Creating space for facilitated music performance: gesture controlled sound for users with complex disabilities

Musical interactions have the potential to increase emotional well-being, self-confidence and self-motivation. However, the ability to actively participate in creative activities involving music performance has so far been difficult for users with complex disabilities. This paper discusses placing a technology probe, using gesture based musical controls, in an existing music technology project for users with complex disabilities (conditions which affect both cognitive and motor abilities of an individual). The focus is on understanding the needs of this user group in a participatory design approach for creative music technologies that allow for tailored accessibility. Outcomes from this research show that many multi-level social interactions surrounding the technology, users, audience, and any third party facilitators exist in the context of ‘facilitated performance’. Results suggest that including facilitators in the design of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) could allow for improved accessibility for users with complex disabilities

Object Manipulation in Virtual Reality Under Increasing Levels of Translational Gain

Room-scale Virtual Reality (VR) has become an affordable consumer reality, with applications ranging from entertainment to productivity. However, the limited physical space available for room-scale VR in the typical home or office environment poses a significant problem. To solve this, physical spaces can be extended by amplifying the mapping of physical to virtual movement (translational gain). Although amplified movement has been used since the earliest days of VR, little is known about how it influences reach-based interactions with virtual objects, now a standard feature of consumer VR. Consequently, this paper explores the picking and placing of virtual objects in VR for the first time, with translational gains of between 1x (a one-to-one mapping of a 3.5m*3.5m virtual space to the same sized physical space) and 3x (10.5m*10.5m virtual mapped to 3.5m*3.5m physical). Results show that reaching accuracy is maintained for up to 2x gain, however going beyond this diminishes accuracy and increases simulator sickness and perceived workload. We suggest gain levels of 1.5x to 1.75x can be utilized without compromising the usability of a VR task, significantly expanding the bounds of interactive room-scale VR

Get a Grip:Evaluating Grip Gestures for VR Input Using a Lightweight Pen

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) in applications such as data analysis, artistic creation, and clinical settings requires high precision input. However, the current design of handheld controllers, where wrist rotation is the primary input approach, does not exploit the human fingers' capability for dexterous movements for high precision pointing and selection. To address this issue, we investigated the characteristics and potential of using a pen as a VR input device. We conducted two studies. The first examined which pen grip allowed the largest range of motion---we found a tripod grip at the rear end of the shaft met this criterion. The second study investigated target selection via 'poking' and ray-casting, where we found the pen grip outperformed the traditional wrist-based input in both cases. Finally, we demonstrate potential applications enabled by VR pen input and grip postures

An Optimization Approach to Teleoperation of the Thumb of a Humanoid Robot Hand: Kinematic Mapping and Calibration

The complex kinematic structure of a human thumb makes it difficult to capture and control the thumb motions. A further complication is that mapping the fingertip position alone leads to inadequate grasping postures for current robotic hands, many of which are equipped with tactile sensors on the volar side of the fingers. This paper aimed to use a data glove as the input device to teleoperate the thumb of a humanoid robotic hand. An experiment protocol was developed with only minimum hardware involved to compensate for the differences in kinematic structures between a robotic hand and a human hand. A nonlinear constrained-optimization formulation was proposed to map and calibrate the motion of a human thumb to that of a robotic thumb by minimizing the maximum errors (minimax algorithms) of fingertip position while subject to the constraint of the normal of the surfaces of the thumb and the index fingertips within a friction cone. The proposed approach could be extended to other teleoperation applications, where the master and slave devices differ in kinematic structure

Creating Space for Facilitated Music Performance

Musical interactions have the potential to increase emotional well-being, self-confidence and self-motivation. However, the ability to actively participate in creative activities involving music performance has so far been difficult for users with complex disabilities.\ud \ud This paper discusses placing a technology probe, using gesture based musical controls, in an existing music technology project for users with complex disabilities (conditions which affect both cognitive and motor abilities of an individual). The focus is on understanding the needs of this user group in a participatory design approach for creative music technologies that allow for tailored accessibility.\ud \ud Outcomes from this research show that many multi-level social interactions surrounding the technology, users, audience, and any third party facilitators exist in the context of ‘facilitated performance’. Results suggest that including facilitators in the design of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) could allow for improved accessibility for users with complex disabilities