Exploring the Front Touch Interface for Virtual Reality Headsets

In this paper, we propose a new interface for virtual reality headset: a touchpad in front of the headset. To demonstrate the feasibility of the front touch interface, we built a prototype device, explored VR UI design space expansion, and performed various user studies. We started with preliminary tests to see how intuitively and accurately people can interact with the front touchpad. Then, we further experimented various user interfaces such as a binary selection, a typical menu layout, and a keyboard. Two-Finger and Drag-n-Tap were also explored to find the appropriate selection technique. As a low-cost, light-weight, and in low power budget technology, a touch sensor can make an ideal interface for mobile headset. Also, front touch area can be large enough to allow wide range of interaction types such as multi-finger interactions. With this novel front touch interface, we paved a way to new virtual reality interaction methods

Virtual Reality applied to biomedical engineering

Actualment, la realitat virtual esta sent tendència i s'està expandint a l'àmbit mèdic, fent possible l'aparició de nombroses aplicacions dissenyades per entrenar metges i tractar pacients de forma més eficient, així com optimitzar els processos de planificació quirúrgica. La necessitat mèdica i objectiu d'aquest projecte és fer òptim el procés de planificació quirúrgica per a cardiopaties congènites, que compren la reconstrucció en 3D del cor del pacient i la seva integració en una aplicació de realitat virtual. Seguint aquesta línia s’ha combinat un procés de modelat 3D d’imatges de cors obtinguts gracies al Hospital Sant Joan de Déu i el disseny de l’aplicació mitjançant el software Unity 3D gracies a l’empresa VISYON. S'han aconseguit millores en quant al software emprat per a la segmentació i reconstrucció, i s’han assolit funcionalitats bàsiques a l’aplicació com importar, moure, rotar i fer captures de pantalla en 3D de l'òrgan cardíac i així, entendre millor la cardiopatia que s’ha de tractar. El resultat ha estat la creació d'un procés òptim, en el que la reconstrucció en 3D ha aconseguit ser ràpida i precisa, el mètode d’importació a l’app dissenyada molt senzill, i una aplicació que permet una interacció atractiva i intuïtiva, gracies a una experiència immersiva i realista per ajustar-se als requeriments d'eficiència i precisió exigits en el camp mèdic

Exploring the Use of Wearables to Enable Indoor Navigation for Blind Users

One of the challenges that people with visual impairments (VI) have to have to confront daily, is navigating independently through foreign or unfamiliar spaces.Navigating through unfamiliar spaces without assistance is very time consuming and leads to lower mobility. Especially in the case of indoor environments where the use of GPS is impossible, this task becomes even harder.However, advancements in mobile and wearable computing pave the path to new cheap assistive technologies that can make the lives of people with VI easier.Wearable devices have great potential for assistive applications for users who are blind as they typically feature a camera and support hands and eye free interaction. Smart watches and heads up displays (HUDs), in combination with smartphones, can provide a basis for development of advanced algorithms, capable of providing inexpensive solutions for navigation in indoor spaces. New interfaces are also introduced making the interaction between users who are blind and mo-bile devices more intuitive.This work presents a set of new systems and technologies created to help users with VI navigate indoor environments. The first system presented is an indoor navigation system for people with VI that operates by using sensors found in mo-bile devices and virtual maps of the environment. The second system presented helps users navigate large open spaces with minimum veering. Next a study is conducted to determine the accuracy of pedometry based on different body placements of the accelerometer sensors. Finally, a gesture detection system is introduced that helps communication between the user and mobile devices by using sensors in wearable devices

EdgeGlass: Exploring Tapping Performance on Smart Glasses while Sitting and Walking

