Data generated as a side effect of game play also solves computational problems and trains AI algorithms.

Abstract. Museums have started to realise the potential of new technologies for the development of edutainment content and services for their visitors. Virtual reality technologies promise to offer a vivid, enjoyable experience to the museums guests, but the cost in time, effort and resources can prove to be overwhelming. In this paper, we propose the use of 3D game technologies for the purpose of developing affordable, easy to use and pleasing virtual environments. To this end, we present a case study based on an already developed version of a virtual museum and a newly implemented version that uses game technologies. The informal assessment indicates that game technologies can offer a prominent and viable solution to the need for affordable desktop virtual reality systems.

The optimization problems associated with adaptive and autonomic computing systems are often difficult to pose well and solve efficiently. A key challenge is that for many applications, particularly interactive applications, the user or developer is unlikely or unable to provide either the objective function f, or constraints. It is a key problem encountered broadly in adaptive and autonomic computing. This dissertation argues for using human-driven optimization techniques to solve optimization problems. In particular, it consists of two core ideas. In human-driven specification, we use direct human input from users to pose specific optimization problems, namely to determine the objective function f and expose hidden constraints. Once we have a well-specified problem, we are left with the need to search for a solution in a very large solution space. In human-driven search, we use direct human input to guide the search for a good solution, a valid configuration x that optimizes f(x). My research happens in three contexts. The main context is the Virtuoso system for utility and grid computing based on virtual machines (VMs) interconnected with overlay

Robot Urban Search and Rescue is a new task in robotics that is challenging not only robot hardware, but also humanrobot interfaces. It is a real-world challenge in an unstructured environment that requires cooperation between a remote robot and a human operator. The study of humanrobot interfaces is still in its infancy, and most of the urban search & rescue systems field so far use an ad hoc approach to user interface design. This paper presents an overview of current thinking on interface design for urban search & rescue, presents a design and evaluation of a user interface based on a video game interface, and then makes the case that video games offer a valid road map for future development of both robot capabilities and user interfaces. A comparative analysis shows that the goals and methods used in both video games and urban search and rescue are similar, if not identical. Therefore, we can leverage the empirical success of video game interfaces in developing current and future user interfaces for urban search and rescue.

Abstract. Mobile devices often utilize touchscreen keyboards for text input. However, due to the lack of tactile feedback and generally small key sizes, users often produce typing errors. Key-target resizing, which dynamically adjusts the underlying target areas of the keys based on their probabilities, can significantly reduce errors, but requires training data in the form of touch points for intended keys. In this paper, we introduce Text Text Revolution (TTR), a game that helps users improve their typing experience on mobile touchscreen keyboards in three ways: first, by providing targeting practice, second, by highlighting areas for improvement, and third, by generating ideal training data for key-target resizing as a side effect of playing the game. In a user study, participants who played 20 rounds of TTR not only improved in accuracy over time, but also generated useful data for key-target resizing. To demonstrate usefulness, we trained key-target resizing on touch points collected from the first 10 rounds, and simulated how participants would have performed had personalized key-target resizing been used in the second 10 rounds. Key-target resizing reduced errors by 21.4%.

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The business organizations currently functioning inside cyberspace are vulnerable to threats and forms of crimes that were unknown prior to the Internet era. New challenges for security have emerged from this situation. It has become increasingly necessary to educate a large number of professionals to be better prepared to maintain the growing number of computer networks. Also, there is a need to place strong emphasis on the security aspects of a network. These goals are impossible to realize without solving the following problems: lack of safe infrastructure, where security experiments can not compromise the organization’s security; and the complexity of existing security auditing methodologies which limits the number of professionals who are able to use them. The complexity makes difficult to obtain a bird-eye view of the whole company’s security system in a way similar to tactical and strategic military map. This hinders the ability to have a single complete status of an organization. This paper describes a tool that can be used to overcome the above problems.

Game engines are the core software component of video games and typically handle tasks such as rendering, game AI and collision detection between game objects. Due to the popularity of computer games, a huge amount of research has been devoted towards the development of game engines. In this paper we analyse the suitability of game engines for visualisation research. We present a software architecture and a visualisation framework which facilitates this task and we evaluate the suitability of a number of popular engines. We conclude with a summary of our experiences from several case studies.

In this paper we report possibilities and experiences from employing Counter-Strike, a popular multi-player Internet computer game and its resulting online community in research on cooperative behaviour. Advantages from using this game include easy availability of rich data, the emphasis on team-playing, as well as numerous possibilities to change the experiment settings. We use descriptive game theory and statistical methods to explore cooperation within the game as well as the way the player community deals with disruptive behaviour. After a quick introduction to the basic rules of Counter-Strike, we describe the setup of the Internet game server used. We then present empirical results from the game server logs where cooperation within the game is analyzed from a game theoretic perspective. Finally we discuss the applications of our results to other online communities, including cooperation and self-regulation in open source teams.

This paper addresses two topics that are viewed important to the future of most institutions of higher learning. One is an increased international focus, forextended student enrolment and also for facilitating international experiences to already enrolled students. The second deals with establishing international partnerships, which not only will provide a receiver of exchange students but will also, as in the case presented, provide a partner for educational joint ventures, resulting in the establishment ofinnovative, newand studentattractive degree programmes. The example given presents curriculum design andwork leading to the establishing ofan undergraduate degree in edutainment software design at a Swedish and a British university, and an extended outlook, to also incorporate other overseas partners over time, initially from the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand.