With the ongoing efforts to empower people with mobility impairments and the increase in technological acceptance by the general public, assistive technologies, such as collaborative robotic arms, are gaining popularity. Yet, their widespread success is limited by usability issues, specifically the disparity between user input and software control along the autonomy continuum. To address this, shared control concepts provide opportunities to combine the targeted increase of user autonomy with a certain level of computer assistance. This paper presents the free and open-source AdaptiX XR framework for developing and evaluating shared control applications in a high-resolution simulation environment. The initial framework consists of a simulated robotic arm with an example scenario in Virtual Reality (VR), multiple standard control interfaces, and a specialized recording/replay system. AdaptiX can easily be extended for specific research needs, allowing Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) researchers to rapidly design and test novel interaction methods, intervention strategies, and multi-modal feedback techniques, without requiring an actual physical robotic arm during the early phases of ideation, prototyping, and evaluation. Also, a Robot Operating System (ROS) integration enables the controlling of a real robotic arm in a PhysicalTwin approach without any simulation-reality gap. Here, we review the capabilities and limitations of AdaptiX in detail and present three bodies of research based on the framework. AdaptiX can be accessed at adaptix.robot-research.de.

Immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) empower users to experience digital realities. Known as distinct technology classes, the lines between them are becoming increasingly blurry with recent technological advancements. New systems enable users to interact across technology classes or transition between them—referred to as cross-reality systems. Nevertheless, these systems are not well understood. Hence, in this article, we conducted a scoping literature review to classify and analyze cross-reality systems proposed in previous work. First, we define these systems by distinguishing three different types. Thereafter, we compile a literature corpus of 306 relevant publications, analyze the proposed systems, and present a comprehensive classification, including research topics, involved environments, and transition types. Based on the gathered literature, we extract nine guiding principles that can inform the development of cross-reality systems. We conclude with research challenges and opportunities.

In the last decade, researchers contributed an increasing number of cross-reality systems and their evaluations. Going beyond individual technologies such as Virtual or Augmented Reality, these systems introduce novel approaches that help to solve relevant problems such as the integration of bystanders or physical objects. However, cross-reality systems are complex by nature, and describing the interactions and transitions taking place is a challenging task. Thus, in this paper, we propose the idea of the Actuality-Time Continuum that aims to enable researchers and designers alike to visualize complex cross-reality experiences. Moreover, we present four visualization examples that illustrate the potential of our proposal and conclude with an outlook on future perspectives.

The global COVID-19 pandemic created a constant need for hand disinfection. While it is still essential, disinfection use is declining with the decrease in perceived personal risk (e.g., as a result of vaccination). Thus this work explores using different visual cues to act as reminders for hand disinfection. We investigated different public display designs using (1) paper-based only, adding (2) screen-based, or (3) projection-based visual cues. To gain insights into these designs, we conducted semi-structured interviews with passersby (N=30). Our results show that the screen- and projection-based conditions were perceived as more engaging. Furthermore, we conclude that the disinfection process consists of four steps that can be supported: drawing attention to the disinfection station, supporting the (subconscious) understanding of the interaction, motivating hand disinfection, and performing the action itself. We conclude with design implications for technology-supported disinfection.

Robotic solutions, in particular robotic arms, are becoming more frequently deployed for close collaboration with humans, for example in manufacturing or domestic care environments. These robotic arms require the user to control several Degrees-of-Freedom (DoFs) to perform tasks, primarily involving grasping and manipulating objects. Standard input devices predominantly have two DoFs, requiring time-consuming and cognitively demanding mode switches to select individual DoFs. Contemporary Adaptive DoF Mapping Controls (ADMCs) have shown to decrease the necessary number of mode switches but were up to now not able to significantly reduce the perceived workload. Users still bear the mental workload of incorporating abstract mode switching into their workflow. We address this by providing feed-forward multimodal feedback using updated recommendations of ADMC, allowing users to visually compare the current and the suggested mapping in real-time. We contrast the effectiveness of two new approaches that a) continuously recommend updated DoF combinations or b) use discrete thresholds between current robot movements and new recommendations. Both are compared in a Virtual Reality (VR) in-person study against a classic control method. Significant results for lowered task completion time, fewer mode switches, and reduced perceived workload conclusively establish that in combination with feedforward, ADMC methods can indeed outperform classic mode switching. A lack of apparent quantitative differences between Continuous and Threshold reveals the importance of user-centered customization options. Including these implications in the development process will improve usability, which is essential for successfully implementing robotic technologies with high user acceptance.

Scanning everyday objects with depth sensors is the state-of-the-art approach to generating point clouds for realistic 3D representations. However, the resulting point cloud data suffers from outliers and contains irrelevant data from neighboring objects. To obtain only the desired 3D representation, additional manual segmentation steps are required. In this paper, we compare three different technology classes as independent variables (desktop vs. tablet vs. virtual reality) in a within-subject user study (N = 18) to understand their effectiveness and efficiency for such segmentation tasks. We found that desktop and tablet still outperform virtual reality regarding task completion times, while we could not find a significant difference between them in the effectiveness of the segmentation. In the post hoc interviews, participants preferred the desktop due to its familiarity and temporal efficiency and virtual reality due to its given three-dimensional representation.

A cohesive text allows readers to follow the described ideas and events. Exploring cohesion in text might aid students enhancing their academic writing. We introduce CohExplore, which promotes exploring and reflecting on cohesion of a given text by visualizing computed cohesion related metrics on an overview and detailed level. Detected topics are color-coded, semantic similarity is shown via lines, while connectives and co-references in a paragraph are encoded using text decoration. Demonstrating the system, we share insights about a student-authored text.

Handling emergencies requires efficient and effective collaboration of medical professionals. To analyze their performance, in an application study, we have developed VisCoMET, a visual analytics approach displaying interactions of healthcare personnel in a triage training of a mass casualty incident. The application scenario stems from social interaction research, where the collaboration of teams is studied from different perspectives. We integrate recorded annotations from multiple sources, such as recorded videos of the sessions, transcribed communication, and eye-tracking information. For each session, an informationrich timeline visualizes events across these different channels, specifically highlighting interactions between the team members. We provide algorithmic support to identify frequent event patterns and to search for user-defined event sequences. Comparing different teams, an overview visualization aggregates each training session in a visual glyph as a node, connected to similar sessions through edges. An application example shows the usage of the approach in the comparative analysis of triage training sessions, where multiple teams encountered the same scene, and highlights discovered insights. The approach was evaluated through feedback from visualization and social interaction experts. The results show that the approach supports reflecting on teams’ performance by exploratory analysis of collaboration behavior while particularly enabling the comparison of triage training sessions.

Robots are becoming increasingly omnipresent in our daily lives, supporting us and carrying out autonomous tasks. In Human-Robot Interaction, human actors benefit from understanding the robot's motion intent to avoid task failures and foster collaboration. Finding effective ways to communicate this intent to users has recently received increased research interest. However, no common language has been established to systematize robot motion intent. This work presents a scoping review aimed at unifying existing knowledge. Based on our analysis, we present an intent communication model that depicts the relationship between robot and human through different intent dimensions (intent type, intent information, intent location). We discuss these different intent dimensions and their interrelationships with different kinds of robots and human roles. Throughout our analysis, we classify the existing research literature along our intent communication model, allowing us to identify key patterns and possible directions for future research.

In Human-Computer-Interaction, vibrotactile haptic feedback offers the advantage of being independent of any visual perception of the environment. Most importantly, the user's field of view is not obscured by user interface elements, and the visual sense is not unnecessarily strained. This is especially advantageous when the visual channel is already busy, or the visual sense is limited. We developed three design variants based on different vibrotactile illusions to communicate 3D directional cues. In particular, we explored two variants based on the vibrotactile illusion of the cutaneous rabbit and one based on apparent vibrotactile motion. To communicate gradient information, we combined these with pulse-based and intensity-based mapping. A subsequent study showed that the pulse-based variants based on the vibrotactile illusion of the cutaneous rabbit are suitable for communicating both directional and gradient characteristics. The results further show that a representation of 3D directions via vibrations can be effective and beneficial.

Runtime data of software systems is often of multivariate nature, describing different aspects of performance among other characteristics, and evolves along different versions or changes depending on the execution context. This poses a challenge for visualizations, which are typically only two- or three-dimensional. Using dimensionality reduction, we project the multivariate runtime data to 2D and visualize the result in a scatter plot. To show changes over time, we apply the projection to multiple timestamps and connect temporally adjacent points to form trajectories. This allows for cluster and outlier detection, analysis of co-evolution, and finding temporal patterns. While projected temporal trajectories have been applied to other domains before, we use it to visualize software evolution and execution context changes as evolution paths. We experiment with and report results of two application examples: (I) the runtime evolution along different versions of components from the Apache Commons project, and (II) a benchmark suite from scientific visualization comparing different rendering techniques along camera paths.

We propose a novel method for seamlessly identifying users by combining thermal and visible feet features. While it is known that users’ feet have unique characteristics, these have so far been underutilized for biometric identification, as observing those features often requires the removal of shoes and socks. As thermal cameras are becoming ubiquitous, we foresee a new form of identification, using feet features and heat traces to reconstruct the footprint even while wearing shoes or socks. We collected a dataset of users’ feet (N = 21), wearing three types of footwear (personal shoes, standard shoes, and socks) on three floor types (carpet, laminate, and linoleum). By combining visual and thermal features, an AUC between 91.1% and 98.9%, depending on floor type and shoe type can be achieved, with personal shoes on linoleum floor performing best. Our findings demonstrate the potential of thermal imaging for continuous and unobtrusive user identification.

Information about source code changes is important for many software development activities. As such, modern IDEs, including,  \emph{IntelliJ IDEA} and \emph{Visual Studio Code}, show visual clues within the code editor that highlight lines that have been changed since the last synchronization with the code repository. However, the granularity of the change information is limited to a line level, showing mainly a small colored icon on the left side of the lines that have been added, deleted, or modified.

This paper introduces Spike, a source code highlighting plugin that uses the font color to visually encode fine-grained version difference information within the code editor. In contrast to previously mentioned tools, Spike can highlight insertions, deletions, updates, and refactorings all in a same line. Our plugin also enriches the source code with small icons that allow retrieving detailed information about a given code change. We perform an exploratory user study with five professional software engineers. Our results show that our approach is able to assist practitioners with complex comprehension tasks about software history within the code editor.

Evaluation of rendering performance is crucial when selecting or developing algorithms, but challenging as performance can largely differ across a set of selected scenarios. Despite this, performance metrics are often reported and compared in a highly aggregated way. In this paper we suggest a more fine-grained approach for the evaluation of rendering performance, taking into account multiple perspectives on the scenario: camera position and orientation along different paths, rendering algorithms, image resolution, and hardware. The approach comprises a visual analysis system that shows and contrasts the data from these perspectives. The users can explore combinations of perspectives and gain insight into the performance characteristics of several rendering algorithms. A stylized representation of the camera path provides a base layout for arranging the multivariate performance data as radar charts, each comparing the same set of rendering algorithms while linking the performance data with the rendered images. To showcase our approach, we analyze two types of scientific visualization benchmarks.

Monitoring dietary intake is essential to providing user feedback and achieving a healthier lifestyle. In the past, different approaches for monitoring dietary behavior have been proposed. In this position paper, we first present an overview of the state-of-the-art techniques grouped by image- and sensor-based approaches. After that, we introduce a case study in which we present a Wizard-of-Oz approach as an alternative and non-automatic monitoring method.

The Artificial Conscience concept aims to improve the user’s quality of life by giving recommendations for a healthier lifestyle and reacting to possibly harmful situations detected by the various sensors of the Huawei Eyewear. But autonomous reactions to situations that pose an immediate danger to the user’s health as well as methods for habit-forming and other supporting functions are only representing a subset of the possible design space. All functions of this concept are described and evaluated individually, both under the assumption of autonomous operation of the Huawei Eyewear and with the inclusion of other data sources and sensors (smartphone, smartwatch). In addition, an outlook is given on additional features for the Huawei Eyewear that could be implemented in future versions of the glasses. YouTube

In Level 3 automated vehicles, preparing drivers for take-over requests (TORs) on the head-up display (HUD) requires their repeated attention. Visually salient HUD elements can distract attention from potentially critical parts in a driving scene during a TOR. Further, attention is (a) meanwhile needed for non-driving-related activities and can (b) be over-requested. In this paper, we conduct a driving simulator study (N=12), varying required attention by HUD warning presence (absent vs. constant vs. TOR-only) across gaze-adaptivity (with vs. without) to fit warnings to the situation. We found that (1) drivers value visual support during TORs, (2) gaze-adaptive scene complexity reduction works but creates a benefit-neutralizing distraction for some, and (3) drivers perceive constant HUD warnings as annoying and distracting over time. Our findings highlight the need for (a) HUD adaptation based on user activities and potential TORs and (b) sparse use of warning cues in future HUD designs.

Virtual Reality (VR) devices empower users to experience virtual worlds through rich visual and auditory sensations. However, believable haptic feedback that communicates the physical properties of virtual objects, such as their weight, is still unsolved in VR. The current trend towards hand tracking-based interactions, neglecting the typical controllers, further amplifies this problem. Hence, in this work, we investigate the combination of passive haptics and electric muscle stimulation to manipulate users’ perception of weight, and thus, simulate objects with different weights. In a laboratory user study, we investigate four differing electrode placements, stimulating different muscles, to determine which muscle results in the most potent perception of weight with the highest comfort. We found that actuating the biceps brachii or the triceps brachii muscles increased the weight perception of the users. Our findings lay the foundation for future investigations on weight perception in VR.

Augmented Reality (AR) technology enables users to superpose virtual content onto their environments. However, interacting with virtual content while mobile often requires users to perform interactions in mid-air, resulting in a lack of haptic feedback. Hence, in this work, we present the ARm Haptics system, which is worn on the user's forearm and provides 3D-printed input modules, each representing well-known interaction components such as buttons, sliders, and rotary knobs. These modules can be changed quickly, thus allowing users to adapt them to their current use case. After an iterative development of our system, which involved a focus group with HCI researchers, we conducted a user study to compare the ARm Haptics system to hand-tracking-based interaction in mid-air (baseline). Our findings show that using our system results in significantly lower error rates for slider and rotary input. Moreover, use of the ARm Haptics system results in significantly higher pragmatic quality and lower effort, frustration, and physical demand. Following our findings, we discuss opportunities for haptics worn on the forearm.

This paper contributes to our understanding of user-centered attacks on smartphones. In particular, we investigate the likelihood of so-called shoulder surfing attacks during touch-based unlock events and provide insights into users' views and perceptions. To do so, we ran a two-week in-the-wild study (N=12) in which we recorded images with a 180-degree field of view lens that was mounted on the smartphone's front-facing camera. In addition, we collected contextual information and allowed participants to assess the situation. We found that only a small fraction of shoulder surfing incidents that occur during authentication are actually perceived as threatening. Furthermore, our findings suggest that our notions of (un)safe places need to be rethought. Our work is complemented by a discussion of implications for future user-centered attack-aware systems. This work can serve as a basis for usable security researchers to better design systems against user-centered attacks.

Nowadays, robots collaborate closely with humans in a growing number of areas. Enabled by lightweight materials and safety sensors , these cobots are gaining increasing popularity in domestic care, supporting people with physical impairments in their everyday lives. However, when cobots perform actions autonomously, it remains challenging for human collaborators to understand and predict their behavior. This, however, is crucial for achieving trust and user acceptance. One significant aspect of predicting cobot behavior is understanding their motion intent and comprehending how they "think" about their actions. We work on solutions that communicate the cobots AI-generated motion intent to a human collaborator. Effective communication enables users to proceed with the most suitable option. We present a design exploration with different visualization techniques to optimize this user understanding, ideally resulting in increased safety and end-user acceptance.

Cross-reality systems empower users to transition along the realityvirtuality continuum or collaborate with others experiencing different manifestations of it. However, prototyping these systems is challenging, as it requires sophisticated technical skills, time, and often expensive hardware. We present VRception, a concept and toolkit for quick and easy prototyping of cross-reality systems. By simulating all levels of the reality-virtuality continuum entirely in Virtual Reality, our concept overcomes the asynchronicity of realities, eliminating technical obstacles. Our VRception Toolkit leverages this concept to allow rapid prototyping of cross-reality systems and easy remixing of elements from all continuum levels. We replicated six cross-reality papers using our toolkit and presented them to their authors. Interviews with them revealed that our toolkit sufficiently replicates their core functionalities and allows quick iterations. Additionally, remote participants used our toolkit in pairs to collaboratively implement prototypes in about eight minutes that they would have otherwise expected to take days.

We explore how attackers behave during shoulder surfing. Unfortunately, such behavior is challenging to study as it is often opportunistic and can occur wherever potential attackers can observe other people’s private screens. Therefore, we investigate shoulder surfing using virtual reality (VR). We recruited 24 participants and observed their behavior in two virtual waiting scenarios: at a bus stop and in an open office space. In both scenarios, avatars interacted with private screens displaying different content, thus providing opportunities for shoulder surfing. From the results, we derive an understanding of factors influencing shoulder surfing behavior.

Nowadays, robots are found in a growing number of areas where they collaborate closely with humans. Enabled by lightweight materials and safety sensors, these cobots are gaining increasing popularity in domestic care, where they support people with physical impairments in their everyday lives. However, when cobots perform actions autonomously, it remains challenging for human collaborators to understand and predict their behavior, which is crucial for achieving trust and user acceptance. One significant aspect of predicting cobot behavior is understanding their perception and comprehending how they "see" the world. To tackle this challenge, we compared three different visualization techniques for Spatial Augmented Reality. All of these communicate cobot perception by visually indicating which objects in the cobot's surrounding have been identified by their sensors. We compared the well-established visualizations Wedge and Halo against our proposed visualization Line in a remote user experiment with participants suffering from physical impairments. In a second remote experiment, we validated these findings with a broader non-specific user base. Our findings show that Line, a lower complexity visualization, results in significantly faster reaction times compared to Halo, and lower task load compared to both Wedge and Halo. Overall, users prefer Line as a more straightforward visualization. In Spatial Augmented Reality, with its known disadvantage of limited projection area size, established off-screen visualizations are not effective in communicating cobot perception and Line presents an easy-to-understand alternative.

Robot arms are one of many assistive technologies used by people with motor impairments. Assistive robot arms can allow people to perform activities of daily living (ADL) involving grasping and manipulating objects in their environment without the assistance of caregivers. Suitable input devices (e.g., joysticks) mostly have two Degrees of Freedom (DoF), while most assistive robot arms have six or more. This results in time-consuming and cognitively demanding mode switches to change the mapping of DoFs to control the robot. One option to decrease the difficulty of controlling a high-DoF assistive robot arm using a low-DoF input device is to assign different combinations of movement-DoFs to the device\’s input DoFs depending on the current situation (adaptive control). To explore this method of control, we designed two adaptive control methods for a realistic virtual 3D environment. We evaluated our methods against a commonly used non-adaptive control method that requires the user to switch controls manually. This was conducted in a simulated remote study that used Virtual Reality and involved 39 non-disabled participants. Our results show that the number of mode switches necessary to complete a simple pick-and-place task decreases significantly when using an adaptive control type. In contrast, the task completion time and workload stay the same. A thematic analysis of qualitative feedback of our participants suggests that a longer period of training could further improve the performance of adaptive control methods.

