004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik
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Interactive rendering techniques for focus+context visualization of 3D geovirtual environments
(2013)
This thesis introduces a collection of new real-time rendering techniques and applications for focus+context visualization of interactive 3D geovirtual environments such as virtual 3D city and landscape models. These environments are generally characterized by a large number of objects and are of high complexity with respect to geometry and textures. For these reasons, their interactive 3D rendering represents a major challenge. Their 3D depiction implies a number of weaknesses such as occlusions, cluttered image contents, and partial screen-space usage. To overcome these limitations and, thus, to facilitate the effective communication of geo-information, principles of focus+context visualization can be used for the design of real-time 3D rendering techniques for 3D geovirtual environments (see Figure). In general, detailed views of a 3D geovirtual environment are combined seamlessly with abstracted views of the context within a single image. To perform the real-time image synthesis required for interactive visualization, dedicated parallel processors (GPUs) for rasterization of computer graphics primitives are used. For this purpose, the design and implementation of appropriate data structures and rendering pipelines are necessary. The contribution of this work comprises the following five real-time rendering methods: • The rendering technique for 3D generalization lenses enables the combination of different 3D city geometries (e.g., generalized versions of a 3D city model) in a single image in real time. The method is based on a generalized and fragment-precise clipping approach, which uses a compressible, raster-based data structure. It enables the combination of detailed views in the focus area with the representation of abstracted variants in the context area. • The rendering technique for the interactive visualization of dynamic raster data in 3D geovirtual environments facilitates the rendering of 2D surface lenses. It enables a flexible combination of different raster layers (e.g., aerial images or videos) using projective texturing for decoupling image and geometry data. Thus, various overlapping and nested 2D surface lenses of different contents can be visualized interactively. • The interactive rendering technique for image-based deformation of 3D geovirtual environments enables the real-time image synthesis of non-planar projections, such as cylindrical and spherical projections, as well as multi-focal 3D fisheye-lenses and the combination of planar and non-planar projections. • The rendering technique for view-dependent multi-perspective views of 3D geovirtual environments, based on the application of global deformations to the 3D scene geometry, can be used for synthesizing interactive panorama maps to combine detailed views close to the camera (focus) with abstract views in the background (context). This approach reduces occlusions, increases the usage the available screen space, and reduces the overload of image contents. • The object-based and image-based rendering techniques for highlighting objects and focus areas inside and outside the view frustum facilitate preattentive perception. The concepts and implementations of interactive image synthesis for focus+context visualization and their selected applications enable a more effective communication of spatial information, and provide building blocks for design and development of new applications and systems in the field of 3D geovirtual environments.
This thesis proposes a privacy protection framework for the controlled distribution and use of personal private data. The framework is based on the idea that privacy policies can be set directly by the data owner and can be automatically enforced against the data user. Data privacy continues to be a very important topic, as our dependency on electronic communication maintains its current growth, and private data is shared between multiple devices, users and locations. The growing amount and the ubiquitous availability of personal private data increases the likelihood of data misuse. Early privacy protection techniques, such as anonymous email and payment systems have focused on data avoidance and anonymous use of services. They did not take into account that data sharing cannot be avoided when people participate in electronic communication scenarios that involve social interactions. This leads to a situation where data is shared widely and uncontrollably and in most cases the data owner has no control over further distribution and use of personal private data. Previous efforts to integrate privacy awareness into data processing workflows have focused on the extension of existing access control frameworks with privacy aware functions or have analysed specific individual problems such as the expressiveness of policy languages. So far, very few implementations of integrated privacy protection mechanisms exist and can be studied to prove their effectiveness for privacy protection. Second level issues that stem from practical application of the implemented mechanisms, such as usability, life-time data management and changes in trustworthiness have received very little attention so far, mainly because they require actual implementations to be studied. Most existing privacy protection schemes silently assume that it is the privilege of the data user to define the contract under which personal private data is released. Such an approach simplifies policy management and policy enforcement for the