Browsing by Author "Wei, Wei"

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    Design of Anthropomorphic Interfaces for Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction
    (2023-01) Wei, Wei; Sharlin, Ehud; Chen, Zhangxing; Sharlin, Ehud; Oehlberg, Lora; Somanath, Sowmya
    Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology promises to revolutionize human life. The promise of AVs includes reduced highway congestion, more efficient energy usage, and cheaper goods and services. However, without careful design, removing human drivers from vehicles will eliminate the natural communication channels which enable pedestrians to navigate safely. This thesis aims to design, present, and study anthropomorphic interfaces for autonomous vehicles, with the objective of enabling AVs to communicate with pedestrians through non-verbal cues. Non-verbal human communication is vital in human relationships. People use non-verbal communication when speech is impractical, such as when interacting with vehicles. When looking into ways in which AVs can use non-verbal communication to interact with pedestrians, we were inspired by the prospect of using anthropomorphic interfaces. This concept is well explored in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) but has not been investigated in the context of AVs. For this thesis, we explored the design of anthropomorphic interfaces for autonomous vehicles. First, we proposed three types of anthropomorphic interfaces for AVs: facial expressions, hand gestures, and humanoid torsos. We developed a design space for each category using sketches and a low-fi prototype. Then, to research the benefits and limitations of anthropomorphic AVs, we implemented our AV interfaces in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment and developed two testbeds to evaluate their feasibility and scalability. Finally, we conducted two studies using the two testbeds. We investigated the study results using immersive analytics alongside traditional methods and revealed that anthropomorphic AVs could be helpful in AV-pedestrian interaction when designed by specific guidelines. Since we studied anthropomorphic AVs in VR, we were interested in the possibilities of analyzing the data of our study in an immersive environment. We designed a VR prototype specifically to analyze the data collected from the anthropomorphic AV study. The prototype provided basic immersive analytics features for the AV study data. We conducted an expert session with two domain experts to evaluate our immersive analytics prototype. The study contributed insights into the opportunities and challenges of utilizing immersive analytics to analyze AV studies.
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    In Situ Combustion for Heavy Oil: Toe-to-Heel Air Injection
    (2020-12-22) Wei, Wei; Gates, Ian Donald; Hejazi, Seyed Hossein; Hu, Jinguang; Huang, Haiping; Jiang, Qi
    Given the environmental impact and relatively high cost of steam-based recovery processes for oil sands reservoirs, there is a search for other recovery processes that yield greater efficiency and lower operating costs. Air injection based recovery processes offer potential for improved efficiency given that the heat is generated within the reservoir. However, industry has been reluctant to adopt air injection methods for oil sands reservoirs. In the research documented in this thesis, a detailed examination of the Kerrobert toe-to-heel air injection (THAI) process is conducted by using data analytics. The current operator of the facility has provided all of the data for the operation including injection and production rates, temperatures, pressures, gas compositions, and facility data. Four studies were conducted: 1. Detailed analysis of causal relationships between injectants and production rates, gas composition, and temperature rise within the reservoir through manual examination of the data, 2. Clustering analysis of operational variables and seek for optimal operating strategy to maximize production rate, 3. Lag time analysis between injection and production to explain the underlying production mechanisms in THAI, and 4. Understand the reaction systems in THAI using produced gas compositions through an inverse calculation approach.
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    Steam conformance control: reservoir versus wells
    (2011) Wei, Wei; Gates, Ian D.
    One critical element of thermal processes is uniform steam delivery to the bitumen­bearing oil sands formation of the reservoir: non-uniform steam injection means poor well utilization which can lead to lower heavy oil and bitumen production rates and recovery factor and higher steam-oil-ratios. Given that steam conformance (i.e. the ability to control the distribution of steam within the oil column) is critical to performance of steam-based recovery processes and it is affected by several factors, such as geology heterogeneity, fluid heterogeneity, well completion and design, and wellbore dynamics. In addition, accurate prediction of steam and water two phase flow in steam injection wells is required to understand and design well systems to obtain uniform steam injection into the reservoir. 1n this research, the relationship between geology and wellbore flow conditions has been explored. The focus of the study is ConocoPhillips Surmont SAGO pilot. Also, the steam-water flow model has been used to understand flow conditions in the injection well. The results show that both geology and wellbore flow contribute to full wellpair utilization and heterogeneities of the steam chamber. Also, the flow conditions in the injection well at the start of the process are critical for establishing the initial steam chamber which impacts its future growth along the wellpair.
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    The study videos of anthropomorphic autonomous vehicle
    (2023-01-14) Wei, Wei
    Our work explores the potential of using anthropomorphism to improve Autonomous Vehicle (AV)-pedestrian interactions. Inspired by human-human and human-robot communication, we propose designs for AV interfaces that leverage non-verbal anthropomorphic characteristics: facial expression, hand gesture, and body movement. For each category, we identified a series of design variants. We used a physical prototype to present hand gestures (Video 1) and sketches to present facial expressions and body movements. We then implemented some of them in VR environment and conducted an evaluation (Video 2).
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    Touch and Beyond: Comparing Physical and Virtual Reality Visualizations
    (2020-09-10) Danyluk, Kurtis Thorvald; Ulusoy, Teoman Tomo; Wei, Wei; Willett, Wesley J.
    We compare physical and virtual reality (VR) versions of simple data visualizations. We also explore how the addition of virtual annotation and filtering tools affects how viewers solve basic data analysis tasks. We report on two studies, inspired by previous examinations of data physicalizations. The first study examined differences in how viewers interact with physical hand-scale, virtual hand-scale,and virtual table-scale visualizations and the impact that the different forms had on viewer's problem-solving behavior. A second study examined how interactive annotation and filtering tools might support new modes of use that transcend the limitations of physical representations. Our results highlight challenges associated with virtual reality representations and hint at the potential of interactive annotation and filtering tools in VR visualizations.