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

Web-based visualisation of head pose and facial expressions changes: monitoring human activity using depth data

Despite significant recent advances in the field of head pose estimation and facial expression recognition, raising the cognitive level when analysing human activity presents serious challenges to current concepts. Motivated by the need of generating comprehensible visual representations from different sets of data, we introduce a system capable of monitoring human activity through head pose and facial expression changes, utilising an affordable 3D sensing technology (Microsoft Kinect sensor). An approach build on discriminative random regression forests was selected in order to rapidly and accurately estimate head pose changes in unconstrained environment. In order to complete the secondary process of recognising four universal dominant facial expressions (happiness, anger, sadness and surprise), emotion recognition via facial expressions (ERFE) was adopted. After that, a lightweight data exchange format (JavaScript Object Notation-JSON) is employed, in order to manipulate the data extracted from the two aforementioned settings. Such mechanism can yield a platform for objective and effortless assessment of human activity within the context of serious gaming and human-computer interaction.Comment: 8th Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, (CEEC 2016), University of Essex, UK, 6 page

Natural user interfaces for interdisciplinary design review using the Microsoft Kinect

As markets demand engineered products faster, waiting on the cyclical design processes of the past is not an option. Instead, industry is turning to concurrent design and interdisciplinary teams. When these teams collaborate, engineering CAD tools play a vital role in conceptualizing and validating designs. These tools require significant user investment to master, due to challenging interfaces and an overabundance of features. These challenges often prohibit team members from using these tools for exploring designs. This work presents a method allowing users to interact with a design using intuitive gestures and head tracking, all while keeping the model in a CAD format. Specifically, Siemens\u27 Teamcenter® Lifecycle Visualization Mockup (Mockup) was used to display design geometry while modifications were made through a set of gestures captured by a Microsoft KinectTM in real time. This proof of concept program allowed a user to rotate the scene, activate Mockup\u27s immersive menu, move the immersive wand, and manipulate the view based on head position. This work also evaluates gesture usability and task completion time for this proof of concept system. A cognitive model evaluation method was used to evaluate the premise that gesture-based user interfaces are easier to use and learn with regards to time than a traditional mouse and keyboard interface. Using a cognitive model analysis tool allowed the rapid testing of interaction concepts without the significant overhead of user studies and full development cycles. The analysis demonstrated that using the KinectTM is a feasible interaction mode for CAD/CAE programs. In addition, the analysis pointed out limitations in the gesture interfaces ability to compete time wise with easily accessible customizable menu options

Understanding 3D mid-air hand gestures with interactive surfaces and displays: a systematic literature review

3D gesture based systems are becoming ubiquitous and there are many mid-air hand gestures that exist for interacting with digital surfaces and displays. There is no well defined gesture set for 3D mid-air hand gestures which makes it difficult to develop applications that have consistent gestures. To understand what gestures exist we conducted the first comprehensive systematic literature review on mid-air hand gestures following existing research methods. The results of the review identified 65 papers where the mid-air hand gestures supported tasks for selection, navigation, and manipulation. We also classified the gestures according to a gesture classification scheme and identified how these gestures have been empirically evaluated. The results of the review provide a richer understanding of what mid-air hand gestures have been designed, implemented, and evaluated in the literature which can help developers design better user experiences for digital interactive surfaces and displays

Spatial Programming for Industrial Robots through Task Demonstration

We present an intuitive system for the programming of industrial robots using markerless gesture recognition and mobile augmented reality in terms of programming by demonstration. The approach covers gesture-based task definition and adaption by human demonstration, as well as task evaluation through augmented reality. A 3D motion tracking system and a handheld device establish the basis for the presented spatial programming system. In this publication, we present a prototype toward the programming of an assembly sequence consisting of several pick-and-place tasks. A scene reconstruction provides pose estimation of known objects with the help of the 2D camera of the handheld. Therefore, the programmer is able to define the program through natural bare-hand manipulation of these objects with the help of direct visual feedback in the augmented reality application. The program can be adapted by gestures and transmitted subsequently to an arbitrary industrial robot controller using a unified interface. Finally, we discuss an application of the presented spatial programming approach toward robot-based welding tasks

Understanding 3D mid-air hand gestures with interactive surfaces and displays: a systematic literature review

3D gesture based systems are becoming ubiquitous and there are many mid-air hand gestures that exist for interacting with digital surfaces and displays. There is no well defined gesture set for 3D mid-air hand gestures which makes it difficult to develop applications that have consistent gestures. To understand what gestures exist we conducted the first comprehensive systematic literature review on mid-air hand gestures following existing research methods. The results of the review identified 65 papers where the mid-air hand gestures supported tasks for selection, navigation, and manipulation. We also classified the gestures according to a gesture classification scheme and identified how these gestures have been empirically evaluated. The results of the review provide a richer understanding of what mid-air hand gestures have been designed, implemented, and evaluated in the literature which can help developers design better user experiences for digital interactive surfaces and displays

Camera-based software in rehabilitation/therapy intervention

Use of an affordable, easily adaptable, ‘non-specific camera-based software’ that is rarely used in the field of rehabilitation is reported in a study with 91 participants over the duration of six workshop sessions. ‘Non-specific camera-based software’ refers to software that is not dependent on specific hardware. Adaptable means that human tracking and created artefact interaction in the camera field of view is relatively easily changed as one desires via a user-friendly GUI. The significance of having both available for contemporary intervention is argued. Conclusions are that the mature, robust, and accessible software EyeCon is a potent and significant user-friendly tool in the field of rehabilitation/therapy and warrants wider exploration.Peer Reviewe