data user, but leaves the data owner with a binary decision to submit or withhold his or her personal data based on the provided policy. We wanted to empower the data owner to express his or her privacy preferences through privacy policies that follow the so-called Owner-Retained Access Control (ORAC) model. ORAC has been proposed by McCollum, et al. as an alternate access control mechanism that leaves the authority over access decisions by the originator of the data. The data owner is given control over the release policy for his or her personal data, and he or she can set permissions or restrictions according to individually perceived trust values. Such a policy needs to be expressed in a coherent way and must allow the deterministic policy evaluation by different entities. The privacy policy also needs to be communicated from the data owner to the data user, so that it can be enforced. Data and policy are stored together as a Protected Data Object that follows the Sticky Policy paradigm as defined by Mont, et al. and others. We developed a unique policy combination approach that takes usability aspects for the creation and maintenance of policies into consideration. Our privacy policy consists of three parts: A Default Policy provides basic privacy protection if no specific rules have been entered by the data owner. An Owner Policy part allows the customisation of the default policy by the data owner. And a so-called Safety Policy guarantees that the data owner cannot specify disadvantageous policies, which, for example, exclude him or her from further access to the private data. The combined evaluation of these three policy-parts yields the necessary access decision. The automatic enforcement of privacy policies in our protection framework is supported by a reference monitor implementation. We started our work with the development of a client-side protection mechanism that allows the enforcement of data-use restrictions after private data has been released to the data user. The client-side enforcement component for data-use policies is based on a modified Java Security Framework. Privacy policies are translated into corresponding Java permissions that can be automatically enforced by the Java Security Manager. When we later extended our work to implement server-side protection mechanisms, we found several drawbacks for the privacy enforcement through the Java Security Framework. We solved this problem by extending our reference monitor design to use Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and the Java Reflection API to intercept data accesses in existing applications and provide a way to enforce data owner-defined privacy policies for business applications.
This talk will describe My Digital Life (TU100), a distance learning module that introduces computer science through immediate engagement with ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). This talk will describe some of the principles and concepts we have adopted for this modern computing introduction: the idea of the ‘informed digital citizen’; engagement through narrative; playful pedagogy; making the power of ubicomp available to novices; setting technical skills in real contexts. It will also trace how the pedagogy is informed by experiences and research in Computer Science education.
Scientific writing is an important skill for computer science and computer engineering professionals. In this paper we present a writing concept across the curriculum program directed towards scientific writing. The program is built around a hierarchy of learning outcomes. The hierarchy is constructed through analyzing the learning outcomes in relation to competencies that are needed to fulfill them.
Informatik im Alltag
(2013)
Die Fachwissenschaft Informatik stellt Mittel bereit, deren Nutzung für Studierende heutzutage selbstverständlich ist. Diese Tatsache darf uns allerdings nicht dar- über hinwegtäuschen, dass Studierende in der Regel keine Grundlage im Sinne einer informatischen Allgemeinbildung gemäÿ der Bildungsstandards der Gesellschaft für Informatik besitzen. Das Schulfach Informatik hat immer noch keinen durchgängigen Platz in den Stundentafeln der allgemein bildenden Schule gefunden. Zukünftigen Lehrkräften ist im Rahmen der bildungswissenschaftlichen Anteile im Studium eine hinreichende Medienkompetenz zu vermitteln. Mit der überragenden Bedeutung der digitalen Medien kann dies nur auf der Grundlage einer ausreichenden informatischen Grundbildung erfolgen. Damit ist es angezeigt, ein Studienangebot bereitzustellen, das allen Studierenden ein Eintauchen in Elemente (Fachgebiete) der Fachwissenschaft Informatik aus der Sicht des Alltags bietet. An diesen Elementen werden exemplarisch verschiedene Aspekte der Fachwissenschaft beleuchtet, um einen Einblick in die Vielgestaltigkeit der Fragen und Lösungsstrategien der Informatik zu erlauben und so die informatische Grundbildung zu befördern.
Im Bachelor-Studiengang (B. Sc.) IT Security an der Fachhochschule St. Pölten wurde im Wintersemester 2011/12 versuchsweise die Lehrorganisation im ersten Fachsemester verändert: Die Module bzw. Teilmodule wurden nicht mehr alle parallel zueinander unterrichtet, sondern jedes Modul wurde exklusiv über einige Wochen abgehalten. Im Beitrag werden die Auswirkungen und bisherigen Erfahrungen mit dieser Reorganisation der Lehre geschildert: So haben sich die Noten im Mittel um etwa eine Note verbessert, die Zahl derjenigen Studierenden, die durch Prüfungen durchfallen, ist drastisch gesunken. Die Zufriedenheit der Studierenden und Lehrenden ist so groß, dass diese Form der Lehrorganisation im gesamten Bachelor- und auch im Masterstudiengang übernommen wird.
