Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Gesture-Controlled Interaction with Aesthetic Information Sonification

Information representation in augmented and virtual reality systems, and social physical (building) spaces can enhance the efficacy of interacting with and assimilating abstract, non-visual data. Sanification is the process of automatically generated real time information representation. There is a gap in our implementation and knowledge of auditory display systems used to enhance interaction in virtual and augmented reality. This paper addresses that gap by examining methodologies for mapping socio-spatial data to spatialised sanification manipulated with gestural controllers. This is a system of interactive knowledge representation that completes the human integration loop, enabling the user to interact with and manipulate data using 3D spatial gesture and 3D auditory display. Benefits include 1) added immersion in an augmented or virtual reality interface; 2) auditory display avoids visual overload in visually-saturated processes such as designing, evacuation in emergencies, flying aircraft; computer gaming; and 3) bi-modal or auditory representation, due to its time-based character, facilitates cognition of complex information

Co-incidental animation: Framing chance occurrences of illusion of movement as animation events

This research originates from a practice-driven urge to achieve simultaneity and immediacy in the creation and experience of animation by aiming to bring together construction, production and presentation of illusion of movement in time and place. Focusing on illusion of movement as animation, this research borrowed from the perceptual elements already employed in animation practices. However, recording a sequence – as in filmmaking – leads to temporal and physical distance between the creation and presentation of an animated work. Accomplishing the aimed simultaneity and immediacy suggested looking for ways to achieve illusory movement without producing material artefacts to yield it. In order to realise this goal, this research turned to performance studies, where ephemerality and immediacy are theorised as inherent properties of performance practice. Those insights from performance theory were developed as possibilities for animation within the research practice. Performance theorist Erika Fischer-Lichte’s positioning of performance event as open-ended and artwork as fixed was taken as a starting point. On the basis of that theoretical grounding, a process to unite separate phases in animation creation is explored in tandem with incorporating event properties into animation. The research asks the question: How can animation be created and experienced simultaneously and immediately, as ephemeral as a performance event? In this practice-based research, the enquiries were carried out through practical experimentation while building a framework for reference and analysis based on performance theories. As suggested by Gray and Malins, this study devised its own methodology where collecting visual, auditory and written data, building physical and developing theoretical tools, as well as working with participants provided methods to inquire an animation practice of immediacy. The research begins in animation practice, negotiating possible ways to create the illusion of movement. In order to understand how this illusion occurs in animation, the research looked at perceptual and cognitive mechanisms. The preliminary investigation of optical toys and flipbooks, rather than films, was then extended to non-visual modes of illusory perception, and possibilities through aural and haptic illusions of movements were explored. The study then introduced the theoretical framework to explore the immediacy of ‘event-ness’. Based on Fischer-Lichte’s framing of the four characteristics of performance, the framework through which to shape and analyse the research practice emerged: mediality (bodily co-presence), materiality (transience), semioticity (emergence of new meaning) and aestheticity (the experience of performance as ‘event’). The considerations of liveness, co-creation, ephemerality, and fixity of the research practice thus found structure for evaluation through Fischer-Lichte’s perspective. Finally, as contribution to expanding animation practice, it is proposed to approach animation as an event where illusory movement is observed through instructional scores. By calibrating and analysing possibilities of animation through the framework provided by Fischer-Lichte’s work, it becomes possible to amalgamate the three separate processes of animation – construction, production and presentation – into a single process, the animation event. In this event, the creation and experience of animation are simultaneous and concurrent; thus, providing an answer to the research question

The haptic iPod: passive learning of multi-limb rhythm skills

Recent experiments showed that the use of haptic vibrotactile devices can support the learning of multi-limb rhythms [Holland et al., 2010]. These experiments centred on a tool called the Haptic Drum Kit, which uses vibrotactiles attached to wrists and ankles, together with a computer system that controls them, and a midi drum kit. The system uses haptic signals in real time, relying on human entrainment mechanisms [Clayton, Sager and Will, 2004] rather than stimulus response, to support the user in playing multi-limbed rhythms. In the present paper, we give a preliminary report on a new experiment, that aims to examine whether passive learning of multi-limb rhythms can occur through the silent playback of rhythmic stimuli via haptics when the subject is focusing on other tasks. The prototype system used for this new experiment is referred to as the Haptic iPod.Paper presented at the Workshop: When Words Fail: What can Music Interaction tell us about HCI? at BCS HCI Conference 2011, Newcastle, U

Using problem based learning to support transdisciplinarity in an HCI education

In this paper we advocate the development of transdisci-plinary educational programs with a strong focus on HCI, which use problem based learning (PBL) as a teaching method-ology. We describe a novel education called Medialogy, developed at Aalborg University Copenhagen in Denmark, outlining through different case studies how PBL supports transdisci-plinarity