Gobron Stéphane

Professeur-e HES associé

Compétences principales

Professeur-e HES associé

Téléphone: +41 32 930 15 80

Haute Ecole Arc - Ingénierie
Espace de l'Europe 11, 2000 Neuchâtel, CH

Après mes études aux États-Unis (B.Sc.), en France (M.Sc.) et au Japon (Ph.D.), j'ai poursuivi une carrière dans la recherche et l'enseignement, en me concentrant sur l'informatique. Mes premiers travaux, de 2002 à 2008, ont été réalisés en collaboration avec l'INRIA, l'Université Henri Poincaré et le CNRS en France. De 2008 à 2011, j'ai dirigé une équipe de recherche et développement pour le projet européen FP7 CyberEmotions, qui intégrait des modèles émotionnels dans des applications de réalité virtuelle. Ce projet a duré près de trois ans à l'EPFL à Lausanne, en Suisse.

Depuis 2012, je suis membre du corps professoral du groupe Image Processing & Computer Graphics, que j'ai dirigé pendant cinq ans à l'HE-Arc. L'HE-Arc fait partie de l'Université des Sciences Appliquées et des Arts de Suisse occidentale (HES-SO), à Neuchâtel et Lausanne. Mes intérêts de recherche actuels incluent la réalité étendue (XR), la réalité virtuelle, mixte et augmentée, ainsi que la gamification industrielle, les jeux sérieux, et le calcul et la visualisation en temps réel. De plus, je suis engagé dans la taxonomie des champs d'interaction numérique, distinguant les Serious Games, la Gamification, et les Simulations Gamifiées.

Mes domaines d'application de recherche sont principalement l'éducation, les sciences spatiales et la santé — c'est-à-dire la réponse d'urgence, la rééducation, l'oncologie et la thanatologie. D'autres applications concernent principalement le transfert de données, la compression, le calcul et la visualisation temps réel. Un aperçu de mes travaux récents est accessible sur ce site. Il inclut des projets de R&D, des publications scientifiques et des engagements dans des comités académiques. Parmi ces rôles, j'ai récemment dirigé la conférence internationale Gamification & Serious Games (GSGS). À ce jour, j'ai écrit plus de 100 publications, y compris le livre WebGL par la pratique (@PPUR, "WebGL par la pratique"). J'ai également été rédacteur de la série GSGS, qui est passée de symposiums (GSGS'16 à GSGS'20) à des conférences internationales (GSGS'21 et GSGS'23) [gsgs.ch].

Au-delà du monde universitaire, je voue une profonde admiration à la culture japonaise. Cuisiner des sushis et pratiquer les arts martiaux - karaté, aïkido et kyudo - est une passion qui dure depuis 40 ans. La rencontre avec le grand maître Moriteru Ueshiba, petit-fils du fondateur de l'aïkido, a été une expérience profonde. Trois heures d'observation où j'ai même eu droit à une correction personnelle ont révélé tout ce qu'il me reste à apprendre: tout ! Cet équilibre entre rigueur, respect et harmonie continue de façonner ma vie et mon travail.

BSc HES-SO en Industrial Design Engineering - Haute Ecole Arc - Ingénierie

Design Patterns
Infographie
Langage C
Langage JavaScript (Master of Advanced Studies)
Langage Python

MA BFH/HES-SO en Architecture - HES-SO Master

Game Design and Development
Academic Writing and Presentation

2023

GSGS'23 :

Livre ArODES

8th International Conference on Gamification & Serious Game

Stefano Carrino, Stéphane Gobron, Samuel Rossetti, Michel Kaeppeli, Yassin Rekik, Olivier Reutenauer, Gordan Savicic, Alexia Mathieu

2023, Neuchâtel : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 105 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

The GSGS conference has evolved from a half-day in 2016 to a full week this year, with over 50 interventions: workshops, project presentations with 25 short speeches, 8 keynote speakers, and demos. All these interactions will present topics at the heart of current events: ethics, soft skills, healthcare, aging, AI, ecology, and environment.

2022

GSGS'22 :

Livre ArODES

7th International Conference on Gamification & Serious Game

Stefano Carrino, Stéphane Gobron, Samuel Rossetti, Yassin Rekik, Olivier Reutenauer, Gordan Savicic, Alexia Mathieu

2022, Geneva, Switzerland : HEPIA, HES-SO, 70 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

GSGS´22: an inter-professional opportunity for the swiss industry : The market for industrial gamification and serious games has grown from 1 to 20 billion euros in 10 years, and the same growth is expected within the next decade. In this context, the GSGS supports the link between the industrial needs and the innovation envisioned by applied research universities. Accordingly, the GSGS’22 aims to reinforced the needed but indeed fragile bridge between industrial and academic partners. It highlights the playful perspective to tackle technical, training, ecological, management and communication challenges. Bringing together the strengths of academy and industry, this event provides an exchange and networking platform through the intervention of national and international actors.