Nowadays, Augmented and Virtual Reality devices are widely available and are often shared among users due to their high cost. Thus, distinguishing users to offer personalized experiences is essential. However, currently used explicit user authentication(e.g., entering a password) is tedious and vulnerable to attack. Therefore, this work investigates the feasibility of implicitly identifying users by their hand tracking data. In particular, we identify users by their uni- and bimanual finger behavior gathered from their interaction with eight different universal interface elements, such as buttons and sliders. In two sessions, we recorded the tracking data of 16 participants while they interacted with various interface elements in Augmented and Virtual Reality. We found that user identification is possible with up to 95 % accuracy across sessions using an explainable machine learning approach. We conclude our work by discussing differences between interface elements, and feature importance to provide implications for behavioral biometric systems.

Nowadays, deep learning models enable numerous safety-critical applications, such as biometric authentication, medical diagnosis support, and self-driving cars. However, previous studies have frequently demonstrated that these models are attackable through slight modifications of their inputs, so-called adversarial attacks. Hence, researchers proposed investigating examples of these attacks with explainable artificial intelligence to understand them better. In this line, we developed an expert tool to explore adversarial attacks and defenses against them. To demonstrate the capabilities of our visualization tool, we worked with the publicly available CIFAR-10 dataset and generated one-pixel attacks. After that, we conducted an online evaluation with 16 experts. We found that our tool is usable and practical, providing evidence that it can support understanding, explaining, and preventing adversarial examples.

Identifying users of a Virtual Reality (VR) headset provides designers of VR content with the opportunity to adapt the user interface, set user-specific preferences, or adjust the level of difficulty either for games or training applications. While most identification methods currently rely on explicit input, implicit user identification is less disruptive and does not impact the immersion of the users. In this work, we introduce a biometric identification system that employs the user’s gaze behavior as a unique, individual characteristic. In particular, we focus on the user’s gaze behavior and head orientation while following a moving stimulus. We verify our approach in a user study. A hybrid post-hoc analysis results in an identification accuracy of up to 75% for an explainable machine learning algorithm and up to 100% for a deep learning approach. We conclude with discussing application scenarios in which our approach can be used to implicitly identify users.

Knowledge graphs store information about historical figures and their relationships indirectly through shared events. We developed a visualization system, VisKonnect, for analyzing the intertwined lives of historical figures based on the events they participated in. A user’s query is parsed for identifying named entities, and related data is retrieved from an event knowledge graph. While a short textual answer to the query is generated using the GPT-3 language model, various linked visualizations provide context, display additional information related to the query, and allow exploration.

Shoulder surfing is an omnipresent risk for smartphone users. However, investigating these attacks in the wild is difficult because of either privacy concerns, lack of consent, or the fact that asking for consent would influence people’s behavior (e.g., they could try to avoid looking at smartphones). Thus, we propose utilizing 360-degree videos in Virtual Reality (VR), recorded in staged real-life situations on public transport. Despite differences between perceiving videos in VR and experiencing real-world situations, we believe this approach to allow novel insights on observers’ tendency to shoulder surf another person’s phone authentication and interaction to be gained. By conducting a study (N=16), we demonstrate that a better understanding of shoulder surfers’ behavior can be obtained by analyzing gaze data during video watching and comparing it to post-hoc interview responses. On average, participants looked at the phone for about 11% of the time it was visible and could remember half of the applications used.

Virtual Reality (VR) enables compelling visual experiences. However, providing haptic feedback is still challenging. Previous work suggests utilizing haptic props to overcome such limitations and presents evidence that props could function as a single haptic proxy for several virtual objects. In this work, we displace users’ hands to account for virtual objects that are smaller or larger. Hence, the used haptic prop can represent several differently-sized virtual objects. We conducted a user study (N = 12) and presented our participants with two tasks during which we continuously handed them the same haptic prop but they saw in VR differently-sized virtual objects. In the first task, we used a linear hand displacement and increased the size of the virtual object to understand when participants perceive a mismatch. In the second task, we compare the linear displacement to logarithmic and exponential displacements. We found that participants, on average, do not perceive the size mismatch for virtual objects up to 50% larger than the physical prop. However, we did not find any differences between the explored different displacement. We conclude our work with future research directions.

Models in HCI describe and provide insights into how humans use interactive technology. They are used by engineers, designers, and developers to understand and formalize the interaction process. At the same time, novel interaction paradigms arise constantly introducing new ways of how interactive technology can support humans. In this work, we look into how these paradigms can be described using the classical HCI model introduced by Schomaker in 1995. We extend this model by presenting new relations that would provide a better understanding of them. For this, we revisit the existing interaction paradigms and try to describe their interaction using this model. The goal of this work is to highlight the need to adapt the models to new interaction paradigms and spark discussion in the HCI community on this topic.

Obesity and overweight are two factors linked to various health problems that lead to death in the long run. Technological advancements have granted the chance to create smart interventions. These interventions could be operated by the Internet of Things (IoT) that connects different smart home and wearable devices, providing a large pool of data. In this work, we use IoT with different technologies to present an exemplary nutrition monitoring intake system. This system integrates the input from various devices to understand the users’ behavior better and provide recommendations accordingly. Furthermore, we report on a preliminary evaluation through semi-structured interviews with six participants. Their feedback highlights the system’s opportunities and challenges.

Sketching is a vital step in design processes. While analog sketching on pen and paper is the defacto standard, Virtual Reality (VR) seems promising for improving the sketching experience. It provides myriads of new opportunities to express creative ideas. In contrast to reality, possible drawbacks of pen and paper drawing can be tackled by altering the virtual environment. In this work, we investigate how hand and pen transparency impacts users’ 2D sketching abilities. We conducted a lab study (N=20N=20) investigating different combinations of hand and pen transparency. Our results show that a more transparent pen helps one sketch more quickly, while a transparent hand slows down. Further, we found that transparency improves sketching accuracy while drawing in the direction that is occupied by the user’s hand.

