Analyzing Users' Performance Interacting with a Digitized Traditional Game on Multi-Touch Display Using Fitts's Law

This paper presents an analysis of digitalizing traditional games by using multi-touch digital tabletop through Fitts’s law. The objectives of this paper are to study the accuracy of the user aiming performance using the Fitts’s Law towards the application, and to determine the movement time with different index of difficulty of the application. Besides, it’s to determine the appropriate size of the shooter marble and the target marble for the game design on the multi touch digital tabletop based on traditional games. The development encourage the collaborative works among the children to communicate with each other for increasing their social skills. The conducted experiment concludes the suitable size of the object in the application with the size of tabletop in guiding the user interface (UI) development

Simulation and control of sensory-mode interaction

Haptics, the sensation of physical touch to the virtual objects, is the most recent enhancement to virtual environment. With haptic simulation, virtual objects with different properties could be created to touch using haptic device. In current medical practice, haptics technology is being used to aid surgeons to perform surgical procedures such as needle insertion. It is vital that the penetration of the needle does not cause injury to the patients. However, the available technology does not address issues such as tissue texture and the depth of penetration. This project is about the simulation of sensory mode interaction of virtual objects of different stiffness and friction using PHANToM Haptic device. The penetration depth and force exerted into the objects should be within limit to avoid any deformity to the objects. PID controller is incorporated into the system to eliminate steady state errors as well as to ensure better transient response. To conduct the specified work, MATLAB software was used. Experimental results on the sensory mode interaction have proven the ability of the system to touch the objects within specified object limits. Simulated results on the system response have also shown the capability of the controller to provide fast and accurate response of the haptic devic

The Influence of Virtual Forest Walk on Physiological and Psychological Responses

The authors of this paper sought to investigate the impact of virtual forest therapy based on realistic versus dreamlike environments on reducing stress levels. Today, people are facing an increase in stress levels in everyday life, which may be due to personal life, work environment, or urban area expansion. Previous studies have reported that urban environments demand more attention and mental workload than natural environments. However, evidence for the effects of natural environments as virtual forest therapy on stress levels has not yet been fully explored. In this study, a total of 20 healthy participants completed a letter-detection test to increase their stress level and were then randomly assigned to two different virtual environments representing realistic and dreamlike graphics. The participants’ stress levels were assessed using two physiological methods that measured heart rate and skin conductance levels and one psychological method through the Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaire. These indicators were analyzed using a sample t-test and a one-way analysis of variance. The results showed that virtual forest environments could have positive stress-relieving effects. However, realistic graphics were more efficient in reducing stress. These findings contribute to growing forest therapy concepts and provide new directions for future forest therapy research.Yayasan Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS through YUTP Fundamental Research Grant No. 015LC0-00

Sensory Feedback and Interactivity: Enhancing Motivation and Engagement for VR Stroke Rehabilitation

Stroke is a condition that happens when the brain is cut off from blood supply. Patients are at risk of disabilities. To help patient recover, gain mobility, and independence, rehabilitation starts as soon as possible. Unfortunately for some patients, they are forced to undergo long-term rehabilitation period. Since the activities during therapy are repetitive, many patient losses their motivation to continue therapy thus unable to recover. Virtual reality has been found to increase motivation for stroke rehabilitation. Its key elements, especially sensory feedback and interactivity have been found to increase motivation and engagement especially when applied to gamification. However, practitioners in related field have raised concern on the relevancy of some VR elements used for rehabilitation. Inappropriate elements may not be effective for the program; thus, requires further investigation. This paper explores various elements that could encourage motivation, bring better engagement, and enhance task performance of stroke patients via VR-based rehabilitation. A literature survey was conducted. The findings signal for the importance of sensory feedback and interactivity when used in VR environment for stroke patients in their rehabilitation programme

Proposed Conceptual Design Model of Persuasive Game for Upper limb for Stroke Rehabilitation

The gamification of stroke rehabilitation may increase patient's motivation and engagement towards their rehabilitation activity and hence contributes to faster recovery. Apart from the interactive experience that games offer, it also may be used as a persuasive tool. In this view, games may be used to persuade stroke patients in shaping a good behavior towards their rehabilitation activity. This paper reports our proposed conceptual design model of building persuasive game for stroke patients that follows the Persuasive System Design Model. We incorporate the persuasive software features that includes reduction, tailoring, self-monitoring, and rewards. The proposed game architecture is also discussed in this paper

Task Automation Intelligent Agents: A Review

As technological advancements increase exponentially, mobile phones become smarter with machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. These advancements have allowed mobile phone users to perform most of their daily routine tasks on mobile phones; tasks performed in daily routines are called repetitive tasks and are performed manually by the users themselves. However, machine learning and artificial intelligence have enabled those tasks to be performed automatically, known as task automation. The users can perform task automation, e.g., through creating automation rules or an intelligent agent, e.g., conversational agents, virtual personal assistants, etc. Several techniques to achieve task automation have been proposed, but this review shows that task automation by programming by demonstration has had massive developmental growth because of its user-centered approach. Apple Siri, Google Assistant, MS Cortana, and Amazon Alexa are the most known task automation agents. However, these agents are not widely adopted because of their usability issues. In this study, two research questions are evaluated through the available literature to expand the research on intelligent task automation agents: (1) What is the state-of-the-art in task automation agents? (2) What are the existing methods and techniques for developing usability heuristics, specifically for intelligent agents? Research shows groundbreaking developments have been made in mobile phone task automation recently. However, it must still be conducted per usability principles to achieve maximum usability and user satisfaction. The second research question further justifies developing a set of domain-specific usability heuristics for mobile task automation intelligent agents