340 research outputs found

    Smart Wearables for Tennis Game Performance Analysis

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    For monitoring the progress of athletes in various sports and disciplines, several different approaches are nowadays available. Recently, miniature wearables have gained popularity for this task due to being lightweight and typically cheaper than other approaches. They can be positioned on the athlete’s body, or in some cases, the devices are incorporated into sports requisites, like tennis racquet handles, balls, baseball bats, gloves, etc. Their purpose is to monitor the performance of an athlete by gathering essential information during match or training. In this chapter, the focus will be on the different possibilities of tennis game monitoring analysis. A miniature wearable device, which is worn on a player’s wrist during the activity, is going to be presented and described. The smart wearable device monitors athletes’ arm movements with sampling the output of the 6 DOF IMU. Parallel to that, it also gathers biometric information like pulse rate and skin temperature. All the collected information is stored locally on the device during the sports activity. Later, it can be downloaded to a PC and transferred to a cloud-based service, where visualization of the recorded data and more detailed game/training statistics can be performed

    Design and Effect of Continuous Wearable Tactile Displays

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    Our sense of touch is one of our core senses and while not as information rich as sight and hearing, it tethers us to reality. Our skin is the largest sensory organ in our body and we rely on it so much that we don\u27t think about it most of the time. Tactile displays - with the exception of actuators for notifications on smartphones and smartwatches - are currently understudied and underused. Currently tactile cues are mostly used in smartphones and smartwatches to notify the user of an incoming call or text message. Specifically continuous displays - displays that do not just send one notification but stay active for an extended period of time and continuously communicate information - are rarely studied. This thesis aims at exploring the utilization of our vibration perception to create continuous tactile displays. Transmitting a continuous stream of tactile information to a user in a wearable format can help elevate tactile displays from being mostly used for notifications to becoming more like additional senses enabling us to perceive our environment in new ways. This work provides a serious step forward in design, effect and use of continuous tactile displays and their use in human-computer interaction. The main contributions include: Exploration of Continuous Wearable Tactile Interfaces This thesis explores continuous tactile displays in different contexts and with different types of tactile information systems. The use-cases were explored in various domains for tactile displays - Sports, Gaming and Business applications. The different types of continuous tactile displays feature one- or multidimensional tactile patterns, temporal patterns and discrete tactile patterns. Automatic Generation of Personalized Vibration Patterns In this thesis a novel approach of designing vibrotactile patterns without expert knowledge by leveraging evolutionary algorithms to create personalized vibration patterns - is described. This thesis presents the design of an evolutionary algorithm with a human centered design generating abstract vibration patterns. The evolutionary algorithm was tested in a user study which offered evidence that interactive generation of abstract vibration patterns is possible and generates diverse sets of vibration patterns that can be recognized with high accuracy. Passive Haptic Learning for Vibration Patterns Previous studies in passive haptic learning have shown surprisingly strong results for learning Morse Code. If these findings could be confirmed and generalized, it would mean that learning a new tactile alphabet could be made easier and learned in passing. Therefore this claim was investigated in this thesis and needed to be corrected and contextualized. A user study was conducted to study the effects of the interaction design and distraction tasks on the capability to learn stimulus-stimulus-associations with Passive Haptic Learning. This thesis presents evidence that Passive Haptic Learning of vibration patterns induces only a marginal learning effect and is not a feasible and efficient way to learn vibration patterns that include more than two vibrations. Influence of Reference Frames for Spatial Tactile Stimuli Designing wearable tactile stimuli that contain spatial information can be a challenge due to the natural body movement of the wearer. An important consideration therefore is what reference frame to use for spatial cues. This thesis investigated allocentric versus egocentric reference frames on the wrist and compared them for induced cognitive load, reaction time and accuracy in a user study. This thesis presents evidence that using an allocentric reference frame drastically lowers cognitive load and slightly lowers reaction time while keeping the same accuracy as an egocentric reference frame, making a strong case for the utilization of allocentric reference frames in tactile bracelets with several tactile actuators

    New Trends in Neuromechanics and Motor Rehabilitation

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    Neuromechanics has been used to identify optimal rehabilitation protocols that successfully improve motor deficits in various populations, such as elderly people and individuals with neurological diseases (e.g., stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and essential tremor). By investigating structural and functional changes in the central and peripheral nervous systems based on neuromechanical theories and findings, we can expand our knowledge regarding underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and specific motor impairment patterns before and after therapies to further develop new training programs (e.g., non-invasive brain stimulation). Thus, the aim of this Special Issue is to present the main contributions of researchers and rehabilitation specialists in biomechanics, motor control, neurophysiology, neuroscience, and rehabilitation science. The current collection provides new neuromechanical approaches addressing theoretical, methodological, and practical topics for facilitating motor recovery progress

    Reducing techno-anxiety in high school teachers by improving their ICT problem-solving skills

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    Teachers need to continuously update their information and communication technologies (ICT) knowledge, but they are usually not trained to deal with the problems arising from their use. In fact, studies in the literature report techno-anxiety (i.e. unpleasant physiological activation and discomfort due to present or future use of ICT) in teachers. Thus, the goal of this action research is to study if teachers’ techno-anxiety can be reduced by increasing their ability to solve technological problems. An inter-subject experiment has been carried out with 46 teachers. High school teachers were chosen because they are digital immigrants, while at the moment of this research their students are digital natives (born around year 2000). Since we could not find any specific training for teachers to increase their resolution skills of technological problems, in order to apply the treatment for our study, we have designed and deployed an online course about ICT problem-solving skills based on the 70/20/10 model for learning and development. Results show the success of the course when it comes to increasing the ICT problem-solving skills and to reducing techno-anxiety.Preprin

    The impacts of new technologies on physical activities: Based on fitness app use and fitness social media postings

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    Focusing on fitness app use and social context of fitness postings on social media, this study examined the implications of mHealth technologies use for fitness. This study explored descriptive information about respondents’ use of fitness apps such as self-monitoring, self-regulation, social facilitators, and rewards. Furthermore, respondents’ fitness posting experience was also explored. For respondents who saw others’ fitness posts, this study examined how viewers’ social comparison on fitness postings (upward and downward) related to their physical activity (PA) self-efficacy, motivation, and participation. For those who posted about their fitness information on social media, this study investigated fitness posters’ ways of self-presentation related to receiving supportive feedback, and how supportive feedback related to fitness posters’ PA motivation and participation. This study recruited fitness app users from a crowdsourcing internet marketplace. Quantitative data analysis examined the role of social comparison, self-presentation, and supportive feedback in respondents’ PA self-efficacy, motivation, and participation. The results revealed that people mostly used the fitness apps for physical activity-related self-monitoring and self-regulation. For those who engaged in upward social comparison tended to have more self-efficacy for PA, PA motivation, and therefore participated more in PA. Both positive and negative self-presenters received more supportive feedback from others. The more supportive feedback fitness posters received, the more self-efficacy for PA they had. The more self-efficacy for PA fitness posters had, the more PA motivation they had. The results also showed that people received more esteem support and emotional support from others when they positively presented their fitness on social media. Fitness posters with negative self-presentation received more emotional support and informational support

    v. 82, issue 17, April 2, 2015

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