Assistive technologies such as human-robot collaboration, have the potential to ease the life of people with physical mobility impairments in social and economic activities. Currently, this group of people has lower rates of economic participation, due to the lack of adequate environments adapted to their capabilities. We take a closer look at the needs and preferences of people with physical mobility impairments in a human-robot cooperative environment at the workplace. Specifically, we aim to design how to control a robotic arm in manufacturing tasks for people with physical mobility impairments. We present a case study of a sheltered-workshop as a prototype for an institution that employs people with disabilities in manufacturing jobs. Here, we collected data of potential end-users with physical mobility impairments, social workers, and supervisors using a participatory design technique (Future-Workshop). These stakeholders were divided into two groups, primary (end-users) and secondary users (social workers, supervisors), which were run across two separate sessions. The gathered information was analyzed using thematic analysis to reveal underlying themes across stakeholders. We identified concepts that highlight underlying concerns related to the robot fitting in the social and organizational structure, human-robot synergy, and human-robot problem management. In this paper, we present our findings and discuss the implications of each theme when shaping an inclusive human-robot cooperative workstation for people with physical mobility impairments.

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming increasingly popular both in the entertainment and professional domains. Behavioral biometrics have recently been investigated as a means to continuously and implicitly identify users in VR. Applications in VR can specifically benefit from this, for example, to adapt virtual environments and user interfaces as well as to authenticate users. In this work, we conduct a lab study (N = 16) to explore how accurately users can be identified during two task-driven scenarios based on their spatial movement. We show that an identification accuracy of up to 90% is possible across sessions recorded on different days. Moreover, we investigate the role of users’ physiology in behavioral biometrics by virtually altering and normalizing their body proportions. We find that body normalization in general increases the identification rate, in some cases by up to 38%; hence, it improves the performance of identification systems.

Deep Learning has revolutionized Machine Learning, enhancing our ability to solve complex computational problems. From image classification to speech recognition, the technology can be beneficial in a broad range of scenarios. However, the barrier to entry is quite high, especially when programming skills are missing. In this paper, we present the development of a learning application that is easy to use, yet powerful enough to solve practical Deep Learning problems. We followed the human-centered design approach and conducted a technical evaluation to identify solvable classification problems. Afterwards, we conducted an online user evaluation to gain insights on users’ experience with the app, and to understand positive as well as negative aspects of our implemented concept. Our results show that participants liked using the app and found it useful, especially for beginners. Nonetheless, future iterations of the learning app should step-wise include more features to support advancing users.

In diesem Beitrag wird untersucht, inwieweit verschiedene Formen von Fortbewegungstechniken in Virtual Reality Umgebungen Einfluss auf die Präzision bei der Interaktion haben. Dabei wurden insgesamt drei Techniken untersucht: Zwei der Techniken integrieren dabei eine körperliche Aktivität, um einen hohen Grad an Realismus in der Bewegung zu erzeugen (Armswinger, Laufstall). Als dritte Technik wurde ein Gamepad als Baseline herangezogen. In einer Studie mit 18 Proband:innen wurde die Präzision dieser drei Fortbewegungstechniken über sechs unterschiedliche Hindernisse in einem VR-Parcours untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass für einzelne Hindernisse, die zum einen eine Kombination aus Vorwärts- und Seitwärtsbewegung erfordern (Slalom, Klippe) sowie auf Geschwindigkeit abzielen (Schiene), der Laufstall eine signifikant präzisere Steuerung ermöglicht als der Armswinger. Auf den gesamten Parcours gesehen ist jedoch kein Eingabegerät signifikant präziser als ein anderes. Die Benutzung des Laufstalls benötigt zudem signifikant mehr Zeit als Gamepad und Armswinger. Ebenso zeigte sich, dass das Ziel, eine reale Laufbewegung 1:1 abzubilden, auch mit einem Laufstall nach wie vor nicht erreicht wird, die Bewegung aber dennoch als intuitiv und immersiv wahrgenommen wird.

Human-robot technology has the potential to positively impact the lives of people with motor disabilities. However, current efforts have mostly been oriented towards technology (sensors, devices, modalities, interaction techniques), thus relegating the user and their valuable input to the wayside. In this paper, we aim to present a holistic perspective of the role of participatory design in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) for People with Motor Disabilities (PWMD). We have been involved in several multiyear projects related to HRC for PWMD, where we encountered different challenges related to planning and participation, preferences of stakeholders, using certain participatory design techniques, technology exposure, as well as ethical, legal, and social implications. These challenges helped us provide five lessons learned that could serve as a guideline to researchers when using participatory design with vulnerable groups. In particular, early-career researchers who are starting to explore HRC research for people with disabilities.

Being able to live independently and self-determined in one's own home is a crucial factor or human dignity and preservation of self-worth. For people with severe physical impairments who cannot use their limbs for every day tasks, living in their own home is only possible with assistance from others. The inability to move arms and hands makes it hard to take care of oneself, e.g. drinking and eating independently. In this paper, we investigate how 15 participants with disabilities consume food and drinks. We report on interviews, participatory observations, and analyzed the aids they currently use. Based on our findings, we derive a set of recommendations that supports researchers and practitioners in designing future robotic drinking and eating aids for people with disabilities.

In diesem Beitrag wird untersucht, inwieweit verschiedene Formen von Fortbewegungstechniken in Virtual Reality Umgebungen Einfluss auf die Präzision bei der Interaktion haben. Dabei wurden insgesamt drei Techniken untersucht: Zwei der Techniken integrieren dabei eine körperliche Aktivität, um einen hohen Grad an Realismus in der Bewegung zu erzeugen (Armswinger, Laufstall). Als dritte Technik wurde ein Gamepad als Baseline herangezogen. In einer Studie mit 18 Proband:innen wurde die Präzision dieser drei Fortbewegungstechniken über sechs unterschiedliche Hindernisse in einem VR-Parcours untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass für einzelne Hindernisse, die zum einen eine Kombination aus Vorwärts- und Seitwärtsbewegung erfordern (Slalom, Klippe) sowie auf Geschwindigkeit abzielen (Schiene), der Laufstall eine signifikant präzisere Steuerung ermöglicht als der Armswinger. Auf den gesamten Parcours gesehen ist jedoch kein Eingabegerät signifikant präziser als ein anderes. Die Benutzung des Laufstalls beötigt zudem signifikant mehr Zeit als Gamepad und Armswinger. Ebenso zeigte sich, dass das Ziel, eine reale Laufbewegung 1:1 abzubilden, auch mit einem Laufstall nach wie vor nicht erreicht wird, die Bewegung aber dennoch als intuitiv und immersiv wahrgenommen wird.

