Teaching science through computer games,simulations,and artificial intelligence(AI)is an increasingly active research field.To this end,we conducted a systematic literature review on serious games for science educatio...Teaching science through computer games,simulations,and artificial intelligence(AI)is an increasingly active research field.To this end,we conducted a systematic literature review on serious games for science education to reveal research trends and patterns.We discussed the role of virtual reality(VR),AI,and augmented reality(AR)games in teaching science subjects like physics.Specifically,we covered the research spanning between 2011 and 2021,investigated country-wise concentration and most common evaluation methods,and discussed the positive and negative aspects of serious games in science education in particular and attitudes towards the use of serious games in education in general.展开更多
Serious games have recently enticed many researchers due to their wide range of capabilities.A serious game is a mean of gaming for a serious job such as healthcare,education,and entertainment purposes.With the advanc...Serious games have recently enticed many researchers due to their wide range of capabilities.A serious game is a mean of gaming for a serious job such as healthcare,education,and entertainment purposes.With the advancement in the Internet of Things,new research directions are paving the way in serious games.However,the internet connectivity of players in Internetof-things-enabled serious games is a matter of concern and has been worth investigating.Different studies on topologies,frameworks,and architecture of communication technologies are conducted to integrate them with serious games on machine and network levels.However,the Internet of things,whose core requirement is the provision of connectivity on the application layer,has different challenges for more dynamic applications such as serious games.The performance of Internet-of-things-enabled serious games depends on the type of infrastructure(wired,wireless)network and Mobile Ad-hoc Network(MANET)and is subtly different from one type of network to another.This paper investigates the connectivity challenges in the Internet-of-thingsenabled serious games using the mentioned infrastructure and identifies the core requirements for these games.It also aims to evaluate various parameters such as reliability,scalability,response time,to name a few,with varying infrastructure and network types.Results highlight the preliminary infrastructure finding and highlight the core setup for which the games are deployed.Moreover,this work will be a steppingstone for architecting the connectivity in serious games in a typical smart space with many infrastructures such as wired networks,wireless networks,and MANET.展开更多
Teams developing serious games are often small and face both time and budget constraints. Although its importance is well-established, iterative usability testing is often forgone. Further, serious games present uniqu...Teams developing serious games are often small and face both time and budget constraints. Although its importance is well-established, iterative usability testing is often forgone. Further, serious games present unique challenges that they must be usable, enjoyable, and effective. It is necessary that the game＇s design is evaluated at several stages during development to ensure that all of these objectives are met. A model for incorporating usability testing into development that addresses these three elements is presented, along with guidelines for implementation focused specifically on small serious games development teams. By applying this model to development should ensure that developers are able to efficiently produce more effective serious games.展开更多
Background In the past few years,augmented reality(AR)has rapidly advanced and has been applied in different fields.One of the successful AR applications is the immersive and interactive serious games,which can be use...Background In the past few years,augmented reality(AR)has rapidly advanced and has been applied in different fields.One of the successful AR applications is the immersive and interactive serious games,which can be used for education and learning purposes.Methods In this project,a prototype of an AR serious game is developed and demonstrated.Gamers utilize a head-mounted device and a vibrotactile feedback jacket to explore and interact with the AR serious game.Fourteen vibration actuators are embedded in the vibrotactile feedback jacket to generate immersive AR experience.These vibration actuators are triggered in accordance with the designed game scripts.Various vibration patterns and intensity levels are synthesized in different game scenes.This article presents the details of the entire software development of the AR serious game,including game scripts,game scenes with AR effects design,signal processing flow,behavior design,and communication configuration.Graphics computations are processed using the graphics processing unit in the system.Results/Conclusions The performance of the AR serious game prototype is evaluated and analyzed.The computation loads and resource utilization of normal game scenes and heavy computation scenes are compared.With 14 vibration actuators placed at different body positions,various vibration patterns and intensity levels can be generated by the vibrotactile feedback jacket,providing different real-world feedback.The prototype of this AR serious game can be valuable in building large-scale AR or virtual reality educational and entertainment games.Possible future improvements of the proposed prototype are also discussed in this article.展开更多
