Cookies Policy
The website need some cookies and similar means to function. If you permit us, we will use those means to collect data on your visits for aggregated statistics to improve our service. Find out More
Accept Reject
  • Menu
Publications

Publications by CSE

2023

Evaluation of Hands-Free VR Interaction Methods During a Fitts' Task: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Authors
Monteiro, P; Goncalves, G; Peixoto, B; Melo, M; Bessa, M;

Publication
IEEE ACCESS

Abstract
Currently, it is standard to use tracked handheld controllers for interaction in immersive virtual reality (VR). However, since VR interactions are becoming more natural with hand tracking, it is important to provide hands-free alternatives for selection and system control tasks. As such, this study aims to provide an exploratory evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of commonly used hands-free interfaces in selection and system control tasks. Nine interaction methods were evaluated while performing a Fitts' law task with nine advanced users of VR in a within-subject experiment. We evaluated handheld controllers as a baseline, against head gaze, eye gaze, and voice commands for pointing at the targets, and dwell time and voice commands to confirm selections. We found that using eye gaze with a 500 ms dwell time proved to be the hand-free method with the highest performance, matching the handheld controllers and being preferred by users. The evaluation also showed that using a multimodal approach to selection, especially using the voice, decreases performance, but increases effectiveness. Moreover, we verified that Fitts' law can be applied to hands-free methods, but its usage is limited when the methods have very short travel times. We then suggest selections per minute as a more robust comparative performance metric. Further studies should expand the audience and interaction tasks and focus on the confirmatory method of selection.

2023

Getting in touch with metadata: a DDI subset for FAIR metadata production in clinical psychology

Authors
Castro, JA; Rodrigues, J; Mena Matos, P; M D Sales, C; Ribeiro, C;

Publication
IASSIST Quarterly

Abstract
To address metadata with researchers it is important to use models that include familiar domain concepts. In the Social Sciences, the DDI is a well-accepted source of such domain concepts. To create FAIR data and metadata, we need to establish a compact set of DDI elements that fit the requirements in projects and are likely to be adopted by researchers inexperienced with metadata creation. Over time, we have engaged in interviews and data description sessions with research groups in the Social Sciences, identifying a manageable DDI subset. A recent Clinical Psychology project, TOGETHER, dealing with risk assessment for hereditary cancer, considered the inclusion of a DDI subset for the production of metadata that are timely and interoperable with data publication initiatives in the same domain. Taking a DDI subset identified by the data curators, we make a preliminary assessment of its use as a realistic effort on the part of researchers, taking into consideration the metadata created in two data description sessions, the effort involved, and overall metadata quality. A follow-up questionnaire was used to assess the perspectives of researchers regarding data description.

2023

Paraconsistent Transition Systems

Authors
Cruz, A; Madeira, A; Barbosa, LS;

Publication
ELECTRONIC PROCEEDINGS IN THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE

Abstract
Often in Software Engineering a modelling formalism has to support scenarios of inconsistency in which several requirements either reinforce or contradict each other. Paraconsistent transition systems are proposed in this paper as one such formalism: states evolve through two accessibility relations capturing weighted evidence of a transition or its absence, respectively. Their weights come from a specific residuated lattice. A category of these systems, and the corresponding algebra, is defined providing a formal setting to model different application scenarios. One of them, dealing with the effect of quantum decoherence in quantum programs, is used for illustration purposes.

2023

Overcoming barriers to manufacturing digitalization: Policies across EU countries

Authors
Senna, PP; Roca, JB; Barros, AC;

Publication
TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Abstract
The digital transformation of manufacturing activities is expected to bring large societal benefits in terms of productivity and sustainability. However, uptake of digital technologies is slower than desirable. As a result, governments are taking action to try to overcome some of the barriers to adoption. However, the mechanisms through which government may act are quite diverse. In this paper, we compare the national strategies across the 27 countries members of the European Union. We map each country's initiative to 14 barriers to the adoption of digital technologies in manufacturing observed in the literature. We observe that most institutional efforts focus on providing funding, developing new regulatory frameworks related to data privacy and security, and creating human capital. Some known barriers to adoption observed at the firm level, such as the lack of off-the-shelf solutions, or the need for retrofitting old equipment, are largely overlooked. We do not find any relationship between the number of initiatives proposed by each country, and the country's existing level of digitalization. We conclude by proposing several policy recommendations, as well as directions for future research.

2023

On the Performance of Secure Sharing of Classified Threat Intelligence between Multiple Entities

Authors
Fernandes, R; Bugla, S; Pinto, P; Pinto, A;

Publication
SENSORS

Abstract
The sharing of cyberthreat information within a community or group of entities is possible due to solutions such as the Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP). However, the MISP was considered limited if its information was deemed as classified or shared only for a given period of time. A solution using searchable encryption techniques that better control the sharing of information was previously proposed by the same authors. This paper describes a prototype implementation for two key functionalities of the previous solution, considering multiple entities sharing information with each other: the symmetric key generation of a sharing group and the functionality to update a shared index. Moreover, these functionalities are evaluated regarding their performance, and enhancements are proposed to improve the performance of the implementation regarding its execution time. As the main result, the duration of the update process was shortened from around 2922 s to around 302 s, when considering a shared index with 100,000 elements. From the security analysis performed, the implementation can be considered secure, thus confirming the secrecy of the exchanged nonces. The limitations of the current implementation are depicted, and future work is pointed out.

2023

BlanketSet - A Clinical Real-World In-Bed Action Recognition and Qualitative Semi-Synchronised Motion Capture Dataset

Authors
Carmona, J; Karacsony, T; Cunha, JPS;

Publication
2023 IEEE 7TH PORTUGUESE MEETING ON BIOENGINEERING, ENBENG

Abstract
Clinical in-bed video-based human motion analysis is a very relevant computer vision topic for several relevant biomedical applications. Nevertheless, the main public large datasets (e.g. ImageNet or 3DPW) used for deep learning approaches lack annotated examples for these clinical scenarios. To address this issue, we introduce BlanketSet, an RGB-IRD action recognition dataset of sequences performed in a hospital bed. This dataset has the potential to help bridge the improvements attained in more general large datasets to these clinical scenarios. Information on how to access the dataset is available at rdm.inesctec.pt/dataset/nis-2022-004.

  • 12
  • 217