Identifying users of a Virtual Reality (VR) headset provides designers of VR content with the opportunity to adapt the user interface, set user-specific preferences, or adjust the level of difficulty either for games or training applications. While most identification methods currently rely on explicit input, implicit user identification is less disruptive and does not impact the immersion of the users. In this work, we introduce a biometric identification system that employs the user’s gaze behavior as a unique, individual characteristic. In particular, we focus on the user’s gaze behavior and head orientation while following a moving stimulus. We verify our approach in a user study. A hybrid post-hoc analysis results in an identification accuracy of up to 75 % for an explainable machine learning algorithm and up to 100 % for a deep learning approach. We conclude with discussing application scenarios in which our approach can be used to implicitly identify users.

Manual assembly tasks require workers to precisely assemble parts in 3D space. Often additional time pressure increases the complexity of these tasks even further (e.g., adhesive bonding processes). Therefore, we investigate how Augmented Reality (AR) can improve workers’ performance in time and spatial dependent process steps. In a user study, we compare three conditions: instructions presented on (a) paper, (b) a camera-based see-through tablet, and (c) a head-mounted AR device. For instructions we used selected work steps from a standardized adhesive bonding process as a representative for common time-critical assembly tasks. We found that instructions in AR can improve the performance and understanding of time and spatial factors. The tablet instruction condition showed the best subjective results among the participants, which can increase motivation, particularly among less-experienced workers.

One of the main benefits of interactive Virtual Reality (VR) applications is that they provide a high sense of immersion. As a result, users lose their sense of real-world space which makes them vulnerable to collisions with real-world objects. In this work, we propose a novel approach to prevent such collisions using Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS). EMS actively prevents the movement that would result in a collision by actuating the antagonist muscle. We report on a user study comparing our approach to the commonly used feedback modalities: audio, visual, and vibro-tactile. Our results show that EMS is a promising modality for restraining user movement and, at the same time, rated best in terms of user experience.

Locating objects in the environment can be a difficult task, especially when the objects are occluded. With Augmented Reality, we can alternate our perceived reality by augmenting it with visual cues or removing visual elements of reality, helping users to locate occluded objects. However, to our knowledge, it has not yet been evaluated which visualization technique works best for estimating the distance and size of occluded objects in optical see-through head-mounted Augmented Reality. To address this, we compare four different visualization techniques derived from previous work in a laboratory user study. Our results show that techniques utilizing additional aid (textual or with a grid) help users to estimate the distance to occluded objects more accurately. In contrast, a realistic rendering of the scene, such as a cutout in the wall, resulted in higher distance estimation errors.

Over the last years, Augmented and Virtual Reality technology became more immersive. However, when users immerse themselves in these digital realities, they detach from their real-world environments. This detachment creates conflicts that are problematic in public spaces such as planes but also private settings. Consequently, on the one hand, the detaching from the world creates an immerse experience for the user, and on the other hand, this creates a social conflict with bystanders. With this work, we highlight and categorize social conflicts caused by using immersive digital realities. We first present different social settings in which social conflicts arise and then provide an overview of investigated scenarios. Finally, we present research opportunities that help to address social conflicts between immersed users and bystanders.

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are progressively adopted by the consumer market, making them available for a variety of use-cases. However, off-the-shelf BCIs are limited in their adjustments towards individual head shapes, evaluation of scalp-electrode contact, and extension through additional sensors. This work presents EasyEG, a BCI headset that is adaptable to individual head shapes and offers adjustable electrode-scalp contact to improve measuring quality. EasyEG consists of 3D-printed and low-cost components that can be extended by additional sensing hardware, hence expanding the application domain of current BCIs. We conclude with use-cases that demonstrate the potentials of our EasyEG headset.

Established safety sensor technology shuts down industrial robots when a collision is detected, causing preventable loss of productivity. To minimize downtime, we implemented three Augmented Reality (AR) visualizations (Path, Preview, and Volume) which allow users to understand robot motion intent and give way to the robot. We compare the different visualizations in a user study in which a small cognitive task is performed in a shared workspace. We found that Preview and Path required significantly longer head rotations to perceive robot motion intent. Volume, however, required the shortest head rotation and was perceived as most safe, enabling closer proximity of the robot arm before one left the shared workspace without causing shutdowns.

Virtual worlds are infinite environments in which the user can move around freely. When shifting from controller-based movement to regular walking as an input, the limitation of the real world also limits the virtual world. Tackling this challenge, we propose the use of electrical muscle stimulation to limit the necessary real-world space to create an unlimited walking experience. We thereby actuate the users‘ legs in a way that they deviate from their straight route and thus, walk in circles in the real world while still walking straight in the virtual world. We report on a study comparing this approach to vision shift – the state-of-the-art approach – as well as combining both approaches. The results show that particularly combining both approaches yield high potential to create an infinite walking experience.

Biometric authentication received considerable attention lately. The vein pattern on the back of the hand is a unique biometric that can be measured through thermal imaging. Detecting this pattern provides an implicit approach that can authenticate users while interacting. In this paper, we present the Vein-Identification system, called VPID. It consists of a vein pattern recognition pipeline and an authentication part. We implemented six different vein-based authentication approaches by combining thermal imaging and computer vision algorithms. Through a study, we show that the approaches achieve a low false-acceptance rate (“FAR”) and a low false-rejection rate (“FRR”). Our findings show that the best approach is the Hausdorff distance-difference applied in combination with a Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) classification of stacked images.

Mobile devices are the core computing platform we use in our everyday life to communicate with friends, watch movies, or read books. For people with severe physical disabilities, such as tetraplegics, who cannot use their hands to operate such devices, these devices are barely usable. Tackling this challenge, we propose SwipeBuddy, a teleoperated robot allowing for touch interaction with a smartphone, tablet, or ebook-reader. The mobile device is mounted on top of the robot and can be teleoperated by a user through head motions and gestures controlling a stylus simulating touch input. Further, the user can control the position and orientation of the mobile device. We demonstrate the SwipeBuddy robot device and its different interaction capabilities.

This paper presents an approach to enhance robot control using Mixed-Reality. It highlights the opportunities and challenges in the interaction design to achieve a Human-Robot Collaborative environment. In fact, Human-Robot Collaboration is the perfect space for social inclusion. It enables people, who suffer severe physical impairments, to interact with the environment by providing them movement control of an external robotic arm. Now, when discussing about robot control it is important to reduce the visual-split that different input and output modalities carry. Therefore, Mixed-Reality is of particular interest when trying to ease communication between humans and robotic systems.