In the early days of computer graphics, research was mainly driven by the goal to create realistic synthetic imagery. By contrast, non-photorealistic computer graphics, established as its own branch of computer graphics in the early 1990s, is mainly motivated by concepts and principles found in traditional art forms, such as painting, illustration, and graphic design, and it investigates concepts and techniques that abstract from reality using expressive, stylized, or illustrative rendering techniques. This thesis focuses on the artistic stylization of two-dimensional content and presents several novel automatic techniques for the creation of simplified stylistic illustrations from color images, video, and 3D renderings. Primary innovation of these novel techniques is that they utilize the smooth structure tensor as a simple and efficient way to obtain information about the local structure of an image. More specifically, this thesis contributes to knowledge in this field in the following ways. First, a comprehensive review of the structure tensor is provided. In particular, different methods for integrating the minor eigenvector field of the smoothed structure tensor are developed, and the superiority of the smoothed structure tensor over the popular edge tangent flow is demonstrated. Second, separable implementations of the popular bilateral and difference of Gaussians filters that adapt to the local structure are presented. These filters avoid artifacts while being computationally highly efficient. Taken together, both provide an effective way to create a cartoon-style effect. Third, a generalization of the Kuwahara filter is presented that avoids artifacts by adapting the shape, scale, and orientation of the filter to the local structure. This causes directional image features to be better preserved and emphasized, resulting in overall sharper edges and a more feature-abiding painterly effect. In addition to the single-scale variant, a multi-scale variant is presented, which is capable of performing a highly aggressive abstraction. Fourth, a technique that builds upon the idea of combining flow-guided smoothing with shock filtering is presented, allowing for an aggressive exaggeration and an emphasis of directional image features. All presented techniques are suitable for temporally coherent per-frame filtering of video or dynamic 3D renderings, without requiring expensive extra processing, such as optical flow. Moreover, they can be efficiently implemented to process content in real-time on a GPU.
Ein konstruktivistischer Lehransatz für die Einführungsveranstaltung der Theoretischen Informatik
(2013)
Ausgehend von einem sozial-konstruktivistischen Verständnis von Lernprozessen und unter der besonderen Berücksichtigung der durch die Bologna-Studienreform angeregten Kompetenzorientierung, haben wir in den letzten Jahren einen hochschuldidaktischen Ansatz für die Einführungsveranstaltung im Bereich der Theoretischen Informatik an der Universität Potsdam entwickelt und praktisch erprobt. Nach zahlreichen Experimenten und mit einer Durchfallquote von zuletzt 6% im Wintersemester 2011/2012 haben wir den Eindruck, dass der Ansatz den Studierenden jene Lernumgebung und -anregung bietet, die ihnen hilft, die entsprechenden Fachkompetenzen in der Veranstaltung zu entwickeln. In diesem Artikel stellen wir unseren Ansatz vor und skizzieren abschlieÿend, wie wir diesen im nächsten Wintersemester empirisch evaluieren werden.
Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie der eLearning-Support in großen Institutionen effizient gestaltet werden kann. Vorgestellt wird ein experimentelles Beratungsprojekt, das Lehrende bei der Gestaltung von eLearning-Maßnahmen mithilfe der Lernplattform ILIAS1 unterstützt. Neben der Zielsetzung des Projekts werden dessen Aufbau und erste Praxiserfahrungen erörtert. Außerdem werden Potenziale des Beratungsformats, die insbesondere mit der individuellen Vor-Ort-Beratung der Lehrenden durch hochschuldidaktisch geschulte Studierende einhergehen, erläutert. Abschließend werden Grenzen und Weiterentwicklungsperspektiven des Projekts dargestellt. Am Beispiel der ILIAS-Beratung soll gezeigt werden, dass es sich einer nachhaltigen Organisationsentwicklung als zuträglich erweist, Kooperationen erschiedenartiger Organisationseinheiten zu fördern und die entstehenden Synergieeffekte zu nutzen.