Real-time Renderings of Multidimensional Massive DataCubes on Jupyter Notebook

Article scientifique

Gobron Stéphane

Springer (peer-reviewed full paper in press), 2022

Résumé:

This paper is about visualizing large matrices, also called datacubes,
in real time (RT) using Web technologies and the power of either
CPU-based or dedicated graphic processor unit (GPU). The aim is to
propose a convenient palette of volume-rendering models for the scientific
community and especially data scientists. Therefore, we have oriented our
approach to a Python Toolbox and Jupyter Notebook deployment. These
models are developed in JavaScript using the WebGL 1.0 graphics API.
We realized the rendering of these datacubes thanks to an improved
raycasting algorithm that allows dimensions of 16^3, 64^3, 256^3, and up to
1024^3, corresponding to a billion cells. The toolbox allows three rendering
types: (1) X-Ray for 3D datacubes in a (x, y, z) space; (2) a model simulating
the implicit surfaces for 3D datacubes in a (x, y, z) space; (3) and
last, an original model, we named Derived-rendering, for 3D datacubes
in a (x, y, t) space where t represents time. We also introduce solutions
to reduce the memory footprint and load on the GPU side. Tested with
a nowadays hardware configuration, our proposal demonstrates we can
even reach RT rendering for a billion cells datacube.

Keywords: Massive Data · 3D visualization · Datacube · Raycasting ·
Real-time · WebGL · GPU · GPGPU · Jupiter notebook · Python.

Implicit Curves: from discrete extraction to applied formalism

Article scientifique

Gobron Stéphane

Springer (peer-reviewed full paper in press), 2022

Résumé:

This paper addresses the issue of visualizing the right information
among large data sets by proposing to represent the raw data as a
set of mathematically-based implicit curves. Implicit curves are proving
to be a powerful yet underused tool. The methodology we propose not
only allows more relevant visualization of information, but also faster
and efficient access to it: (1) since curves are extracted and compressed
during precomputation, real-time rendering is possible on the end-user’s
computer, even for very large datasets; (2) this property can be extended
by enabling real-time data access and transfer at the server level – i.e.
simultaneously saving local storage costs and increasing raw data security.
Our proposal also achieved a high compression ratio (3%) while
maintaining the visual significance of the data and reducing discrete artifacts
such as curve gaps and pixel aliasing. We based our tests using
two-dimensional height maps but extending it to more dimensions is not
a problem since we can consider any two-dimensional slice in these data.

Keywords: Information visualization · Datacube · Earth observation ·
GPGPU · WebGL · Fourier series · Splines.

Earth observation datacubes multi-visualization toolkits

Article scientifique

Muller Christophe, Lestrade Antoine, Mathias Marty, Sadiku Artan, Joep Neijt, Yann Voumard, Gobron Stéphane

(peer-reviewed full paper currently in press), 2022 , vol. The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, no XLVIII-4/W1-2022, pp. 321-328

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Too much information often kills information. With the increasing number of satellites and their ever-increasing performance, new
tools must be made available to deal with this onslaught of data. We noticed that a number of computer graphics tools were largely
under-exploited to help scientists better interpret and find relevant information in large sets of data. A modern approach to run large
processes efficiently is the use of GPUs, but nowadays the emphasis is often put on the parallel processing of geospatial datasets
rather than focusing on their visualization. The main contributions of this paper is to consider geospatial data using GPU resources
for intermediate computation and visualization. Considering the increasing interest to interact with this data directly using Web
pages or Notebooks, this article presents tools allowing a program to run on the GPU and display the desired datacubes using the
WebGL API. The end goal is to display even large (i.e. 1024^3) datacubes rendered on the fly in real time on a PC. This paper
presents a range of models applicable to datacubes deployed in the context of terrestrial observation. Results show our models can
process large amounts of data and render them in real-time. All of these highly efficient rendering models are assembled together in
a toolbox dedicated to datacube visualization. In this paper we demonstrate an example of application using this toolbox to retrieve
raw data from a server, format it for local use with GPGPU, and render it with several innovative models.

KEY WORDS: Data Visualization, Data Cube, Earth Observation, Raycasting, 3D Rendering, WebGL, GLSL, Toolbox.

