Ele- ja ohjainkäyttökokemus virtuaalitodellisuudessa

Virtuaalitodellisuuden (VR) viimeaikainen yleistyminen on nostanut esille kysymyksiä myös uudenlaisista vuorovaikutustavoista. Käsielekäyttöliittymät tarjoavat potentiaalisesti intuitiivisen ja monipuolisen vuorovaikutustavan virtuaaliympäristöihin. Käsieleiden käytettävyyttä on kuitenkin tutkittu vasta vähän virtuaaliympäristössä. Tutkielmassa tarkastelen, miten elepohjainen käyttöliittymä ja ohjainkäyttöliittymä vaikuttavat käyttökokemukseen virtuaalitodellisuudessa. Käytettävyystestien pohjalta selvisi että perinteinen VR-ohjain on eleitä tarkempi ja nopeampi kappaleidenlajittelutehtävässä. Eleet tarjoavat kuitenkin luonnollisemman tavan käsitellä todellisen maailman esineitä. Käyttäjät arvioivat ohjaimet käytettävämmiksi kuin eleet. Testissä käytetyn Leap Motion Controller:n eleiden tunnistuksen epätarkkuus aiheutti testihenkilöille ongelmia erityisesti nopeutta ja tarkkuutta vaativassa tehtävässä. Eleiden tunnistuksen ongelmien ratkaiseminen on oleellista eleiden käytettävyyden kehittämisessä

Towards observable haptics: Novel sensors for capturing tactile interaction patterns

Kõiva R. Towards observable haptics: Novel sensors for capturing tactile interaction patterns. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University; 2014.Touch is one of the primary senses humans use when performing coordinated interaction, but the lack of a sense of touch in the majority of contemporary interactive technical systems, such as robots, which operate in non-deterministic environments, results in interactions that can at best be described as clumsy. Observing human haptics and extracting the salient information from the gathered data is not only relevant if we are to try to understand the involved underlying cognitive processes, but should also provide us with significant clues to design future intelligent interactive systems. Such systems could one day help to take the burden of tedious tasks off our hands in a similar fashion to how industrial robots revolutionized manufacturing. The aim of the work in this thesis was to provide significant advancements in tactile sensing technology, and thus move us a step closer to realizing this goal. The contributions contained herein can be broken into two major parts. The first part investigates capturing interaction patterns in humans with the goals of better understanding manual intelligence and improving the lives of hand amputees, while the second part is focused on augmenting technical systems with a sense of touch. tacTiles, a wireless tactile sensitive surface element attached to a deformable textile, was developed to capture human full-body interactions with large surfaces we come into contact with in our daily lives, such as floors, chairs, sofas or other furniture. The Tactile Dataglove, iObject and the Tactile Pen were developed especially to observe human manual intelligence. Whereas iObject allows motion sensing and a higher definition tactile signal to be captured than the Tactile Dataglove (220 tactile cells in the first iObject prototype versus 54 cells in the glove), the wearable glove makes haptic interactions with arbitrary objects observable. The Tactile Pen was designed to measure grip force during handwriting in order to better facilitate therapeutic treatment assessments. These sensors have already been extensively used by various research groups, including our own, to gain a better understanding of human manual intelligence. The Finger-Force-Linear-Sensor and the Tactile Bracelet are two novel sensors that were developed to facilitate more natural control of dexterous multi Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) hand prostheses. The Finger-Force-Linear-Sensor is a very accurate bidirectional single finger force ground-truth measurement device that was designed to enable testing and development of single finger forces and muscle activations mapping algorithms. The Tactile Bracelet was designed with the goal to provide a more robust and intuitive means of control for multi-DOF hand prostheses by measuring the muscle bulgings of the remnant muscles of lower arm amputees. It is currently in development and will eventually cover the complete forearm circumference with high spatial resolution tactile sensitive surfaces. An experiment involving a large number of lower arm amputees has already been planned. The Modular flat tactile sensor system, the Fabric-based touch sensitive artificial skin and the 3D shaped tactile sensor were developed to cover and to add touch sensing capabilities to the surfaces of technical systems. The rapid augmentation of systems with a sense of touch was the main goal of the modular flat tactile sensor system. The developed sensor modules can be used alone or in an array to form larger tactile sensitive surfaces such as tactile sensitive tabletops. As many robots have curved surfaces, using flat rigid modules severely limits the areas that can be covered with tactile sensors. The Fabric-based tactile sensor, originally developed to form a tactile dataglove for human hands, can with minor modifications also function as an artificial skin for technical systems. Finally, the 3D shaped tactile sensor based on Laser-Direct-Structuring technology is a novel tactile sensor that has a true 3D shape and provides high sensitivity and a high spatial resolution. These sensors take us further along the path towards creating general purpose technical systems that in time can be of great help to us in our daily lives. The desired tactile sensor characteristics differ significantly according to which haptic interaction patterns we wish to measure. Large tactile sensor arrays that are used to capture full body haptic interactions with floors and upholstered furniture, or that are designed to cover large areas of technical system surfaces, need to be scalable, have low power consumption and should ideally have a low material cost. Two examples of such sensors are tacTiles and the Fabric-based sensor for curved surfaces. At the other end of the tactile sensor development spectrum, if we want to observe manual interactions, high spatial and temporal resolution are crucial to enable the measurement of fine grasping and manipulation actions. Our fingertips contain the highest density area of mechanoreceptors, the organs that sense mechanical pressure and distortions. Thus, to construct biologically inspired anthropomorphic robotic hands, the artificial tactile sensors for the fingertips require similar high-fidelity sensors with surfaces that are curved under small bending radii in 2 dimensions, have high spatial densities, while simultaneously providing high sensitivity. With the fingertip tactile sensor, designed to fit the Shadow Robot Hands' fingers, I show that such sensors can indeed be constructed in the 3D-shaped high spatial resolution tactile sensor section of my thesis. With my work I have made a significant contribution towards making haptics more observable. I achieved this by developing a high number of novel tactile sensors that are usable, give a deeper insight into human haptic interactions, have great potential to help amputees and that make technical systems, such as robots, more capable

