8,820 research outputs found
A Study of Gestures in a Video-Mediated Collaborative Assembly Task
This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of two gesture representations (overlaying hands and cursor pointer) in a video-mediated scenario—remote collaboration on physical task. Our study assessed the relative value of the two gesture representations with respect to their effectiveness in task performance, user's satisfaction, and user's perceived quality of collaboration in terms of the coordination and interaction with the remote partner. Our results show no clear difference between these two gesture representations in the effectiveness and user satisfaction. However, when considering the perceived quality of collaboration, the overlaying hands condition was statistically significantly higher than the pointer cursor condition. Our results seem to suggest that the value of a more expressive gesture representation is not so much a gain in performance but rather a gain in user's experience, more specifically in user's perceived quality of collaborative effort
Explorations in engagement for humans and robots
This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which
individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived
connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among
human interactors--the effect of tracking faces during an interaction. It also
describes the architecture of a robot that can participate in conversational,
collaborative interactions with engagement gestures. Finally, the paper reports
on findings of experiments with human participants who interacted with a robot
when it either performed or did not perform engagement gestures. Results of the
human-robot studies indicate that people become engaged with robots: they
direct their attention to the robot more often in interactions where engagement
gestures are present, and they find interactions more appropriate when
engagement gestures are present than when they are not.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, 3 table
Conceitos e métodos para apoio ao desenvolvimento e avaliação de colaboração remota utilizando realidade aumentada
Remote Collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) shows great
potential to establish a common ground in physically distributed
scenarios where team-members need to achieve a shared goal.
However, most research efforts in this field have been devoted to
experiment with the enabling technology and propose methods to
support its development. As the field evolves, evaluation and
characterization of the collaborative process become an essential,
but difficult endeavor, to better understand the contributions of AR.
In this thesis, we conducted a critical analysis to identify the main
limitations and opportunities of the field, while situating its maturity
and proposing a roadmap of important research actions. Next, a
human-centered design methodology was adopted, involving
industrial partners to probe how AR could support their needs
during remote maintenance. These outcomes were combined with
literature methods into an AR-prototype and its evaluation was
performed through a user study. From this, it became clear the
necessity to perform a deep reflection in order to better understand
the dimensions that influence and must/should be considered in
Collaborative AR. Hence, a conceptual model and a humancentered
taxonomy were proposed to foster systematization of
perspectives. Based on the model proposed, an evaluation
framework for contextualized data gathering and analysis was
developed, allowing support the design and performance of
distributed evaluations in a more informed and complete manner.
To instantiate this vision, the CAPTURE toolkit was created,
providing an additional perspective based on selected dimensions
of collaboration and pre-defined measurements to obtain “in situ”
data about them, which can be analyzed using an integrated
visualization dashboard. The toolkit successfully supported
evaluations of several team-members during tasks of remote
maintenance mediated by AR. Thus, showing its versatility and
potential in eliciting a comprehensive characterization of the added
value of AR in real-life situations, establishing itself as a generalpurpose
solution, potentially applicable to a wider range of
collaborative scenarios.Colaboração Remota utilizando Realidade Aumentada (RA)
apresenta um enorme potencial para estabelecer um entendimento
comum em cenários onde membros de uma equipa fisicamente
distribuídos precisam de atingir um objetivo comum. No entanto, a
maioria dos esforços de investigação tem-se focado nos aspetos
tecnológicos, em fazer experiências e propor métodos para apoiar
seu desenvolvimento. À medida que a área evolui, a avaliação e
caracterização do processo colaborativo tornam-se um esforço
essencial, mas difícil, para compreender as contribuições da RA.
