• Definition (Michael Benedikt, editor, Cyberspace: First Steps, 1994)

"Cyberspace: A word from the pen of William Gibson, science fiction writer, circa 1984 . . . A new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world's computers and communication lines . . . The tablet become a page become a screen become a world, a virtual world . . . A common mental geography, built, in turn, by consensus and revolution, canon and experiment . . . Its corridors form wherever electricity  runs with intelligence . . . The realm of pure information . . . "

• Definition (Howard Rheingold - The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (1993))

"Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace"
• Characteristics (Quentin Jones) -
• Minimum Level of Interactivity
• Variety Of Communicators
• Common-Public-Space Where a Significant Portion of a Community's Interactive Group-CMC Occurs
• A minimum level of sustained membership
• Example Communities:
• BBs
• The WELL
• Considered to be one of the oldest virtual communities on the Web.
• Currently it consists of 10,000 participants.
• Name stands for "whole earth 'lectronic link, which was an outgrowth of the whole earth catalog         started in 1985
• Physicians' Online® Network (POL)
• Third Age
• MUDs  (Multiple User Dimension, Multiple User Dungeon, or Multiple User Dialogue)
• A program which users can log into and explore.
• Each user takes control of a computerized persona/avatar/incarnation/ character.
• Users can walk around, chat with other characters, explore dangerous monster-infested areas, solve puzzles, and even create your very own rooms, descriptions and items.
• Sample Sites:
• http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/muds_vw.html
• http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Internet_Games/MUDs__MUSHes__MOOs__etc_/
• MOOs -
• Internet-accessible, text-mediated virtual environments suited for distance learning.
• Every participant can construct spaces and objects and write code that augments or increases the functionality with these virtual spaces.
• MOOs are constructed social spaces in a dynamic process of continual evolution.
• MOOs are constellations of spaces, or "rooms", within which multiple individuals can congregate and interact.
• Sample Site:
• http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Internet_Games/MUDs__MUSHes__MOOs__etc_/MOOs/

• MBone is the Internet's multicast backbone.
• Multicast distributes data from one sender to multiple receivers with minimal packet duplication.
• Types of _casting:
• Broadcasting - traffic sent from a source is distributed to all segments of the network, even portions where there are no receivers for the message.
• Used primarily on LANs where servers may advertise their availability to small groups of machines and clients may poll for certain services
• Unicasting - sends data only to the portions of the network where there are users interested in receiving it BUT a new copy of the data must be sent for each individual receiver making the technology inefficient.
• Primary technology used on the Internet for such applications as e-mail, FTP, and the WWW
• Used for multimedia services such as Real Audio/Real Video
• Multicasting - one copy of the data is sent only to the portions of the network where there are users interested in receiving it - made possible by routing processes that keep track of the data streams in use and adjust the data routing rules accordingly.
• Not widely implemented on the Internet
• MBone is constructed by connecting together portions of the Internet that have implemented multicasting
• MBone formed by building "tunnels" that encapsulate multicast data into unicast data packets while

travelling between multicast-enabled portions of the network.
The collection of multicast tunnels forms a virtual multicast network (the MBone) that is implemented over the traditional Internet network.
• MBone transmits across the Internet real-time video and audio streams for conferences and  meetings.
• (e.g. congressional sessions and NASA shuttle launches)
• MVC - MBone VideoConferencing Tools
• "VIC" (VIdeo Conferencing),  by the Network Research Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National

Laboratory (LBL).
• VIC displays a thumbnail-sized picture of each transmitting source along with identification and bandwidth information.
• VIC users can select one or more of these sources for a larger display.
• Users can control their video transmissions by selecting options from a "menu" panel (not shown).
• A video frame rate of 4-6 frames per second for most video material.

 
 
• "VAT" (Visual Audio Tool)  also developed at LBL.
• A list of users participating in the session is displayed on the left side of the tool while microphone and speaker controls are displayed on the right.
• VAT users can obtain more information about other users by selecting a name in the list.

Users control various audio options from a "menu" panel.

 
 
• Resources
• Industry Consortia
• Live.com - Source of information on multicasting
• "The Human Factors of MBone Videoconferences: Recommendations for Improving Sessions and Software" by Andrew  Patrick.
• MBone Tools for Win95 and Mac
• University College London Site for MBone Tools

• Definition - VR is a computer generated, interactive, three-dimensional environment in which a person is immersed. This implies:
• Requires a high performance computer graphics system to provide an adequate level of realism.
• The virtual world is interactive. A user requires real-time response from the system to be able to interact with it in an effective manner.
• The last point is that the user is immersed in this virtual environment. This usuall means that the user wears a head mounted display.

• Applications -
• The Palace of Fine Arts - Panorama
• Roller Coaster Ride  - Kramer International
• National Advanced Driving Simulator - National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• The University of Rochester Driving Simulator
• Home Simulator Seat - Rock'N'Ride
• The Cave - Electronic Visualization Lab - University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
• Generic Immersive VR Environment
• A theater 10x10x9 feet, made up of three rear-projected screens for walls and a reflective projection for the floor.
• High resolution, high bandwidth, short persistance CRT projectors throw full-color workstation fields (1024x768 stereo) onto the screens, giving approximately 3,000 linear pixel resolution to the surrounding composite image.
• Computer-controlled audio provides a sonification capability to multiple speakers.
• User's head and hand orientation and position are aquired using an Ascension tracking system with      tethered electromagnetic sensors.
• Stereographics' LCD stereo shutter glasses are used to separate the alternate fields going to the eyes.

