Motion estimation based on optical flow and an artificial neural network (ANN)

Motion estimation provides an attractive alternative to cumbersome interface devices for human-computer interaction (HCI). Worthy of note is that the visual recognition of hand gestures can help to achieve an easy and natural interaction between human and computer. The interfaces of HCI and other virtual reality systems depend on accurate, real-time hand and fingertip tracking for an association between real objects and the corresponding digital information. However, they are expensive, and complicated operations can make them troublesome. We are developing a real-time, view-based gesture recognition system. The optical flow is estimated and segmented into motion fragments. Using an artificial neural network (ANN), the system can compute and estimate the motions of gestures. Compared with traditional approaches, theoretical and experimental results show that this method has simpler hardware and algorithms, but is more effective. It can be used in moving object recognition systems for understanding human body languages.     

The design of conceptual language interfaces to open computer network application and management systems

The justification for standardization of human-computer and control interfaces is discussed. Various approaches are explored. Special emphasis is placed on the functionality of user interfaces in network environments of interconnected, heterogeneous, open computer systems. Finally, a linguistic and functional model of the user interface is proposed as a basis for further research     

The design of conceptual language interfaces to open computer network application and management systems

Abstract

The justification for standardization of human-computer and control interfaces is discussed. Various approaches are explored. Special emphasis is placed on the functionality of user interfaces in network environments of interconnected, heterogeneous, open computer systems. Finally, a linguistic and functional model of the user interface is proposed as a basis for further research     

A human-computer interface for non-computer specialists

The COM teleconferencing system was designed to be easy to use for both beginners and people with much computer experience. A number of design choices in organizing the human-computer interface were considered very carefully. These design problems are not unique for teleconferencing applications, but will appear in many other developments of human-computer interfaces for non-computer specialists. This report discusses naming conventions, menu format, user commands, help facility and the treatment of ‘type ahead’ from the users.     

基于表面肌电信号的人机交互软件设计

设计了一种基于Qt的人机交互软件,用于从表面肌电信号中解码出手势,控制空间机械臂灵巧手作业;介绍了肌电信号解码手势并控制仿真灵巧手系统的组成,包括下位机肌电采集接口部分和上位机人机交互软件两部分;详细说明了人机交互软件的3个功能模块,即接收并显示16路神经接口向上位机发送的肌电信号、对肌电信号进行实时手势解码以及控制仿真灵巧手;分析了软件设计过程中的几个关键技术,信号与槽机制、多线程与多进程结合、UDP通信等;最后,设计了基于肌电信号解码3种手势并控制仿真灵巧手的实时实验,手势识别率在98％以上,控制延迟为200 ms左右;实验结果表明,人机交互软件运行稳定,功能齐全,在航天遥操作人机交互系统中具有应用前景.     

Computer interface design: A user-centered approach

Enhancing the way people use computers to perform tasks has become a very important issue in interface design and human-computer interactions. When the concept of human-computer interaction first began to emerge it was commonly understood as the hardware and software through which a human and computer could effectively communicate (Laurel, 1990). This effective communication is also know as user-friendliness. The concept of user friendliness has recently been expanded to include various attributes and cognitive aspects of the user's needs and experiences. Focus should be on the user's experiences, expectations, preferences, and cognitive aspects in developing efficient and effective computer interface designs. It is the basic premise of this paper to emphasize using a user-centered design in developing computer interfaces.     

基于FPGA的煤矿安全监控系统监控分站的设计

针对煤矿安全监控系统中的监控分站采用单一微处理器采集传感器数据而导致的实时性差的问题,提出了一种基于FPGA的煤矿安全监控系统监控分站的设计方案,详细介绍了该监控分站的软、硬件设计。该监控分站采用A3PE600系列FPGA完成传感器信号的数据采集任务,采用ARM系列MCU完成与FPGA通信、与上位机通信、根据配置信息及传感器数据实现断电及报警控制、人机交互等任务。该监控分站实时性强,可接入多种类型的传感器,并适用于传输接口不同的多种安全监测监控系统。     

Strange Bedfellows: Human-Computer Interaction, Interface Design, and Composition Pedagogy

As digital interfaces increasingly mediate our access to information, the design of these interfaces becomes increasingly important. Designing digital interfaces requires writers to make rhetorical choices that are sometimes technical in nature and often correspond with principles taught in the computer science subfield of human-computer interaction. We propose that an HCI-informed writing pedagogy can complicate for both writing and computer science students the important role audience should play when designing traditional and digital interfaces. Although it is a subtle shift in many ways, this pedagogy seemed to complicate student understanding of the relationship between audience and the texts/interfaces they created: it was not just the “human” (beliefs, attitudes, values, demographics) or the “computer” (the software or hardware or other types of mediation) that mattered but rather the “interaction” between the two. First we explore some of the ways in which writing code and writing prose have merged and paved the way for an HCI-informed writing pedagogy. Next we examine some parallels between human-computer interaction principles and composition principles. Finally, we refer to assignments, student responses, and anecdotal evidence from our classes where an HCI-informed writing pedagogy drew—or could have drawn—student attention more acutely to various audience-related technical and rhetorical interface design choices.     