Torque #2: The Act of Reading

This book is the result of a 12 month research process, including a residency at Tate Liverpool, an exhibition in London's Furtherfield Gallery, and a symposium and performance event taking place at FACT in Liverpool in 2015. The book is aimed as a popular primer on reading discourse from a range of disciplines, but also as a performative document on what interdisciplinary brings to such discourse. It features new material from several world-leading practitioners from a range of disciplines, including media theorists N. Katherine Hayles and Soenke Zehle, literary theorist Garrett Stewart, political theorists Esther Leslie and Nina Power, the poet Charles Bernstein, artists Tim Etchells and Erica Scourti, and clinical neuroscientist Alex Leff, along with a selection of early career academics. Each of these contributors were chosen according to the prescience of their current work to the questions: what does means to read today? and, how is reading changing as a result of current political and technological conditions? The content for the book was developed with the contributors in a process that included discussion at the symposium and supplementary e-correspondence, resulting in a number of cross disciplinary observations being made by the authors - for example between Garrett Stewart's close readings of literary sonification, and Alex Leff's work on the role of the eye saccade in reading disorders. The book was designed by Mark Simmonds, and has a central insert of yellow pages that features a number of creative submissions, further contributing to the range ways that the book itself can interrogate reading. In an introduction (c. 1500 words) inter and cross-disciplinarity is framed as integral to the approach of the editors, and essential to properly understand the context of reading as itself "hybrid": "recycling ... more innate neuronal networks such as object recognition and memory". In a comment published on the reverse of the book, Professor Steven Connor notes the effectiveness of the book's approach to its subject: "Reading inquisitively over each others' shoulders, the poems, meditations, analyses and experiences in this volume response with audacity and adventure to the challenge of characterising what reading … has been and may yet become" Nathan Jones was research leader on this project, co-editing and co-authoring the introduction with Sam Skinner. He also contributes a 10-page creative-theoretical chapter in the book. The book sold out its edition of 500 copies, and is available freely as PDF and EPUB on the publisher's website. Further public impact and relevance to the project can be seen in the Jones and Skinner's paper "Absorbing Text: Rereading Speed Reading" (APRJA_Machine Research 2016), and contribution to the Transmediale Festival of that year. The material and research partnerships in the book also resulted in an exhibition and new artworks by Jones and Skinner, "Re-learning to Read" (Grundy Art Gallery, 2017). The book and project was supported by a grant from Arts Council England, and by the institutions Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), Tate Liverpool and Furtherfield Gallery in London

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Incidence of Injury in Professional Female Soccer

The epidemiology of injury in male professional football is well documented and has been used as a basis to monitor injury trends and implement injury prevention strategies. There are no systematic reviews that have investigated injury incidence in women’s professional football. Therefore, the extent of injury burden in women’s professional football remains unknown. PURPOSE: The primary aim of this study was to calculate an overall incidence rate of injury in senior female professional soccer. The secondary aims were to provide an incidence rate for training and match play. METHODS: PubMed, Discover, EBSCO, Embase and ScienceDirect electronic databases were searched from inception to September 2018. Two reviewers independently assessed study quality using the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology statement using a 22-item STROBE checklist. Seven prospective studies (n=1137 professional players) were combined in a pooled analysis of injury incidence using a mixed effects model. Heterogeneity was evaluated using the Cochrane Q statistic and I2. RESULTS: The epidemiological incidence proportion over one season was 0.62 (95% CI 0.59 - 0.64). Mean total incidence of injury was 3.15 (95% CI 1.54 - 4.75) injuries per 1000 hours. The mean incidence of injury during match play was 10.72 (95% CI 9.11 - 12.33) and during training was 2.21 (95% CI 0.96 - 3.45). Data analysis found a significant level of heterogeneity (total Incidence, X2 = 16.57 P < 0.05; I2 = 63.8%) and during subsequent sub group analyses in those studies reviewed (match incidence, X2 = 76.4 (d.f. = 7), P <0.05; I2 = 90.8%, training incidence, X2 = 16.97 (d.f. = 7), P < 0.05; I2 = 58.8%). Appraisal of the study methodologies revealed inconsistency in the use of injury terminology, data collection procedures and calculation of exposure by researchers. Such inconsistencies likely contribute to the large variance in the incidence and prevalence of injury reported. CONCLUSIONS: The estimated risk of sustaining at least one injury over one football season is 62%. Continued reporting of heterogeneous results in population samples limits meaningful comparison of studies. Standardising the criteria used to attribute injury and activity coupled with more accurate methods of calculating exposure will overcome such limitations