ÁGORAS: HACIA UNA INFRAESTRUCTURA PARA EL APRENDIZAJE CREATIVO EN SUPERFICIES INTERACTIVAS

Este trabajo presenta los fundamentos para la construcción de un entorno para el aprendizaje creativo, constructivista y social basado en superficies interactivas, para lo cual se han desarrollado dos componentes que formarán parte de la infraestructura final: un subsistema de seguimiento de marcadores y otro de eventos semánticos. Abstract: This work presents the foundations to build an environment to support social, constructivist, and creative learning based on interactive tabletops. Two middleware components have been developed to take part of the final infrastructure: a subsystem of fiducial markers for tracking objects, and a subsystem for semantic events.Catalá Bolós, A. (2008). ÁGORAS: HACIA UNA INFRAESTRUCTURA PARA EL APRENDIZAJE CREATIVO EN SUPERFICIES INTERACTIVAS. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/13003Archivo delegad

Augmented Tangible Surfaces to Support Cognitive Games for Ageing People

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19695-4_27The continuous and rapidly increasing elderly population requires a revision of technology design in order to devise systems usable and meaningful for this social group. Most applications for ageing people are built to provide supporting services, taking into account the physical and cognitive abilities that decrease over time. However, this paper focuses on building technology to improve such capacities, or at least slow down their decline, through cognitive games. This is achieved by means of a digitally-augmented table-like surface that combines touch with tangible input for a more natural, intuitive, and appealing means of interaction. Its construction materials make it an affordable device likely to be used in retirement homes in the context of therapeutic activities, and its form factor enables a versatile, quick, and scalable configuration, as well as a socializing experience.This work received financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TIN2010-20488, and from Universitat Politécnica de Valencia under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowships APOST D/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (GVA).García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Augmented Tangible Surfaces to Support Cognitive Games for Ageing People. En Ambient Intelligence - Software and Applications. Springer. 263-271. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19695-4_27S26327

Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals' behavior using depth-based tracking

[EN] There is growing interest in the automatic detection of animals' behaviors and body postures within the field of Animal Computer Interaction, and the benefits this could bring to animal welfare, enabling remote communication, welfare assessment, detection of behavioral patterns, interactive and adaptive systems, etc. Most of the works on animals' behavior recognition rely on wearable sensors to gather information about the animals' postures and movements, which are then processed using machine learning techniques. However, non-wearable mechanisms such as depth-based tracking could also make use of machine learning techniques and classifiers for the automatic detection of animals' behavior. These systems also offer the advantage of working in set-ups in which wearable devices would be difficult to use. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for the automatic detection of animals' postures and body parts, as well as an exhaustive evaluation on the performance of several classification algorithms based on both a supervised and a knowledge-based approach. The evaluation of the depth -based tracking system and the different classifiers shows that the system proposed is promising for advancing the research on animals' behavior recognition within and outside the field of Animal Computer Interaction. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish MINECO with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catala (APOSTD/2013/013). The work of Patricia Pons is supported by a national grant from the Spanish MECD (FPU13/03831). Special thanks to our cat participants and their owners, and many thanks to our feline caretakers and therapists, Olga, Asier and Julia, for their valuable collaboration and their dedication to animal wellbeing.Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2017). Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals' behavior using depth-based tracking. Expert Systems with Applications. 86:235-246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2017.05.063S2352468

A diffusion-based ACO resource discovery framework for dynamic p2p networks

© 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksThe Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has been a very resourceful metaheuristic over the past decade and it has been successfully used to approximately solve many static NP-Hard problems. There is a limit, however, of its applicability in the field of p2p networks; derived from the fact that such networks have the potential to evolve constantly and at a high pace, rendering the already-established results useless. In this paper we approach the problem by proposing a generic knowledge diffusion mechanism that extends the classical ACO paradigm to better deal with the p2p's dynamic nature. Focusing initially on the appearance of new resources in the network we have shown that it is possible to increase the efficiency of ant routing by a significant margin.Kamil Krynicki is supported by a FPI fellowship from the Universitat Politècnica de València with reference number 3117. This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TSI2010-20488.Krynicki, KK.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2013). A diffusion-based ACO resource discovery framework for dynamic p2p networks. En 2013 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. IEEE. 860-867. https://doi.org/10.1109/CEC.2013.6557658S86086

Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-546-4_6Play stands as one of the most natural and inherent behavior among the majority of living species, specifically humans and animals. Human play has evolved significantly over the years, and so have done the artifacts which allow us to play: from children playing tag games without any tools other than their bodies, to modern video games using haptic and wearable devices to augment the playful experience. However, this ludic revolution has not been the same for the humans’ closest companions, our pets. Recently, a new discipline inside the human–computer interaction (HCI) community, called animal–computer interaction (ACI), has focused its attention on improving animals’ welfare using technology. Several works in the ACI field rely on playful interfaces to mediate this digital communication between animals and humans. Until now, the development of these interfaces only comprises a single goal or activity, and its adaptation to the animals’ needs requires the developers’ intervention. This work analyzes the existing approaches, proposing a more generic and autonomous system aimed at addressing several aspects of animal welfare at a time: Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals. The great potential of these systems is discussed, explaining how incorporating intelligent capabilities within playful environments could allow learning from the animals’ behavior and automatically adapt the game to the animals’ needs and preferences. The engaging playful activities created with these systems could serve different purposes and eventually improve animals’ quality of life.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science andInnovation under the National R&D&I Program within the projects Create Worlds (TIN2010-20488) and SUPEREMOS (TIN2014-60077-R), and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within theVALi+d Program of the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by the Universitat Politècnica de València under the “Beca de Excelencia” program and currently by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports (FPU13/03831).Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals. En More Playful User Interfaces: Interfaces that Invite Social and Physical Interaction. Springer. 121-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-546-4_6S121150Alfrink, K., van Peer, I., Lagerweij H, et al.: Pig Chase. Playing with Pigs project. (2012) www.playingwithpigs.nlAmat, M., Camps, T., Le, Brech S., Manteca, X.: Separation anxiety in dogs: the implications of predictability and contextual fear for behavioural treatment. Anim. Welf. 23(3), 263–266 (2014). doi: 10.7120/09627286.23.3.263Barker, S.B., Dawson, K.S.: The effects of animal-assisted therapy on anxiety ratings of hospitalized psychiatric patients. Psychiatr. Serv. 49(6), 797–801 (1998)Bateson, P., Martin, P.: Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation. Cambridge University Press, New York (2013)Bekoff, M., Allen, C.: Intentional communication and social play: how and why animals negotiate and agree to play. In: Bekoff, M., Byers, J.A. (eds.) Animal Play Evolutionary. 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Customizing smart environments: a tabletop approach

