Resonating Experiences of Self and Others enabled by a Tangible Somaesthetic Design

Digitalization is penetrating every aspect of everyday life including a human's heart beating, which can easily be sensed by wearable sensors and displayed for others to see, feel, and potentially "bodily resonate" with. Previous work in studying human interactions and interaction designs with physiological data, such as a heart's pulse rate, have argued that feeding it back to the users may, for example support users' mindfulness and self-awareness during various everyday activities and ultimately support their wellbeing. Inspired by Somaesthetics as a discipline, which focuses on an appreciation of the living body's role in all our experiences, we designed and explored mobile tangible heart beat displays, which enable rich forms of bodily experiencing oneself and others in social proximity. In this paper, we first report on the design process of tangible heart displays and then present results of a field study with 30 pairs of participants. Participants were asked to use the tangible heart displays during watching movies together and report their experience in three different heart display conditions (i.e., displaying their own heart beat, their partner's heart beat, and watching a movie without a heart display). We found, for example that participants reported significant effects in experiencing sensory immersion when they felt their own heart beats compared to the condition without any heart beat display, and that feeling their partner's heart beats resulted in significant effects on social experience. We refer to resonance theory to discuss the results, highlighting the potential of how ubiquitous technology could utilize physiological data to provide resonance in a modern society facing social acceleration.Comment: 18 page

Real-Time personalized stress detection from physiological signals

This is the era of modern life. The era of email, text messages, Facebook and Twitter, careers Crisis news coming from everywhere at any time. We (human) are assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour all posing as information. We text while we’re walking across the street, catch up on email while standing in a queue. When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. It has been found to increase the production of the stress that results overstimulate brains and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. However, stress management should start far before the stress start causing illnesses. In this paper, a real-time personalized stress detection system from physiological signals is introduced. It is based on Pulse rate and temperature. That could record a person’s stress levels

Fish tracking technology development. Phase 1 project definition desk study

The document reports on Phase 1 of a definition study to appraise the options to develop fish tracking equipment, in particular tags and data logging systems in order to improve the efficiency of the Environment Agency's tracking studies and to obtain a greater understanding of fish biology. Covered in this report are radio telemetry, audio telemetry, High Resolution Position Fixing, data storage and archival tags and other fish tracking systems such as biosonics

Android Controlled Smart Wheelchair for Disabilities

This paper describes a control technology of wheelchair which may feel more flexible than traditional joystick controlled one. The main objective of our research is to develop new control architecture for a motorized wheelchair as well as an embedded system for monitoring critical patients. Such a smart wheelchair is designed for the disabled people in the developing countries as it will be very low-cost than existing others. Controlling is possible by android operated mobile or tab. In addition to button control, motion sensor controlling mechanism also has implemented. Moreover, bio-metric features have made wheelchair more suitable for critical patients. If the patient is in hostile condition, the wheelchair will produce an alert by raising the alarm with the measurement of the heartbeat at a particular interval

Fun weight

Treball desenvolupat dins el marc del programa 'European Project Semester' i l'"International Design Project Semester".The main objective of the Fun Weight project was to decrease the level of anxiety from children during preoperative treatment, while the gathering of measurements essential for further hospitalization takes place. This assignment has been conducted by an international and multidisciplinary team whose members were from fields of: Product Design, Electronics and Information Communication Technologies, Mechanical Engineering and Information Technology. The project was interesting and constructive due to tight cooperation with the Hospital de Sant Joan de Deu in Barcelona which was the main stakeholder of this project. Methodology of the project consisted of in advance strictly defined steps, which were: researching, designing of the interactive game, designing/development of the application, prototyping of the application, prototyping of the interactive game and testing. However the development of the interactive game and the application have been performed simultaneously. The outcome of this project has reached its end at the 17th of June and concluded following three elements: electronical prototype of the interactive game, three dimensional model of the game and the mobile application for retrieving measurements and communicating with the interactive game. The stage of testing was divided into three independent sections: testing of the application usability, testing of the application functionality and evaluation of actual anxiety decreasing. As a result of application usability test, an average rate of ease of the interface has been obtained at the level of 2 what states for easy to use. Functionality tests have been performed with application of the Angel Sensor in function of the measuring device. In spite of problems encountered during the use of that sensor, basic functionalities of the application have been confirmed. Due to the shortage of the time, evaluation of decrease of anxiety level has not yet been conducted

Smart technologies and beyond: exploring how a smart band can assist in monitoring children’s independent mobility & well-being

The problem which is being investigated through this thesis is not having a device(s) or method(s) which are appropriate for monitoring a child’s vital and tracking a child’s location. This aspect is being explored by other researchers which are yet to find a viable solution. This work focuses on providing a solution that would consider using the Internet of Things for measuring and improving children’s health. Additionally, the focus of this research is on the use of technology for health and the needs of parents who are concerned about their child’s physical health and well-being. This work also provides an insight into how technology is used during the pandemic. This thesis will be based on a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research, which will have been used to review the following areas covering key aspects and focuses of this study which are (i) Children’s Independent Mobility (ii) Physical activity for children (iii) Emotions of a child (iv) Smart Technologies and (v) Children’s smart wearables. This will allow a review of the problem in detail and how technology can help the health sector, especially for children. The deliverable of this study is to recommend a suitable smart band device that enables location tracking of the child, activity tracking as well as monitoring the health and wellbeing of the child. The research also includes an element of practical research in the form of (i) Surveys, the use of smart technology and a perspective on the solution from parents. (ii) Focus group, in the form of a survey allowing opinions and collection of information on the child and what the parents think of smart technology and how it could potentially help with their fears. (iii) Observation, which allows the collection of data from children who were given six activities to conduct while wearing the Fitbit Charge HR. The information gained from these elements will help provide guidelines for a proposed solution. In this thesis, there are three frameworks which are about (i) Research process for this study (ii) Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are findings from the literature review and (iii) Proposed framework for the solution, all three combined frameworks can help health professionals and many parents who want an efficient and reliable device, also deployment of technologies used in the health industry for children in support of independent mobility. Current frameworks have some considerations within the technology and medical field but were not up to date with the latest elements such as parents fears within today’s world and the advanced features of technology

Physiopad: development of a non-invasive game controller toolkit to study physiological responses for Game User Research

Os jogos afectivos usam as respostas fisiológicas do jogador para criar um ambiente adequado ao estado emocional do utilizador. A investigação destes jogos tem sido explorada nos últimos anos. Estas experiências, contudo, ainda requerem sistemas complexos e difíceis de utilizar. Nesta dissertação, é proposta a construção de um dispositivo capaz de ler dados fisiológicos de forma não invasiva e que seja de fácil utilização. Este aparelho faz a leitura do ritmo cardíaco e dos níveis de excitação do jogador, além disso foi criado um software para interligar com o dispositivo. Utilizando um comando da PlayStation 3 e um BITalino, o dispositivo é capaz de fazer a aquisição do sinal PPG e sinal EDA durante o jogo. O software analisa os sinais do comando, calcula o ritmo cardíaco e mede os níveis de excitação em tempo real. Foi realizada uma experiência utilizando biofeedback positivo e negativo, com o objectivo de testar a integração entre o software e o hardware. Não será no imediato que os dispositivos deste género sejam disponibilizados comercialmente. Os resultados são, no entanto, promissores. O cálculo do ritmo cardíaco em tempo real tem apenas uma diferença de 5 batimentos por minuto em relação ao ritmo cardíaco real do jogador. Apesar de os testes com o EDA serem inconclusivos, pode-se verificar que foi possível construir um sistema para ler os dados fisiológicos sendo mais económico do que os seus pares, sem comprometer a fiabilidade dos dados.Affective games are a genre of games that use the physiological responses from the player to adapt the gameplay to a more enjoyable emotional state and experience. Physiological responses and affective games have been studied vastly over the years. However, the setups used in these interventions are very intrusive and are complex to set up. In this project, it is purposed to build a non-invasive and easy-to-set-up toolkit that records physiological data. This toolkit records the player's heart rate and arousal levels and was decomposed into software and hardware. Using a PS3 game controller replica and a BITalino, a physiological game controller which can record heart rate and arousal during gameplay was built. The software interfaces with the gamepad, processes the physiological signals and sends this information to the game. An experiment with a positive biofeedback condition and negative biofeedback condition was conducted. This experiment showed that even though more work must be done until these type of devices could be commercially available, the results are promising. This toolkit’s heart rate values, when compared with other more traditional acquisition devices, were very similar, being on average only 5 BMP lower than the actual heart rate, proving that is possible to build more affordable non-invasive physiological hardware without compromising the signal's accuracy

Innovative Developments in HCI and Future Trends

The recent developments in technology have made noteworthy positive impacts on the human computer interaction (HCI). It is now possible to interact with computers using voice commands, touchscreen, eye movement etc. This paper compiles some of the innovative HCI progresses in the modern desktop and mobile computing and identifies some future research directions