A Conceptual Architecture and a Framework for Dealing with Variability in Mulsemedia Systems

Abstract

The thesis is within the emerging topic of mulsemedia systems, which encompass audiovisual content associated with multisensory effects, users' quality of experience, and human-computer interaction. It presents a conceptual architecture and a framework that take into account the challenges and requirements for mulsemedia delivery systems identified from the gaps and shortcomings in related work. Furthermore, the work's outcome brings multiple and valuable contributions relying on a complex and solid experimental setup, which have been shared and published in relevant journals and conferences.

A Conceptual Architecture and a Framework for Dealing with Variability in Mulsemedia Systems

“…As a result, few mulsemedia systems have remained reusable to be applied to different research purposes as opposed to the use of open mulsemedia datasets [20]. Therefore, the thesis [11] introduces a decoupled conceptual architecture to deal with variability of scenarios in mulsemedia delivery systems filling those gaps and shortcomings, which includes recommendations to cope with the variation of end-user applications and sensory effect devices through the support and reuse of even unforeseen communication and connectivity protocols, and Sensory Effects Metadata (SEM). The conceptual architecture is grounded on the separation of concerns by dividing a mulsemedia system into five main layers: (1) Mulsemedia Applications, which isolates multimedia issues; (2) Communication Broker, which provides the reuse of mulsemedia services provided by sensory effect renderers through different communication protocols; (3) Sensory Effects Processing, which copes with metadata processing regardless of the SEM standard; (4) Connectivity Layer, which allows the reuse of different connectivity protocols for sensory effect devices independently of implementation of commands for devices; and (5) Sensory Effects Rendering, to represent devices that deliver sensory effects to end-users.…”