Interaction Methods for Smart Glasses : A Survey

Since the launch of Google Glass in 2014, smart glasses have mainly been designed to support micro-interactions. The ultimate goal for them to become an augmented reality interface has not yet been attained due to an encumbrance of controls. Augmented reality involves superimposing interactive computer graphics images onto physical objects in the real world. This survey reviews current research issues in the area of human-computer interaction for smart glasses. The survey first studies the smart glasses available in the market and afterwards investigates the interaction methods proposed in the wide body of literature. The interaction methods can be classified into hand-held, touch, and touchless input. This paper mainly focuses on the touch and touchless input. Touch input can be further divided into on-device and on-body, while touchless input can be classified into hands-free and freehand. Next, we summarize the existing research efforts and trends, in which touch and touchless input are evaluated by a total of eight interaction goals. Finally, we discuss several key design challenges and the possibility of multi-modal input for smart glasses.Peer reviewe

Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

Somatic ABC's: A Theoretical Framework for Designing, Developing and Evaluating the Building Blocks of Touch-Based Information Delivery

abstract: Situations of sensory overload are steadily becoming more frequent as the ubiquity of technology approaches reality--particularly with the advent of socio-communicative smartphone applications, and pervasive, high speed wireless networks. Although the ease of accessing information has improved our communication effectiveness and efficiency, our visual and auditory modalities--those modalities that today's computerized devices and displays largely engage--have become overloaded, creating possibilities for distractions, delays and high cognitive load; which in turn can lead to a loss of situational awareness, increasing chances for life threatening situations such as texting while driving. Surprisingly, alternative modalities for information delivery have seen little exploration. Touch, in particular, is a promising candidate given that it is our largest sensory organ with impressive spatial and temporal acuity. Although some approaches have been proposed for touch-based information delivery, they are not without limitations including high learning curves, limited applicability and/or limited expression. This is largely due to the lack of a versatile, comprehensive design theory--specifically, a theory that addresses the design of touch-based building blocks for expandable, efficient, rich and robust touch languages that are easy to learn and use. Moreover, beyond design, there is a lack of implementation and evaluation theories for such languages. To overcome these limitations, a unified, theoretical framework, inspired by natural, spoken language, is proposed called Somatic ABC's for Articulating (designing), Building (developing) and Confirming (evaluating) touch-based languages. To evaluate the usefulness of Somatic ABC's, its design, implementation and evaluation theories were applied to create communication languages for two very unique application areas: audio described movies and motor learning. These applications were chosen as they presented opportunities for complementing communication by offloading information, typically conveyed visually and/or aurally, to the skin. For both studies, it was found that Somatic ABC's aided the design, development and evaluation of rich somatic languages with distinct and natural communication units.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Computer Science 201

Mirror-touch synaesthesia: the role of shared representations in social cognition

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one property of a stimulus results in conscious experiences of an additional attribute. In mirror-touch synaesthesia, the synaesthete experiences a tactile sensation on their own body simply when observing touch to another person. This thesis investigates the prevalence, neurocognitive mechanisms, and consequences of mirror-touch synaesthesia. Firstly, the prevalence and neurocognitive mechanisms of synaesthesia were assessed. This revealed that mirrortouch synaesthesia has a prevalence rate of 1.6%, a finding which places mirror-touch synaesthesia as one of the most common variants of synaesthesia. It also indicated a number of characteristics of the condition, which led to the generation of a neurocognitive model of mirror-touch synaesthesia. An investigation into the perceptual consequences of synaesthesia revealed that the presence of synaesthesia is linked with heightened sensory perception - mirror-touch synaesthetes showed heightened tactile perception and grapheme-colour synaesthetes showed heightened colour perception. Given that mirror-touch synaesthesia has been shown to be linked to heightened sensorimotor simulation mechanisms, the impact of facilitated sensorimotor activity on social cognition was then examined. This revealed that mirror-touch synaesthetes show heightened emotional sensitivity compared with control participants. To compliment this, two transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies were then conducted to assess the impact of suppressing sensorimotor activity on the expression recognition abilities of healthy adults. Consistent with the findings of superior emotion sensitivity in mirror-touch synaesthesia (where there is facilitated sensorimotor activity), suppressing sensorimotor resources resulted in impaired expression recognition across modalities. The findings of the thesis are discussed in relation to neurocognitive models of synaesthesia and of social cognition

Allocentric emotional affordances in HRI : the multimodal binding

The concept of affordance perception is one of the distinctive traits of human cognition; and its application to robots can dramatically improve the quality of human-robot interaction (HRI). In this paper we explore and discuss the idea of "emotional affordances" by proposing a viable model for implementation into HRI; which considers allocentric and multimodal perception. We consider "2-ways" affordances: perceived object triggering an emotion; and perceived human emotion expression triggering an action. In order to make the implementation generic; the proposed model includes a library that can be customised depending on the specific robot and application scenario. We present the AAA (Affordance-Appraisal-Arousal) model; which incorporates Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions; and we outline some numerical examples of how it can be used in different scenarios

Between the point of view and the point of being: the space of the stereoscopic tours

One of the most interesting features of the travel stereoviews series is not the three-dimensional effect but rather the intertwined outcome of realism and \u201cbeing-thereness\u201d for the early-20th-century armchair traveler\u2019s experience. On the set of Italy through the Stereoscope, the viewer\u2019s \u201cpath of the gaze\u201d was a novelty compared to with 2D photographs and stereoviews. The Underwood & Underwood publishing company created a stereoscopic multimodal tour to improve the impression of realism with a proprioceptive perception of the scene. The procedure of textual d\ue9brayage, the description of the experience as it is happening here and now, the direction of the viewer\u2019s gaze with a narrative itinerary, the changing of the visual convergence along with the variation of the points of attention: All of these elements fostered a synesthesia for the spectator. The result is immersion in an explorable space between the \u201cpoint of view\u201d (2D images) and the \u201cpoint of being\u201d (virtual reality)

Between the point of view and the point of being: the space of the stereoscopic tours

One of the most interesting features of the travel stereoview series is not their three-dimensional effect but rather the intertwined outcome of realism and “being-thereness” in the experience of early twentieth century armchair travellers. On the set of Italy through the Stereoscope, the viewer’s “path of the gaze” was a novelty compared to two dimensional photographs and stereoviews. The Underwood & Underwood publishing company created a stereoscopic multimodal tour to improve the impression of realism with a proprioceptive perception of the scene. The procedure of textual débrayage, the description of the experience as it is happening here and now, the direction of the viewer’s gaze with a narrative itinerary, the changing of the visual convergence with the variation in the points of attention: all of these elements fostered a synaesthesia for the spectator. The result was immersion in an explorable space between the “point of view” (2D images) and the “point of being” (virtual reality)