Smart environments are becoming a reality in our society and the number of intelligent devices integrated in these spaces is in-creasing very rapidly. As the combination of intelligent elements will open a wide range of new opportunities to make our lives easier, final users should be provided with a simplified method of handling complex intelligent features. Specifying behavior in these environments can be difficult for non-experts, so that more efforts should be directed towards easing the customization tasks. This work presents an entirely visual rule editor based on dataflow expressions for interactive tabletops which allows be-havior to be specified in smart environments. An experiment was carried out aimed at evaluating the usability of the editor in terms of non-programmers understanding of the abstractions and concepts involved in the rule model, ease of use of the pro-posed visual interface and the suitability of the interaction mechanisms implemented in the editing tool. The study revealed that users with no previous programming experience were able to master the proposed rule model and editing tool for specifying be-havior in the context of a smart home, even though some minor usability issues were detected.We would like to thank all the volunteers that participated in the empirical study. Our thanks are also due to the ASIC/Polimedia team for their computer hardware support. This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catala (APOSTD/2013/013). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia under the "Beca de Excelencia" program, and currently by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (FPU13/03831).Pons Tomás, P.; Catalá Bolós, A.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2015). Customizing smart environments: a tabletop approach. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments. 7(4):511-533. https://doi.org/10.3233/AIS-150328S51153374[1]C. Becker, M. Handte, G. Schiele and K. Rothermel, PCOM – a component system for pervasive computing, in: Proc. of the Second IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom’04), IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 2004, pp. 67–76.Bhatti, Z. W., Naqvi, N. Z., Ramakrishnan, A., Preuveneers, D., & Berbers, Y. (2014). Learning distributed deployment and configuration trade-offs for context-aware applications in Intelligent Environments. 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F., RATANAMAHATANA, C. «ANN», & MYERS, B. A. (2001). Studying the language and structure in non-programmers’ solutions to programming problems. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 54(2), 237-264. doi:10.1006/ijhc.2000.0410[33]P. Pons, A. Catala, J. Jaen and J.A. Mocholi, DafRule: Un modelo de reglas enriquecido mediante flujos de datos para la definición visual de comportamiento reactivo de entidades virtuales, in: Actas de las Jornadas de Ingeniería del Software y Bases de Datos (JISBD 2011), 2011, 989–1002.Rasch, K. (2014). An unsupervised recommender system for smart homes. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 6(1), 21-37. doi:10.3233/ais-130242[35]K. Ryall, C. Forlines, C. Shen and M.R. Morris, Exploring the effects of group size and table size on interactions with tabletop shared-display groupware, in: Proc. of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2004, pp. 284–293.Schmidt, A. (2000). 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Multi-Display Environments to Foster Emotional Intelligence in Hospitalized Children

© Owner/Author 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Interacción '15 Proceedings of the XVI International Conference on Human Computer Interactionhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2829875.2829880Long-term and frequent hospitalized children are under high loads of emotional stress, which affects their well-being in addition to the illness they are suffering. This thesis proposes and will focus on an approach to use Multi-Display Environments (MDE) in pediatric hospitalization contexts to improve patients’ emotional intelligence so they can deal with the negative emotions produced by their situation.This work is supported by Spanish MINECO (TIN2010-20488 and TIN2014-60077-R), from Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV-FE-2014-24), and from GVA (APOSTD/2013/013 and ACIF/2014/214).García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Multi-Display Environments to Foster Emotional Intelligence in Hospitalized Children. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2829875.2829880SGal, E., Bauminger, N., Goren-Bar, D., et al. Enhancing Social Communication of Children with High-functioning Autism Through a Co-located Interface. AI & Society 24, 1 (2009), 75--84.Hornecker, E., Marshall, P., Dalton, N.S., and Rogers, Y. Collaboration and Interference: Awareness with Mice or Touch Input. CSCW '08, ACM (2008), 167--176.Kaminski, M., Pellino, T., and Wish, J. Play and Pets: The Physical and Emotional Impact of Child-Life and Pet Therapy on Hospitalized Children. Children's Health Care 31, 4 (2002), 321--335.Mandryk, R.L., Inkpen, K.M., Bilezikjian, M., Klemmer, S.R., and Landay, J.A. Supporting children's collaboration across handheld computers. CHI EA '01, ACM (2001), 255--256.Morris, M.E., Marshall, C.S., Calix, M., Al Haj, M., MacDougall, J.S., and Carmean, D.M. PIXEE: Pictures, Interaction and Emotional Expression. CHI EA '13, ACM (2013), 2277--2286.Ohta, T. and Tanaka, J. Pinch: an interface that relates applications on multiple touch-screen by `pinching' gesture. ACE '12, Springer-Verlag (2012), 320--335.Ohta, T. Dynamically reconfigurable multi-display environment for CG contents. ACE '08, ACM (2008), 416.Rick, J., Marshall, P., and Yuill, N. Beyond One-size-fits-all: How Interactive Tabletops Support Collaborative Learning. IDC '11, ACM (2011), 109--117

Beyond the limits of digital interaction: should animals play with interactive environments?