Nesta dissertação, realizámos uma análise crítica para identificar
as principais limitações e oportunidades da área, ao mesmo tempo
em que situámos a sua maturidade e propomos um mapa com
direções de investigação importantes. De seguida, foi adotada uma
metodologia de Design Centrado no Humano, envolvendo
parceiros industriais de forma a compreender como a RA poderia
responder às suas necessidades em manutenção remota. Estes
resultados foram combinados com métodos da literatura num
protótipo de RA e a sua avaliação foi realizada com um caso de
estudo. Ficou então clara a necessidade de realizar uma reflexão
profunda para melhor compreender as dimensões que influenciam
e devem ser consideradas na RA Colaborativa. Foram então
propostos um modelo conceptual e uma taxonomia centrada no ser
humano para promover a sistematização de perspetivas. Com base
no modelo proposto, foi desenvolvido um framework de avaliação
para recolha e análise de dados contextualizados, permitindo
apoiar o desenho e a realização de avaliações distribuídas de
forma mais informada e completa. Para instanciar esta visão, o
CAPTURE toolkit foi criado, fornecendo uma perspetiva adicional
com base em dimensões de colaboração e medidas predefinidas
para obter dados in situ, que podem ser analisados utilizando o
painel de visualização integrado. O toolkit permitiu avaliar com
sucesso vários colaboradores durante a realização de tarefas de
manutenção remota apoiada por RA, permitindo mostrar a sua
versatilidade e potencial em obter uma caracterização abrangente
do valor acrescentado da RA em situações da vida real. Sendo
assim, estabelece-se como uma solução genérica, potencialmente
aplicável a uma gama diversificada de cenários colaborativos.Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Informátic
Towards social embodied cobots: The integration of an industrial cobot with a social virtual agent
The integration of the physical capabilities of an industrial collaborative
robot with a social virtual character may represent a viable solution to
enhance the workers' perception of the system as an embodied social entity and
increase social engagement and well-being at the workplace. An online study was
setup using prerecorded video interactions in order to pilot potential
advantages of different embodied configurations of the cobot-avatar system in
terms of perceptions of Social Presence, cobot-avatar Unity and Social Role of
the system, and explore the relation of these. In particular, two different
configurations were explored and compared: the virtual character was displayed
either on a tablet strapped onto the base of the cobot or on a large TV screen
positioned at the back of the workcell. The results imply that participants
showed no clear preference based on the constructs, and both configurations
fulfill these basic criteria. In terms of the relations between the constructs,
there were strong correlations between perception of Social Presence, Unity and
Social Role (Collegiality). This gives a valuable insight into the role of
these constructs in the perception of cobots as embodied social entities, and
towards building cobots that support well-being at the workplace
Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions
In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research
Gaming techniques and the product development process : commonalities and cross-applications
The use of computer-based tools is now firmly embedded within the product development process, providing a wide range of uses from visualisation to analysis. However, the specialisation required to make effective use of these tools has led to the compartmentalisation of expertise in design teams, resulting in communication problems between individual members. This paper therefore considers how computer gaming techniques and strategies could be used to enhance communication and group design activities throughout the product design process
Periscope: A Robotic Camera System to Support Remote Physical Collaboration
We investigate how robotic camera systems can offer new capabilities to
computer-supported cooperative work through the design, development, and
evaluation of a prototype system called Periscope. With Periscope, a local
worker completes manipulation tasks with guidance from a remote helper who
observes the workspace through a camera mounted on a semi-autonomous robotic
arm that is co-located with the worker. Our key insight is that the helper, the
worker, and the robot should all share responsibility of the camera view--an
approach we call shared camera control. Using this approach, we present a set
of modes that distribute the control of the camera between the human
collaborators and the autonomous robot depending on task needs. We demonstrate
the system's utility and the promise of shared camera control through a
preliminary study where 12 dyads collaboratively worked on assembly tasks.
Finally, we discuss design and research implications of our work for future
robotic camera systems that facilitate remote collaboration.Comment: This is a pre-print of the article accepted for publication in PACM
HCI and will be presented at CSCW 202
Turn It This Way: Remote Gesturing in Video-Mediated Communication
Collaborative physical tasks are working tasks characterised by workers 'in-the-field' who manipulate task artefacts under the guidance of a remote expert. Examples of such interactions include paramedics requiring field-surgery consults from hospital surgeons, soldiers requiring support from distant bomb-disposal experts, technicians inspecting and repairing machinery under the guidance of a chief engineer or scientists examining artefacts with distributed colleagues. This thesis considers the design of technology to support such forms of distributed working. Early research in video-mediated communication (VMC) which sought to support such interactions presumed video links between remote spaces would improve collaboration. The results of these studies however, demonstrated that in such tasks audio-video links alone were unlikely to improve performance beyond that achievable by simpler audio-only links. In explanation of these observations a reading of studies of situated collaborative working practices suggests that to support distributed object-focussed interactions it is beneficial to not only provide visual access to remote spaces but also to present within the task-space the gestural actions of remote collaborators. Remote Gestural Simulacra are advanced video-mediated communication tools that enable remote collaborators to both see and observably point at and gesture around and towards shared task artefacts located at another site. Technologies developed to support such activities have been critiqued; their design often fractures the interaction between the collaborating parties, restricting access to aspects of communication which are commonly used in co-present situations to coordinate interaction and ground understanding.
This thesis specifically explores the design of remote gesture tools, seeking to understand how remote representations of gesture can be used during collaborative physical tasks. In a series of lab-based studies, the utility of remote gesturing is investigated, both qualitatively, examining its collaborative function and quantitatively exploring its impact on both facets of task performance and collaborative language. The thesis also discusses how the configuration of remote gesture tools impacts on their usability, empirically comparing various gesture tool designs. The thesis constructs and examines an argument that remote gesture tools should be designed from a 'mixed ecologies' perspective (theoretically alleviating the problems engendered by 'fractured ecologies' in which collaborating partners are given access to the most salient and relevant features of communicative action that are utilised in face-to-face interaction, namely mutual and reciprocal awareness of commonly understood object-focussed actions (hand-based gestures) and mutual and reciprocal awareness of task-space perspectives. The thesis demonstrates experimental support for this position and concludes by presenting discussion of how the findings generated from the thesis research can be used to guide the design of future iterations of remote gesture tools, and presents directions for areas of further research
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