4,480 research outputs found
Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics
Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as âcomputing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotionsâ. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field
Wearable Haptic Devices for Gait Re-education by Rhythmic Haptic Cueing
This research explores the development and evaluation of wearable haptic devices for gait sensing and rhythmic haptic cueing in the context of gait re-education for people with neurological and neurodegenerative conditions. Many people with long-term neurological and neurodegenerative conditions such as Stroke, Brain Injury, Multiple Sclerosis or Parkinsonâs disease suffer from impaired walking gait pattern. Gait improvement can lead to better fluidity in walking, improved health outcomes, greater independence, and enhanced quality of life. Existing lab-based studies with wearable devices have shown that rhythmic haptic cueing can cause immediate improvements to gait features such as temporal symmetry, stride length, and walking speed. However, current wearable systems are unsuitable for self-managed use for in-the-wild applications with people having such conditions. This work aims to investigate the research question of how wearable haptic devices can help in long-term gait re-education using rhythmic haptic cueing. A longitudinal pilot study has been conducted with a brain trauma survivor, providing rhythmic haptic cueing using a wearable haptic device as a therapeutic intervention for a two-week period. Preliminary results comparing pre and post-intervention gait measurements have shown improvements in walking speed, temporal asymmetry, and stride length. The pilot study has raised an array of issues that require further study. This work aims to develop and evaluate prototype systems through an iterative design process to make possible the self-managed use of such devices in-the-wild. These systems will directly provide therapeutic intervention for gait re-education, offer enhanced information for therapists, remotely monitor dosage adherence and inform treatment and prognoses over the long-term. This research will evaluate the use of technology from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including clinicians, carers and patients. This work has the potential to impact clinical practice nationwide and worldwide in neuro-physiotherapy
M-health review: joining up healthcare in a wireless world
In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver health and social care. This trend is bound to continue as providers (whether public or private) strive to deliver better care to more people under conditions of severe budgetary constraint
Animal-Computer Interaction: the emergence of a discipline
In this editorial to the IJHCS Special Issue on Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in this emerging field, outlining the main scientific interests of its developing community, in a broader cultural context of evolving human-animal relations. We summarise the core aims proposed for the development of ACI as a discipline, discussing the challenges these pose and how ACI researchers are trying to address them. We then introduce the contributions to the Special Issue, showing how they illustrate some of the key issues that characterise the current state-of-the-art in ACI, and finally reflect on how the journey ahead towards developing an ACI discipline could be undertaken
Challenges of Multi-Factor Authentication for Securing Advanced IoT (A-IoT) Applications
The unprecedented proliferation of smart devices together with novel
communication, computing, and control technologies have paved the way for the
Advanced Internet of Things~(A-IoT). This development involves new categories
of capable devices, such as high-end wearables, smart vehicles, and consumer
drones aiming to enable efficient and collaborative utilization within the
Smart City paradigm. While massive deployments of these objects may enrich
people's lives, unauthorized access to the said equipment is potentially
dangerous. Hence, highly-secure human authentication mechanisms have to be
designed. At the same time, human beings desire comfortable interaction with
their owned devices on a daily basis, thus demanding the authentication
procedures to be seamless and user-friendly, mindful of the contemporary urban
dynamics. In response to these unique challenges, this work advocates for the
adoption of multi-factor authentication for A-IoT, such that multiple
heterogeneous methods - both well-established and emerging - are combined
intelligently to grant or deny access reliably. We thus discuss the pros and
cons of various solutions as well as introduce tools to combine the
authentication factors, with an emphasis on challenging Smart City
environments. We finally outline the open questions to shape future research
efforts in this emerging field.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. The work has been accepted for
publication in IEEE Network, 2019. Copyright may be transferred without
notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl
Connecting Couples in Long-Distance Relationships : Towards Unconventional Computer-Mediated Emotional Communication Systems
The number of couples who find themselves in a long-distance relationship (LDR) is increasing for a wide range of reasons, such as overseas employment, academic pursuits, military duty, and similar circumstances. With the myriad of communication channels enabled by the low cost and ubiquity of computer-mediated communication technologies, couples in LDRs are able to stay in touch with each other around the globe. However, recent studies have revealed that the mainstream communication tools are inadequate to support the full spectrum of communication needed in intimate relationships. Emotional communication is one of the fundamental needs in close relationships, as it forms an important part of intimacy. This dissertation argues that there is a gap between what is known about LDR couplesâ needs in research and what has been implemented for them in practice. The aim of this work is to bridge this gap by mediating emotional communication through unconventional user interfaces that use interaction solutions outside of the scope of their conventional use, with a particular focus on couples who sustain a committed LDR.
Here, taking research through design as a core approach, a variety of qualitative methods were employed to seek answers to the research questions. This dissertation includes eight case studies, each of which is dedicated to answering its corresponding research question(s). Study I presents a systematic literature review which explored the current state of the art and identified the design opportunities. Study II introduces a series of co-design activities with five couples in LDRs to reveal the needs and challenges of users in an LDR. Studies III and IV propose two functional prototypes for unconventional communication systems to connect couples in LDRs. Study V showcases 12 design concepts of wearables created by the participants to support their own LDR. Study VI describes how four low-resolution prototypes created for mediating LDRs by the participants in the workshop would be used in real-world contexts. Studies VII and VIII each present a novel design tool to be used as a scaffold when designing communication systems for supporting LDRs: specifically, a conceptual design framework and a card-based design toolkit.
This dissertation contributes new knowledge to the field of human-computer interaction through design interventions. It showcases a spectrum of practices which can be seen as a first step towards mediating emotional communication for couples in LDRs using unconventional communication systems. The findings comprise theoretical and empirical insightsâderived from the eight case studies in which the author identified design opportunities and design considerationsârelating to how couples in LDRs can be better supported by unconventional computer-mediated emotional communication systems
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