The human body reveals emotional and bodily states through measurable signals, such as body language and electroencephalography. However, such manifestations are difficult to communicate to others remotely. We propose EmotionActuator, a proof-of-concept system to investigate the transmission of emotional states in which the recipient performs emotional gestures to understand and interpret the state of the sender.We call this kind of communication embodied emotional feedback, and present a prototype implementation. To realize our concept we chose four emotional states: amused, sad, angry, and neutral. We designed EmotionActuator through a series of studies to assess emotional classification via EEG, and create an EMS gesture set by comparing composed gestures from the literature to sign-language gestures. Through a final study with the end-to-end prototype interviews revealed that participants like implicit sharing of emotions and find the embodied output to be immersive, but want to have control over shared emotions and with whom. This work contributes a proof of concept system and set of design recommendations for designing embodied emotional feedback systems.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgOZmsa8xs8

PINs and patterns remain among the most widely used knowledge-based authentication schemes. As thermal cameras become ubiquitous and affordable, we foresee a new form of threat to user privacy on mobile devices. Thermal cameras allow performing thermal attacks, where heat traces, resulting from authentication, can be used to reconstruct passwords. In this work we investigate in details the viability of exploiting thermal imaging to infer PINs and patterns on mobile devices. We present a study (N=18) where we evaluated how properties of PINs and patterns influence their thermal attacks resistance. We found that thermal attacks are indeed viable on mobile devices; overlapping patterns significantly decrease successful thermal attack rate from 100% to 16.67%, while PINs remain vulnerable (>72% success rate) even with duplicate digits. We conclude by recommendations for users and designers of authentication schemes on how to resist thermal attacks.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxOBAvI-YFI

Obtaining information about audience engagement in presentations is a valuable asset for presenters in many domains. Prior literature mostly utilized explicit methods of collecting feedback which induce distractions, add workload on audience and do not provide objective information to presenters. We present EngageMeter - a system that allows fine-grained information on audience engagement to be obtained implicitly from multiple brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and to be fed back to presenters for real time and post-hoc access. Through evaluation during an HCI conference (Naudience=11, Npresenters=3) we found that EngageMeter provides value to presenters (a) in real-time, since it allows reacting to current engagement scores by changing tone or adding pauses, and (b) in post-hoc, since presenters can adjust their slides and embed extra elements. We discuss how EngageMeter can be used in collocated and distributed audience sensing as well as how it can aid presenters in long term use.

The 6th International Conference on the Internet of Things (IoT 2016) showed clear departure from the research on data acquisition and sensor management presented at previous series of this conference. Learn about this year's move toward more commercially applicable implementations and cross-domain applications.

This chapter introduces fundamental concepts related to wearable computing, smart textiles, and context awareness. The history of wearable computing is summarized to illustrate the current state of smart textile and garment research. Subsequently, the process to build smart textiles from fabric production, sensor and actuator integration, contacting and integration, as well as communication, is summarized with notes and links to relevant chapters of this book. The options and specific needs for evaluating smart textiles are described. The chapter concludes by highlighting current and future research and development challenges for smart textiles.

Textiles are pervasive in our life, covering human body and objects, as well as serving in industrial applications. In its everyday use of individuals, smart textile becomes a promising medium for monitoring, information retrieval, and interaction. While there are many applications in sport, health care, and industry, the state-of-the-art smart textile is still found only in niche markets. To gain mass-market capabilities, we see the necessity of generalizing and modularizing smart textile production and application development, which on the one end lowers the production cost and on the other end enables easy deployment. In this chapter, we demonstrate our initial effort in modularization. By devising types of universal sensing fabrics for conductive and non-conductive patches, smart textile construction from basic, reusable components can be made. Using the fabric blocks, we present four types of sensing modalities, including resistive pressure, capacitive, bioimpedance, and biopotential. In addition, we present a multi-channel textile–electronics interface and various applications built on the top of the basic building blocks by ‘cut and sew’ principle.

From a holistic perspective, this handbook explores the design, development and production of smart textiles and textile electronics, breaking with the traditional silo-structure of smart textile research and development.

Leading experts from different domains including textile production, electrical engineering, interaction design and human-computer interaction (HCI) address production processes in their entirety by exploring important concepts and topics like textile manufacturing, sensor and actuator development for textiles, the integration of electronics into textiles and the interaction with textiles. In addition, different application scenarios, where smart textiles play a key role, are presented too.

Smart Textiles would be an ideal resource for researchers, designers and academics who are interested in understanding the overall process in creating viable smart textiles.

Muscle movement is central to virtually everything we do, be it walking, writing, drawing, smiling, or singing. Even while we're standing still, our muscles are active, ensuring that we keep our balance. In a recent forum [1] we showed how electrical signals on the skin that reflect muscle activity can be measured. Here, we look at the reverse direction. We explain how muscles can be activated and how movements can be controlled with electrical signals.

Smartwatches provide quick and easy access to information. Due to their wearable nature, users can perceive the information while being stationary or on the go. The main drawback of smartwatches, however, is the limited input possibility. They use similar input methods as smartphones but thereby suffer from a smaller form factor. To extend the input space of smartwatches, we present GestureSleeve, a sleeve made out of touch enabled textile. It is capable of detecting different gestures such as stroke based gestures or taps. With these gestures, the user can control various smartwatch applications. Exploring the performance of the GestureSleeve approach, we conducted a user study with a running application as use case. In this study, we show that input using the GestureSleeve outperforms touch input on the smartwatch. In the future the GestureSleeve can be integrated into regular clothing and be used for controlling various smart devices.

Secure user identification is important for the increasing number of eyewear computers but limited input capabilities pose significant usability challenges for established knowledge-based schemes, such as passwords or PINs. We present SkullConduct, a biometric system that uses bone conduction of sound through the user's skull as well as a microphone readily integrated into many of these devices, such as Google Glass. At the core of SkullConduct is a method to analyze the characteristic frequency response created by the user's skull using a combination of Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) features as well as a computationally light-weight 1NN classifier. We report on a controlled experiment with 10 participants that shows that this frequency response is person-specific and stable -- even when taking off and putting on the device multiple times -- and thus serves as a robust biometric. We show that our method can identify users with 97.0% accuracy and authenticate them with an equal error rate of 6.9%, thereby bringing biometric user identification to eyewear computers equipped with bone conduction technology.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yG_nWocXNY

Common user authentication methods on smartphones, such as lock patterns, PINs, or passwords, impose a trade-off between security and password memorability. Image-based passwords were proposed as a secure and usable alternative. As of today, however, it remains unclear how such schemes are used in the wild. We present the first study to investigate how image-based passwords are used over long periods of time in the real world. Our analyses are based on data from 2318 unique devices collected over more than one year using a custom application released in the Android Play store. We present an in-depth analysis of what kind of images users select, how they define their passwords, and how secure these passwords are. Our findings provide valuable insights into real-world use of image-based passwords and inform the design of future graphical authentication schemes.

