Design Space and Usability of Earable Prototyping

Earable computing gains growing attention within research and becomes ubiquitous in society. However, there is an emerging need for prototyping devices as critical drivers of innovation. In our work, we reviewed the features of existing earable platforms. Based on 24 publications, we characterized the design space of earable prototyping. We used the open eSense platform (6-axis IMU, auditory I/O) to evaluate the problem-based learning usability of non-experts. We collected data from 79 undergraduate students who developed 39 projects. Our questionnaire-based results suggest that the platform creates interest in the subject matter and supports self-directed learning. The projects align with the research space, indicating ease of use, but lack contributions for more challenging topics. Additionally, many projects included games not present in current research. The average SUS score of the platform was 67.0. The majority of problems are technical issues (e.g., connecting, playing music)

ERICA: Enabling real-time mistake detection and corrective feedback for free-weights exercises

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Exploring Uni-manual Around Ear Off-Device Gestures for Earables

Small form factor limits physical input space in earable (i.e., ear-mounted wearable) devices. Off-device earable inputs in alternate mid-air and on-skin around-ear interaction spaces using uni-manual gestures can address this input space limitation. Segmenting these alternate interaction spaces to create multiple gesture regions for reusing off-device gestures can expand earable input vocabulary by a large margin. Although prior earable interaction research has explored off-device gesture preferences and recognition techniques in such interaction spaces, supporting gesture reuse over multiple gesture regions needs further exploration. We collected and analyzed 7560 uni-manual gesture motion data from 18 participants to explore earable gesture reuse by segmentation of on-skin and mid-air spaces around the ear. Our results show that gesture performance degrades significantly beyond 3 mid-air and 5 on-skin around-ear gesture regions for different uni-manual gesture classes (e.g., swipe, pinch, tap). We also present qualitative findings on most and least preferred regions (and associated boundaries) by end-users for different uni-manual gesture shapes across both interaction spaces for earable devices. Our results complement earlier elicitation studies and interaction technologies for earables to help expand the gestural input vocabulary and potentially drive future commercialization of such devices.Comment: 30 pages, 15 figures, to be published in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, Volume 8, Issue 1 (March 2024

Real-time head movement tracking through earables in moving vehicles

Abstract. The Internet of Things is enabling innovations in the automotive industry by expanding the capabilities of vehicles by connecting them with the cloud. One important application domain is traffic safety, which can benefit from monitoring the driver’s condition to see if they are capable of safely handling the vehicle. By detecting drowsiness, inattentiveness, and distraction of the driver it is possible to react before accidents happen. This thesis explores how accelerometer and gyroscope data collected using earables can be used to classify the orientation of the driver’s head in a moving vehicle. It is found that machine learning algorithms such as Random Forest and K-Nearest Neighbor can be used to reach fairly accurate classifications even without applying any noise reduction to the signal data. Data cleaning and transformation approaches are studied to see how the models could be improved further. This study paves the way for the development of driver monitoring systems capable of reacting to anomalous driving behavior before traffic accidents can happen