Experiments in haptic-based authentication of humans

With the rapid advancement of the technological revolution, computer technology such as faster processors, advanced graphic cards, and multi-media systems are becoming more affordable. Haptics technology is a force/tactile feedback technology growing in disciplines linked to human–computer interaction. Similar to the increasing complexity of silicon-based components, haptics technology is becoming more advanced. On the other hand, currently available commercial haptics interfaces are expensive, and their application is mostly dedicated to enormous research projects or systems. However, the trend of the market is forcing haptic developers to release products for use in conjunction with current keyboards and mice technologies. Haptics allows a user to touch, fell, manipulate, create, and/or alter simulated three-dimensional objects in a virtual environment. Most of the existing applications of haptics are dedicated to hone human physical skills such as sensitive hardware repair, medical procedures, handling hazardous substances, etc. These skills can be trained in a realistic virtual world, and describe human behavioural patterns in human–computer interaction environments. The measurement of such psychomotor patterns can be used to verify a person’s identity by assessing unique-to-the-individual behavioural attributes. This paper explores the unique behaviour exhibited by different users interacting with haptic systems. Through several haptic-based applications, users’ physical attributes output data from the haptic interface for use in the construction of a biometric system.

Multilayered visuo-haptic hair simulation

Over the last fifteen years, research on hair simulation has made great advances in the domains of modeling, animation and rendering, and is now moving towards more innovative interaction modalities. The combination of visual and haptic interaction within a virtual hairstyling simulation framework represents an important concept evolving in this direction. Our visuo-haptic hair interaction framework consists of two layers which handle the response to the user’s interaction at a local level (around the contact area), and at a global level (on the full hairstyle). Two distinct simulation models compute individual and collective hair behavior. Our multilayered approach can be used to efficiently address the specific requirements of haptics and vision. Haptic interaction with both models has been tested with virtual hairstyling tools.

Multimodal support to group dynamics

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service.

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The 2007 IEEE CEC simulated car racing competition

This paper describes the simulated car racing competition that was arranged as part of the 2007 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Both the game that was used as the domain for the competition, the controllers submitted as entries to the competition and its results are presented. With this paper, we hope to provide some insight into the efficacy of various computational intelligence methods on a well-defined game task, as well as an example of one way of running a competition. In the process, we provide a set of reference results for those who wish to use the simplerace game to benchmark their own algorithms. The paper is co-authored by the organizers and participants of the competition.

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The Visible Human<Superscript>®</Superscript> at the University of Colorado 15 years later

The Visible Human has come through ages, providing a foundation of photorealistic anatomy for learner-centered, interactive education. Pathways for improvement of the Visible Human process for reverse engineering the macrostructure of the human body have been developed to provide higher resolution and decreased production time for segmentation and modeling human form. The assignment of physical properties, the development of algorithms for the interaction of surgical tools with this virtual anatomy and the availability of high-fidelity haptic interfaces provide the basis for fully immersive surgical training and certification in an environment that is zero direct-risk to patients. Interactive journal publishing, 3D stereoscopic anatomical visualization software and surgical simulators, all based on the Visible Human, the history of the Project and its utilization and provide a framework for its evolution and role in delivering education, training, certification and credentialing through virtual reality to the health care workforce of tomorrow.

Evolving strategy for a probabilistic game of imperfect information using genetic programming

We provide the complete record of methodology that let us evolve BrilliAnt, the winner of the Ant Wars contest. Ant Wars contestants are virtual ants collecting food on a grid board in the presence of a competing ant. BrilliAnt has been evolved through a competitive one-population coevolution using genetic programming and fitnessless selection. In this paper, we detail the evolutionary setup that lead to BrilliAnt’s emergence, assess its direct and indirect human-competitiveness, and describe the behavioral patterns observed in its strategy.

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Methods for quantitative usability requirements: a case study on the development of the user interface of a mobile phone

Quantitative usability requirements are a critical but challenging, and hence an often neglected aspect of a usability engineering process. A case study is described where quantitative usability requirements played a key role in the development of a new user interface of a mobile phone. Within the practical constraints of the project, existing methods for determining usability requirements and evaluating the extent to which these are met, could not be applied as such, therefore tailored methods had to be developed. These methods and their applications are discussed.

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Neuro-cognitively inspired haptic user interfaces

Haptic systems and devices are a recent addition to multimodal systems. These devices have widespread applications such as surgical simulations, medical and procedural training, scientific visualizations, assistive and rehabilitative devices for individuals who have physical or neurological impediments and assistive devices for individuals who are blind. While the potential of haptics in natural human machine interaction is undisputable, the realization of such means is still a long way ahead. There are considerable research challenges to development of natural haptic interfaces. The study of human tactile abilities is a recent endeavor and many of the available systems still do not incorporate the domain knowledge of psychophysics, biomechanics and neurological elements of haptic perception. Development of smart and effective haptic interfaces and devices requires extensive studies that link perceptual phenomena with measurable parameters and incorporation of such domain knowledge in the engineering of haptic interfaces. This paper presents design, development and usability testing of a neuro-cognitively inspired haptic user interface for individuals who are blind. The proposed system design is inspired by neuro-cognitive basis of haptic perception and incorporates the computational aspects and requirements of multimodal information processing system. Usability testing of the system suggests that a biologically inspired haptic user interfaces may form a powerful paradigm for haptic user interface design.