Pedestrian navigation systems require users to perceive, interpret, and react to navigation information. This can tax cognition as navigation information competes with information from the real world. We propose actuated navigation, a new kind of pedestrian navigation in which the user does not need to attend to the navigation task at all. An actuation signal is directly sent to the human motor system to influence walking direction. To achieve this goal we stimulate the sartorius muscle using electrical muscle stimulation. The rotation occurs during the swing phase of the leg and can easily be counteracted. The user therefore stays in control. We discuss the properties of actuated navigation and present a lab study on identifying basic parameters of the technique as well as an outdoor study in a park. The results show that our approach changes a user's walking direction by about 16°/m on average and that the system can successfully steer users in a park with crowded areas, distractions, obstacles, and uneven ground.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSfnm_HoUv4

Distant pointing at objects and persons is a highly expressive gesture that is widely used in human communication. Pointing is also used to control a range of interactive systems. For determining where a user is pointing at, different ray casting methods have been proposed. In this paper we assess how accurately humans point over distance and how to improve it. Participants pointed at projected targets from 2m and 3m while standing and sitting. Testing three common ray casting methods, we found that even with the most accurate one the average error is 61.3cm. We found that all tested ray casting methods are affected by systematic displacements. Therefore, we trained a polynomial to compensate this displacement. We show that using a user-, pose-, and distant-independent quartic polynomial can reduce the average error by 37.3%.

VIdeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8NOERrhWfA

Touch-enabled user interfaces have become ubiquitous, such as on ATMs or portable devices. At the same time, authentication using touch input is problematic, since finger smudge traces may allow attackers to reconstruct passwords. We present SmudgeSafe, an authentication system that uses random geometric image transformations, such as translation, rotation, scaling, shearing, and flipping, to increase the security of cued-recall graphical passwords. We describe the design space of these transformations and report on two user studies: A lab-based security study involving 20 participants in attacking user-defined passwords, using high quality pictures of real smudge traces captured on a mobile phone display; and an in-the-field usability study with 374 participants who generated more than 130,000 logins on a mobile phone implementation of SmudgeSafe. Results show that SmudgeSafe significantly increases security compared to authentication schemes based on PINs and lock patterns, and exhibits very high learnability, efficiency, and memorability.

Thermal cameras have recently drawn the attention of HCI researchers as a new sensory system enabling novel interactive systems. They are robust to illumination changes and make it easy to separate human bodies from the image background. Far-infrared radiation, however, has another characteristic that distinguishes thermal cameras from their RGB or depth counterparts, namely thermal reflection. Common surfaces reflect thermal radiation differently than visual light and can be perfect thermal mirrors. In this paper, we show that through thermal reflection, thermal cameras can sense the space beyond their direct field-of-view. A thermal camera can sense areas besides and even behind its field-of-view through thermal reflection. We investigate how thermal reflection can increase the interaction space of projected surfaces using camera-projection systems. We moreover discuss the reflection characteristics of common surfaces in our vicinity in both the visual and thermal radiation bands. Using a proof-of-concept prototype, we demonstrate the increased interaction space for hand-held camera-projection system. Furthermore, we depict a number of promising application examples that can benefit from the thermal reflection characteristics of surfaces.

The entertainment industry is going through a transformation, and technology development is affecting how we can enjoy and interact with the entertainment media content in new ways. In our work, we explore how to enable interaction with content in the context of 3D cinemas. This allows viewers to use their mobile phone to retrieve, for example, information on the artist of the soundtrack currently playing or a discount coupon on the watch the main actor is wearing. We are particularly interested in the user experience of the interactive 3D cinema concept, and how different interactive elements and interaction techniques are perceived. We report on the development of a prototype application utilizing smart phones and on an evaluation in a cinema context with 20 participants. Results emphasize that designing for interactive cinema experiences should drive for holistic and positive user experiences. Interactive content should be tied together with the actual video content, but integrated into contexts where it does not conflict with the immersive experience with the movie.

In this paper, we identify design guidelines for stereoscopic 3D (S3D) user interfaces (UIs) and present the MirrorBox and the FrameBox, two UI prototyping tools for S3D displays. As auto-stereoscopy becomes available for the mass market we believe the design of S3D UIs for devices, for example, mobile phones, public displays, or car dashboards, will rapidly gain importance. A benefit of such UIs is that they can group and structure information in a way that makes them easily perceivable for the user. For example, important information can be shown in front of less important information. This paper identifies core requirements for designing S3D UIs and derives concrete guidelines. The requirements also serve as a basis for two depth layout tools we built with the aim to overcome limitations of traditional prototyping when sketching S3D UIs. We evaluated the tools with usability experts and compared them to traditional paper prototyping.

The emergence of many new embedded computing platforms has lowered the hurdle for creating ubiquitous computing devices. Here, the authors highlight some of the newer platforms, communication technologies, sensors, actuators, and cloud-based development tools, which are creating new opportunities for ubiquitous computing.

Being able to live independently and self-determined in once own home is a crucial factor for social participation. For people with severe physical impairments, such as tetraplegia, who cannot use their hands to manipulate materials or operate devices, life in their own home is only possible with assistance from others. The inability to operate buttons and other interfaces results also in not being able to utilize most assistive technologies on their own. In this paper, we present an ethnographic field study with 15 tetraplegics to better understand their living environments and needs. Results show the potential for robotic solutions but emphasize the need to support activities of daily living (ADL), such as grabbing and manipulating objects or opening doors. Based on this, we propose Little Helper, a tele-operated pack of robot drones, collaborating in a divide and conquer paradigm to fulfill several tasks using a unique interaction method. The drones can be tele-operated by a user through gaze-based selection and head motions and gestures manipulating materials and applications.

Dataset: https://uni-duisburg-essen.sciebo.de/s/nKHomAwBVa7PPQo