Expressive Animated Character Sequences Using Knowledge-Based Painterly Rendering

We propose a technique to enhance emotionalexpressiveness in games and animations. Artists have usedcolors and painting techniques to convey emotions in theirpaintings for many years. Moreover, researchers have foundthat colors and line properties affect users\u27 emotions. Wepropose using painterly rendering for character sequencesin games and animations with a knowledge-based approach. This technique is especially useful for parametric facial sequences. We introduce two parametric authoring tools foranimation and painterly rendering and a method to integrate them into a knowledge-based painterly rendering system. Furthermore, we present the results of a preliminarystudy on using this technique for facial expressions in stillimages. The results of the study show the effect of different color palettes on the intensity perceived for an emotionby users. The proposed technique can provide the animatorwith a depiction tool to enhance the emotional content of acharacter sequence in games and animations

Applications of Propolis in Dentistry: A Review

BACKGROUND: Propolis is a resinous substance obtained from the beehives that has antioxidant, anti-bacteria, anti-virus, antifungal, anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory activity. The aim of this study was to review the studies about the role of propolis in improving dental and oral health.METHODS: This study reviewed the published articles regarding the applications of propolis in dentistry. An electronic search of the literature was carried out in Farsi electronic databases includingGoogle, Medlib.ir, SID, Iranmedex and Magiran as well as English electronic databases such as PubMed and ISI Web of Knowledge.These databases were searched for articles published between 1997and October 20, 2017. Non-dental books and journals were also manually searched.RESULTS: This study reviewed published articles on the efficacy of propolis for surgical wound healing, caries prevention, treatment of dentin hypersensitivity, treatment of aphthous ulcers and propolis as a storage medium for avulsed teeth, root canal irrigating solution and mouthwash.CONCLUSION: The result of the reviewed article showed that propolis is effective an agent that is used for multiple purpose in oral health.KEYWORDS: Propolis, Dentistry, Honeybee, Oral healt

Body x Materials: A workshop exploring the role of material-enabled body-based multisensory experiences

Over the last 15 years, HCI and Interaction Design have experienced a “material turn” characterized by a growing interest in the materiality of technology and computation, and in methods that support exploring, envisioning, and crafting with and through materials. The community has experienced a similar turn focused on the body, on how to best design for and from a first-person, lived experience, and the moving and sensual body. In this workshop, we focus on the intersection of these two turns. The emerging developments in multimodal interfaces open opportunities to bring in materiality to the digital world as well as to transform the materiality of objects and bodies in the real-world, including the materiality of our own body. The different sensory qualities of (touchable and untouchable, physical and digital) objects and bodies, including our own, can be brought into the design of digital technologies to enrich, augment, and transform embodied experiences. In this “materials revolution” [15], what are the current theories, approaches, methods, and tools that emphasize the critical role of materiality to body-based interactions with technology? To explore this, in this workshop we will focus on five related themes: material enabling expression, material as a catalyst for human action, material enabling reflection and awareness, material enabling transformation and material supporting the design process for the re-creation of the existing and the yet-to-exist. This workshop with technology presentations, panel sessions with experts, and multidisciplinary discussions will: (i) bring together researchers who work on (re)creating sensory properties of materials through technology with those who investigate experiential effects of materials and materialenabled interactions, (ii) discuss methods, opportunities, difficulties in designing materiality and material-enabled interactions, and (iii) form a multidisciplinary community to build synergies and collaborations

CoVR: A Large-Scale Force-Feedback Robotic Interface for Non-Deterministic Scenarios in VR

We present CoVR, a novel robotic interface providing strong kinesthetic feedback (100 N) in a room-scale VR arena. It consists of a physical column mounted on a 2D Cartesian ceiling robot (XY displacements) with the capacity of (1) resisting to body-scaled users' actions such as pushing or leaning; (2) acting on the users by pulling or transporting them as well as (3) carrying multiple potentially heavy objects (up to 80kg) that users can freely manipulate or make interact with each other. We describe its implementation and define a trajectory generation algorithm based on a novel user intention model to support non-deterministic scenarios, where the users are free to interact with any virtual object of interest with no regards to the scenarios' progress. A technical evaluation and a user study demonstrate the feasibility and usability of CoVR, as well as the relevance of whole-body interactions involving strong forces, such as being pulled through or transported.Comment: 10 pages (without references), 14 pages tota

The Influence of Aging on Perceptual Grouping in Haptic Search

Perceptual grouping speeds up haptic search. This has particularly been shown for grouping of distractors by similarity and good continuation [1]. Here, we investigated the effect of aging on grouping in haptic search. We reasoned that because older adults have less cognitive resources available for processing perceptual information, they would benefit more from grouping as compared to younger adults. We tested this hypothesis in a haptic search task in which proximity, similarity and good continuation of the distractors were manipulated. We found that older adults indeed show a larger effect of distractor similarity on search times as compared to younger adults, where similar dis- tractors were processed faster than dissimilar distractors. However, older adults showed an opposite effect of grouping by proximity, where items that were further apart were processed faster. This may be caused by a strong bowed spatial position effect in older adults: stimuli that are closer to each other are more difficult to discriminate. We conclude that haptic perceptual grouping by similarity has larger benefits in elderly as compared to younger adults

