Seven Years after the Manifesto: Literature Review and Research Directions for Technologies in Animal Computer Interaction

As technologies diversify and become embedded in everyday lives, the technologies we expose to animals, and the new technologies being developed for animals within the field of Animal Computer Interaction (ACI) are increasing. As we approach seven years since the ACI manifesto, which grounded the field within Human Computer Interaction and Computer Science, this thematic literature review looks at the technologies developed for (non-human) animals. Technologies that are analysed include tangible and physical, haptic and wearable, olfactory, screen technology and tracking systems. The conversation explores what exactly ACI is whilst questioning what it means to be animal by considering the impact and loop between machine and animal interactivity. The findings of this review are expected to form the first grounding foundation of ACI technologies informing future research in animal computing as well as suggesting future areas for exploratio

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

Digitizing the chemical senses: possibilities & pitfalls

Many people are understandably excited by the suggestion that the chemical senses can be digitized; be it to deliver ambient fragrances (e.g., in virtual reality or health-related applications), or else to transmit flavour experiences via the internet. However, to date, progress in this area has been surprisingly slow. Furthermore, the majority of the attempts at successful commercialization have failed, often in the face of consumer ambivalence over the perceived benefits/utility. In this review, with the focus squarely on the domain of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), we summarize the state-of-the-art in the area. We highlight the key possibilities and pitfalls as far as stimulating the so-called ‘lower’ senses of taste, smell, and the trigeminal system are concerned. Ultimately, we suggest that mixed reality solutions are currently the most plausible as far as delivering (or rather modulating) flavour experiences digitally is concerned. The key problems with digital fragrance delivery are related to attention and attribution. People often fail to detect fragrances when they are concentrating on something else; And even when they detect that their chemical senses have been stimulated, there is always a danger that they attribute their experience (e.g., pleasure) to one of the other senses – this is what we call ‘the fundamental attribution error’. We conclude with an outlook on digitizing the chemical senses and summarize a set of open-ended questions that the HCI community has to address in future explorations of smell and taste as interaction modalities

Digitally enhancing tasting experiences

Our experience of food and drink depends on more than merely the ingredients that have been combined in a dish or drink and the way in which it has been prepared. There is growing interest in the question of whether digital technologies/solutions can be used to enhance consumers’ multisensory tasting experiences. Projection mapping and sonic seasoning have been incorporated onto the menu in a number of world-leading restaurants for several years now. However, there has, as yet, been relatively little uptake of such digital technologies in the home environment. And while a wide (and growing) range of food and beverage brands have come out with sensory apps and sonic seasoning playlists in recent years, they do not tend to be present in the marketplace for very long. In fact, it would appear that the majority of augmented and virtual reality solutions have more relevance to the world of consumer/food science research than necessarily to enhancing the tasting experience for those in the home environment. Looking to the future, the widespread societal uptake of digitally-enhanced tasting experiences will likely only occur when such solutions provide an obvious, and demonstrable, benefit to the intended users

Channel State Information from pure communication to sense and track human motion: A survey

Human motion detection and activity recognition are becoming vital for the applications in smart homes. Traditional Human Activity Recognition (HAR) mechanisms use special devices to track human motions, such as cameras (vision-based) and various types of sensors (sensor-based). These mechanisms are applied in different applications, such as home security, Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), gaming, and healthcare. However, traditional HAR methods require heavy installation, and can only work under strict conditions. Recently, wireless signals have been utilized to track human motion and HAR in indoor environments. The motion of an object in the test environment causes fluctuations and changes in the Wi-Fi signal reflections at the receiver, which result in variations in received signals. These fluctuations can be used to track object (i.e., a human) motion in indoor environments. This phenomenon can be improved and leveraged in the future to improve the internet of things (IoT) and smart home devices. The main Wi-Fi sensing methods can be broadly categorized as Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Wi-Fi radar (by using Software Defined Radio (SDR)) and Channel State Information (CSI). CSI and RSSI can be considered as device-free mechanisms because they do not require cumbersome installation, whereas the Wi-Fi radar mechanism requires special devices (i.e., Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP)). Recent studies demonstrate that CSI outperforms RSSI in sensing accuracy due to its stability and rich information. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of recent advances in the CSI-based sensing mechanism and illustrates the drawbacks, discusses challenges, and presents some suggestions for the future of device-free sensing technology