In particular, this game aims to help them control a robotic wheelchair. A racing track was used as a game narrative, including restriction areas, static and dynamic objects, obstacles and...

Most efforts on Augmented Reality (AR) remote collaboration have been devoted to on-site individuals in need of assistance. Yet, since remote experts do not have access to the local environment, it is also important to explore how different methods affect the situation understanding and interaction. This work describes a user study with 16 particip...

The fusion of data from different sensors often requires that an accurate geometric transformation between the sensors is known. The procedure by which these transformations are estimated is known as sensor calibration. The vast majority of calibration approaches focus on specific pairwise combinations of sensor modalities, unsuitable to calibrate...

Decision-making processes and decision support systems (DSS) have been improved by a variety of methods originated from several scientific fields, such as information science and artificial intelligence (AI). Situated visualization (SV) allows presenting visual data representations in context and may support better DSS. Its main characteristic is t...

This paper presents an evaluation and comparison of interaction methods for the con- figuration and visualization of pervasive Augmented Reality (AR) experiences using two different platforms: desktop and mobile. AR experiences consist of the enhancement of real-world environ- ments by superimposing additional layers of information, real-time inter...

Assembly processes require now more than ever a systematic way to improve efficiency complying with increasing product demand. Several industrial scenarios have been using augmented reality (AR) to enhance environments with different types of information and influence the overall user satisfaction and performance. The purpose of this work is to eva...

Problem solving in Industry 4.0 often requires collaboration among remote team members, which face increased complexity on their daily tasks and require mechanisms with adaptive capabilities to share and combine knowledge. Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the most promising solutions, allowing taking advantage from seamless integration of virtual a...

Texture mapping of 3D models using multiple images often results in textured meshes with unappealing visual artifacts known as texture seams. These artifacts can be more or less visible, depending on the color similarity between the used images. The main goal of this work is to produce textured meshes free of texture seams through a process of colo...

This paper describes a Human-Centered Design process aimed at understanding how Virtual Reality (VR) can assist in post-stroke physical rehabilitation. Based on insights from stroke survivors and healthcare professionals, a serious game prototype is proposed. We focused on upper-limb rehabilitation, which inspired the game narrative and the movemen...

This paper presents a prototype for configuration and visualization of Pervasive Augmented Reality (AR) experiences using two versions: desktop and mobile. It makes use of 3D scans from physical environments to provide a reconstructed digital representation of such spaces to the desktop version and enable positional tracking for the mobile. While t...

This work describes a user study aimed at understanding how the remote expert representation affects the sense of social presence in scenarios of remote guidance. We compared a traditional video chat solution with an Augmented Reality (AR) annotation tool. These were selected due to ongoing research with partners from the industry sector, following...

Collaboration is essential in industrial, medical, and educational contexts, among others. It can be described as the process of interdependent activities performed to achieve a common goal between co-located or remote collaborators. One major issue of remote collaboration is the fact that collaborators don't share a common space/world. In this vei...

There is a discussion on the potential of augmented reality (AR), mobile technologies to enhance learning. This article presents: 1) the EduPARK project's first cycle of design-based research for the development of a mobile AR game-like app that aims to promote learning in an urban park, and 2) an experience of students using it in loco. The focus...

Remote Collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) shows great potential to establish a common ground in physically distributed scenarios where team-members need to achieve a shared goal. However, most research efforts in this field have been devoted to experiment with the enabling technology and propose methods to support its development. As the fi...

Immersive technologies have been evolving in the latest years and have currently many applications, such as training, medicine, and entertainment. Augmented Reality (AR) enables users to interact with their augmented physical environment through the overlay of digital information, yet it still has many challenges concerning how to show and to let u...

Remote collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) has potential to support physically distributed team-members that need to achieve a common goal by increasing knowledge retention, improving understanding and awareness of the problem and its context. In this vein, the path to achieve usable, realistic and impactful solutions must entail an explicit...

Remote collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) has enormous potential to support collaborators that need to achieve a common goal. However, there is a lack of tools for evaluating these multi-faceted contexts, involving many aspects that may influence the way collaboration occurs. Therefore, it is essential to develop solutions to monitor AR-sup...

Human operators experience increased complexity on their daily tasks, requiring flexible mechanisms with adaptive capabilities like Augmented Reality (AR) authoring tools to assist in creating content for such activities. The main challengeis the ability to create content intuitively without having to master complicated AR concepts. In this vein, w...

In many scenarios of remote collaboration, experts don’t have access to the local environment and require additional mechanisms to provide instructions and guidance in such context. Since the use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) is becoming more accessible, these technologies can provide an advantage in creating a shared understan...

Remote collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) has enormous potential to support collaborators that need to achieve a common goal. However, there is a lack of tools for evaluating these multi-faceted contexts, involving many aspects that may influence the way collaboration occurs. Therefore, it is essential to develop solutions to monitor AR-sup...

To support the nuances of collaborative work, many researchers have been exploring the field of Augmented Reality (AR), aiming to assist in co-located or remote scenarios. Solutions using AR allow taking advantage from seamless integration of virtual objects and real-world objects, thus providing collaborators with a shared understanding or common...

