“Show me, how does it look now”: Remote Help-giving in Collaborative Design

This paper examines the role of visual information in a remote help-giving situation involving the collaborative physical task of designing a prototype remote control. We analyze a set of video recordings captured within an experimental setting. Our analysis shows that using gestures and relevant artefacts and by projecting activities on the camera, participants were able to discuss several design-related issues. The results indicate that with a limited camera view (mainly faces and shoulders), participants’ conversations were centered at the physical prototype that they were designing. The socially organized use of our experimental setting provides some key implications for designing future remote collaborative systems

In-home and remote use of robotic body surrogates by people with profound motor deficits

By controlling robots comparable to the human body, people with profound motor deficits could potentially perform a variety of physical tasks for themselves, improving their quality of life. The extent to which this is achievable has been unclear due to the lack of suitable interfaces by which to control robotic body surrogates and a dearth of studies involving substantial numbers of people with profound motor deficits. We developed a novel, web-based augmented reality interface that enables people with profound motor deficits to remotely control a PR2 mobile manipulator from Willow Garage, which is a human-scale, wheeled robot with two arms. We then conducted two studies to investigate the use of robotic body surrogates. In the first study, 15 novice users with profound motor deficits from across the United States controlled a PR2 in Atlanta, GA to perform a modified Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and a simulated self-care task. Participants achieved clinically meaningful improvements on the ARAT and 12 of 15 participants (80%) successfully completed the simulated self-care task. Participants agreed that the robotic system was easy to use, was useful, and would provide a meaningful improvement in their lives. In the second study, one expert user with profound motor deficits had free use of a PR2 in his home for seven days. He performed a variety of self-care and household tasks, and also used the robot in novel ways. Taking both studies together, our results suggest that people with profound motor deficits can improve their quality of life using robotic body surrogates, and that they can gain benefit with only low-level robot autonomy and without invasive interfaces. However, methods to reduce the rate of errors and increase operational speed merit further investigation.Comment: 43 Pages, 13 Figure

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

Assisted Interaction for Improving Web Accessibility: An Approach Driven and Tested by Userswith Disabilities

148 p.Un porcentaje cada vez mayor de la población mundial depende de la Web para trabajar, socializar, opara informarse entre otras muchas actividades. Los beneficios de la Web son todavía más cruciales paralas personas con discapacidades ya que les permite realizar un sinfín de tareas que en el mundo físico lesestán restringidas debido distintas barreras de accesibilidad. A pesar de sus ventajas, la mayoría depáginas web suelen ignoran las necesidades especiales de las personas con discapacidad, e incluyen undiseño único para todos los usuarios. Existen diversos métodos para combatir este problema, como porejemplo los sistemas de ¿transcoding¿, que transforman automáticamente páginas web inaccesibles enaccesibles. Para mejorar la accesibilidad web a grupos específicos de personas, estos métodos requiereninformación sobre las técnicas de adaptación más adecuadas que deben aplicarse.En esta tesis se han realizado una serie de estudios sobre la idoneidad de diversas técnicas de adaptaciónpara mejorar la navegación web para dos grupos diferentes de personas con discapacidad: personas conmovilidad reducida en miembros superiores y personas con baja visión. Basado en revisionesbibliográficas y estudios observacionales, se han desarrollado diferentes adaptaciones de interfaces web ytécnicas alternativas de interacción, que posteriormente han sido evaluadas a lo largo de varios estudioscon usuarios con necesidades especiales. Mediante análisis cualitativos y cuantitativos del rendimiento yla satisfacción de los participantes, se han evaluado diversas adaptaciones de interfaz y métodosalternativos de interacción. Los resultados han demostrado que las técnicas probadas mejoran el acceso ala Web y que los beneficios varían según la tecnología asistiva usada para acceder al ordenador

Robot mediated communication: Enhancing tele-presence using an avatar

In the past few years there has been a lot of development in the field of tele-presence. These developments have caused tele-presence technologies to become easily accessible and also for the experience to be enhanced. Since tele-presence is not only used for tele-presence assisted group meetings but also in some forms of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), these activities have also been facilitated. One of the lingering issues has to do with how to properly transmit presence of non-co-located members to the rest of the group. Using current commercially available tele-presence technology it is possible to exhibit a limited level of social presence but no physical presence. In order to cater for this lack of presence a system is implemented here using tele-operated robots as avatars for remote team members and had its efficacy tested. This testing includes both the level of presence that can be exhibited by robot avatars but also how the efficacy of these robots for this task changes depending on the morphology of the robot. Using different types of robots, a humanoid robot and an industrial robot arm, as tele-presence avatars, it is found that the humanoid robot using an appropriate control system is better at exhibiting a social presence. Further, when compared to a voice only scenario, both robots proved significantly better than with only voice in terms of both cooperative task solving and social presence. These results indicate that using an appropriate control system, a humanoid robot can be better than an industrial robot in these types of tasks and the validity of aiming for a humanoid design behaving in a human-like way in order to emulate social interactions that are closer to human norms. This has implications for the design of autonomous socially interactive robot systems