AUTHOR = {Muller, C. and Lestrade, A. and Marty, M. and Sadiku, A. and Neijt, J. and Voumard, Y. and Gobron, S.},

2021

GSGS'21 :

Livre ArODES

6th Gamification & Serious Game Symposium

Stefano Carrino, Stéphane Gobron, Yassin Rekik, Olivier Reutenauer, Samuel Rossetti, Gordan Savicic, Dominique Truchot-Cardot

2021, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 92 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

The GSGS'21 conference aims to be a bridge between industrial needs and original academic answers in the domain of Gamification and Serious Gaming. It highlights the playful perspective to tackle technical, training, ecological, management and communication challenges. Bringing together the strenghts of academy and industry, this event provides an exchange and networking platform through the intervention of national and international actors.

GSGS'21

Article scientifique

6th International Conference on Gamification and Serious Games 2021

Gobron Stéphane, Yassin Rekik

Livre, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 2021 , vol. Livre, no p104

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Corresponding event has held in Lausanne,

Towards an e-class stimulating social interactivity based on digitized and gamified brainstorming

Article scientifique

Gobron Stéphane, Barman Corentin, Sadiku Artan, Xavier Lince, Isabelle Capron-Puozzo

The Gamevironments Journal, 2021 , vol. 15, no 15, pp. 19-55

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Résumé:

How do we strengthen the social bond in the case of a situation where we have to conduct a distance-learning course? Since we can no longer do without digital tools, this article proposes to use of digital media where young audiences may wish to actively participate. The idea is to set up an e-class where everyone can contribute and be stimulated. In this context, we propose to set up digital brainstorming, based on the best products on the market and adding gamification attributes. Being careful not to make it a serious game, we developed a gamified online application that allows working out issues creatively and collectively. To study positive or negative impacts of gamification, we organised multiple user-tests comparing professional tools and our proposal. This led to a thinking on the type of gamification assets and when to use them within the creative process.

2020

GSGS'20 :

Livre ArODES

5th Gamification & Serious Game Symposium

Stefano Carrino, Stéphane Gobron, Yassin Rekik, Olivier Reutenauer, Samuel Rossetti, Gordan Savicic, Dominique Truchot-Cardot, Assunta Fiorentino, Philippe Delmas, Dominique Truchot-Cardot, Matteo Antonini, Séverine Vuilleumier, Guy Stotzer, Aurélien Kollbrunner

2020, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 94 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

The GSGS’20 conference aims to be a bridge between industrial needs and original academic answers in the domain of Gamification and Serious Gaming. It highlights the playful perspective to tackle technical, training, ecological, management and communication challenges. Bringing together the strengths of academy and industry, this event provides an exchange and networking platform through the intervention of national and international actors.

2019

A picture-based serious game to train non-medical people for emergency situations

Chapitre de livre ArODES

Stéphane Gobron, Sylvie Chatelain, Christophe Bolinhas, Dominique Correia de Oliveira

Dans IEEE Staff, Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE 7th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH) (8 p.). 2019, Piscataway : IEEE

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

As a non-medical professional, reacting to an emergency situation where life is at stake is not an easy task: knowing the minimum procedure to react to such a situation is a question that most people just cannot answer. This paper proposes a serious game using a simple picture-based navigation which provides a training tool for common people. This serious game wants above all that everyone can fully know the four priorities of action: (1) keep calm, (2) evaluate the situation, (3) identify the dangers, and (4), call for help. For practical purposes, the domain of early childhood has been selected to train educators for five typical major accidents they will probably encounter with children. Two of these accidents were fully developed, parameterized, and tested. This paper focuses are: first, on the medical and social needs, demonstrating how important first-witness reactions are in an emergency scene; second, on how different domain experts and professionals were brought together; third, on how the software was developed based on an educator-centered design. Result in terms of image-based interface and user tests show that a application without fantastic graphics and special effects can have a real impact: potentially, an impact on people's lives.

GSGS'19 :

Livre ArODES

4th Gamification & Serious Game Symposium

Stefano Carrino, Stéphane Gobron, Mela Kocher, Yassin Rekik, Olivier Reutenauer, Samuel Rossetti, Gordan Savicic, Antoine Widmer

2019, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 81 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

The GSGS'19 conference is at the interface between industrial needs and original answers by highlighting the playful perspective to tackle technical, training, ecological, management and communication challenges. Bringing together the strenghths of our country, this event provides a solid bridge between academia and industry through the intervention of more than 40 national and international actors. In parallel with the 53 presentations and demos, the public will be invited to participate actively through places of exchange and round tables.

2018

GSGS'18 :

Livre ArODES

3rd Gamification & Serious Game Symposium : health and silver technologies, architecture and urbanism, economy and ecology, education and training, social and politics

Stéphane Gobron, Florence Quinche, Yassin Aziz Rekik, Nabil Ouerhani, Samuel Rossetti, Olivier Reutenauer, Gordan Savicic, Antoine Widmer

2018, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 108 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

The GSGS’18 conference is at the interface between industrial needs and original answers by highlighting the playful perspective to tackle technical, training, ecological, management and communication challenges. Bringing together the strengths of our country, this event provides a solid bridge between academia and industry through the intervention of more than 40 national and international actors. In parallel with the 53 presentations and demos, the public will be invited to participate actively through places of exchange and round tables.

