A preliminary study of a hybrid user interface for augmented reality applications

Augmented Reality (AR) applications are nowadays largely diffused in many fields of use, especially for entertainment, and the market of AR applications for mobile devices grows faster and faster. Moreover, new and innovative hardware for human-computer interaction has been deployed, such as the Leap Motion Controller. This paper presents some preliminary results in the design and development of a hybrid interface for hand-free augmented reality applications. The paper introduces a framework to interact with AR applications through a speech and gesture recognition-based interface. A Leap Motion Controller is mounted on top of AR glasses and a speech recognition module completes the system. Results have shown that, using the speech or the gesture recognition modules singularly, the robustness of the user interface is strongly dependent on environmental conditions. On the other hand, a combined usage of both modules can provide a more robust input

Accessible Human Computer Interaction: Video Games and Assisted Living for Persons with Severe Disabilities

Accessible Human Computer Interaction is a very wide area of study, which covers many topics and addresses several interesting problems; but there is a common goal that researchers of this field usually share: to use technology for improving the quality of life of persons with disabilities. In fact, this thesis stems from the will of helping persons with disabilities in different moments of their lives (i.e., during their childhood and in their adult age), by using different interactive technologies. In particular, this document explores two challenges: first, the problem that children with motor disabilities face as they cannot access dynamic video games as their normally developing peers do, leading them to reduced participation at leisure and playful educational activities, and finally to a potential social exclusion. The second challenge is faced by professional caregivers that work with adults motor and cognitively disabled, within assisted living facilities. Such caregivers need to effectively monitor the people under their care, as well as to be alerted of potentially hazardous situations that happen to these persons while they are alone. This thesis contributes to the improvement of the quality of life of persons with motor and cognitive disabilities, by supporting them in specific situations through different moments of their lives: in their childhood, by allowing them to play dynamic video games; and in their adulthood while they live and are cared by caregivers in assisted living facilities. Moreover, the research presented in this document constitutes a potentially valuable contribution to bring together the technical capabilities of engineers and HCI researchers, with the experience and knowledge of healthcare professionals that work daily with persons with disabilities

Robo-ethics design approach for cultural heritage: Case study - Robotics for museum purpose

The thesis shows the study behind the design process and the realization of the robotic solution for museum purposes called Virgil. The research started with the literature review on museums management and the critic analysis of signi cant digital experiences in the museum eld. Then, it continues analyzing the museum and its relation with the territory and the cultural heritage. From this preliminary analysis stage, signi cant issue related to museum management analysis comes out: nowadays many museum areas are not accessible to visitors because of issues related to security or architectural barriers. Make explorable these areas is one of the important topics in the cultural debate related to the visiting experience. This rst stage gave the knowledge to develop the outlines which brought to the realization of an ef cient service design then realized following robot ethical design values. One of the pillars of the robot ethical design is the necessity to involve all the stakeholders in the early project phases, for this reason, the second stage of the research was the study of the empathic relations between museum and visitors. In this phase, facilitator factors of this relation are de ned and transformed into guidelines for the product system performances. To perform this stage, it has been necessary create a relation between all the stakeholders of the project, which are: Politecnico di Torino, Tim (Telecom Italia Mobile) JOL CRAB research laboratory and Terre dei Savoia which is the association in charge of the Racconiggi’s Castle, the context scenario of the research. The third stage of the research, provided the realization of a prototype of the robot, in this stage telepresence robot piloted the Museum Guide it is used to show, in real time, the inaccessible areas of the museum enriched with multimedia contents. This stage concludes with the nal test user, from the test session feedback analysis, many of people want to drive themselves the robot. To give an answer to user feedback an interactive game has been developed. The game is based both on the robot ability to be driven by the visitors and also on the capacity of the robot to be used as a platform for the digital telling. To be effective, the whole experience it has been designed and tested with the support of high school students, which are one of the categories less interested in the traditional museum visit. This experience wants to demonstrate that the conscious and ethical use of the robotic device is effectively competitive, in term of performances, with the other solutions of digital visit: because it allows a more interactive digital experience in addition to the satisfaction of the physical visit at the museum

Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

Perspectives and research on play for children with disabilities. Collected papers

This book includes eight chapters reflecting various approaches towards the theme of play for children with disabilities that characterised the work of the members of the COST Action TD1309 “LUDI–Play for Children with Disabilities”. Alongside these multifaceted points of view, some theoretical aspects emerged as a common background: the ICF-CY theoretical perspective, the vision of “play for the sake of play” and play as a fundamental right

Perspectives and research on play for children with disabilities: collected papers

This book includes eight chapters reflecting various approaches towards the theme of play for children with disabilities that characterised the work of the members of the COST Action TD1309 "LUDI-Play for Children with Disabilities". Alongside these multifaceted points of view, some theoretical aspects emerged as a common background: the ICF-CY theoretical perspective, the vision of "play for the sake of play" and play as a fundamental right

Second Screen Applications: A Multi-Platform Software Development Kit and Optimization of Human-Computer Interaction in Distributed Systems

This dissertation addresses various aspects of the term second screen and the challenges involved in the development of this type of application. The term and its characteristics have been clearly delineate by the means of a structured review of literature of 65 publications and an analysis of 19 currently available commercial applications. Furthermore, a content and technical classification were created to facilitate communication and the positing of future research activity in this area. The development of second screen applications is currently associated with a high effort, caused by the redundant implementation of multiple software platforms on both first and second screen side. In order to counteract this double multi-platform problem, an SDK was developed that facilitates the connection and communication process between the different application parts. The functionality of this 2ndS SDK was evaluated as reliable and performant and proven in several functional prototypes, which also served the purpose to examine existing and new forms of second screen interaction. In addition to addressing the technical challenges involved in the development of second screen applications, this work presents several results regarding the optimization of human-computer interaction in this type of application. These include a collection of 55 application components raised and validated in a mixed-method approach and insights into the attention behavior in such scenarios with corresponding recommendations derived from two eye-tracking studies. Furthermore, were concrete design guidelines from existing sources abstracted and evaluated with the help of a user study, and heuristics derived for the domain second screen and extended to a checklist for the efficient identification of problems. The results presented in this work are intended to be used in a usercentered design process and aim to ease the development of second screen applications with optimized interaction, and thereby contribute to their awareness and further distribution