How to generate human like mouse pointer movement using Fitt's Law - java

I was trying to generate the human like mouse movement. While finding the correct model I come to know about Fitts's law.
You can read more about the law and the reason behind the mathematical model of it here. I want to generate the human like mouse pointer data given distance between source to target and width of target object.
I am not able to come up with the good model to find the radius of circle of error and position and number of circle of error explained in the below image.
Also I am planning to use Bézier curve to achieve random curves in intermediate stages.
I believe the solution of the problem contains following steps
1) Find out the time going to take for the whole interaction, (after removing some initial extra waiting time ) using Fitts's Law.
2) Based on time and distance find the number of circle of error, and using that number also find the decreasing radius of each circle. One of the possible approach is to use log function.
3) Find out position of each circle which is random but still in the intended direction. This is one of the most confusing task. There are many possibilities but there is few particular model behind where circle of errors are placed.
4) Find out the random points inside the circle but still in intended direction.
5) Pass the (Time, X,Y) triplets to MouseMove function of selenium
I am not sure how to achieve step 3,4 and 5.
Preferred language to achieve this is Java using selenium.

Related

Check if the mouse is over a circle - Java

I have an array with the coordinates of the center of small circles which have the same radius. I know how to find when the mouse is over a circle, but my array is big and I want the fastest way to calculate this operation.
Is there a way of finding if the mouse is over a circle without looping all the array for each movement of the mouse?
Initially, set up some 'zones' for quicker reference:
Separate the whole surface into a small number of rectangles that don't intersect.
For each of these rectangles, list all circles that are at least partially contained in it. (A circle may end up listed in multiple rectangles, but that's okay.)
Every time you want to check whether the mouse is over a circle, you won't have to go through the whole array of circles. Instead:
Figure out which rectangle you're in.
Check only the circles that are listed under that rectangle.
This looks like a problem of optimizing the boundary check for a large number of items. The approach of going linearly does not scale well for thousands of circles.
This is a good topic to read on the net. But first, without going there, I'll try to explain (as an exercise) what I would explore. I would create a binary tree and partition the space, then instead of using an array I would put the circle points in such a tree. Looking the tree elements that are closer to the actual X,Y location becomes a matter of doing a binary search on the tree. The you have the closest point as a result of that search and can check for collision on it. There is still more to be done to the algorithm, and further optimizations are needed. For example, how to check for more points and not only the final one? Potentially I need a tree for the X coordinate, and another for the Y coordinate, etc... But I would explore these ideas. I will come back to this post and expand my reply with an actual example and a more concrete solution.
What if you check the coordinates that are r(radius) distance from the mouse? Then you could narrow your search down in the array if it is ordered.

Simple java game: Filling up figures drawn by a moving cursor

So I'm doing the project of an introduction to Java course and it seems that I chose something that goes way beyond what I'm able to do. :P
Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is what I'm having problems with:
You have a cursor that is controlled by a player (goes forward or
turns 90°) which leaves a colored line as it goes. If you manage to go
over your own line and close a polygon of any shape (only right angles
though), its surface changes color into the color of your line.
I can detect when this situation arises but I am kind of lost as how to actually fill the correct polygon just closed. I can't seem to imagine an algorithm that would cover any case possible.
I looked at the Scanline fill algorithm but I think it would start having problems by the time there are already some polygons already filled in the map.
The Floodfill algorithm would be perfect if I had a way of finding a point inside the polygon, but, as there are many different possibilities, I can't think of a general rule for this.
I'm using an array 2x2 of integers where each color is represented by a number.
Does anyone have an idea on how to approach this problem?
If you can detect the situation then this can be solved in very simple manner. The question is which point to choose as start point for floodfill. The simple answer is: try all of them. Of course it makes a sense to start only with points adjacent to the one where your cursor is located. In this case you will have at most 8 points to check. Even better - at least 2 of them are definitely painted already if current point forms a polygon.
So you have 8 points to check. Launch floodfill 8 times starting from each of those points.
Two things which you probably should keep in mind:
You should try filling the area in cloned version of your field in order to be able to get back if floodfill will not find a polygon.
Launching floodfill second time and later you should reuse this cloned version of your field to see whether it was filled there. This will allow you to check every point at most once and this will make your 8 floodfills almost as fast as 1 floodfill.
Check this question, using Graphics2 and Polygon to fill an arbitrary polygon: java swing : Polygon fill color problem
Finding out whether a point is inside or outside a polygon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_in_polygon
Make sure you use double buffering. If you set individual pixels and don't use double buffering the component may redraw after every pixel was set.