A Utility Framework for Selecting Immersive Interactive Capability and Technology for Virtual Laboratories

There has been an increase in the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in the education community since VR is emerging as a potent educational tool that offers students with a rich source of educational material and makes learning exciting and interactive. With a rise of popularity and market expansion in VR technology in the past few years, a variety of consumer VR electronics have boosted educators and researchers’ interest in using these devices for practicing engineering and science laboratory experiments. However, little is known about how such devices may be well-suited for active learning in a laboratory environment. This research aims to address this gap by formulating a utility framework to help educators and decision-makers efficiently select a type of VR device that matches with their design and capability requirements for their virtual laboratory blueprint. Furthermore, a framework use case is demonstrated by not only surveying five types of VR devices ranging from low-immersive to full-immersive along with their capabilities (i.e., hardware specifications, cost, and availability) but also considering the interaction techniques in each VR device based on the desired laboratory task. To validate the framework, a research study is carried out to compare these five VR devices and investigate which device can provide an overall best-fit for a 3D virtual laboratory content that we implemented based on the interaction level, usability and performance effectiveness

Remote presence: supporting deictic gestures through a handheld multi-touch device

This thesis argues on the possibility of supporting deictic gestures through handheld multi-touch devices in remote presentation scenarios. In [1], Clark distinguishes indicative techniques of placing-for and directing-to, where placing-for refers to placing a referent into the addressee’s attention, and directing-to refers to directing the addressee’s attention towards a referent. Keynote, PowerPoint, FuzeMeeting and others support placing-for efficiently with slide transitions, and animations, but support limited to none directing-to. The traditional “pointing feature” present in some presentation tools comes as a virtual laser pointer or mouse cursor. [12, 13] have shown that the mouse cursor and laser pointer offer very little informational expressiveness and do not do justice to human communicative gestures. In this project, a prototype application was implemented for the iPad in order to explore, develop, and test the concept of pointing in remote presentations. The prototype offers visualizing and navigating the slides as well as “pointing” and zooming. To further investigate the problem and possible solutions, a theoretical framework was designed representing the relationships between the presenter’s intention and gesture and the resulting visual effect (cursor) that enables the audience members to interpret the meaning of the effect and the presenter’s intention. Two studies were performed to investigate people’s appreciation of different ways of presenting remotely. An initial qualitative study was performed at The Hague, followed by an online quantitative user experiment. The results indicate that subjects found pointing to be helpful in understanding and concentrating, while the detached video feed of the presenter was considered to be distracting. The positive qualities of having the video feed were the emotion and social presence that it adds to the presentations. For a number of subjects, pointing displayed some of the same social and personal qualities [2] that video affords, while less intensified. The combination of pointing and video proved to be successful with 10-out-of-19 subjects scoring it the highest while pointing example came at a close 8-out-of-19. Video was the least preferred with only one subject preferring it. We suggest that the research performed here could provide a basis for future research and possibly be applied in a variety of distributed collaborative settings.Universidade da Madeira - Madeira Interactive Technologies Institut

Effects of Local Latency on Games

Video games are a major type of entertainment for millions of people, and feature a wide variety genres. Many genres of video games require quick reactions, and in these games it is critical for player performance and player experience that the game is responsive. One of the major contributing factors that can make games less responsive is local latency — the total delay between input and a resulting change to the screen. Local latency is produced by a combination of delays from input devices, software processing, and displays. Due to latency, game companies spend considerable time and money play-testing their games to ensure the game is both responsive and that the in-game difficulty is reasonable. Past studies have made it clear that local latency negatively affects both player performance and experience, but there is still little knowledge about local latency’s exact effects on games. In this thesis, we address this problem by providing game designers with more knowledge about local latency’s effects. First, we performed a study to examine latency’s effects on performance and experience for popular pointing input devices used with games. Our results show significant differences between devices based on the task and the amount of latency. We then provide design guidelines based on our findings. Second, we performed a study to understand latency’s effects on ‘atoms’ of interaction in games. The study varied both latency and game speed, and found game speed to affect a task’s sensitivity to latency. Third, we used our findings to build a model to help designers quickly identify latency-sensitive game atoms, thus saving time during play-testing. We built and validated a model that predicts errors rates in a game atom based on latency and game speed. Our work helps game designers by providing new insight into latency’s varied effects and by modelling and predicting those effect