Our digital world evolves towards ubiquitous and intuitive scenarios, filled with interconnected and transparent computing devices which ease our daily activities. We have approached this evolution of technology in a strictly human-centric manner. There are, however, plenty of species, among them our pets, which could also profit from these technological advances. A new field in Computer Science, called Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), aims at filling this technological gap by developing systems and interfaces specifically designed for animals. This paper envisions how ACI could be extended to enhance the most natural animal behavior: play. This work explains how interactive environments could become playful scenarios where animals enjoy, learn and interact with technology, improving their wellbeingThis work is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). The work of Patricia Pons is supported by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (FPU13/03831). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). We also thank the Valencian Society for the Protection of Animals and Plants (SVPAP) for their cooperation.Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Beyond the limits of digital interaction: should animals play with interactive environments?. ACM. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/65361

Developing a depth-based tracking systems for interactive playful environments with animals

© ACM 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (p. 59). http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2837007.[EN] Digital games for animals within Animal Computer Interaction are usually single-device oriented, however richer interactions could be delivered by considering multimodal environments and expanding the number of technological elements involved. In these playful ecosystems, animals could be either alone or accompanied by human beings, but in both cases the system should react properly to the interactions of all the players, creating more engaging and natural games. Technologically-mediated playful scenarios for animals will therefore require contextual information about the game participants, such as their location or body posture, in order to suitably adapt the system reactions. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for cats capable of detecting their location, body posture and field of view. The proposed system could also be extended to locate and detect human gestures and track small robots, becoming a promising component in the creation of intelligent interspecies playful environments.Work supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the EDRF-FEDER (TIN2014-60077-R). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by a national grant from the Spanish MECD (FPU13/03831). Alejandro Catalá also received support from a VALi+d fellowship from the GVA (APOSTD/2013/013). Special thanks to our cat participants, their owners, and our feline caretakers and therapistsPons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Developing a depth-based tracking systems for interactive playful environments with animals. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2837007SJan Bednarik and David Herman. 2015. Human gesture recognition using top view depth data obtained from Kinect sensor.Excel. - Student Conf. Innov. Technol. Sci. IT, 1--8.Hrvoje Benko, Andrew D. Wilson, Federico Zannier, and Hrvoje Benko. 2014. Dyadic projected spatial augmented reality.Proc. 27th Annu. ACM Symp. User interface Softw. Technol. - UIST '14, 645--655.Alper Bozkurt, David L Roberts, Barbara L Sherman, et al. 2014. Toward Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue.IEEE Intell. Syst. 29, 6, 32--39.Rita Brugarolas, Robert T. Loftin, Pu Yang, David L. Roberts, Barbara Sherman, and Alper Bozkurt. 2013. Behavior recognition based on machine learning algorithms for a wireless canine machine interface.2013 IEEE Int. Conf. Body Sens. Networks, 1--5.Adrian David Cheok, Roger Thomas K C Tan, R. L. Peiris, et al. 2011. Metazoa Ludens: Mixed-Reality Interaction and Play for Small Pets and Humans.IEEE Trans. Syst. Man, Cybern. - Part A Syst. Humans41, 5, 876--891.Amanda Hodgson, Natalie Kelly, and David Peel. 2013. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveying Marine Fauna: A dugong case study.PLoS One8, 11, 1--15.Gang Hu, Derek Reilly, Mohammed Alnusayri, Ben Swinden, and Qigang Gao. 2014. DT-DT: Top-down Human Activity Analysis for Interactive Surface Applications.Proc. Ninth ACM Int. Conf. Interact. Tabletops Surfaces - ITS '14, 167--176.Brett R Jones, Hrvoje Benko, Eyal Ofek, and Andrew D. Wilson. 2013. IllumiRoom: Peripheral Projected Illusions for Interactive Experiences.Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst. - CHI '13, 869--878.Brett Jones, Lior Shapira, Rajinder Sodhi, et al. 2014. RoomAlive: magical experiences enabled by scalable, adaptive projector-camera units.Proc. 27th Annu. ACM Symp. User Interface Softw. Technol. - UIST '14, 637--644.Cassim Ladha, Nils Hammerla, Emma Hughes, Patrick Olivier, and Thomas Ploetz. 2013. Dog's Life: Wearable Activity Recognition for Dogs.Proc. 2013 ACM Int. Jt. Conf. Pervasive Ubiquitous Comput. - UbiComp'13, 415.Shang Ping Lee, Adrian David Cheok, Teh Keng Soon James, et al. 2006. A mobile pet wearable computer and mixed reality system for human--poultry interaction through the internet.Pers. Ubiquitous Comput. 10, 5, 301--317.Clara Mancini, Janet van der Linden, Jon Bryan, and Andrew Stuart. 2012. Exploring interspecies sensemaking: Dog Tracking Semiotics and Multispecies Ethnography.Proc. 2012 ACM Conf. Ubiquitous Comput. - UbiComp '12, 143--152.Clara Mancini. 2011. Animal-computer interaction: a manifesto.Mag. Interact. 18, 4, 69--73.Clara Mancini. 2013. Animal-computer interaction (ACI): changing perspective on HCI, participation and sustainability.CHI '13 Ext. Abstr. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst., 2227--2236.Steve North, Carol Hall, Amanda Roshier, and Clara Mancini. 2015. HABIT: Horse Automated Behaviour Identification Tool -- A Position Paper.Proc. Br. Hum. Comput. Interact. Conf. - Anim. Comput. Interact. Work., 1--4.Mikko Paldanius, Tuula Kärkkäinen, Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Oskar Juhlin, and Jonna Häkkilä. 2011. Communication technology for human-dog interaction: exploration of dog owners' experiences and expectations.Proc. SIGCHI Conf. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst., 2641--2650.Patricia Pons, Javier Jaen, and Alejandro Catala. Multimodality and Interest Grabbing: Are Cats Ready for the Game?Submitt. to Int. J. Human-Computer Stud. Spec. Issue Anim. Comput. Interact. (under Rev).Patricia Pons, Javier Jaen, and Alejandro Catala. 2014. 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Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children