Business simulation games are considered as effective tools for the empowerment and mediation of business content learning. They act as serious games which contribute to learning through a simulation of real-life situ...Business simulation games are considered as effective tools for the empowerment and mediation of business content learning. They act as serious games which contribute to learning through a simulation of real-life situations and busi-ness environments. They are especially useful in the area of business management processes and business strategies. The blending of designed simulation technology and content curricula offers participants (players, students) a risk-free opportunity to test out a range of relevant strategies to drive business results. By customizing computer-based business simulations, participants can integrate key strategic and financial priorities. This paper provides a brief review of busi-ness simulations that serve learning purposes. The first part presents a short introduction and description of business games and their evaluation properties, and the second part provides a brief evaluation and analysis of selected business simulation games.展开更多
Asthma is the most common noncommunicable disease among children. It leads to substantial problems both in health and economic terms to individuals and families. This paper introduces a technological solution, Easy Br...Asthma is the most common noncommunicable disease among children. It leads to substantial problems both in health and economic terms to individuals and families. This paper introduces a technological solution, Easy Breathing, that supports the man-agement of childhood asthma, providing tools for both doctors and patients. Through the establishment of an asthma chronic care model, it combines doctors’ professional guidance and a gamification system to improve the compliance of patients with their treatments and to provide them with tools for the self-management of their disease. The system is in the testing phase, the first mockup has been developed and validated with 270 medical experts and patients, and it will be tested with 540 end-users over the next months.展开更多
Critical Infrastructures(CIs),which serve as the foundation of our modern society,are facing increasing risks from cyber threats,physical attacks,and natural disasters.Additionally,the interdependencies between CIs th...Critical Infrastructures(CIs),which serve as the foundation of our modern society,are facing increasing risks from cyber threats,physical attacks,and natural disasters.Additionally,the interdependencies between CIs through-out their operational lifespan can also significantly impact their integrity and safety.As a result,enhancing the resilience of CIs has emerged as a top priority for many countries,including the European Union.This involves not only understanding the threats/attacks themselves but also gaining knowledge about the areas and infrastruc-tures that could potentially be affected.A European Union-funded project named PRECINCT(Preparedness and Resilience Enforcement for Critical INfrastructure Cascading Cyber-Physical Threats),under the Horizon 2020 program,tries to connect private and public stakeholders of CIs in a specific geographical area.The key objec-tive of this project is to establish a common cyber-physical security management approach that will ensure the protection of both citizens and infrastructures,creating a secure territory.This paper presents the components of PRECINCT,including a directory of PRECINCT Critical Infrastructure Protection(CIP)blueprints.These blueprints support CI communities in designing integrated ecosystems,operating and replicating PRECINCT components(or toolkits).The integration enables coordinated security and resilience management,incorporating improved’installation-specific’security solutions.Additionally,Serious Games(SG),and Digital Twins(DT)are a significant part of this project,serving as a novel vulnerability evaluation method for analysing complicated multi-system cascading effects in the PRECINCT Living Labs(LLs).The use of SG supports the concentrated advancement of innovative resilience enhancement services.展开更多
Rehabilitation is the most effective way to reduce motor impairments in post-stroke patients.This process demands several hours with a specialized therapist.Given resources and personnel shortages,the literature repor...Rehabilitation is the most effective way to reduce motor impairments in post-stroke patients.This process demands several hours with a specialized therapist.Given resources and personnel shortages,the literature reports a high interest in robotic assisted rehabilitation solutions.Recently,cable-driven robotic architectures are attracting significant research interest for post-stroke rehabilitation.However,the existing cable-driven robots are mostly unilateral devices allowing the rehabilitation only of the most affected limb.This leaves unaddressed the rehabilitation of bimanual activities,which are predominant within the common Activities of Daily Living(ADL).Thus,this paper presents a specific novel design to achieve bimanual rehabilitation tasks that has been named as BiCAR robot.Specifically,this paper provides a full insight on the BiCAR system as well as on its dedicated developed software BiEval.In particular,BiEval software has been developed as based on a serious game strategy and a virtual reality environment to track the patient exercising duration,motion ranges,speeds,and forces over time for achieving a quantitative assessment of the rehabilitation progress.Finally,the paper presents the BiCAR/BiEval capabilities by referring to a pilot Randomized Controlled Trial(RCT).The clinical trials have been used to validate the BiCAR/BiEval in terms of engineering feasibility and user acceptance to achieve an innovative cost-oriented integrated hardware/software device for the bimanual assistive rehabilitation of post-stroke patients.展开更多
Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the soft...Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the software is deployed in critical infrastructures.Therefore,several industrial standards mandate secure coding guidelines and industrial software developers’training,as software quality is a significant contributor to secure software.CyberSecurity Challenges(CSC)form a method that combines serious game techniques with cybersecurity and secure coding guidelines to raise secure coding awareness of software developers in the industry.These cybersecurity awareness events have been used with success in industrial environments.However,until now,these coached events took place on-site.In the present work,we briefly introduce cybersecurity challenges and propose a novel platform that allows these events to take place online.The introduced cybersecurity awareness platform,which the authors call Sifu,performs automatic assessment of challenges in compliance to secure coding guidelines,and uses an artificial intelligence method to provide players with solution-guiding hints.Furthermore,due to its characteristics,the Sifu platform allows for remote(online)learning,in times of social distancing.The CyberSecurity Challenges events based on the Sifu platform were evaluated during four online real-life CSC events.We report on three surveys showing that the Sifu platform’s CSC events are adequate to raise industry software developers awareness on secure coding.展开更多
Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the soft...Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the software is deployed in critical infrastructures.Therefore,several industrial standards mandate secure coding guidelines and industrial software developers’training,as software quality is a significant contributor to secure software.CyberSecurity Challenges(CSC)form a method that combines serious game techniques with cybersecurity and secure coding guidelines to raise secure coding awareness of software developers in the industry.These cybersecurity awareness events have been used with success in industrial environments.However,until now,these coached events took place on-site.In the present work,we briefly introduce cybersecurity challenges and propose a novel platform that allows these events to take place online.The introduced cybersecurity awareness platform,which the authors call Sifu,performs automatic assessment of challenges in compliance to secure coding guidelines,and uses an artificial intelligence method to provide players with solution-guiding hints.Furthermore,due to its characteristics,the Sifu platform allows for remote(online)learning,in times of social distancing.The CyberSecurity Challenges events based on the Sifu platform were evaluated during four online real-life CSC events.We report on three surveys showing that the Sifu platform’s CSC events are adequate to raise industry software developers awareness on secure coding.展开更多
文摘Teaching science through computer games,simulations,and artificial intelligence(AI)is an increasingly active research field.To this end,we conducted a systematic literature review on serious games for science education to reveal research trends and patterns.We discussed the role of virtual reality(VR),AI,and augmented reality(AR)games in teaching science subjects like physics.Specifically,we covered the research spanning between 2011 and 2021,investigated country-wise concentration and most common evaluation methods,and discussed the positive and negative aspects of serious games in science education in particular and attitudes towards the use of serious games in education in general.
基金This research is supported by the Ministry of Culture,Sports and Tourism and Korea Creative Content Agency(Project Number:R2020040243)by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF)Grant funded by the Korean government under Grant NRF-2021R1I1A1A01045177.
文摘Serious games have recently enticed many researchers due to their wide range of capabilities.A serious game is a mean of gaming for a serious job such as healthcare,education,and entertainment purposes.With the advancement in the Internet of Things,new research directions are paving the way in serious games.However,the internet connectivity of players in Internetof-things-enabled serious games is a matter of concern and has been worth investigating.Different studies on topologies,frameworks,and architecture of communication technologies are conducted to integrate them with serious games on machine and network levels.However,the Internet of things,whose core requirement is the provision of connectivity on the application layer,has different challenges for more dynamic applications such as serious games.The performance of Internet-of-things-enabled serious games depends on the type of infrastructure(wired,wireless)network and Mobile Ad-hoc Network(MANET)and is subtly different from one type of network to another.This paper investigates the connectivity challenges in the Internet-of-thingsenabled serious games using the mentioned infrastructure and identifies the core requirements for these games.It also aims to evaluate various parameters such as reliability,scalability,response time,to name a few,with varying infrastructure and network types.Results highlight the preliminary infrastructure finding and highlight the core setup for which the games are deployed.Moreover,this work will be a steppingstone for architecting the connectivity in serious games in a typical smart space with many infrastructures such as wired networks,wireless networks,and MANET.