SGI InfiniteReality Engine is used to create the imagery that is projected onto the walls and floor.
 



 

• Cave Applications -
• Chemistry

 
• Climate Simulation

• The Grip Project - UNC Chapel Hill - Molecular Visualization


 
• The NanoManipulator - UNC Chapel Hill

 
 
• Virtual Surgery -
• Virtual Arthroscopic Knee Surgery Simulator
• The 'Karlsruhe Endoscopic Surgery Trainer'
• Web-Based Surgical Simulators
• The Virtual Mummy:Unwrapping a Mummy by Mouse Click - University Hospital Eppendorf -University of Hamburg
• Visible Human Project - National Library of Medicine
• Resources -
• Virtual Reality in Medicine: A Survey of the State of the Art

• Augmented reality systems merge a real world scene with a computer view.
• System Structure -

• Application Areas -
• Medicine
• Image Guided Surgery - Medical Vision Group (MIT)
• Ultrasound-guided Breast Biopsy - UNC Ultrasound Research
• Entertainment
• Mobile Computing
• MARS - Mobile Augmented Reality - Columbia University

A user wearing the Virtual Touring Machine. The view through the user's see-through head mounted display.
 
• Military Training
• Engineering Design / Construction
• Augmented Reality for Construction - Columbia University
• Robotics and Telerobotics
• Resources -
• Introduction to Augmented Reality
• Augmented Reality Page

Ubiquitous computing, or calm technology, is the name for a discipline where computing technology is designed to be virtually invisible. Instead desk-top or lap-top machines, the technology we use will be embedded in our environment.

• Wearable Computer
• Characteristics
• Person's computer worn much as eyeglasses or clothing .
• PC should interact with the user based on the context of the situation.
• Heads-up displays, unobtrusive input devices, personal wireless local area networks, and other

context sensing and communication tools make the wearable computer act as an intelligent assistant.
• Wearables are always operational, tend to have sensors into their environement, and tend to have the ability to get information to the wearer even when the wearer doesn't expect it.
• How to Build One
• Two Experiences at MIT
• Future Computer Clothing - Beauty and the Bits
• Wearable Computer Systems at Carnegie Mellon University
• Wearable Computing Links

• Software Agents
• Definitions: from "Is it an Agent, or just a Program?:A Taxonomy for Autonomous Agents"
• The term agent is used to represent two orthogonal concepts. The first is the agent's ability for autonomous execution. The second is the agent's ability to perform domain oriented reasoning
• An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors

and acting upon that environment through effectors.
• Autonomous agents are computational systems that inhabit some complex dynamic environment,

sense and act autonomously in this environment, and by doing so realize a set of goals or tasks for which they are designed.
• Characteristics:
• Autonomy - agents can operate on their own without the need for human guidance, even though this would sometimes be invaluable. Hence agents have individual internal states and goals, and they act in such a manner as to meet these goals on behalf of its user. A key element of their autonomy is their proactiveness, i.e. their ability to "take the initiative" rather than acting simply in response to their environment.
• Cooperation -  In order to cooperate, agents need to possess a social ability, i.e. the ability to interact with other agents and possibly humans via some communication language.  It is possible for agents to coordinate their actions without cooperation.
• Learning - For agent systems to be truly "smart," they have to learn as they react and/or interact with their external environment. Agents are disembodied bits of "intelligence." The learning may also take the form of increased performance over time.
• Hive: Distributed Agents for Networking Things
• Hive is a distributed agents platform, a decentralized system for building applications by networking local system resources.
• Hive provides ad-hoc agent interaction, ontologies of agent capabilities, mobile agents, and a graphical interface to the distributed system.

Hive is designed to put computation and communication in everyday places such as your shoes,     your kitchen, or your own body.
• BOND. The Distributed Object Multi-Agent System
• Java based distributed object system and agent framework
• JATLite
• (Java Agent Template, Lite) is a package of programs written in the Java language that allow users to quickly create new software "agents" that communicate robustly over the Internet.
• JATLite provides a basic infrastructure in which agents register with an Agent Message Router facilitator using a name and password, connect/disconnect from the Internet, send and receive messages, transfer files, and invoke other programs or actions on the various computers where they are running.
• Demo (IE4)
• Resources -
• The Agent Society
• Software Agents: An Overview
• Agent Construction Tools
• Smart House
• What's A Smart House System All About?
• Scene Lighting
• Voice Command Your Entire Home
• Remote Access To Your Home Via PC or Phone
• Remote Lighting/Appliance Control
• One Stop Touch Screen Central Controller
• Intelligent Timed Programmed Operation
• Smart Appliance/Plant Equipment Control
•  Smart Security/Intrusion Deterrent System
• Smart Remote Video Surveillance
• Smart Home Theatre Control
• Intelligent Occupancy Sensing
• Whole House Audio/Video Signal Distribution
• Smart IR Signal Distribution
• Smart HVAC
• Smart Motorised Drapes
• Smart Garden Sprinkle
• IBM Home Director X10 Starter Kit
• Control and program timed schedules for lights and appliances from PC
• Macro capability can trigger a sequence of X10 commands.
• One press can turn on a series of lights and appliances.
• Programmed events