© ACM, 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (pp. 159-162). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2669485.2669523Pre-kindergarten children are becoming frequent users of multi-touch technology and, according to previous studies they are able to perform several multi-touch gestures successfully. However, they do not use these devices supervised at all times. Consequently, interactive applications for pre-kindergarteners need to convey their underlying design intent and interactive principles with respect to touch interaction. In this paper, we present and evaluate two approaches to communicate three different touch gestures (tap, drag and scale up) to pre-kindergarten users. Our results show, firstly, that it is possible to effectively communicate them using visual cues and, secondly, that an animated semiotic approach is better than an iconic one.Work supported by the MINECO (grant TIN2010-20488) and GVA VALi+d program (grant APOSTD/2013/013).Nácher Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2014). Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2669485.2669523SBaloian, N., Pino, J. A., and Vargas, R. Tablet gestures as a motivating factor for learning. In Proc. ChileCHI'13, (2013), 98--103.Hofmeester, K., and Wolfe, J. Self-revealing gestures: teaching new touch interactions in windows 8. In ACM CHI EA '12 (2012), 815--828Kähkönen, M. and Ovaska, S. Initial observations on children and online instructions. In Proc. IDC '06, (2006), 93.Lee, R. Gestures. http://gesturecons.com/.Levine, S.C., Huttenlocher, J., Taylor, A., and Langrock, A. Early sex differences in spatial skill. Developmental Psychology, 35, (1999) 940--949.McKnight, L. and Fitton, D. Touch-screen technology for children: Giving the Right Instructions and Getting the Right Responses. In Proc. IDC '10, ACM Press (2010), 238.Niemi, H. and Ovaska, S. Designing spoken instructions with preschool children. In Proc. IDC '07, (2007), 133.Prates, R.O., de Souza, C.S., and Barbosa, S.D.J. Methods and tools: a method for evaluating the communicability of user interfaces. Interactions 7, 1 (2000), 31--38.Rideout, V. Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America. Common Sense Media, 2011.Walter, R., Bailly, G. and Müller, J. StrikeAPose: Revealing Mid-Air Gestures on Public Displays. In Proc. ACM CHI'13 (2013), 841--850