文摘Teams developing serious games are often small and face both time and budget constraints. Although its importance is well-established, iterative usability testing is often forgone. Further, serious games present unique challenges that they must be usable, enjoyable, and effective. It is necessary that the game＇s design is evaluated at several stages during development to ensure that all of these objectives are met. A model for incorporating usability testing into development that addresses these three elements is presented, along with guidelines for implementation focused specifically on small serious games development teams. By applying this model to development should ensure that developers are able to efficiently produce more effective serious games.
文摘Background In the past few years,augmented reality(AR)has rapidly advanced and has been applied in different fields.One of the successful AR applications is the immersive and interactive serious games,which can be used for education and learning purposes.Methods In this project,a prototype of an AR serious game is developed and demonstrated.Gamers utilize a head-mounted device and a vibrotactile feedback jacket to explore and interact with the AR serious game.Fourteen vibration actuators are embedded in the vibrotactile feedback jacket to generate immersive AR experience.These vibration actuators are triggered in accordance with the designed game scripts.Various vibration patterns and intensity levels are synthesized in different game scenes.This article presents the details of the entire software development of the AR serious game,including game scripts,game scenes with AR effects design,signal processing flow,behavior design,and communication configuration.Graphics computations are processed using the graphics processing unit in the system.Results/Conclusions The performance of the AR serious game prototype is evaluated and analyzed.The computation loads and resource utilization of normal game scenes and heavy computation scenes are compared.With 14 vibration actuators placed at different body positions,various vibration patterns and intensity levels can be generated by the vibrotactile feedback jacket,providing different real-world feedback.The prototype of this AR serious game can be valuable in building large-scale AR or virtual reality educational and entertainment games.Possible future improvements of the proposed prototype are also discussed in this article.
基金supported by FCT(INESC-ID multian-nual funding)through the PIDDAC Program fundsthe European funded Project UNITE(FP7 248583),namely its second-ment programme coordinated by UNINOVA-GRIS,that supported the development of various ideas and concepts presented in this paper.
文摘Business simulation games are considered as effective tools for the empowerment and mediation of business content learning. They act as serious games which contribute to learning through a simulation of real-life situations and busi-ness environments. They are especially useful in the area of business management processes and business strategies. The blending of designed simulation technology and content curricula offers participants (players, students) a risk-free opportunity to test out a range of relevant strategies to drive business results. By customizing computer-based business simulations, participants can integrate key strategic and financial priorities. This paper provides a brief review of busi-ness simulations that serve learning purposes. The first part presents a short introduction and description of business games and their evaluation properties, and the second part provides a brief evaluation and analysis of selected business simulation games.
文摘Asthma is the most common noncommunicable disease among children. It leads to substantial problems both in health and economic terms to individuals and families. This paper introduces a technological solution, Easy Breathing, that supports the man-agement of childhood asthma, providing tools for both doctors and patients. Through the establishment of an asthma chronic care model, it combines doctors’ professional guidance and a gamification system to improve the compliance of patients with their treatments and to provide them with tools for the self-management of their disease. The system is in the testing phase, the first mockup has been developed and validated with 270 medical experts and patients, and it will be tested with 540 end-users over the next months.
基金funded by the European Commission,Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.101021668.
文摘Critical Infrastructures(CIs),which serve as the foundation of our modern society,are facing increasing risks from cyber threats,physical attacks,and natural disasters.Additionally,the interdependencies between CIs through-out their operational lifespan can also significantly impact their integrity and safety.As a result,enhancing the resilience of CIs has emerged as a top priority for many countries,including the European Union.This involves not only understanding the threats/attacks themselves but also gaining knowledge about the areas and infrastruc-tures that could potentially be affected.A European Union-funded project named PRECINCT(Preparedness and Resilience Enforcement for Critical INfrastructure Cascading Cyber-Physical Threats),under the Horizon 2020 program,tries to connect private and public stakeholders of CIs in a specific geographical area.The key objec-tive of this project is to establish a common cyber-physical security management approach that will ensure the protection of both citizens and infrastructures,creating a secure territory.This paper presents the components of PRECINCT,including a directory of PRECINCT Critical Infrastructure Protection(CIP)blueprints.These blueprints support CI communities in designing integrated ecosystems,operating and replicating PRECINCT components(or toolkits).The integration enables coordinated security and resilience management,incorporating improved’installation-specific’security solutions.Additionally,Serious Games(SG),and Digital Twins(DT)are a significant part of this project,serving as a novel vulnerability evaluation method for analysing complicated multi-system cascading effects in the PRECINCT Living Labs(LLs).The use of SG supports the concentrated advancement of innovative resilience enhancement services.