2017

GSGS'17 :

Livre ArODES

2nd gamification and serious game symposium : health, training, art and cultural inheritance, politics, ecology and economy social, business expertise, education

Stéphane Gobron

2017, HE-Arc, HES-SO : HE-Arc, HES-SO Neuchâtel, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 107 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

The GSGS’17 conference is at the interface between industrial needs and original answers by highlighting the playful perspective to tackle technical, training, ecological, management and communication challenges. Bringing together the strengths of our country, this event provides a solid bridge between academia and industry through the intervention of more than 50 national and international actors. In parallel with the 60 presentations and demos, the public will be invited to participate actively through places of exchange and round tables.

Jouer pour mieux accompagner la mort de l’autre est-ce bien sérieux ?

Article scientifique ArODES

Pierre-Alain Charmillot, Stéphane Gobron

Revue internationale de soins palliatifs, 2017, vol. 32, pp. 37-44

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Les besoins d’assistance en fin de vie seront en nette augmentation dans les décennies à venir, dès lors il s’agit de mieux former pour répondre aux besoins en soins palliatifs (SP) de la population vieillissante. Les professionnels de la santé et du social, notamment les infirmières, sont des acteurs clés dans l’accompagnement jusqu’à la mort des personnes âgées. Cette tâche nécessite des habiletés relationnelles (HRs) de haut niveau, à la fois fondement de soins de qualité et garant d’une protection psychologique des professionnels. Former dans le contexte de la fin de vie se révèle être un véritable défi pour les enseignants, car cela touche des dimensions intimes, sensibles et complexes. Des moyens pédagogiques jalonnent les dispositifs de formation dans les hautes écoles spécialisées pour développer les HRs, privilégiant des groupes d’apprentissage à taille humaine. Toutefois, en favorisant uniquement les activités en groupe en présence d’enseignants – figures d’autorité – peu de place est accordée à une approche plus intime. En utilisant une technologie éprouvée dans d’autres domaines, le Serious Game (SG) constitue un outil pédagogique à haut potentiel en phase avec la jeune population en formation. Cette recherche expérimentale porte sur la conception d’un scénario d’interactions relationnelles soignant-soigné dans le contexte de la fin de vie à partir duquel nous envisageons de développer quatre prototypes différents de SG. Ils seront testés à la fois auprès de 120 étudiants en Bachelor dans trois écoles de la santé et du social et de 20 professionnels spécialisés en SP. Le but est de déterminer 1) quel-s environnement-s est/sont le/les plus adapté-s pour soutenir la formation à la compétence relationnelle dans un contexte de fin de vie, 2) de mieux comprendre l’impact des SGs selon les médias et supports utilisés et 3) d’étudier un transfert potentiel auprès d’une population plus âgée. Une première phase a permis de concevoir un scénario et un prototype de SG basé uniquement sur du texte et quelques images, que nous avons testés auprès de 50 étudiants en formation Bachelor. Les résultats montrent un haut intérêt et du plaisir à utiliser ce jeu. Les étudiants rapportent être en mesure de mobiliser des HRs déjà acquises, ainsi qu’une prise de conscience de leur propre charge émotionnelle face à la perspective de mort de l’Autre. Ces premiers résultats nous encouragent à réaliser l’ensemble du projet.

2016

Towards the instantaneous expression of emotions with avatars

Chapitre de livre ArODES

Ronan Boulic, Junghyun Ahn, Stéphane Gobron, Nan Wang, Quentin Silvestre, Daniel Thalmann

Dans Holyst, Janusz A., Cybermotions: understanding Complex Systems (21 p.). 2016, Cham : Springer

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Résumé:

Many on-line communities still rely on text messages as their privileged medium of communication and we believe it will remain so even if it can be complemented by images and video. Previous chapters have described how to infer emergent emotion dynamics from text corpus whereas we focus here on the instantaneous display of a detected emotion with a human avatar. The avatar acts as a new modality to provide an emotional visual stream of the messages through facial and body Non-Verbal Communication (NVC). In this chapter we concentrate on chat applications for which the time constraint is critical for preserving the natural flow of the discussion. We describe an efficient mapping of the Valence-Arousal-Dominance emotion model to real-time facial expressions. Within that framework, we stress the need for reconsidering the expressive power of asymmetric facial expression for better conveying a whole range of complex and ambivalent emotions. In the last section we briefly outline how the emotional avatar modality can be offered with recent software standards across systems and display environments.

