Abstract
This paper describes the features and concepts behind the Command, Control and Intelligence (C2I) system under development in the ICARUS project, which aims at improving crisis management with the use of unmanned search and rescue robotic appliances embedded and integrated into existing infrastructures. A beneficial C2I system should assist the search and rescue process by enhancing first responder situational awareness, decision making and crisis handling by designing intuitive user interfaces that convey detailed and extensive information about the crisis and its evolution. The different components of C2I, their architectural and functional aspects are described along with the robot platform used for development and field testing.

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Virtual environments for driving simulations aimed to scientific purposes require three-dimensional road models that must obey to detailed standards of specification and realism. The creation of road models with this level of quality requires previous definition of the road networks and the road paths. Each road path is usually obtained through the dedicated work of roadway design specialists, resulting in a long time consuming process. The driving simulation for scientific purposes also requires a semantic description of all elements within the environment in order to provide the parameterization of actors during the simulation and the production of simulation reports. This paper presents a methodology to automatically generate road environments suitable to the implementation of driving simulation experiences. This methodology integrates every required step for modelling road environments, from the determination of interchanges nodes to the generation of the geometric and the semantic models. The human supervisor can interact with the model generation process at any stage, in order to meet every specific requirement of the experimental work. The proposed methodology reduces workload involved in the initial specification of the road network and significantly reduces the use of specialists for preparing the road paths of all roadways. The generated semantic description allows procedural placing of actors in the simulated environment. The models are suitable for conducting scientific work in a driving simulator. Copyright

Abstract
Procedural modeling techniques reduce the effort of creating large virtual cities. However, current methodologies do not allow direct user control over the generated models. Associated with this problem, we face the additional problem related to intrinsic ambiguity existing in user selections. In this paper, we propose to address this problem by using a genetic algorithm to generalize user-provided point-and-click selections of building elements. From a few user-selected elements, the system infers new sets of elements that potentially correspond to the user's intention, including the ones manually selected. These sets are obtained by queries over the shape trees generated by the procedural rules, thus exploiting shape semantics, hierarchy and geometric properties. Our system also provides a complete selection-action paradigm that allows users to edit procedurally generated buildings without necessarily explicitly writing queries. The pairs of user selections and procedural operations (the actions) are stored in a tree-like structure, which is easily evaluated. Results show that the selection inference is capable of generating sets of shapes that closely match the user intention and queries are able to perform complex selections that would be difficult to achieve in other systems. User studies confirm this result.

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Museums promote cultural experiences through the exhibits and the stories behind them. Nevertheless, museums are not always designed to engage and interest young audiences, particularly teenagers. This Ph.D. proposal in Digital Media explores how digital technologies can facilitate Natural History and Science Museums in fostering and creating immersive museum experiences for teenagers. Especially by using digital storytelling along with location-based gaming. The overall objectives of the work are to establish guidelines, design, develop and study interactive storytelling and gamification experiences in those type of museums focusing in particular on delivering pleasurable and engaging experiences for teens of 15-17 years old.

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