Department of Human Factors EngineeringCurrently, smart glasses allow only touch sensing area which supports front mounted touch pads. However, touches on top, front and bottom sides of glass mounted touchpad is not yet explored. We made a customized touch sensor (length: 5-6 cm, height: 1 cm, width: 0.5 cm) featuring the sensing on its top, front, and bottom surfaces. For doing that, we have used capacitive touch sensing technology (MPR121 chips) with an electrode size of ~4.5 mm square, which is typical in the modern touchscreens. We have created a hardware system which consists of a total of 48 separate touch sensors. We investigated the interaction technique by it for both the sitting and walking situation, using a single finger sequential tapping and a pair finger simultaneous tapping. We have divided each side into three equal target areas and this separation made a total of 36 combinations. Our quantitative result showed that pair finger simultaneous tapping touches were faster, less error-prone in walking condition, compared to single finger sequential tapping into walking condition. Whereas, single finger sequence tapping touches were slower, but less error-prone in sitting condition, compared to pair simultaneous tapping in sitting condition. However, single finger sequential tapping touches were slower, much less error-prone in sitting condition compared to walking. Interestingly, double finger tapping touches had similar performance result in terms of both, error rate and completion time, in both sitting and walking conditions. Mental, physical, performance, effort did not have any effect on any temporal tapping???s and body poses experience of workload. In case of the parameter of temporal demand, for single finger sequential tapping mean temporal (time pressure) workload demand was higher than pair finger simultaneous tapping but body poses did not affect temporal (time pressure) workload for both of the sequential and simultaneous tapping type. In case of the parameter of frustration, the result suggested that mean frustration workload was higher for single finger sequential tapping experienced by the participants compared to pair finger simultaneous tapping and among body poses, walking experienced higher frustration mean workload than sitting. The subjective measure of overall workload during the performance study showed no significant difference between both independent variable: body pose (sitting and walking) and temporal tapping (single finger sequential tapping and pair finger simultaneous tapping).ope

STRUCTURED POLARIZATION-BASED EYE TRACKING

Methods and systems for using a polarization-sensitive camera to track changes in eye movement of a user are provided. The system may include a light source for directing light into an eye(s) of a user via a waveguide(s). The light reflected from the eye(s) may be captured by a polarization-sensitive camera configured to detect eye polarization phase change(s). The polarization-sensitive camera may utilize the polarization phase change(s) information to determine one or more eye polarization parameters. The eye polarization parameters may be utilized by a head mounted device of the system to determine eye tracking features associated with orientation and states of the eye(s), gaze direction of the eye(s) or segmentation of the eye(s)

Breaking the Screen: Interaction Across Touchscreen Boundaries in Virtual Reality for Mobile Knowledge Workers.

Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to transform knowledge work. One advantage of VR knowledge work is that it allows extending 2D displays into the third dimension, enabling new operations, such as selecting overlapping objects or displaying additional layers of information. On the other hand, mobile knowledge workers often work on established mobile devices, such as tablets, limiting interaction with those devices to a small input space. This challenge of a constrained input space is intensified in situations when VR knowledge work is situated in cramped environments, such as airplanes and touchdown spaces. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of interacting jointly between an immersive VR head-mounted display and a tablet within the context of knowledge work. Specifically, we 1) design, implement and study how to interact with information that reaches beyond a single physical touchscreen in VR; 2) design and evaluate a set of interaction concepts; and 3) build example applications and gather user feedback on those applications.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, ISMAR 202

Viewport- and World-based Personal Device Point-Select Interactions in the Augmented Reality

Personal smart devices have demonstrated a variety of efficient techniques for pointing and selecting on physical displays. However, when migrating these input techniques to augmented reality, it is both unclear what the relative performance of different techniques will be given the immersive nature of the environment, and it is unclear how viewport-based versus world-based pointing methods will impact performance. To better understand the impact of device and viewing perspectives on pointing in augmented reality, in this thesis, we present the results of two controlled experiments comparing pointing conditions that leverage various smartphone- and smartwatch-based external display pointing techniques and examine viewport-based versus world-based target acquisition paradigms. Our results demonstrate that viewport-based techniques offer faster selection and that both smartwatch- and smartphone-based pointing techniques represent high-performance options for performing distant target acquisition tasks in augmented reality