Livre ArODES

Gamification & Serious Game : Symposium 2016, July 4 & 5

Stéphane Gobron

2016, Delémont : HE-Arc, HES-SO, 48 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Reinforcing the bridge between local academic and applied worlds in the domain of Serious Game & Gamification, e.g. applied universities and startups. Focusing on three application domain, Helath, Social, and Education, the figure next page illustrates the variety of short talks of the symposium. The three categories of talks (among 14 corresponding short papers): five concept-oriented in green, nine demo-oriented in black, and three roundtables.

2015

Serious games for rehabilitation using head-mounted display and haptic devices

Chapitre de livre ArODES

Stéphane Gobron, Nicolas Zannini, Nicolas Wenk, Carl Schmitt, Yannick Charrotton, Aurélien Fauquex, Michel Lauria, Francis Degache, Rolf Frischknecht

Dans De Paolis, L., Mongelli, A., AVR 2015: Augmented and Virtual Reality : Lecture Notes in Computer Science (22 p.). 2015, Cham : Springer

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Résumé:

In the health domain, the field of rehabilitation suffers from a lack specialized staff while hospital costs only increase. Worse, almost no tools are dedicated to motivate patients or help the personnel to carry out monitoring of therapeutic exercises. This paper demonstrates the high potential that can bring the virtual reality with a platform of serious games for the rehabilitation of the legs involving a head-mounted display and haptic robot devices. We first introduce SG principles, nowadays rehabilitation context, and an original applied haptic device called Lambda Health System. The architecture of the model is then detailed, including communication specifications showing that lag is imperceptible for user. Finally, to improve this prototype, four serious games for rehabilitation using haptic robots and/or HMD were tested by 33 health specialists.

WebGL par la pratique

Livre ArODES

Stéphane Gobron, Mario Gutierrez

2015, Lausanne : Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 650 p.

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

La communication numérique a ouvert l’ère de l’information en temps réel, immédiate et mondialisée. Médias, loisirs ou industrie, autant de secteurs pour lesquels la capacité à s’adapter à cette nouvelle réalité est devenue garante de leur pérennité. Fonctionnel sur l’immense majorité des navigateurs, systèmes d’exploitation et supports informatiques, WebGL s’est imposé comme le standard pour la 3D. Programmer du contenu 3D pour Internet est une tâche plus complexe que l’élaboration d’une page Web. Elle requiert la maîtrise de divers langages informatiques qu’il faut faire coexister simultanément (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, OpenGL Shader Language) ainsi que des trois piliers de l’infographie : la modélisation géométrique, le rendu graphique et l’animation. Cet ouvrage propose une introduction à ce vaste domaine, en exposant l’ensemble des bases indispensables à la pratique de WebGL. Pragmatique et didactique, illustré de plus de 90 exemples et exercices corrigés, il s’adresse tout particulièrement aux étudiants en informatique, ainsi qu’aux passionnés des technologies Web. Il intéressera également les lecteurs les plus ambitieux, qui trouveront là divers défi s à relever, comme autant d’invitations à la réalisation de futurs projets professionnels et innovants.

2013

Asymmetric facial expressions :

Article scientifique ArODES

revealing richer emotions for embodied conversational agents

Junghyun Ahn, Stéphane Gobron, Daniel Thalmann, Ronan Boulic

Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 2013, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 539-551

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Résumé:

In this paper, we propose a method to achieve effective facial emotional expressivity for embodied conversational agents by considering two types of asymmetry when exploiting the valence-arousal-dominance representation of emotions. Indeed, the asymmetry of facial expressions helps to convey complex emotional feelings such as conflicting and/or hidden emotions due to social conventions. To achieve such a higher degree of facial expression in a generic way, we propose a new model for mapping the valence-arousal-dominance emotion model onto a set 12 scalar facial part actions built mostly by combining pairs of antagonist action units from the Facial Action Coding System. The proposed linear model can automatically drive a large number of autonomous virtual humans or support the interactive design of complex facial expressions over time. By design, our approach produces symmetric facial expressions, as expected for most of the emotional spectrum. However, more complex ambivalent feelings can be produced when differing emotions are applied on the left and right sides of the face. We conducted and experiment on static images produced by our approach to compare the expressive power of symmetric and asymmetric facial expressions for a set of eight basic and complex emotions. Results confirm both the pertinence of our general mapping for expressing basic emotions and the significant improvement brought by asymmetry for expressing ambivalent feelings.