Body x materials: A workshop exploring the role of material-enabled body-based multisensory experiences

Over the last 15 years, HCI and Interaction Design have experienced a “material turn” characterized by a growing interest in the materi- ality of technology and computation, and in methods that support exploring, envisioning, and crafting with and through materials. The community has experienced a similar turn focused on the body, on how to best design for and from a first-person, lived experience, and the moving and sensual body. In this workshop, we focus on the intersection of these two turns. The emerging developments in mul- timodal interfaces open opportunities to bring in materiality to the digital world as well as to transform the materiality of objects and bodies in the real-world, including the materiality of our own bod- ies. The different sensory qualities of (touchable and untouchable, physical and digital) objects and bodies, including our own, can be brought into the design of digital technologies to enrich, augment, and transform embodied experiences. In this “materials revolution” [15], what are the current theories, approaches, methods, and tools that emphasize the critical role of materiality to body-based interac- tions with technology? To explore this, in this workshop we will fo- cus on five related themes: material enabling expression, material as a catalyst for human action, material enabling reflection and aware- ness, material enabling transformation and material supporting the design process for the re-creation of the existing and the yet-to- exist. This workshop with technology presentations, panel sessions with experts, and multidisciplinary discussions will: (i) bring to- gether researchers who work on (re)creating sensory properties of materials through technology with those who investigate expe- riential effects of materials and material-enabled interactions, (ii)discuss methods, opportunities, difficulties in designing materiality and material-enabled interactions, and (iii) form a multidisciplinary community to build synergies and collaborations

TOUCHLESS: Demonstrations of Contactless Haptics for Affective Touch

A set of demonstrators of contactless haptic principles is described in this work. The technologies are based on electrostatic piloerection, chemical compounds and ultrasound. Additionally, applications related to affective touch are presented, ranging from storytelling to biosignal transfer, accompanied with a simple application to edit dynamic tactile patterns in an easy way. The demonstrators are the result of the Touchless project, which is a H2020 european collaborative project that integrates 3 universities and 3 companies. These demostrators are contactless haptic experiences and thus facilitate the come-and-interact paradigm, where users can approach the demo booth and directly experience the applications without having to wear devices, making the experience fast and hygienic

TOUCHLESS: demonstrations of contactless haptics for affective touch

A set of demonstrators of contactless haptic principles is described in this work. The technologies are based on electrostatic piloerection, chemical compounds and ultrasound. Additionally, applications related to affective touch are presented, ranging from storytelling to biosignal transfer, accompanied with a simple application to edit dynamic tactile patterns in an easy way. The demonstrators are the result of the Touchless project, which is a H2020 european collaborative project that integrates 3 universities and 3 companies. These demostrators are contactless haptic experiences and thus facilitate the come-and-interact paradigm, where users can approach the demo booth and directly experience the applications without having to wear devices, making the experience fast and hygienic.Funded by EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement No 101017746 TOUCHLESS

Personalizing haptics : from individuals’ sense-making schemas to end-user haptic tools

Synthetic haptic sensations will soon proliferate throughout many aspects of our lives, well beyond the simple buzz we get from our mobile devices. This view is widely held, as evidenced by the growing list of use cases and industry's increasing investment in haptics. However, we argue that taking haptics to the crowds will require haptic design practices to go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, common in the field, to satisfy users' diverse perceptual, functional, and hedonic needs and preferences reported in the literature. In this thesis, we tackle end-user personalization to leverage utility and aesthetics of haptic signals for individuals. Specifically, we develop effective haptic personalization mechanisms, grounded in our synthesis of users' sense-making schemas for haptics. First, we propose a design space and three distinct mechanisms for personalization tools: choosing, tuning, and chaining. Then, we develop the first two mechanisms into: 1) an efficient interface for choosing from a large vibration library, and 2) three emotion controls for tuning vibrations. In developing these, we devise five haptic facets that capture users' cognitive schemas for haptic stimuli, and derive their semantic dimensions and between-facet linkages by collecting and analyzing users' annotations for a 120-item vibration library. Our studies verify utility of the facets as a theoretical model for personalization tools. In collecting users' perception, we note a lack of scalable haptic evaluation methodologies and develop two methodologies for large-scale in-lab evaluation and online crowdsourcing of haptics. Our studies focus on vibrotactile sensations as the most mature and accessible haptic technology but our contributions extend beyond vibrations and inform other categories of haptics.Science, Faculty ofComputer Science, Department ofGraduat