Interaction With Tilting Gestures In Ubiquitous Environments

In this paper, we introduce a tilting interface that controls direction based applications in ubiquitous environments. A tilt interface is useful for situations that require remote and quick interactions or that are executed in public spaces. We explored the proposed tilting interface with different application types and classified the tilting interaction techniques. Augmenting objects with sensors can potentially address the problem of the lack of intuitive and natural input devices in ubiquitous environments. We have conducted an experiment to test the usability of the proposed tilting interface to compare it with conventional input devices and hand gestures. The experiment results showed greater improvement of the tilt gestures in comparison with hand gestures in terms of speed, accuracy, and user satisfaction.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Dynamics of tilt-based browsing on mobile devices

A tilt-controlled photo browsing method for small mobile devices is presented. The implementation uses continuous inputs from an accelerometer, and a multimodal (visual, audio and vibrotactile) display coupled with the states of this model. The model is based on a simple physical model, with its characteristics shaped to enhance usability. We show how the dynamics of the physical model can be shaped to make the handling qualities of the mobile device fit the browsing task. We implemented the proposed algorithm on Samsung MITs PDA with tri-axis accelerometer and a vibrotactile motor. The experiment used seven novice users browsing from 100 photos. We compare a tilt-based interaction method with a button-based browser and an iPod wheel. We discuss the usability performance and contrast this with subjective experience from the users. The iPod wheel has significantly poorer performance than button pushing or tilt interaction, despite its commercial popularity

Assessing the effectiveness of direct gesture interaction for a safety critical maritime application

Multi-touch interaction, in particular multi-touch gesture interaction, is widely believed to give a more natural interaction style. We investigated the utility of multi-touch interaction in the safety critical domain of maritime dynamic positioning (DP) vessels. We conducted initial paper prototyping with domain experts to gain an insight into natural gestures; we then conducted observational studies aboard a DP vessel during operational duties and two rounds of formal evaluation of prototypes - the second on a motion platform ship simulator. Despite following a careful user-centred design process, the final results show that traditional touch-screen button and menu interaction was quicker and less erroneous than gestures. Furthermore, the moving environment accentuated this difference and we observed initial use problems and handedness asymmetries on some multi-touch gestures. On the positive side, our results showed that users were able to suspend gestural interaction more naturally, thus improving situational awareness

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer Book 2018

(Abridged) This is the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer 2018 book. It is intended as a concise reference guide to all aspects of the scientific and technical design of MSE, for the international astronomy and engineering communities, and related agencies. The current version is a status report of MSE's science goals and their practical implementation, following the System Conceptual Design Review, held in January 2018. MSE is a planned 10-m class, wide-field, optical and near-infrared facility, designed to enable transformative science, while filling a critical missing gap in the emerging international network of large-scale astronomical facilities. MSE is completely dedicated to multi-object spectroscopy of samples of between thousands and millions of astrophysical objects. It will lead the world in this arena, due to its unique design capabilities: it will boast a large (11.25 m) aperture and wide (1.52 sq. degree) field of view; it will have the capabilities to observe at a wide range of spectral resolutions, from R2500 to R40,000, with massive multiplexing (4332 spectra per exposure, with all spectral resolutions available at all times), and an on-target observing efficiency of more than 80%. MSE will unveil the composition and dynamics of the faint Universe and is designed to excel at precision studies of faint astrophysical phenomena. It will also provide critical follow-up for multi-wavelength imaging surveys, such as those of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, Gaia, Euclid, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, and the Next Generation Very Large Array.Comment: 5 chapters, 160 pages, 107 figure

Completely Automated Public Physical test to tell Computers and Humans Apart: A usability study on mobile devices

A very common approach adopted to fight the increasing sophistication and dangerousness of malware and hacking is to introduce more complex authentication mechanisms. This approach, however, introduces additional cognitive burdens for users and lowers the whole authentication mechanism acceptability to the point of making it unusable. On the contrary, what is really needed to fight the onslaught of automated attacks to users data and privacy is to first tell human and computers apart and then distinguish among humans to guarantee correct authentication. Such an approach is capable of completely thwarting any automated attempt to achieve unwarranted access while it allows keeping simple the mechanism dedicated to recognizing the legitimate user. This kind of approach is behind the concept of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA), yet CAPTCHA leverages cognitive capabilities, thus the increasing sophistication of computers calls for more and more difficult cognitive tasks that make them either very long to solve or very prone to false negatives. We argue that this problem can be overcome by substituting the cognitive component of CAPTCHA with a different property that programs cannot mimic: the physical nature. In past work we have introduced the Completely Automated Public Physical test to tell Computer and Humans Apart (CAPPCHA) as a way to enhance the PIN authentication method for mobile devices and we have provided a proof of concept implementation. Similarly to CAPTCHA, this mechanism can also be used to prevent automated programs from abusing online services. However, to evaluate the real efficacy of the proposed scheme, an extended empirical assessment of CAPPCHA is required as well as a comparison of CAPPCHA performance with the existing state of the art. To this aim, in this paper we carry out an extensive experimental study on both the performance and the usability of CAPPCHA involving a high number of physical users, and we provide comparisons of CAPPCHA with existing flavors of CAPTCHA

Pickup usability dominates: a brief history of mobile text entry research and adoption

Text entry on mobile devices (e.g. phones and PDAs) has been a research challenge since devices shrank below laptop size: mobile devices are simply too small to have a traditional full-size keyboard. There has been a profusion of research into text entry techniques for smaller keyboards and touch screens: some of which have become mainstream, while others have not lived up to early expectations. As the mobile phone industry moves to mainstream touch screen interaction we will review the range of input techniques for mobiles, together with evaluations that have taken place to assess their validity: from theoretical modelling through to formal usability experiments. We also report initial results on iPhone text entry speed

Power processor design considerations for a solar electric propulsion spacecraft

Propulsion power processor design options are described. The propulsion power processor generated the regulated dc voltages and currents from a solar array source of a solar electric propelled spacecraft. The power processor consisted of 12 power supplies that provide the regulated voltages and currents necessary to power a 30-cm mercury ion thruster. The design options for processing unregulated solar array power and for generating the regulated power required by each supply are studied. The technical approaches utilized in the developed design and the technological limitation of the identified design options are discussed. Alternate approaches for delivering power to a number of mercury ion thrusters and methods of optimizing are described. It was concluded that this power processor design should be considered for application in solar electric propulsion missions of the future