Impact study of nonverbal facial cues on spontaneous chatting with virtual humans

Article scientifique ArODES

Stéphane Gobron, Junghyun Ahn, Daniel Thalmann, Marcin Skowron, Arvid Kappas

Journal of Virtual Reality and Broadcasting, 2013, vol. 19, no. 6

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Non-verbal communication (NVC) is considered to represent more than 90 percent of everyday communication. In virtual world, this important aspect of interaction between virtual humans (VH) is strongly neglected. This paper presents a user-test study to demonstrate the impact of automatically generated graphics-based NVC expression on the dialog quality: first, we wanted to compare impassive and emotion facial expression simulation for impact on the chatting. Second, we wanted to see whether people like chatting within a 3D graphical environment. Our model only proposes facial expressions and head movements induced from spontaneous chatting between VHs. Only subtle facial expressions are being used as non verbal cues –i.e. related to the emotional model. Motion capture animations related to hand gestures, such as cleaning glasses, were randomly used to make the virtual human lively. After briefly introducing the technical architecture of the 3D-chatting system, we focus on two aspects of chatting through VHs. First, what is the influence of facial expressions that are induced from text dialog? For this purpose, we exploited an emotion engine extracting an emotional content from a text and depicting it into a virtual character developed previously ([GAS+11]). Second, as our goal was not addressing automatic generation of text, we compared the impact of nonverbal cues in conversation with a chatbot or with a human operator with a wizard of oz approach. Among main results, the within group study –involving 40 subjects– suggests that subtle facial expressions impact significantly not only on the quality of experience but also on dialog understanding.

Damping sentiment analysis in online communication :

Chapitre de livre ArODES

discussions, monologs and dialogs

Mike Thelwall, Kevan Buckley, George Paltogloiu, Marcin Skowron, David Garcia, Stéphane Gobron, Junghyun Ahn, Arvid Kappas, Dennis Küster, Janusz A. Holyst

Dans Gelbukh, A., Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing: CICLing 2013: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (12 p.). 2013, Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer

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Résumé:

Sentiment analysis programs are now sometimes used to detect patterns of sentiment use over time in online communication and to help automated systems interact better with users. Nevertheless, it seems that no previous published study has assessed whether the position of individual texts within on-going communication can be exploited to help detect their sentiments. This article assesses apparent sentiment anomalies in on-going communication – texts assigned significantly different sentiment strength to the average of previous texts – to see whether their classification can be improved. The results suggest that a damping procedure to reduce sudden large changes in sentiment can improve classification accuracy but that the optimal procedure will depend on the type of texts processed.

2012

Conveying real-time ambivalent feelings through asymmetric facial expressions

Chapitre de livre ArODES

Junghyun Ahn, Stéphane Gobron, Daniel Thalmann, Ronan Boulic

Dans Bekris, K., Kallmann, M., Kallmann, M:, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (12 p.). 2012, Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Achieving effective facial emotional expressivity within a real-time rendering constraint requests to leverage on all possible inspiration sources and especially from the observations of real individuals. One of them is the frequent asymmetry of facial expressions of emotions, which allows to express complex emotional feelings such as suspicion, smirk, and hidden emotion due to social conventions. To achieve such a higher degree of facial expression, we propose a new model for mapping emotions onto a small set of 1D Facial Part Actions (FPA)s that act on antagonist muscle groups or on individual head orientation degree of freedoms. The proposed linear model can automatically drive a large number of autonomous virtual humans or support the interactive design of complex facial expressions over time.

An event-based architecture to manage virtual human non-verbal communication in 3D chatting environment

Chapitre de livre ArODES

Stéphane Gobron, Junghyun Ahn, David Garcia, Quentin Silvestre, Daniel Thalmann, Ronan Boulic

Dans Fischer, R.B., Moeslund, T.B., Perales, F.J., Lecture Notes in Computer Science (11 p.). 2012, Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer

Lien vers la publication

Résumé:

Non-verbal communication (NVC) makes up about two-thirds of all communication between two people or between one speaker and a group of listeners. However, this fundamental aspect of communicating is mostly omitted in 3D social forums or virtual world oriented games. This paper proposes an answer by presenting a multi-user 3D-chatting system enriched with NVC relative to motion. This event-based architecture tries to recreate a context by extracting emotional cues from dialogs and derives virtual human potential body expressions from that event triggered context model. We structure the paper by expounding the system architecture enabling the modeling NVC in a multi-user 3D-chatting environment. There, we present the transition from dialog-based emotional cues to body language, and the management of NVC events in the context of a virtual reality client-server system. Finally, we illustrate the results with graphical scenes and a statistical analysis representing the increase of events due to NVC.

Les enjeux de l'interaction homme-machine

Article professionnel ArODES

Stéphane Gobron

Swiss Engineering RTS, 2012, no.4, pp. 10-11

Lien vers la publication

2020

Improving a digital manufacturing operation manueal thanks to augmented reality :

Conférence ArODES

gamification design of a carpolling-based freight transport

Axel Collet, Valérie Duay, Stéphane Bourquin, Stéphane Gobron, Omar Abou Khaled

Proceedings of GSGS'20 : 5th Gamification & Serious Game Symposium, September-November 2020, Switzerland

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Résumé:

A traditional paper guide for industrial maintenance tasks has been transformed into a digital one composed of three augmented reality supports: augmented reality glasses, spatial projection, and video stream superimposition. For the last two, the recording is done by a 6 degree of freedom (trasnlation and rotations) tracking algorithms by deep learning on synthetically generated data. Tests in an industrial environment showed very good results and also that each support has its own advantages depending on the to-do task.

