Recent Developments and Applications of Haptic Devices

Authors:

Summary:

The paper talks about the present day technologies available for haptic feedback. Factors to be considered while designing a haptic device

* weight

* frictional feedback in virtual world

* Parallel vs serial mechanism - serial mechanism offer less stiffness.

* ability of the device to handle pressure exerted by the user.

* hydraulic actuators - large forces but risk of hydraulic fluid leak.

The paper discusses about a wide range of devices starting from mice to force feedback skeleton arm and their costs , applications and working

Discussion:

I dint know the abundance of such technologies. This paper introduces to lot of research being done in this field expecially research in neuromuscular stimulation.

Hand and Brain - Neurophysiology and psychology of hand movements

Summary:

Optic Ataxia. pg 18/19

- one of the types is caused by parietal damage

- deficit in spacial vision - difficult to localize an object in visual space.

- gaze, misreaching, size of grasp.

- can identify objects but cannot pick up

Visual form agnosia

- ability to reach objects but not perceive them visually.

- There are different pathways for transforming visual information in to actions and perception.

Page 22 - Experiments to analyze the precision grasp mechanism. Objects chosen that would require contour analysis.

Coming to grips with the objects we grasp: detecting interactions with efficient wrist-worn sensors

Authors:

Eugen Berlin

Jun Liu

Kristof van Laerhoven

Bernt Schiele

Summary:

contributions of this paper are threefold: First, we mention the technical procedure in optimizing a wrist-worn RFID antenna. Second, a benchmark is presented that allows evaluation of different antenna configurations. Third, an approximation algorithm is demonstrated which makes recognition of short gestures possible.

- Experiments were conducted for finding the best performance of RFID reader for oval and circular antenna. Oval antenna performed better.

- A sliding window technique is implemented to find the most probable window in which the gesture was performed.

- a series of studies were performed to evaluate the instrument. First, reading an object from a cluster of objects kept inside a box. A study with user performing different gardening tasks using 16 objects and 36 tags was performed. A long study was performed with one user performing daily activities with 29 objects and 43 tags. The user was observed for 3 consecutive days.

Discussion:

Sliding window is an interesting method to extract the most probable gesture from the continuous stream. Evaluation study was quite extensive.

The Wiimote with multiple sensor bars: creating an affordable, virtual reality controller

Authors:

Torben Sko

Henry Gardner

Summary:

Goal: Using Wiimote, nunchuk and sensor bars for interaction in multiple screen environment.

The IR camera in Wii mote can detect upto 4 IR LED source. So it can detect 2 sensor bars at a time. A software which process the data does some intelligent prediction on which bars are being detected. The dynamic model is built from the IR data received from the Wiimote. The static model is read from a configuration file and describes the mapping of IR sources to pixel positions on the displays behind them. configuration needs to comply with the following conditions: at least two IR sources should visible at most times (justifying why each sensor bar has two IR sources), two sensor bars are visible when moving from one bar to another, and no more than 4 IR sources are visible at any one time. A sensor bar / environment switching algorithm has been defined by the author in the paper.

First user testing : 12 participants , 1 female , 8 with prior experience in using Wiimote - “Involvement/Control” and “Interface Quality” were rated at 5.7 & 5.3. Physical presence sensor bars were noted as distracting.

Second user testing: 8 participants, 1 female, 6 with prior experience in using Wii mote and everyone had gaming experience. The users had to play half life 2 (FPS). Everybody stated that they enjoyed the interface. Most of them expressed frustration with the control system. Some participants reported physical discomfort due rate of rotation in the screen.

Third user testing: 4 users from second test. refined was done in seating position, slower movement rate, vertical shooting and reset rate. Positive feedbacks on the usability of the system

Discussion:

One of the few research papers where follow up studies have been conducted. The authors have conducted a good user study. I would like to know the orientation of the sensor bars that helped them restricting the number of sensors on the screen to 4 always. The dynamic modelling system would also be interesting to know.

The peppermill: a human-powered user interface device

Authors:

Nicolas Villar

Steve Hodges

Summary:

GOAL: the use of a simple circuit to enable interaction-powered devices that support rotary input as the primary interaction technique; a design for a generic wireless interface device based on this circuit. gestural interaction devices like Wiimote enable users to perform large set of gestures which have potential energy. There are lot of oppurtunities to harness this energy to use it as power source for the device.

When the user turns the knob, the microcontroller powers up and samples the inputs from the supply circuit, as well as the state of the three additional buttons. It encodes and transmits the speed of turn, direction of turn and state of the buttons (pressed/released) as a single wireless packet. As long as enough power is being generated the microcontroller continually samples and transmits packets at 5ms intervals. Some interesting extensions include providing force feedback to users by shorting the DC motor. This stops the motor and does not allow the user to turn the knob. By periodically and momentarily braking rotation in this manner, it becomes possible to dynamically generate a variety of interesting haptic effects without supplying additional power.

Discussion: Interesting field of research. Tapping potential energy from the gesture movements is awesome. The haptic feedback entensions provided by the system is interesting.

Comments:

Whack gestures: inexact and inattentive interaction with mobile devices

Authors:

Scott E. Hudson

Chris Harrison

Beverly L. Harrison

Anthony LaMarca

Summary:

Goal: Inexact & inattentive interaction. interaction that does not require visual attention and does not disrupt the current activity.

Whack gestures - a set of gestures which are combinations of whack/ tap and wiggle/ shake. An adhoc recognition engine is set up to recognize the gestures. A user study with 11 people was performed to check the accuracy of the recognition.

Discussion:

I was totally taken back by the evaluation. I was expecting qualitative evaluation of the system as such user experience evaluation. I did not expect a recognizer accuracy evaluation. It would have been more interesting if they had evaluated the user experience given a certain scenario.

Comments: Murat

Gameplay issues in the design of spatial 3D gestures for video games

Authors:

John Payne

Paul Keir

Jocelyn Elgoyhen

Mairghread McLundie

Martin Naef

Martyn Horner

Paul Anderson

Summary:

effective implementation in 2D, 3D spatial gestures present their own problems in relation to: how to present 3D gesture feedback, user performance differences,how to instruct/learn user gestures,what are familiar semiotics for 3D gestures. The authors have created a device called 3motion and created several games to evaluate the useful ness of gestures in gaming scenarios. They identified intuitive gestures, clear user feedback and effective semiotics are important.

Discussion:

I did not realize that this was a paper before Wii was in the market. elaborate research on user feedback and recognizing features of feedback would be helpful. In fact, each topic identified as important needs an elaborate study.

Comments: Drew, franck