Educational virtual environments: design rationale and architecture

The use of collaborative virtual environments in e-learning is one of the most promising uses of virtual reality technology. While much research has been done in the area of networked virtual environments corresponding to the sharing of events, very little research has been done on specific services and functionality. However both the requirements and the kind of the offered services affect significantly the design of a system. In this paper we present the design and implementation of a platform suitable for educational virtual environments, which are collaborative virtual environments aiming at offering collaborative e-learning services to the users. Apart from the platform itself, we present the technological choices, and a new method for sharing virtual environments. Furthermore, we present an e-learning environment to support e-learning services using collaborative virtual environments from both the technical and functional point of view, along with the end-user evaluation results.

ONTRACK: Dynamically adapting music playback to support navigation

Listening to music on personal, digital devices whilst mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, ONTRACK, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. First we report on an initial lab-based evaluation that demonstrated the approach’s efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these results we constructed a handheld prototype. Here, we discuss this implementation and the results of field-trials. These indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes.

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Connecting the family with awareness systems

Awareness systems have attracted significant research interest for their potential to support interpersonal relationships. Investigations of awareness systems for the domestic environment have suggested that such systems can help individuals stay in touch with dear friends or family and provide affective benefits to their users. Our research provides empirical evidence to refine and substantiate such suggestions. We report our experience with designing and evaluating the ASTRA awareness system, for connecting households and mobile family members. We introduce the concept of connectedness and its measurement through the Affective Benefits and Costs of communication questionnaire (ABC-Q). We inform results that testify the benefits of sharing experiences at the moment they happen without interrupting potential receivers. Finally, we document the role that lightweight, picture-based communication can play in the range of communication media available.

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Interacting with mobile services: an evaluation of camera-phones and visual tags

We present a study of using camera-phones and visual-tags to access mobile services. Firstly, a user-experience study is described in which participants were both observed learning to interact with a prototype mobile service and interviewed about their experiences. Secondly, a pointing-device task is presented in which quantitative data was gathered regarding the speed and accuracy with which participants aimed and clicked on visual-tags using camera-phones. We found that participants’ attitudes to visual-tag-based applications were broadly positive, although they had several important reservations about camera-phone technology more generally. Data from our pointing-device task demonstrated that novice users were able to aim and click on visual-tags quickly (well under 3 s per pointing-device trial on average) and accurately (almost all meeting our defined speed/accuracy tradeoff of 6% error-rate). Based on our findings, design lessons for camera-phone and visual-tag applications are presented.

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Meetings and meeting modeling in smart environments

In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear.

E-redesigning of society: towards experiential connectivity of generations in Lithuania

The paper reflects on the unique experience of social and technological development in Lithuania since the regaining of independence as a newly reshaped society constructing a distinctive competitive IST-based model at global level. This has presented Lithuanian pattern of how to integrate different experiences and relations between generations in implementing complex information society approaches. The resulting programme in general is linked to the Lisbon objectives of the European Union. The experience of transitional countries in Europe, each different but facing some common problems, may be useful to developing countries in Africa.

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Navigation help in 3D worlds: some empirical evidences on use of sound

The concept of Interaction Locus (IL) has been introduced to help the users to orient, navigate, and identify relevant interaction areas in 3D Virtual Environments (VEs). The IL is a multimodal concept: it adds to the 3D visual scene parallel information channels that are perceived by other senses. In particular, the IL emphasizes the role of music as a navigation aid in a VE. This paper reports three user-evaluations of different IL enriched virtual worlds, and in particular of the role of the IL auditory component. Results suggest that audio in 3D plays not only an aesthetic role, which the users greatly appreciate, but also a functional role simplifying navigation and helping the users to recognise scenes in the environment. Such a functional role however is subordinated to a proper understanding of the link between music and virtual space. While these experiments refer to desktop virtual reality environments, their findings are general enough to inform the design of navigational tools for other segments of the mixed reality domain.

Adaptive training of video sets for image recognition on mobile phones

We present an enhancement towards adaptive video training for PhoneGuide, a digital museum guidance system for ordinary camera-equipped mobile phones. It enables museum visitors to identify exhibits by capturing photos of them. In this article, a combined solution of object recognition and pervasive tracking is extended to a client–server-system for improving data acquisition and for supporting scale-invariant object recognition. A static as well as a dynamic training technique are presented that preprocess the collected object data differently and apply two types of neural networks (NN) for classification. Furthermore, the system enables a temporal adaptation for ensuring a continuous data acquisition to improve the recognition rate over time. A formal field experiment reveals current recognition rates and indicates the practicability of both methods under realistic conditions in a museum.

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Towards the development of a virtual environment-based training system for mechanical assembly operations

In this paper, we discuss the development of Virtual Training Studio (VTS), a virtual environment-based training system that allows training supervisors to create training instructions and allows trainees to learn assembly operations in a virtual environment. Our system is mainly focused on the cognitive side of training so that trainees can learn to recognize parts, remember assembly sequences, and correctly orient the parts during assembly operations. Our system enables users to train using the following three training modes: (1) Interactive Simulation, (2) 3D Animation, and (3) Video. Implementing these training modes required us to develop several new system features. This paper presents an overview of the VTS system and describes a few main features of the system. We also report user test results that show how people train using our system. The user test results indicate that the system is able to support a wide variety of training preferences and works well to support training for assembly operations.

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Was kann die Wirtschaftsinformatik dazu beitragen,E-Health voran zu bringen?

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Ethical regulations on robotics in Europe

There are only a few ethical regulations that deal explicitly with robots, in contrast to a vast number of regulations, which may be applied. We will focus on ethical issues with regard to “responsibility and autonomous robots”, “machines as a replacement for humans”, and “tele-presence”. Furthermore we will examine examples from special fields of application (medicine and healthcare, armed forces, and entertainment). We do not claim to present a complete list of ethical issue nor of regulations in the field of robotics, but we will demonstrate that there are legal challenges with regard to these issues.

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