Remote Collaboration mediated by Mixed and Augmented Reality (MR/AR) shows great potential in scenarios where physically distributed collaborators need to establish a common ground to achieve a shared goal. So far, most research efforts have been devoted to creating the enabling technology, overcoming engineering hurdles and proposing methods to su...

Quality control procedures are essential in many industrial production pipelines. These repetitive and precise tasks are frequently complex, including several steps that must be performed correctly by different operators. To facilitate these, quality control tests are often documented with static media like video recordings, photos, or diagrams. Ho...

Augmented Reality (AR) has been explored with the objective to assist in scenarios of co-located or remote collaboration. To help understand how well collaborative work can be addressed with AR, it is important to foster harmonization of perspectives and create a common ground for systematization and discussion. In this vein, understand relationshi...

The creation of a textured 3D mesh from a set of RGD-D images often results in textured meshes that yield unappealing visual artifacts. The main cause is the misalignments between the RGB-D images due to inaccurate camera pose estimations. While there are many works that focus on improving those estimates, the fact is that this is a cumbersome prob...

Research on remote collaboration mediated by Augmented Reality (AR) has been mostly devoted to creating and exploring the enabling technologies to establish a shared understanding among distributed collaborators. Yet, a more in-depth consideration of the nuances of collaboration should be considered in order to improve the methods to support, as we...

This paper presents an Augmented Reality (AR) remote collaborative approach making use of different stabilized annotation features, part of an ongoing research with partners from the industry. It enables a remote expert to assist an on-site technician during asynchronous maintenance tasks. To foster the creation of a shared understanding, the on-si...

Spatio-temporal data can be used to study and simulate the movement and behavior of objects and natural phenomena. However, the use of real-world data raises several challenges related to its acquisition, representation, and quality. This article presents a data cleaning process, based on consistency rules and checks, that uses geometric operations...

Collaboration among remotely distributed professionals is often required in a maintenance context. Professionals need mechanisms with adaptive capabilities to enable knowledge transfer, since the necessary experience and expertise are usually spread among different professionals. To provide a shared understanding, Augmented Reality (AR) has been ex...

Quality control procedures are extremely important among industrial applications. Generally, these tasks include many repetitive tasks that require manual intervention. Given their complexity, quality control tests are often detailed in video recordings, paper instructions, photos or diagrams to guide workers throughout the process. Augmented Reali...

Maintaining appropriate home rehabilitation programs after stroke, with proper adherence and remote monitoring is a challenging task. Virtual reality (VR) - based serious games could be a strategy used in telerehabilitation (TR) to engage patients in an enjoyable and therapeutic approach. The aim of this review was to analyze the background and qua...

Systems composed of multiple sensors for exteroceptive perception are becoming increasingly common, such as mobile robots or highly monitored spaces. However, to combine and fuse those sensors to create a larger and more robust representation of the perceived scene, the sensors need to be properly registered among them, that is, all relative geomet...

Assembly procedures are a common task in several domains of application. Augmented Reality (AR) has been considered as having great potential in assisting users while performing such tasks. However, poor interaction design and lack of studies, often results in complex and hard to use AR systems. This paper considers three different interaction meth...

Assembly procedures are a common task in several domains of application. Augmented Reality (AR) has been considered as having great potential in assisting users while performing such tasks. However, poor interaction design and lack of studies, often results in complex and hard to use AR systems. This paper considers three different interaction meth...

A significant effort has been devoted to the creation of the enabling technology and in the proposal of novel methods to support remote collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR), given the novelty of the field. As the field progresses to focus on the nuances of supporting collaboration and with the growing number of proto- types mediated by AR, th...

Quality control procedures are extremely important among industrial applications. Generally, these tasks include many repetitive tasks that require manual intervention. Given their complexity, quality control tests are often detailed in video recordings, paper instructions, photos or diagrams to guide workers throughout the process. Augmented Reali...

Collaboration among remotely distributed professionals is often required in a maintenance context. Professionals need mechanisms with adaptive capabilities to enable knowledge transfer, since the necessary experience and expertise are usually spread among different professionals. To provide a shared understanding, Augmented Reality (AR) has been ex...

The FICA project-Tools for Identifying and Combating Dropout-started at the University of Aveiro in 2015 with the aim to help reduce and prevent dropouts and increase academic success among university students. Within the project a signicant amount of data is provided to different University stakeholders to monitor academic issues; however, these d...

Artificial Intelligent (AI) techniques, such as ma- chine learning (ML), have been making significant progress over the past decade. Many systems have been applied in sensitive tasks involving critical infrastructures which affect human well- being or health. Before deploying an AI system, it is necessary to validate its behavior and guarantee that...

Spatio-temporal data may be used to represent the evolution of real-world objects and phenomena. Such data can be represented in discrete time, which associates spatial information (like position and shape) to time instants, or in continuous time, in which the representation of the evolution of the phenomena is decomposed into slices and interpolat...

This work presents a methodology for the comparison and evaluation of region interpolation methods proposed in the spatiotemporal databases literature. An evaluation performed using the methodology proposed is also presented. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that such a methodology is discussed and presented in the spatiotemporal...