Sound production and modeling

Sound in multimedia, movies, games, virtual reality, and human-computer interfaces is a growing field that encompasses the disciplines of analog and digital signal processing, physics, speech, music, perception, and computer systems architecture. This overview of sound production and modeling techniques surveys the state of the art in sound technology. Sound has become a critical component in modern multimedia systems, especially multispeaker surround-sound entertainment systems. Many of the components and techniques in these systems are also applicable in virtual and augmented reality systems. With basic sound hardware now available for most (but not all, as in some palmtops) computer systems, and increasing processor speeds allowing direct real-time sound manipulation, enhancing multimodal computer-human interfaces by using the sonic channel is becoming commonplace. Sound in games and other graphics-intensive real-time applications is achieving higher levels of sophistication and promises to undergo even further advancements in realism and responsiveness.     

The electronic mirror: Human-computer interaction and change in self-appraisals

As computers become increasingly powerful and complex, software designers are employing anthropomorphism to enhance the usability of computer interfaces (i.e., “user-centered” design). The potential for implementing a social mode of interface behavior, however, can only be realized through understanding the role anthropomorphism plays in modifying the behavior and perceptions of users. The present study compares human-like versus machine-like interactional styles of computer interfaces, testing hypotheses that evaluative feedback conveyed through a human-like interface will have greater impact on individuals' self-appraisals. College students received experimentally manipulated positive or negative computerized feedback in response to their performance on a purported “psychic ability” task. In general, computer feedback had considerable impact upon reflected appraisals (participants' perceptions of the computer's evaluations of their performance and ability) as well as upon their self-appraisals of performance and ability. Reflected appraisals were more influenced by computer feedback than were self-appraisals. Human-like and machine-like interface styles did not have significantly different effects.     

The Role of Cognitive Modeling for User Interface Design Representations: An Epistemological Analysis of Knowledge Engineering in the Context of Human-Computer Interaction

In this paper we review some problems with traditional approaches for acquiring and representing knowledge in the context of developing user interfaces. Methodological implications for knowledge engineering and for human-computer interaction are studied. It turns out that in order to achieve the goal of developing human-oriented (in contrast to technology-oriented) human-computer interfaces developers have to develop sound knowledge of the structure and the representational dynamics of the cognitive system which is interacting with the computer.We show that in a first step it is necessary to study and investigate the different levels and forms of representation that are involved in the interaction processes between computers and human cognitive systems. Only if designers have achieved some understanding about these representational mechanisms, user interfaces enabling individual experiences and skill development can be designed. In this paper we review mechanisms and processes for knowledge representation on a conceptual, epistemological, and methodologieal level, and sketch some ways out of the identified dilemmas for cognitive modeling in the domain of human-computer interaction.     

A tangible goal for 3D modeling

As we progress into applications that incorporate interactive life-like 3D computer graphics, the mouse falls short as a user interface device, and it becomes obvious that 3D computer graphics could achieve much more with a more intuitive user interface mechanism. Haptic interfaces, or force feedback devices, promise to increase the quality of human-computer interaction by accommodating our sense of touch. The article discusses the application of touch feedback systems to 3D modelling. To achieve a high interactivity level requires novel rendering techniques such as volume-based rendering algorithms     

Hot topics-eye-gaze computer interfaces: what you look at is whatyou get

As computers are becoming more powerful, the critical bottleneck in their use is often in the user interface, not in the computer processing. Research in human-computer interaction that seeks to increase the communication bandwidth between the user and the machine by using input from the user's eye movement is discussed. The speed potential, processing stages, interaction techniques, and problems associated with these eye-gaze interfaces are described     

Ecological interface design and computer network management: The effects of network size and fault frequency

This article describes an experiment investigating the impact of ecological interface design (EID) on human performance in computer network management. This work domain is more dynamic than those previously studied under EID because there is a constant potential for the addition and removal of devices, as well as changing configurations, making it important to study the generalizability of the framework. Two interfaces were created for the University of Toronto campus network consisting of 220 nodes: a P interface based on existing design practices which presented primarily physical information and a P+F interface based on EID which presented both physical and functional information identified by an abstraction hierarchy analysis. Participants used one of the two interfaces to detect and diagnose faults or disturbances in the simulated network in real-time. Network size and fault frequency were both manipulated as within-participants variables. The P+F interface led to faster detection times overall, as well as improved fault detection rate and more accurate fault diagnosis under higher fault loads. These results suggest that the EID framework may lead to more robust monitoring performance in computer network management compared to existing interfaces.     

