Amal Benzina

Amal Benzina, M.Sc. Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures & Augmented Reality Fakultät für Informatik Technische Universität München Boltzmannstr. 3 85748 Garching bei München room : MI 00.13.037 Tel : +49 (89) 289 17050 email:

Research Interests

• Ubiquitous Interaction
• Multimodal Interaction
• Mobile Interaction
• 3D User Interfaces
• Natural User Interfaces

Publications

2012
	T. Coskun, A. Benzina, E. Artinger, C. Binder, G. Klinker User-Centered Development Of UI Elements for Selecting Items on a Digital Map Designed for Heavy Rugged Tablet PCs in Mass Casualty Incidents International Health Informatics 2012 (bib)
2011
	T. Coskun, E. Artinger, L.Pirritano, D.Korhammer, A. Benzina, C.Grill, A. Dippon, G. Klinker Gestyboard: A 10-finger-system and gesture based text input system for multi-touchscreens with no need for tactile feedback Technical Report TUM (bib)
	M. Tönnis, A. Benzina, G. Klinker Utilizing Consumer 3D TV Hardware for a Flexibly Reconfigurable Visualization System Technical Report (TUM-I1113), Technische Universität München, Germany, Jul. 1, 2011. (bib)
	M. Tönnis, A. Benzina, G. Klinker Exploring and Controlling Multidimensional Parameter Spaces Proceedings of the International Conference on Simulation Technology (SimTech), Stuttgart, Germany, Jun. 14 - 17, 2011. (bib)
	A. Benzina, M. Tönnis, M. Ashry, G. Klinker Phone-Based Motion Control in VR - Analysis of Degrees of Freedom CHI Extended Abstracts'2011, Vancouver, Canada, May 7 - 12, 2011, pp. 1519-1524. (bib)
2010
	T. Coskun, S. Nestler, E. Artinger, A. Benzina, G. Klinker Is it possible to interact with a handheld device while holding it in both hands? 2. Workshop zur IT-Unterstützung von Rettungskräften im Rahmen der GI-Jahrestagung Informatik 2010 (bib)
	T. Coskun, E. Artinger, S. Nestler, A. Benzina, G. Klinker Tablet device interaction with geographical information in time-critical, life- threatening and unstable situations 10.Workshop Mobile Informationstechnologien in der Medizin (Mocomed 2010) (bib)

Projects

Virtual Arabia Project K1

Interaction in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) such as a CAVE is divided into three main tasks: Travel techniques, selection/manipulation techniques and system control techniques. Users are active participants in the 3D computer generated virtual world, and are able to explore, select and manipulate the world and embedded data. Three research areas have been identified to be most important for interaction with the Virtual Arabia system: Active navigation of the user in CAVE Guidance to points of interest Selection and manipulation of building infrastructure Parameter control for simulation Virtual Arabia Project webpage Virtual Arabia MAC webpage

Student DA/MA/BA/HIWI and Other Projects

In the Following table there are the Open student projects. Those projects can be part of a Bachelor, Master or Diploma thesis. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Available Topics

Open topics	Type of thesis	Image
Multimodal Interacion in the Frave Many interface have been and are being implemented for interaction (Travel, Selection and Manipulation) in Virtual Environment, in this case the FRAVE. The idea of this project is to implement the integration of those difference interaction devices and exchange of context data and information between the devices in general and specifically between the touch panels and the hand-held devices used. The touch panel should be able to detect that the hand-held device is in proximity or even put on the touch table and exchange important context information, like it is being modified and displayed on the FRAVE.	DA/MA/BA
3D MultiTouch Large scale 3D Plasma TV want to be equipped with multi-touch capabilities. You'll be part of a international partnership with KAUST university.	DA/MA/BA
Does Size Matter We use mobile phones and tablet PCs of different sizes to maneuver in a virtual world. Questions are if different sized and form factors have an influence on the steering quality and if the underlying mappings between actions to the device and viewpoint motion need to be cahnged. This exiting topic waits for a motivated student to be part in the project VirtualArabia.	DA/MA/BA
Maneuvering Metaphors Are you airplane pilot, car driver or lens user? Or are you anything else? Investigate metaphors, test users and develop an integrated solution for all purposes.	DA/MA/BA
Touch Floor Large scale 3D Plasma TV on the ground are equipped with multi-touch capabilities. Make them available as User Interfaces. You'll be part of a international partnership with KAUST university.	DA/MA/BA
Virtual 3D Menu Grabber This work is about implementing an AR application which allows a smartphone or a tablet to be pointed towards virtual 3D Menus and grab them onto the phone. We expect, that it is much more confortable to interact with the menu on the smartphone, instead of trying to hit the virtual menu in 3D space. If you are interested in this theses, please contact benzina@in.tum.de.	DA/MA/BA