Flocking boids behaviour problem

Yesterday I came across Craig Reynolds' Boids, and subsequently figured that I'd give implementing a simple 2D version in Java a go.
I've put together a fairly basic setup based closely on Conrad Parker's notes.
However, I'm getting some rather bizarre (in my opinion) behaviour. Currently, my boids move reasonably quickly into a rough grid or lattice, and proceed to twitch on the spot. By that I mean they move around a little and rotate very frequently.
Currently, I have implemented:
Alignment
Cohesion
Separation
Velocity limiting
Initially, my boids are randomly distributed across the screen area (slightly different to Parker's method), and their velocities are all directed towards the centre of the screen area (note that randomly initialised velocities give the same result). Changing the velocity limit value only changes how quickly the boids move into this pattern, not formation of the pattern.
As I see it, this could be:
A consequence of the parameters I'm using (right now my code is as described in Parker's pseudocode; I have not yet tried areas of influence defined by an angle and a radius as described by Reynolds.)
Something I need to implement but am not aware of.
Something I am doing wrong.
The expected behaviour would be something more along the lines of a two dimensional version of what happens in the applet on Reynolds' boids page, although right now I haven't implemented any way to keep the boids on screen.
Has anyone encountered this before? Any ideas about the cause and/or how to fix it? I can post a .gif of the behaviour in question if it helps.
Perhaps your weighting for the separation rule is too strong, causing all the boids to move as far away from all neighboring boids as they can. There are various constants in my pseudocode which act as weights: /100 in rule 1 and /8 in rule 3 (and an implicit *1 in rule 2); these can be tweaked, which is often useful for modelling different behaviors such as closely-swarming insects or gliding birds.
Also the arbitrary |distance| < 100 in the separation rule should be modified to match the units of your simulation; this rule should only apply to boids within close proximity, basically to avoid collisions.
Have fun!
If they see everyone, they will all try to move with average velocity. If they see only some there can be some separated groups.
And if they are randomly distributed, it will be close to zero.
If you limit them by rectangle and either repulse them from walls or teleport them to other side when they got close) and have too high separation, they will be pushed from walls (from walls itself or from other who just were teleported, who will then be pushed to other side (and push and be pushed again)).
So try tighter cohesion, limited sight, more space and distribute them clustered (pick random point and place multiple of them small random distance from there), not uniformly or normaly.
I encountered this problem as well. I solved it by making sure that the method for updating each boid's velocity added the new velocity onto the old, instead of resetting it. Essentially, what's happening is this: The boids are trying to move away from each other but can't accelerate (because their velocities are being reset instead of increasing, as they should), thus the "twitching". Your method for updating velocities should look like
def set_velocity(self, dxdy):
self.velocity = (self.velocity[0] + dxdy[0], self.velocity[1] + dxdy[1])
where velocity and dxdy are 2-tuples.
I wonder if you have a problem with collision rectangles. If you implemented something based on overlapping rectangles (like, say, this), you can end up with the behaviour you describe when two rectangles are close enough that any movement causes them to intersect. (Or even worse if one rectangle can end up totally inside another.)
One solution to this problem is to make sure each boid only looks in a forwards direction. Then you avoid the situation where A cannot move because B is too close in front, but B cannot move because A is too close behind.
A quick check is to actually paint all of your collision rectangles and colour any intersecting ones a different colour. It often gives a clue as to the cause of the stopping and twitching.

What is the meaning of jitter in visualize tab of weka

In weka I load an arff file. I can view the relationship between attributes using the visualize tab.
However I can't understand the meaning of the jitter slider. What is its purpose?
You can find the answer in the mailing list archives:
The jitter function in the Visualize panel just adds artificial random
noise to the coordinates of the plotted points in order to spread the
data out a bit (so that you can see points that might have been
obscured by others).
I don't know weka, but generally jitter is a term for the variation of a periodic signal to some reference interval. I'm guessing the slider allows you to set some range or threshold below which data points are treated as being regular, or to modify the output to introduce some variation. The wikipedia entry can give you some background.
Update: from this pdf, the jitter slider is for this purpose:
“Jitter” option to deal with nominal attributes (and to detect “hidden”data points)
Based on the accompanying slide it looks like it introduces some variation in the visualisation, perhaps to show when two data points overlap.
Update 2: This google books extract (to Data mining By Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank) seems to confirm my guess:
[jitter] is a random displacement applied to X and Y values to separate points that lie on top of one another. Without jitter, 1000 instances at the same data point would look just the same as 1 instance
I don't know the products you mention, but jittering generally means randomising the sample positions. Eg, in ray tracing you would normally render a ray though each pixel on the screen. Jittering adds a random offset to each ray to reduce issues caused by regular aliasing.

point in polygon in sphere,

My question is, will the code given in http://pietschsoft.com/post/2008/07/Virtual-Earth-Polygon-Search-Is-Point-Within-Polygon.aspx work to find a point in one of areas mentioned in
below file (page 7-9):
http://www.weather.gov/directives/sym/pd01008006curr.pdf
looking forward,
A point-in-polygon algorithm usually just counts the number of times it crosses a line by "drawing" one out in any particular direction. It would then know if it's in the polygon or not by knowing how many times it crossed that line (even number it was outside, odd number it is inside). The code on that site looks like it just flips a boolean instead of adding to a counter but it's the same thing.
I must confess I have not read the PDF you linked too (too long!) but I've not come across an instance where the algorithm fails.
One tip might be to draw a rough square around the outermost extremeties of the polygon first and check whether it falls within that to avoid having to test each point).
I believe it will fail in some cases. The algorithm you linked to, which is correct for planar geometry, is incorrect for spherical geometry. Consider the rectangles which cross the 180th meridian, e.g. the rectangle labelled "M". The algorithm would consider that rectangle as covering the americas, Africa, and Europe, but not Asia or the Pacific.

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