Interface, multimodal / multisensory

International audienceIn general, a multimodal interface is a class of interfaces, designed to make the interaction process between a human and a computer more similar to human-to-human communication. What is important in a multimodal interface, is that these kinds of systems strive for meaning, as defined in multimodality from the point of view of HCI

Improved Haptic Linear Lines for Better Movement Accuracy in Upper Limb Rehabilitation

Force feedback has proven to be beneficial in the domain of robot-assisted rehabilitation. According to the patients' personal needs, the generated forces may either be used to assist, support, or oppose their movements. In our current research project, we focus onto the upper limb training for MS (multiple sclerosis) and CVA (cerebrovascular accident) patients, in which a basic building block to implement many rehabilitation exercises was found. This building block is a haptic linear path: a second-order continuous path, defined by a list of points in space. Earlier, different attempts have been investigated to realize haptic linear paths. In order to have a good training quality, it is important that the haptic simulation is continuous up to the second derivative while the patient is enforced to follow the path tightly, even when low or no guiding forces are provided. In this paper, we describe our best solution to these haptic linear paths, discuss the weaknesses found in practice, and propose and validate an improvement

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx)

1. Climate change is a world‐wide threat to biodiversity and ecosystem structure, functioning and services. To understand the underlying drivers and mechanisms, and to predict the consequences for nature and people, we urgently need better understanding of the direction and magnitude of climate change impacts across the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum. An increasing number of climate change studies are creating new opportunities for meaningful and high‐quality generalizations and improved process understanding. However, significant challenges exist related to data availability and/or compatibility across studies, compromising opportunities for data re‐use, synthesis and upscaling. Many of these challenges relate to a lack of an established ‘best practice’ for measuring key impacts and responses. This restrains our current understanding of complex processes and mechanisms in terrestrial ecosystems related to climate change. 2. To overcome these challenges, we collected best‐practice methods emerging from major ecological research networks and experiments, as synthesized by 115 experts from across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Our handbook contains guidance on the selection of response variables for different purposes, protocols for standardized measurements of 66 such response variables and advice on data management. Specifically, we recommend a minimum subset of variables that should be collected in all climate change studies to allow data re‐use and synthesis, and give guidance on additional variables critical for different types of synthesis and upscaling. The goal of this community effort is to facilitate awareness of the importance and broader application of standardized methods to promote data re‐use, availability, compatibility and transparency. We envision improved research practices that will increase returns on investments in individual research projects, facilitate second‐order research outputs and create opportunities for collaboration across scientific communities. Ultimately, this should significantly improve the quality and impact of the science, which is required to fulfil society's needs in a changing world

Spe-Ler: Serious (fun-) gaming for youngsters with mental disabilities

Spe-Ler (which is an acronym for the Dutch 'Spelend Leren' (Learn while playing)) creates a gaming environment where people with mental disabilities can play 'fun'-games according to their possibilities. On the other hand, the environment allows a care-taker to create didactical content in the form of short movies. While playing, the game session is interrupted at certain moments (e.g. after some time of playing, or when progressing to the next level). At the time of the interruption, the movies are shown inbetween as it were a commercial. After the movie, the player is asked one question, which has to be answered before continuing the game. The idea of Spe-Ler is to offer short didactical messages in a relaxed and fun situation. Important hereby is that the question is not a true/false question, or does not peek for 'knowledge', but rather throws a dilemma forcing the player to reflect about the situation presented in the movie. Using an administrative tool, the given answers as well as the scores, are at the disposal of the care-takers to be used as input for other didactical approaches. This environment also allows care-takers to upload their own didactical movies, create questions and possible answers, order them as desired and present them as new didactical content. New (Open Source) games can be integrated in the environment as well, as long as the source code is available, and a programmer is able to add three or four lines of code. In our particular case-study, we focussed on the rules of daily living in a care center for people with mental disabilities. The movies and the content are managed by the care center, while the games are created by Master and Bachelor students in ICT. At this particular time, the evaluation is in progress, but in the final paper, the results will be available to be integrated.status: publishe

A User and Designer Perspective on Multimodal Interaction in 3D Environments

Although we daily interact in a real 3D world in our normal existence, interaction in 3D computer generated worlds is often a very cumbersome task. Mostly, those interfaces suffer from usability issues due to limitations in the current technical solutions, but also because the limited use of the human senses or the absence of suitable interaction techniques. In this thesis, we investigate how the interaction in a personal desktop setup can be improved by making optimal use of the human’s communication capabilities. Experiments using haptic feedback, speech interaction and both symmetrical and cooperative bimanual interaction have been conducted in order to achieve this goal. As a promising approach, the experiments led to a combination of force feedback with the dominant, using a PHANToM device, supported by the proprioceptive feeling of the user’s non-dominant hand. The non-dominant hand is then applied to select, grab and hold objects and to activate and hold user interface elements such as menus or dialogs. In order to facilitate the reasoning about interaction techniques, and to shorten the development cycle of an interaction technique, the thesis also presents NiMMiT (Notation for Multimodal Interaction Techniques) as a visual notation to describe interaction techniques.nrpages: 236status: publishe

An empirical approach for the evaluation of haptic algorithms

The number of haptic algorithms has been growing over the past few years. However, little research has been performed in evaluating these algorithms. This paper provides a discussion of how force feedback algorithms can be empirically evaluated for correctness and performance.status: publishe

Spe-Ler: Serious Gaming for Youngsters with Intellectual Disabilities

When working with youngsters with intellectual disabilities, it is often a challenge to teach them ‘boring’ content (e.g. the ‘rules of daily living’ in their school or care-center). In this paper we propose a serious gaming approach in order to facilitate the learning process. The novelty in our concept is that we decouple the game and the didactical content, which allows us to transfer the learning to the youngster’s leisure time. In our research, we built a framework containing several (fun) games and an administration environment that facilitates the creation of learning content. In a user experiment, measuring the user’s joy and motivation we found that the subjects enjoyed playing the games and were very attentive when the didactical content appeared.status: publishe

K.: Force feedback magnitude effects on user’s performance during target acquisition: a pilot study. Accepted for Interact

Abstract. Only a few guidelines exist for defining the force properties in a haptic interface; as a consequence, they are mostly determined in an ad-hoc manner. We investigate how the user's performance changes during target acquisition when increasing force amplitudes are applied. Using a simple multidirectional point-select task, forces with variable amplitudes are applied to the user while traversing from one target to the other. We find that the user's performance suddenly degrades significantly, rather than decreasing progressively. This finding may be important for defining guidelines which forces may and may not be applied to a user in order to allow the haptic feedback to improve, rather than deteriorate the user's performance