Development of actuated Tangible User Interfaces: new interaction concepts and evaluation methods

Riedenklau E. Development of actuated Tangible User Interfaces: new interaction concepts and evaluation methods. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2016.Making information understandable and literally graspable is the main goal of tangible interaction research. By giving digital data physical representations (Tangible User Interface Objects, or TUIOs), they can be used and manipulated like everyday objects with the users’ natural manipulation skills. Such physical interaction is basically of uni-directional kind, directed from the user to the system, limiting the possible interaction patterns. In other words, the system has no means to actively support the physical interaction. Within the frame of tabletop tangible user interfaces, this problem was addressed by the introduction of actuated TUIOs, that are controllable by the system. Within the frame of this thesis, we present the development of our own actuated TUIOs and address multiple interaction concepts we identified as research gaps in literature on actuated Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs). Gestural interaction is a natural means for humans to non-verbally communicate using their hands. TUIs should be able to support gestural interaction, since our hands are already heavily involved in the interaction. This has rarely been investigated in literature. For a tangible social network client application, we investigate two methods for collecting user-defined gestures that our system should be able to interpret for triggering actions. Versatile systems often understand a wide palette of commands. Another approach for triggering actions is the use of menus. We explore the design space of menu metaphors used in TUIs and present our own actuated dial-based approach. Rich interaction modalities may support the understandability of the represented data and make the interaction with them more appealing, but also mean high demands on real-time precessing. We highlight new research directions for integrated feature rich and multi-modal interaction, such as graphical display, sound output, tactile feedback, our actuated menu and automatically maintained relations between actuated TUIOs within a remote collaboration application. We also tackle the introduction of further sophisticated measures for the evaluation of TUIs to provide further evidence to the theories on tangible interaction. We tested our enhanced measures within a comparative study. Since one of the key factors in effective manual interaction is speed, we benchmarked both the human hand’s manipulation speed and compare it with the capabilities of our own implementation of actuated TUIOs and the systems described in literature. After briefly discussing applications that lie beyond the scope of this thesis, we conclude with a collection of design guidelines gathered in the course of this work and integrate them together with our findings into a larger frame

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

Augmented Reality and Robotics: A Survey and Taxonomy for AR-enhanced Human-Robot Interaction and Robotic Interfaces

This paper contributes to a taxonomy of augmented reality and robotics based on a survey of 460 research papers. Augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) have emerged as a new way to enhance human-robot interaction (HRI) and robotic interfaces (e.g., actuated and shape-changing interfaces). Recently, an increasing number of studies in HCI, HRI, and robotics have demonstrated how AR enables better interactions between people and robots. However, often research remains focused on individual explorations and key design strategies, and research questions are rarely analyzed systematically. In this paper, we synthesize and categorize this research field in the following dimensions: 1) approaches to augmenting reality; 2) characteristics of robots; 3) purposes and benefits; 4) classification of presented information; 5) design components and strategies for visual augmentation; 6) interaction techniques and modalities; 7) application domains; and 8) evaluation strategies. We formulate key challenges and opportunities to guide and inform future research in AR and robotics

Physical Telepresence: Shape Capture and Display for Embodied, Computer-mediated Remote Collaboration

We propose a new approach to Physical Telepresence, based on shared workspaces with the ability to capture and remotely render the shapes of people and objects. In this paper, we describe the concept of shape transmission, and propose interaction techniques to manipulate remote physical objects and physical renderings of shared digital content. We investigate how the representation of user's body parts can be altered to amplify their capabilities for teleoperation. We also describe the details of building and testing prototype Physical Telepresence workspaces based on shape displays. A preliminary evaluation shows how users are able to manipulate remote objects, and we report on our observations of several different manipulation techniques that highlight the expressive nature of our system.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant No. 1122374

An Abstraction Framework for Tangible Interactive Surfaces

This cumulative dissertation discusses - by the example of four subsequent publications - the various layers of a tangible interaction framework, which has been developed in conjunction with an electronic musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Based on the experiences that have been collected during the design and implementation of that particular musical application, this research mainly concentrates on the definition of a general-purpose abstraction model for the encapsulation of physical interface components that are commonly employed in the context of an interactive surface environment. Along with a detailed description of the underlying abstraction model, this dissertation also describes an actual implementation in the form of a detailed protocol syntax, which constitutes the common element of a distributed architecture for the construction of surface-based tangible user interfaces. The initial implementation of the presented abstraction model within an actual application toolkit is comprised of the TUIO protocol and the related computer-vision based object and multi-touch tracking software reacTIVision, along with its principal application within the Reactable synthesizer. The dissertation concludes with an evaluation and extension of the initial TUIO model, by presenting TUIO2 - a next generation abstraction model designed for a more comprehensive range of tangible interaction platforms and related application scenarios

物理/バーチャル空間の接続と分離を媒介する可動壁に関する研究

Tohoku University博士（情報科学）thesi