Bombuscar :

Conférence ArODES

gamification design of a carpolling-based freight transport

Francesco Carrino, Quentin Vaucher, Richard Pasquier, Vincent Bourquin, Omar Abou Khaled, Elena Mugellini, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of GSGS'20 : 5th Gamification & Serious Game Symposium, September-November 2020, Switzerland

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Résumé:

The environmental and societal cost of traditional logistics, based on the "Hub and spoke" model, is increasingly unfavorable. Digitization allows new approaches that have proved effective in people transportation (e.g., Uber, BlaBlaCar). This project proposes the creation of a smart distribution network for the goods transport by exploiting existing transport capabilities. We present the gamification design of the user interface (UI) to foster users’ motivation and trust to the platform.

2019

Gamification to improve adherence in home-based activities for seniors

Conférence ArODES

promoting speech production in young children with hearing disabilities

Sylvain Cardin, Mouna Cerra Chekara, Christophe Bolinhas, Maria Sisto, Roger Schaer, Mélanie Bieler, Daniel Perez Marcos, Stéphane Gobron, Antoine Widmer

Proceedings of the 4th Gamification Serious Games Symposium (GSGS 19)

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Résumé:

In the context of the "Stay Fit Longer" European project, aiming at developing a tablet application with gamified activities that prevents cognitive and physical decline in seniors, we implemented different gamification strategies for studying adherence in the elderly population. Using proven mechanism from the mobile entertainment industry, such as daily activities, leader boards, achievements, temporal limitation and reward system for customization of social avatars, we are measuring the usage and performance of 120 subjetcs in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada during the next 18 months. We expect that one of the greatest motivation factors come from intrinsic rewards of their social enviroment by being congratulated by their relative for their dedication and performances.

St-Ursanne, circuit secret

Conférence ArODES

Maria Sisto, Mélanie Gagnebin Brown, Julia Nemeth, Nicolas Sommer, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of the 4th Gamification Serious Games Symposium (GSGS 19)

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Résumé:

The city of St-Ursanne, located in the Swiss Jura, is a city with a rich historical and religious heritage. According to the legend, the town was founded in the VIth century by Saint Urscinius, an Irish monk. For the 1400th anniversary of the death of its death, the ecclesiastic township has created a steering committee to organize events and bring a new dynamic to the city. One part of the actions taken by the committee is to modernize the visit of the town through a location-based mobile app. The innovation of the project is to combine an access management system (Circuit Secret) with video-projection and Augmented Reality to provide a rich and original experience to the visitor of the city.

2018

Holographic visualisation and interaction of fused CT, PET and MRI volumetric medical imaging data using dedicated remote GPGPU ray casting

Conférence ArODES

Magali Fröhlich, Christophe Bolinhas, Adrien Depeursinge, Antoine Widmer, Nicolas Chevrey, Patric Hagmann, Christian Simon, Vivianne Kokje, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of the 21st international Conference on MICCAI 2018

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Résumé:

Medical experts commonly use imaging including Computed Tomography (CT), Positron-Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for diagnosis or to plan a surgery. These scans give a highly detailed representation of the patient anatomy, but the usual Three-Dimensional (3D) separate visualisations on screens does not provide an convenient and performant understanding of the real anatom-ical complexity. This paper presents a computer architecture allowing medical staﬀ to visualise and interact in real-time holographic fused CT, PET, MRI of patients. A dedicated workstation with a wireless connec-tion enables real-time General-Purpose Processing on Graphics Process-ing Units (GPGPU) ray casting computation through the mixed reality (MR) headset. The hologram can be manipulated with hand gestures and voice commands through the following interaction features: instan-taneous visualisation and manipulation of 3D scans with a frame rate of 30 fps and a delay lower than 120 ms. These performances give a seamless interactive experience for the user.

HapticBikeTraining project

Conférence ArODES

Frédéric Fischer, Julien Senn, Mohamed Karmous, Stéphane Gobron, Maria Sisto

Proceedings of GSGS'18: 3rd Gamification Serious Game Symposium, 5-6 July 2018, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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Résumé:

In this paper, we present an ongoing project by graphic artists of the Académie de Meuron and He-Arc Ingénierie engineers: The HapBikeTraining.