基金partially funded by UFU,FAPEMIG,CNPQ,and CAPES(Finance Code 001).
文摘Rehabilitation is the most effective way to reduce motor impairments in post-stroke patients.This process demands several hours with a specialized therapist.Given resources and personnel shortages,the literature reports a high interest in robotic assisted rehabilitation solutions.Recently,cable-driven robotic architectures are attracting significant research interest for post-stroke rehabilitation.However,the existing cable-driven robots are mostly unilateral devices allowing the rehabilitation only of the most affected limb.This leaves unaddressed the rehabilitation of bimanual activities,which are predominant within the common Activities of Daily Living(ADL).Thus,this paper presents a specific novel design to achieve bimanual rehabilitation tasks that has been named as BiCAR robot.Specifically,this paper provides a full insight on the BiCAR system as well as on its dedicated developed software BiEval.In particular,BiEval software has been developed as based on a serious game strategy and a virtual reality environment to track the patient exercising duration,motion ranges,speeds,and forces over time for achieving a quantitative assessment of the rehabilitation progress.Finally,the paper presents the BiCAR/BiEval capabilities by referring to a pilot Randomized Controlled Trial(RCT).The clinical trials have been used to validate the BiCAR/BiEval in terms of engineering feasibility and user acceptance to achieve an innovative cost-oriented integrated hardware/software device for the bimanual assistive rehabilitation of post-stroke patients.
文摘Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the software is deployed in critical infrastructures.Therefore,several industrial standards mandate secure coding guidelines and industrial software developers’training,as software quality is a significant contributor to secure software.CyberSecurity Challenges(CSC)form a method that combines serious game techniques with cybersecurity and secure coding guidelines to raise secure coding awareness of software developers in the industry.These cybersecurity awareness events have been used with success in industrial environments.However,until now,these coached events took place on-site.In the present work,we briefly introduce cybersecurity challenges and propose a novel platform that allows these events to take place online.The introduced cybersecurity awareness platform,which the authors call Sifu,performs automatic assessment of challenges in compliance to secure coding guidelines,and uses an artificial intelligence method to provide players with solution-guiding hints.Furthermore,due to its characteristics,the Sifu platform allows for remote(online)learning,in times of social distancing.The CyberSecurity Challenges events based on the Sifu platform were evaluated during four online real-life CSC events.We report on three surveys showing that the Sifu platform’s CSC events are adequate to raise industry software developers awareness on secure coding.
文摘Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the software is deployed in critical infrastructures.Therefore,several industrial standards mandate secure coding guidelines and industrial software developers’training,as software quality is a significant contributor to secure software.CyberSecurity Challenges(CSC)form a method that combines serious game techniques with cybersecurity and secure coding guidelines to raise secure coding awareness of software developers in the industry.These cybersecurity awareness events have been used with success in industrial environments.However,until now,these coached events took place on-site.In the present work,we briefly introduce cybersecurity challenges and propose a novel platform that allows these events to take place online.The introduced cybersecurity awareness platform,which the authors call Sifu,performs automatic assessment of challenges in compliance to secure coding guidelines,and uses an artificial intelligence method to provide players with solution-guiding hints.Furthermore,due to its characteristics,the Sifu platform allows for remote(online)learning,in times of social distancing.The CyberSecurity Challenges events based on the Sifu platform were evaluated during four online real-life CSC events.We report on three surveys showing that the Sifu platform’s CSC events are adequate to raise industry software developers awareness on secure coding.