Developing and evaluating an interactive system for producing human-computer interfaces

The Author's Interactive Dialogue Environment (AIDE) of the Dialogue Management System is an integrated set of interactive tools for developing human-computer interfaces. AIDE is used by an interface specialist, called a dialogue developer, to implement an interface by directly manipulating and defining its objects, rather than by the traditional method of writing source code. This paper describes the structural dialogue transaction model upon which AIDE is based, describes the use of AIDE for developing human-computer interfaces, and describes an empirical study comparing use of AIDE with use of a programming language for implementing a human-computer interface. Results of this study empirically support, possibly for the first time, the claim that interactive tools for interface development, such as AIDE, can improve productivity and reduce frustration in developing interfaces over traditional programming techniques for interface development.     

WalkMap: Developing an augmented reality map application for wearable computers

We have designed, implemented, and evaluated a map application for wearable computer users. Our application, called WalkMap, is targeted at a walking user in an urban environment, offering the user both navigational aids as well as contextual information. WalkMap uses augmented reality techniques to display a map on the surrounding area on the user's head-worn display. WalkMap is constructed by the means of software development, user interface design and evaluations, and existing knowledge on how humans use maps and navigate. The key design driver in our approach is intuitivity of use. In this paper, we present the design and implementation process of our application, considering human-map interfaces, technical implementation, and human-computer interfaces. We identify some of the key issues in these areas, and present the way they have been solved. We also present some usability evaluation results.     

Beyond WIMP

The WIMP (windows, icons, menus, point-and-click devices) graphical user interface (GUI) is not an ideal interface. Expert users find pure WIMP GUIs frustratingly slow and thus use keyboard shortcuts. In addition, they don't scale well-GUI bloat accompanies feature bloat. The most serious limitation, however, is that WIMP GUIs were designed for keyboard-plus-mouse desktop computing environments-environments that takes advantage only of vision and primitive touch. Our goal should be to design user interfaces that match our human perceptual, cognitive, manipulative and social abilities. We want to interact as naturally with computers and intelligent devices as we communicate and collaborate with each other and as we manipulate our physical environments. Indeed, computers are increasingly being used to facilitate human communication, collaboration and social interaction. Therefore, we should increasingly focus on human-human interaction, not just human-computer interaction. This change in focus reflects not only changes in the mode of computer use but also the increasingly invisible nature of the computer in our environments. New environments must serve as forcing functions to give us far higher expectations for user interfaces than we have had previously. Furthermore, the potential of future interfaces for handicapped people is phenomenal. Thus, despite the technology challenges, the greatest challenge lies in our understanding of human capabilities and how to incorporate that understanding into new design tools, methodologies and user interfaces     

The sensitive interface

One of the most important problems in human-computer interaction is that of maximising communication between the user and the computer. We claim that optimum communication will be facilitated when the computer can analyse and respond to the intentions of the computer user. We propose a philosophy for computer interface design in which the computer analyses the intentions of users through verbal and nonverbal media. With respect to verbal media we describe a computer program called Operating System CONsultant (OSCON) which can analyse users' intentions from English in the domain of computer operating systems. With respect to nonverbal media we argue that computers will be better able to analyse people's intentions when recognising the media of facial expression, touch, and sound. Some results and implications from a recent experiment on cross-cultural emotions in faces are discussed. We describe the IDIOMS (Intelligent Decision-making In On-line Management Systems) project which implements a design philosophy for capturing users' concepts and intentions. We argue that this approach will ensure the computers will become more understanding of their users and this will result in a more sensitive human-computer interface.     

To model objects in information systems and user interfaces: implications for object-oriented methods

Abstract. A general way of contrasting the object-oriented to the function-oriented approach, called 'object-order' and 'function-order', is proposed in this paper. In addition, when modelling information systems, there is a third principle of ordering, 'subject-order'. Object and function-order are used to define the two approaches to modelling information systems and in human-computer interaction, in ways that are compatible to the corresponding distinction in programming. The conditions for selecting either of the two approaches are, however, not discussed here.
By means of an object-ordered method, e.g. Jackson System Development (JSD), an object-ordered model is produced, and the user interface that can be derived from the model is object-ordered too. However, other guidelines in JSD support subject-order. A function-ordered interface can be derived from the subject-ordered model. A computer system designed by means of an object-organized method may therefore obtain an interface that is partially object-ordered and partially function-ordered. Other object-oriented methods give guidelines for designing function-oriented interfaces without relating these guidelines to the model.
The system designer may benefit from having three principles of ordering when modelling a system. However, a user may be confused by an interface that sometimes gives preference to objects, sometimes to functions.