The introduction of multimedia on pervasive and mobile communication devices raises a number of perceptual quality issues, however, limited work has been done examining the 3-way interaction between use of equipment, quality of perception and quality of service. Our work measures levels of informational transfer (objective) and user satisfaction (subjective) when users are presented with multimedia video clips at three different frame rates, using four different display devices, simulating variation in participant mobility. Our results will show that variation in frame-rate does not impact a user’s level of information assimilation, however, does impact a users ’ perception of multimedia video ‘quality’. Additionally, increased visual immersion can be used to increase transfer of video information, but can negatively affect the users ’ perception of ‘quality’. Finally, we illustrate the significant affect of clip-content on the transfer of video, audio and textual information, placing into doubt the use of purely objective quality definitions when considering multimedia presentations.

This paper describes a research that has been conducted in the field of cognitive assistance to human-machine interaction in virtual environments. The idea is to design a system which, bearing in mind the actions performed by the operator at present and the current state of the environment, attempts to determine the global operation that the user is in the process of executing, and eventually takes control of the same process in order to complete it automatically. This idea implies the conception of an action recognition mechanism based on a specific knowledge representation model. This mechanism is implemented in a computer demonstrator, known as the TOASt system, which is also presented. 1