Would you think that a rubber band could be used as an effective and novel input device? You might want to take a look at the video before you answer:
"The controller uses a conductive rubber cord (available on Adafruit) which changes resistance when stretched. It is very easy to measure that using an Arduino, from where it can be forwarded to a PC. In this example, I'm using a Joystick controller to send the data to a Unity3D project."
Now you have seen it can you find a killer application for it?
Can you indicate emotion just using a low resolution RGB display? This is an important question given the number of social robots that are being developed:
Technology has become an essential part in every aspect of our lives. However the key to a successful implementation of a technology depends on the acceptance by the general public. In order to increase the acceptance various approaches can be applied. In this paper, we will examine the human-robot emotional interaction by investigating the capabilities of a developed low-resolution RGB-LED display in the context of artificial emotions.
We are focusing on four of the most representative human emotions which include happiness, anger, sadness and fear. We will work with colors and dynamic light patterns which are supposed to evoke various associations. In an experiment, the use these patterns as expressions of emotions are validated. The results of the conducted study show that some of the considered basic emotions can be recognized by human observers.
If you want to know which emotions were possible, the conclusion says:
A statistically significant difference was observed among the group of patterns with high arousal value and those with a low value. This result indicates that our patterns are able to represent one dimension of the considered emotions and that they can be recognized appropriately in the case of emotions with different arousal values. However, to express emotions of pleasantness and unpleasantness solely on the basis of the used LED display and the corresponding movement pattern was difficult to distinguish by the participants. One possible reason is that the frequencies of the illuminated patterns are too similar.
Using heart rate, blood pressure as input signals to control games is relatively rare, but with depth cameras and sensors it is becoming more possible. This review tells you a lot of useful facts about how to acquire cardiovascular signals using low cost devices such as sports watches:
The use of psychophysiologic signals in human-computer interaction is a growing field with significant potential for future smart personalised systems. Working in this emerging field requires comprehension of different physiological signals and analysis techniques.
Cardiovascular signals such as heart rate variability and blood pressure variability are commonly used in psychophysiology in order to investigate phenomena such as mental workload. In this paper we present a short review of different cardiovascular metrics useful in the context of human-computer interaction.
This paper aims to serve as a primer for the novice, enabling rapid familiarisation with the latest core concepts. We emphasise everyday human-computer interface applications to distinguish from the more common clinical or sports uses of psychophysiology.
The final paragraph of the conclusion is also worth being aware of:
Cardiovascular metrics have been applied extensively for determining and monitoring levels of mental workload. However, it appears that these metrics have not been used thus far for the purpose of adapting user interfaces to the degree of mental workload. This is a new, relatively unexplored area.
Microsoft has announced a preview release of the Microsoft Extensions VectorData Abstractions library, which can be used to help integrate vector stores into .NET applications and libraries.
