23,842 research outputs found
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
An Immersive Telepresence System using RGB-D Sensors and Head Mounted Display
We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each
other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal
communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online
conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be
particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and
interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose
recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and
manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the
instructor to ef- fectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex
concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The highly
interactive and flexible environment can capture and sustain more student
attention than the traditional classroom setting and, thus, delivers a
compelling experience to the students. Our main focus here is to investigate
possible solutions for the system design and implementation and devise
strategies for fast, efficient computation suitable for visual data processing
and network transmission. We describe the technique and experiments in details
and provide quantitative performance results, demonstrating our system can be
run comfortably and reliably for different application scenarios. Our
preliminary results are promising and demonstrate the potential for more
compelling directions in cyberlearning.Comment: IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia 201
An Introduction to 3D User Interface Design
3D user interface design is a critical component of any virtual environment (VE) application. In this paper, we present a broad overview of three-dimensional (3D) interaction and user interfaces. We discuss the effect of common VE hardware devices on user interaction, as well as interaction techniques for generic 3D tasks and the use of traditional two-dimensional interaction styles in 3D environments. We divide most user interaction tasks into three categories: navigation, selection/manipulation, and system control. Throughout the paper, our focus is on presenting not only the available techniques, but also practical guidelines for 3D interaction design and widely held myths. Finally, we briefly discuss two approaches to 3D interaction design, and some example applications with complex 3D interaction requirements. We also present an annotated online bibliography as a reference companion to this article
Bringing tabletop technologies to kindergarten children
Taking computer technology away from the desktop and into a more physical, manipulative space, is known that provide many benefits and is generally considered to result in a system that is easier to learn and more natural to use. This paper describes a design solution that allows kindergarten children to take the benefits of the new pedagogical possibilities that tangible interaction and tabletop technologies offer for manipulative learning. After analysis of children's cognitive and psychomotor skills, we have designed and tuned a prototype game that is suitable for children aged 3 to 4 years old. Our prototype uniquely combines low cost tangible interaction and tabletop technology with tutored learning. The design has been based on the observation of children using the technology, letting them freely play with the application during three play sessions. These observational sessions informed the design decisions for the game whilst also confirming the children's enjoyment of the prototype
Prop-Based Haptic Interaction with Co-location and Immersion: an Automotive Application
Most research on 3D user interfaces aims at providing only a single sensory
modality. One challenge is to integrate several sensory modalities into a
seamless system while preserving each modality's immersion and performance
factors. This paper concerns manipulation tasks and proposes a visuo-haptic
system integrating immersive visualization, tactile force and tactile feedback
with co-location. An industrial application is presented
Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions
In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research
Design and Evaluation of Menu Systems for Immersive Virtual Environments
Interfaces for system control tasks in virtual environments (VEs) have not been extensively studied. This paper focuses on various types of menu systems to be used in such environments. We describe the design of the TULIP menu, a menu system using Pinch Gloves™, and compare it to two common alternatives: floating menus and pen and tablet menus. These three menus were compared in an empirical evaluation. The pen and tablet menu was found to be significantly faster, while users had a preference for TULIP. Subjective discomfort levels were also higher with the floating menus and pen and tablet
A new method for interacting with multi-window applications on large, high resolution displays
Physically large display walls can now be constructed using off-the-shelf computer hardware. The high resolution
of these displays (e.g., 50 million pixels) means that a large quantity of data can be presented to users, so the
displays are well suited to visualization applications. However, current methods of interacting with display walls
are somewhat time consuming. We have analyzed how users solve real visualization problems using three desktop
applications (XmdvTool, Iris Explorer and Arc View), and used a new taxonomy to classify users’ actions and
illustrate the deficiencies of current display wall interaction methods. Following this we designed a novel methodfor interacting with display walls, which aims to let users interact as quickly as when a visualization application is used on a desktop system. Informal feedback gathered from our working prototype shows that interaction is both fast and fluid
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