Archeogame :

Conférence ArODES

a serious game in the field of archeology

Guillaume Noguera, Ludivine Marquis, Stéphane Gobron, Benoît Clarys

Proceedings of GSGS'18: 3rd Gamification Serious Game Symposium, 5-6 July 2018, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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Gamified-ED3D project

Conférence ArODES

Julia Németh, Pierre-Nicolas Carron, Alexandre Bentvelzen, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of GSGS'18: 3rd Gamification Serious Game Symposium, 5-6 July 2018, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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A serious game in mixed reality towards urban network development

Conférence ArODES

Olivier Francey, Raphael Chevail, Michaël Weiss, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of GSGS'18: 3rd Gamification Serious Game Symposium, 5-6 July 2018, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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Virtual reality puzzle game for musculoskeletal disorders prevention

Conférence ArODES

Maria Sisto, Mohsen Zare, Nabil Ouerhani, Jean-Claude Sagot, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of GSGS'18: 3rd Gamification Serious Game Symposium, 5-6 July 2018, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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First steps towards a virtual coach within a SG to prevent MSD

Conférence ArODES

Christophe Bolinhas, Nicolas Sommer, Maria Sisto, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of GSGS'18: 3rd Gamification Serious Game Symposium, 5-6 July 2018, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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Virtual reality serious game for musculoskeletal disorder prevention

Conférence ArODES

Maria Sisto, Mohsen Zare, Nabil Ouerhani, Christophe Bolinhas, Margaux Divernois, Bernard Mignot, Jean-Claude Sagot, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Computer Graphics (AVR), 24-27 June, Otranto, Italia

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Résumé:

Musculo Skeletal Disorders (MSDs) is the most common disease in the workplaces causing disabilities and excessive costs to industries, particularly in EU countries. Most of MSDs prevention programs have focused on a combination of interventions including training to change individual behaviors (such as awkward postures). However, little evidence proves that current training approach on awkward postures is efficient and can significantly reduce MSDs symptoms. Therefore, dealing with awkward postures and repetitive tasks is the real challenge for practitioners and manufacturers, knowing that the amount of risk exposure varies increasingly among workers depending on their attitude and expertise as well as on their strategy to perform the task. The progress in MSDs prevention might come through developing new tools that inform workers more efficiently on their gestures and postures. This paper proposes a potential Serious Game that immerses industrial workers using Virtual Reality and helps them recognize their strategy while performing tasks and trains them to find the most efficient and least risky tactics.

2017

A study of transitional virtual environments

Conférence ArODES

Maria Sisto, Nicolas Wenk, Nabil Ouerhani, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics AVR 17, Ugento, Italy, June 12-15, 2017, part 1

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Résumé:

Due to real world physical constraints (e.g. walls), experimenting a virtual reality phenomenon implies transitional issues from one virtual environment (VE) to another. This paper proposes an experiment which studies the relevance of smooth and imperceptible transitions from a familiar and pleasurable virtual environment to a similar workplace as a mean to avoid traumatic experiences in VR for trainees. Specifically, the hereby work assumes that the user conciousness regarding virtual environment transitions is a relevant indicator of positive user experience during those. Furthermore, serious games taking place in purely virtual environments have the advantage of coping with various workplace configurations and tasks that the trainee can practice. However, the virtual world of serious games should be carefully designed in order to avoid traumatic experiences for trainees. The results presented stem from an empirical evaluation of user experience conducted with 80 volunteers. This evaluation shows that more than one-third of the participants did not even notice the VE global change.

2015

Dynamic street light management :

Conférence ArODES

towards a citizen centred approach

Nabil Ouerhani, Nuria Pazos Escudero, Marco Aeberli, Julien Senn, Stéphane Gobron

Proceedings of 2nd Conference "Smart Cities", 30 May 2015, Agadir, Morocco

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Résumé:

This paper presents a novel approach towards dynamic street light control, which combines advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and citizens' involvement and engagement. Our proposal is based on the citizens' involvement which would strongly increases the efficiency and perfromance of technological solutions in smart city context. We believe that serious Games have the potential to strengthen people motivation in this context.

Réalisations

PEOPLE@HES-SO
Annuaire et Répertoire des compétences

Gobron Stéphane

Professeur-e HES associé

Compétences principales

Geometric modelling

Computer Graphics

Mixed Realities (XR)

Industrial gamification

Serious game

General Purpose GPU

Data visualization

Professeur-e HES associé

PEOPLE@HES-SO Annuaire et Répertoire des compétences

Gobron Stéphane

Professeur-e HES associé

Compétences principales

Geometric modelling

Computer Graphics

Mixed Realities (XR)

Industrial gamification

Serious game

General Purpose GPU

Data visualization

Professeur-e HES associé

PEOPLE@HES-SO
Annuaire et Répertoire des compétences