Abdelwahab Hamam

A comparison of Mamdani and Sugeno fuzzy inference systems for evaluating the quality of experience of Hapto-Audio-Visual applications

Virtual reality applications which incorporate haptic devices to enrich userspsila sense of touch are increasing in number. Assessing the quality of experience (QoE) of these applications reflects the amount of overall satisfaction and benefit gained from the application plus it lays the foundation for ideal user-centric design in the future. In this paper we build on our QoE fuzzy logic model, previously simulated and tested, by comparing results from two different and well-established fuzzy systems: Mamdani and Sugeno. The results analytically demonstrate the essential differences between the two systems and the benefits of using either one in assessing the overall QoE.

A Fuzzy Logic System for Evaluating Quality of Experience of Haptic-Based Applications

Multimedia systems and applications have recently started to integrate the sense of touch and force feedback in the human-computer interaction. Surprisingly, measuring the quality of experience (QoE) when haptic modality is incorporated in a virtual user interface has received limited attention from the research community. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy for measuring the quality of experience of Virtual Reality (VR) applications. Furthermore, the taxonomy is modeled using a Fuzzy Logic Inference System (FIS) to quantitatively measure the QoE of a haptic virtual environment. Finally, the proposed model is tested using the Mamdani system. The simulation and usability analysis demonstrated that the proposed model reflects the user estimation for the applications more accurately and thus is capable of measuring the overall QoE of a haptic application.

A quality of experience model for haptic user interfaces

Multimedia systems and applications have recently started to integrate the sense of touch and force feedback in the human-computer interaction. Surprisingly, measuring the quality of experience when haptic modality is incorporated in a graphical user interface has received limited attention from the research community. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy for measuring the quality of experience of a haptic user interface (HUI) applications. Furthermore, the taxonomy is modeled using a mathematical model. Finally, the proposed model is evaluated using two HUI-based applications: the haptic learning system and the haptic enabled UML CASE tool. The performance evaluation demonstrated that the proposed model is capable of reflecting the user estimation of the applications.

Effect of kinesthetic and tactile haptic feedback on the quality of experience of edutainment applications

Haptic technologies and applications have received enormous attention in the last decade. The incorporation of haptic modality into multimedia applications adds excitement and enjoyment to an application. It also adds a more natural feel to multimedia applications, that otherwise would be limited to vision and audition, by engaging as well the user’s sense of touch, giving a more intrinsic feel essential for ambient intelligent applications. However, the improvement of an application’s Quality of Experience (QoE) by the addition of haptic feedback is still not completely understood. The research presented in this paper focuses on the effect of haptic feedback and what it potentially adds to the experience of the user as opposed to the traditional visual and auditory feedback. In essence, it investigates certain issues regarding stylus-based haptic education applications and haptic-enhanced entertainment videos. To this end, we used two haptic applications: the haptic handwriting learning tool to experiment with force feedback haptic interaction and the tactile YouTube application for tactile haptic feedback. In both applications, our analysis shows that the addition of haptic feedback will increase the QoE in the absence of fatigue or discomfort for this category of applications. This implies that the incorporation of haptic modality (both force feedback as well as tactile feedback) has positively contributed to the overall QoE for the users.

Toward a Mathematical Model for Quality of Experience Evaluation of Haptic Applications

There is rapid progress in the advancement of user interfaces. One such advancement is enabling the sense of touch, or haptics, as part of the interface. Haptic devices are seeing growth in many types of applications such as gaming and medical simulation. Assessing the quality of experience (QoE) of the user is necessary to evaluate how the user perceives such interfaces. The QoE is a user-centric parameter that shifts the paradigm of evaluation from the technology itself to the user. This paper proposes a mathematical-based QoE evaluation of haptic-based applications. A mathematical model that is able to quantify the QoE of the user is described. By conducting a user study in which users evaluate a haptic-based game application, we were able to test and validate the mathematical model. There are several approaches in determining the weights to be used with the mathematical model. This paper presents and compares different approaches for weight determination, namely even weight distribution, correlation-based weights, even weights-correlation combination, linear regression analysis, and principal component analysis (PCA). Our results show that PCA weight determination performs slightly better than the rest of the approaches.

A Quality of Experience Model for Haptic Virtual Environments

Haptic-based Virtual Reality (VR) applications have many merits. What is still obscure, from the designers perspective of these applications, is the experience the users will undergo when they use the VR system. Quality of Experience (QoE) is an evaluation metric from the users perspective that unfortunately has received limited attention from the research community. Assessing the QoE of VR applications reflects the amount of overall satisfaction and benefits gained from the application in addition to laying the foundation for ideal user-centric design in the future. In this article, we propose a taxonomy for the evaluation of QoE for multimedia applications and in particular VR applications. We model this taxonomy using a Fuzzy logic Inference System (FIS) to quantitatively measure the QoE of haptic virtual environments. We build and test our FIS by conducting a users study analysis to evaluate the QoE of a haptic game application. Our results demonstrate that the proposed FIS model reflects the users estimation of the applications quality significantly with low error and hence is suited for QoE evaluation.

Evaluating the Quality of Experience of haptic-based applications through mathematical modeling

Advanced user interfaces are being incorporated into multimedia applications including haptic interfaces which provide a sense of touch to the user. There is a need for a user-based assessment of these newer types of applications especially that the multimedia community is starting to focus on the Quality of Experience (QoE) as a new paradigm for evaluation. This paper focuses on a mathematical-centered user evaluation of haptic-based applications. Using a haptic game entitled Balance Ball, users data were collected. The data were standardized and then used to calculate QoE values through a mathematical model. The results were compared with the overall users ratings. The results are promising with a significant correlation values and a moderate average relative error rate.

Effect of haptics on the Quality of Experience

Haptic interfaces add excitement and enjoyment to an application. Since haptics is not yet a mainstream medium, the improvement of an applications Quality of Experience (QoE) by the addition of haptic feedback is still not completely understood. This paper focuses on the effect of force feedback and what it adds to the experience of the user compared to visual and auditory feedback. In essence, it deals with certain issues regarding haptic-based applications compared to the traditional mouse and keyboard applications. These issues center on the QoE of applications that can utilize either haptics or traditional user interfaces. Our analysis shows that the addition of haptics will increase the QoE in the absence of fatigue.

Haptibasic: Learning basic concepts of a haptic technology through edutainment games

In this paper, we present edutainment games to teach basic concepts of haptic technology to general users. Although many users are using haptic technology and its applications in their daily life through their smart phones, most of them are unaware of the meaning of haptic concepts in the technical world. An initial survey demonstrated that around 86% of smart phone users are not aware of haptic technology concepts although they are exposed to it frequently during their phone usage. Consequently, we introduced basic haptic technology concepts to non-specialized users through three proposed edutainment games in order to enhance their knowledge and experience about haptic. We argue that adding haptic feedback feature to classic games will prove the potential of using haptic feedback as an edutainment tool. HaptiMemo game is one of the proposed games that have been implemented. The preliminary testing and evaluation of the game has shown its ability to provide useful information about haptic feedback in an entertaining form. It shows that integrating haptic feedback with memory games has a potential impact on players ability to find matching items.

Deducing user's fatigue from haptic data

Undesired physical fatigue reduces the overall Quality of Experience (QoE) of virtual reality haptics applications. Detecting fatigue is the first step in rectifying this problem. Fatigue in usability analysis is usually detected through conducting questionnaires and observations. This paper introduces an objective indirect discovery of users fatigue through analyzing data of a haptic writing application. