189 research outputs found
PhysioKit: An Open-Source, Low-Cost Physiological Computing Toolkit for Single- and Multi-User Studies
The proliferation of physiological sensors opens new opportunities to explore interactions, conduct experiments and evaluate the user experience with continuous monitoring of bodily functions. Commercial devices, however, can be costly or limit access to raw waveform data, while low-cost sensors are efforts-intensive to setup. To address these challenges, we introduce PhysioKit, an open-source, low-cost physiological computing toolkit. PhysioKit provides a one-stop pipeline consisting of (i) a sensing and data acquisition layer that can be configured in a modular manner per research needs, and (ii) a software application layer that enables data acquisition, real-time visualization and machine learning (ML)-enabled signal quality assessment. This also supports basic visual biofeedback configurations and synchronized acquisition for co-located or remote multi-user settings. In a validation study with 16 participants, PhysioKit shows strong agreement with research-grade sensors on measuring heart rate and heart rate variability metrics data. Furthermore, we report usability survey results from 10 small-project teams (44 individual members in total) who used PhysioKit for 4–6 weeks, providing insights into its use cases and research benefits. Lastly, we discuss the extensibility and potential impact of the toolkit on the research community
Feeling the Temperature of the Room: Unobtrusive Thermal Display of Engagement during Group Communication
Thermal signals have been explored in HCI for emotion-elicitation and
enhancing two-person communication, showing that temperature invokes social and
emotional signals in individuals. Yet, extending these findings to group
communication is missing. We investigated how thermal signals can be used to
communicate group affective states in a hybrid meeting scenario to help people
feel connected over a distance. We conducted a lab study (N=20 participants)
and explored wrist-worn thermal feedback to communicate audience emotions. Our
results show that thermal feedback is an effective method of conveying audience
engagement without increasing workload and can help a presenter feel more in
tune with the audience. We outline design implications for real-world wearable
social thermal feedback systems for both virtual and in-person communication
that support group affect communication and social connectedness. Thermal
feedback has the potential to connect people across distances and facilitate
more effective and dynamic communication in multiple contexts.Comment: In IMWUT 202
Game AI revisited
More than a decade after the early research efforts on the
use of artificial intelligence (AI) in computer games and the
establishment of a new AI domain the term “game AI” needs
to be redefined. Traditionally, the tasks associated with
game AI revolved around non player character (NPC) behavior at different levels of control, varying from navigation
and pathfinding to decision making. Commercial-standard
games developed over the last 15 years and current game
productions, however, suggest that the traditional challenges
of game AI have been well addressed via the use of sophisticated AI approaches, not necessarily following or inspired
by advances in academic practices. The marginal penetration of traditional academic game AI methods in industrial
productions has been mainly due to the lack of constructive communication between academia and industry in the
early days of academic game AI, and the inability of academic game AI to propose methods that would significantly
advance existing development processes or provide scalable
solutions to real world problems. Recently, however, there
has been a shift of research focus as the current plethora
of AI uses in games is breaking the non-player character AI
tradition. A number of those alternative AI uses have already shown a significant potential for the design of better
games.
This paper presents four key game AI research areas that
are currently reshaping the research roadmap in the game
AI field and evidently put the game AI term under a new
perspective. These game AI flagship research areas include
the computational modeling of player experience, the procedural generation of content, the mining of player data on
massive-scale and the alternative AI research foci for enhancing NPC capabilities.peer-reviewe
Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbilTS) framework : a solution for building complex multimodal data capture and interactive systems
Contemporary Data Capture and Interactive Systems (DCIS) systems are tied in with various
technical complexities such as multimodal data types, diverse hardware and software
components, time synchronisation issues and distributed deployment configurations. Building
these systems is inherently difficult and requires addressing of these complexities before the
intended and purposeful functionalities can be attained. The technical issues are often
common and similar among diverse applications.
This thesis presents the Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbiITS)
framework, a generic solution to address the technical complexities in building DCISs. The
proposed solution is an abstract software framework that can be extended and customised to
any application requirements. UbiITS includes all fundamental software components,
techniques, system level layer abstractions and reference architecture as a collection to enable
the systematic construction of complex DCISs.
This work details four case studies to showcase the versatility and extensibility of UbiITS
framework’s functionalities and demonstrate how it was employed to successfully solve a
range of technical requirements. In each case UbiITS operated as the core element of each
application. Additionally, these case studies are novel systems by themselves in each of their
domains. Longstanding technical issues such as flexibly integrating and interoperating
multimodal tools, precise time synchronisation, etc., were resolved in each application by
employing UbiITS. The framework enabled establishing a functional system infrastructure in
these cases, essentially opening up new lines of research in each discipline where these
research approaches would not have been possible without the infrastructure provided by the
framework. The thesis further presents a sample implementation of the framework on a
device firmware exhibiting its capability to be directly implemented on a hardware platform.
Summary metrics are also produced to establish the complexity, reusability, extendibility,
implementation and maintainability characteristics of the framework.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grants - EP/F02553X/1, 114433 and 11394
Design and Development of a Real-Time Bio-Sensing System Assessing Student Mental Workload and Engagement
Ο εντοπισμός του επακριβούς επιπέδου προσήλωσης και εμπλοκής των μαθητών με το περιεχόμενο διδασκαλίας στην τάξη είναι ένας από τους πιο μεγαλεπήβολους στόχους των ερευνητών της εκπαιδευτικής και επιστημονικής κοινότητας. (Lang, 1995, Grossberg, 1987).
Σχετικές διεπιστημονικές ερευνητικές προσπάθειες προσαύξησης ενδιαφέροντος και εντοπισμού της αποτελεσματικότητας των διδακτικών πρακτικών βασίζονται σε τυπικές μελέτες από τον χώρο της ψυχολογίας, της παιδαγωγικής, της παιδοψυχολογίας και της ψυχοφυσιολογίας. Νέες τεχνολογίες έχουν εισάγει διαγνωστικές συσκευές δανεισμένες από τον χώρο της ιατρικής με σκοπό να εκμεταλλευτούν τις δυνατότητες μετρήσεων βιολογικών σημάτων τα οποία αποτελούν επιβεβαιωμένες εκφράσεις ψυχοφυσιολογικών καταστάσεων οι οποίες μπορούν να μεταφραστούν σε εκδηλώσεις διέγερσης και διάθεσης. Οι ιατρικές συσκευές απαιτούν εργαστηριακό περιβάλλον λόγω των αναγκών χρήσης ηλεκτροδίων, κινητικών περιορισμών, συγχρονισμού και ομοιομορφίας των στοιχείων που προκύπτουν και γι’ αυτό τον λόγο δεν μπόρεσαν ποτέ να αποδόσουν μια προσιτή λύση εφαρμόσιμη ευρύτερα σε εκπαιδευτικό περιβάλλον. Στην παρούσα μελέτη, αναλύονται οι επιδόσεις μιας ειδικά κατασκευασμένης ηλεκτρονικής συσκευής, σχεδιασμένης ώστε να εξεταστούν οι δυνατότητες να εξαχθούν δείκτες ψυχοσωματικών εκφράσεων του χρήστη, με την δυνατότητα να χρησιμοποιείται εύχρηστα στην τάξη χωρίς ηλεκτρόδια και επηρεασμούς από προσαρτήσεις. Το ολοκληρωμένο σύστημα μέτρησης και αποτύπωσης συμπερασμάτων είναι βασισμένο σε μοντελοποίηση συμπεριφορών αλλαγής του καρδιακού παλμού και της ειδικής διηλεκτρικής αγωγιμότητας του δέρματος σε πραγματικό χρόνο. Η συσκευή χρησιμοποιεί οπτικούς και διηλεκτρικούς αισθητήρες επαφής και έχει μελετηθεί σε αντιπαραβολή με διαβαθμισμένα περιβάλλοντα προκλητών καταστάσεων νοητικής φόρτισης. Σειρές πειραματικών διαδικασιών εφαρμοσμένες σε διαβαθμισμένα σενάρια πρόκλησης ψυχοσωματικών διεγέρσεων έχουν ολοκληρωθεί για επικύρωση, μελέτη επιδόσεων και λειτουργία του συστήματος ακόμη και σε σύγκριση με εμπορικό προϊόν. Πειραματικά αποτελέσματα δείχνουν αξιόλογους συσχετισμούς του μοντέλου και των επιδόσεων του συστήματος με τις αναμενόμενες αποκρίσεις με ενθαρρυντικά ποσοστά ακρίβειας.Facing the challenge of improving adaptive interaction in educational technologies scientists and educators have turned their focal point in diverse areas ranging from educational, teaching and behavioural psychology to cognitive, affective and perceptual neuroscience. The introduction of digital technologies and interactive media tools in education has shown improved learning efficiency, much higher memory activation and assimilation than verbal teaching, notably due to enhancing motivation achieved by employing approaches attracting student’s attention. Excelling aspects of audio visual presentation proved highly valuable particularly in classes with multi ethnic groups of students, as for example consistency between definitions and objects which were verbally and visually defined, eliminating possible misconceptions caused by mishearing or misinterpretation by the learner.
Taking it all one step further as to how an educational system could be even more efficient, a new element would be needed revealing a credible judgment of learning scores and effectiveness of the learning process instantaneously as for example inner levels of activation and satisfaction. In fact, this could be made possible using existing technologies if subconscious neurophysiological responses of a learner could be ascertained and inferred to psycho-somatic conditions as they occur. A system including bio-sensing, data analysis and processing in real time able to provide quantified markers of psychosomatic states of a learner would help enormously in next generations of educational practice. Incorporating data of student engagement and active involvement could help to deduce the interest of a learner, which is known to improve sensitisation in implicit, incidental and also in classical learning. Experimental settings used in previous studies attempting to incorporate physiological responses and interpretations into responsive educational settings have faced major obstacles. Operational issues caused by the requirements of the devices used for the acquisition of physiological signals such as electrodes and movement restrictions have reduced the progress of such settings to laboratory environments. In such settings as described above, the effects of wiring harnesses and sensory components produced an additional psychological burden on the participants. Consequently, the need to approach the physiological data acquisition from a new angle with seamless and unnoticeable operation is apparent. The challenge to design, develop and validate a system that being minimally obstructive and literally unnoticed by the user would uncover combined subconscious expressions of a learner was the primary objective of this research. Physiological data of Heart Rate and Skin Trans-Conductance (Electro-dermal Response) elected as vitally important and highly appropriate to produce the input of data required to evaluate a behavioural concept model. The behavioural assessment model entailed vector classifiers producing directional interpretations of measurements. Directional information (Gradient response) has been derived by comparison of measurements to previously measured values in real time. Assessing the effectiveness and accuracy of the adopted model to deduce attention and engagement of a learner in real time formed the second major objective. For this purpose, a series of relevant experimental methodologies have been employed. Data produced using formal personality assessments have also been investigated in conjunction with those derived from physiological responses in order to identify personality related particularities. The final part of this work has been supplemented by propositions and suggestions with regards to various applications of the system in accomplishment of the initial aims
Toward Data-Driven Digital Therapeutics Analytics: Literature Review and Research Directions
With the advent of Digital Therapeutics (DTx), the development of software as
a medical device (SaMD) for mobile and wearable devices has gained significant
attention in recent years. Existing DTx evaluations, such as randomized
clinical trials, mostly focus on verifying the effectiveness of DTx products.
To acquire a deeper understanding of DTx engagement and behavioral adherence,
beyond efficacy, a large amount of contextual and interaction data from mobile
and wearable devices during field deployment would be required for analysis. In
this work, the overall flow of the data-driven DTx analytics is reviewed to
help researchers and practitioners to explore DTx datasets, to investigate
contextual patterns associated with DTx usage, and to establish the (causal)
relationship of DTx engagement and behavioral adherence. This review of the key
components of data-driven analytics provides novel research directions in the
analysis of mobile sensor and interaction datasets, which helps to iteratively
improve the receptivity of existing DTx.Comment: This paper has been accepted by the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica
Sinic
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION WITH PHYSIOLOGICAL SENSORS. THE AESTHETIC DOMAIN OF WEARABLES AND NEURAL NETWORKS
Historically, communication implies the transfer of information between bodies, yet this
phenomenon is constantly adapting to new technological and cultural standards. In a
digital context, it’s commonplace to envision systems that revolve around verbal modalities.
However, behavioural analysis grounded in psychology research calls attention to
the emotional information disclosed by non-verbal social cues, in particular, actions that
are involuntary. This notion has circulated heavily into various interdisciplinary computing
research fields, from which multiple studies have arisen, correlating non-verbal
activity to socio-affective inferences. These are often derived from some form of motion
capture and other wearable sensors, measuring the ‘invisible’ bioelectrical changes that
occur from inside the body.
This thesis proposes a motivation and methodology for using physiological sensory
data as an expressive resource for technology-mediated interactions. Initialised from a
thorough discussion on state-of-the-art technologies and established design principles
regarding this topic, then applied to a novel approach alongside a selection of practice
works to compliment this. We advocate for aesthetic experience, experimenting with
abstract representations. Atypically from prevailing Affective Computing systems, the
intention is not to infer or classify emotion but rather to create new opportunities for rich
gestural exchange, unconfined to the verbal domain.
Given the preliminary proposition of non-representation, we justify a correspondence
with modern Machine Learning and multimedia interaction strategies, applying an iterative,
human-centred approach to improve personalisation without the compromising
emotional potential of bodily gesture. Where related studies in the past have successfully
provoked strong design concepts through innovative fabrications, these are typically limited
to simple linear, one-to-one mappings and often neglect multi-user environments;
we foresee a vast potential. In our use cases, we adopt neural network architectures to
generate highly granular biofeedback from low-dimensional input data.
We present the following proof-of-concepts: Breathing Correspondence, a wearable
biofeedback system inspired by Somaesthetic design principles; Latent Steps, a real-time auto-encoder to represent bodily experiences from sensor data, designed for dance performance;
and Anti-Social Distancing Ensemble, an installation for public space interventions,
analysing physical distance to generate a collective soundscape. Key findings are
extracted from the individual reports to formulate an extensive technical and theoretical
framework around this topic. The projects first aim to embrace some alternative perspectives
already established within Affective Computing research. From here, these concepts
evolve deeper, bridging theories from contemporary creative and technical practices with
the advancement of biomedical technologies.Historicamente, os processos de comunicação implicam a transferência de informação
entre organismos, mas este fenómeno está constantemente a adaptar-se a novos padrões
tecnológicos e culturais. Num contexto digital, é comum encontrar sistemas que giram
em torno de modalidades verbais. Contudo, a análise comportamental fundamentada
na investigação psicológica chama a atenção para a informação emocional revelada por
sinais sociais não verbais, em particular, acções que são involuntárias. Esta noção circulou
fortemente em vários campos interdisciplinares de investigação na área das ciências da
computação, dos quais surgiram múltiplos estudos, correlacionando a actividade nãoverbal
com inferências sócio-afectivas. Estes são frequentemente derivados de alguma
forma de captura de movimento e sensores “wearable”, medindo as alterações bioeléctricas
“invisíveis” que ocorrem no interior do corpo.
Nesta tese, propomos uma motivação e metodologia para a utilização de dados sensoriais
fisiológicos como um recurso expressivo para interacções mediadas pela tecnologia.
Iniciada a partir de uma discussão aprofundada sobre tecnologias de ponta e princípios
de concepção estabelecidos relativamente a este tópico, depois aplicada a uma nova abordagem,
juntamente com uma selecção de trabalhos práticos, para complementar esta.
Defendemos a experiência estética, experimentando com representações abstractas. Contrariamente
aos sistemas de Computação Afectiva predominantes, a intenção não é inferir
ou classificar a emoção, mas sim criar novas oportunidades para uma rica troca gestual,
não confinada ao domínio verbal.
Dada a proposta preliminar de não representação, justificamos uma correspondência
com estratégias modernas de Machine Learning e interacção multimédia, aplicando uma
abordagem iterativa e centrada no ser humano para melhorar a personalização sem o
potencial emocional comprometedor do gesto corporal. Nos casos em que estudos anteriores
demonstraram com sucesso conceitos de design fortes através de fabricações
inovadoras, estes limitam-se tipicamente a simples mapeamentos lineares, um-para-um,
e muitas vezes negligenciam ambientes multi-utilizadores; com este trabalho, prevemos
um potencial alargado. Nos nossos casos de utilização, adoptamos arquitecturas de redes
neurais para gerar biofeedback altamente granular a partir de dados de entrada de baixa dimensão.
Apresentamos as seguintes provas de conceitos: Breathing Correspondence, um sistema
de biofeedback wearable inspirado nos princípios de design somaestético; Latent
Steps, um modelo autoencoder em tempo real para representar experiências corporais
a partir de dados de sensores, concebido para desempenho de dança; e Anti-Social Distancing
Ensemble, uma instalação para intervenções no espaço público, analisando a
distância física para gerar uma paisagem sonora colectiva. Os principais resultados são
extraídos dos relatórios individuais, para formular um quadro técnico e teórico alargado
para expandir sobre este tópico. Os projectos têm como primeiro objectivo abraçar algumas
perspectivas alternativas às que já estão estabelecidas no âmbito da investigação
da Computação Afectiva. A partir daqui, estes conceitos evoluem mais profundamente,
fazendo a ponte entre as teorias das práticas criativas e técnicas contemporâneas com o
avanço das tecnologias biomédicas
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