Running Topics

Running topics	Type of thesis	Student	Image
F the FRAVE The FRAVE is a Fully Reconfigurable CAVE at the Showroom I-Tüpferl in the Magistrale of the computer science building. It is mainly driven by a 3D terrain rendering software that uses Equalizer for parallelization of rendering. Our approach goes further. The F stands for Fully Equalizer does not yet support dynamic reconfiguration of displays. Your honorable job is to extend Equalizer to make the FRAVE what it is.	DA/MA/BA	Evgeny Ilyushkin
Feel This We don't have force feedback light. Therefore we use haptic devices. Be part of the project VirtualArabia by integrating one of the best force feedback devices available on the market.	DA/MA/BA	Maximilian Weber
Usage of Depth Camera xbox Kinect The Purpose of the project is to investigate the usage of Depth camera xbox “Kinect” to implement some gesture recognition in a Virtual Reality environment.	Hiwi	Hasan Elsherbiny
Design of user evaluation of two travel metaphors in a VR environment. Design of user evaluation to be able to compare and evaluate the two implemented travel metaphors: Phone Based Motion Control Vs Steering and Driving. The two metaphors will be evaluated to each other quantitatively and qualitatively. To do that both metaphors should be integrated. An android phone has to be used for both metaphors (instead of tablet Pc in the second metaphor) and ART tracking has to be used in both metaphors (instead of orientation sensor in the first metaphor).	Bachelor Thesis	Anastas Tanushev
Follow The Magic Lense Interaction in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) such as a CAVE or in our case FRAVEis an important issue to investigate. To be able to select and manipulate the virtual object displayed in VR world. The User can do it through the Magic Lenses, Where the Frave provide the contextual view and the tracked Handheld device the focus view. The view frustum is calculated using handheld device position and orientation.	DA/MA/BA	Alba Huelves
Below The Surface Exploration Interaction in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) such as a CAVE or in our case FRAVEis an important issue to investigate. Whithin the scope of the project Virtual Arabia, we need to perform Below surface exploration. For that purpose we would like to use the magic-lens solution with the Clearview solution(TUM3D)	DA/MA/BA	Sandro Weber
Guidance in Simulation Simulation systems may generate points of interest (POI) somewhere in the simlated volume. Let's assume we (the system) know, where such POIs are. Then, a system is needed to guide the user to that POI. But sometimes you have to be at a certain location to be able to see it in a specific direction... We already developed such a system for guidance and got much insights into furter demands. Your job will be to get into the previous work, to port the system to our rendering environment and to extend it according to the demands already found and with stuff that we discuss in our discussions.	DA/MA/BA	Manuel Wolf
Motivation Sports Cave Kinect Emotion Exergotchi In dieser Arbeit soll die Frage beantwortet werden, welchen Einfluss die Emotionen eines virtuellen Avatars auf den Menschen oder gar Besitzer des Menschen hat. Konkret soll evaluiert werden, in wie weit Menschen bereit sind Sport zu machen, um eine Tamagotchi-ähnliche Figur glücklich zu machen. Es existiert ein Vorprojekt zu diesem Thema, dessen Ergebnisse in diese Arbeit einfließen sollen Diplomarbeit Exergotchi 2008. In dieser Arbeit sollen CG Animationen in Form von Real-Time-3D-Rendering in ein Evaluationsstoryboard integriert werden, so dass alle Zustände der Evaluationsaufgabe durchlaufen werden können. Als Evaluationsplattform soll die sich derzeit im ITüpferl befindliche "Cave" verwendet werden.	DA/MA/BA	Mathias Gorf

All Finished Student Projects can be found here on this link

If you are intersted in a Diploma/Master/Bachelor/HIWI projects or a term work, please feel free to contact me. we can also discuss your ideas.

Teaching

* Summer Semester 2011 -- Master Course-- 3D User Interfaces

* WinterSemester 2010/2011 -- Master Course--2D Graphical User Interfaces for Desktop-based and Mobile Computer Applications

* Summer Semester 2010 -- Master Course-- 3D User Interfaces

Misc

* Phantom Installation Tutorial

* Phantom Client Programming Tutorial

* Terrain3D Installation Tutorial

* Terrain3D Installation Tutorial for OSX

* Terrain3D Installation Tutorial

* Terrain3D Documentation Doxygen