Examining the role of smart TVs and VR HMDs in synchronous at-a-distance media consumption

This article examines synchronous at-a-distance media consumption from two perspectives: How it can be facilitated using existing consumer displays (through TVs combined with smartphones), and imminently available consumer displays (through virtual reality (VR) HMDs combined with RGBD sensing). First, we discuss results from an initial evaluation of a synchronous shared at-a-distance smart TV system, CastAway. Through week-long in-home deployments with five couples, we gain formative insights into the adoption and usage of at-a-distance media consumption and how couples communicated during said consumption. We then examine how the imminent availability and potential adoption of consumer VR HMDs could affect preferences toward how synchronous at-a-distance media consumption is conducted, in a laboratory study of 12 pairs, by enhancing media immersion and supporting embodied telepresence for communication. Finally, we discuss the implications these studies have for the near-future of consumer synchronous at-a-distance media consumption. When combined, these studies begin to explore a design space regarding the varying ways in which at-a-distance media consumption can be supported and experienced (through music, TV content, augmenting existing TV content for immersion, and immersive VR content), what factors might influence usage and adoption and the implications for supporting communication and telepresence during media consumption

Autoencoder with recurrent neural networks for video forgery detection

Video forgery detection is becoming an important issue in recent years, because modern editing software provide powerful and easy-to-use tools to manipulate videos. In this paper we propose to perform detection by means of deep learning, with an architecture based on autoencoders and recurrent neural networks. A training phase on a few pristine frames allows the autoencoder to learn an intrinsic model of the source. Then, forged material is singled out as anomalous, as it does not fit the learned model, and is encoded with a large reconstruction error. Recursive networks, implemented with the long short-term memory model, are used to exploit temporal dependencies. Preliminary results on forged videos show the potential of this approach.Comment: Presented at IS&T Electronic Imaging: Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics, January 201

Mobile graphics: SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 course

Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Empowerment or Engagement? Digital Health Technologies for Mental Healthcare

We argue that while digital health technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, smartphones, and virtual reality) present significant opportunities for improving the delivery of healthcare, key concepts that are used to evaluate and understand their impact can obscure significant ethical issues related to patient engagement and experience. Specifically, we focus on the concept of empowerment and ask whether it is adequate for addressing some significant ethical concerns that relate to digital health technologies for mental healthcare. We frame these concerns using five key ethical principles for AI ethics (i.e. autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and explicability), which have their roots in the bioethical literature, in order to critically evaluate the role that digital health technologies will have in the future of digital healthcare

Designing Accessible Tourism Experiences: Slow, Sensory And Smart Framework

Slow tourism is an emergent research area focused on slowing the pace of life during vacations. A comprehensive multi-sensory approach can contribute to designing enhanced slow tourism experiences deemed accessible, both in situ and remotely. There is a research gap in considering multi-sensory stimuli in the design of accessible tourism experiences using technology. As such, this research intends to propose a theoretical framework focused on the development of slow tourism through sensory cues and smart technologies. In so doing, a critical approach to literature was carried out by intersecting three areas of literature following the rationale of the Stimuli-Organism-Response model: slow tourism, multi-sensory tourism experiences design, and smart destinations. The significance of this framework is threefold: it strengthens local identities and aids sustainable tourism by involving the community; it promotes experiences deemed authentic considering multiple stakeholders’ perspectives; and it addresses the visitor experience before, during and after the visit to the destination in an accessible manner using smart technologies. A framework with six steps is offered based on participatory methods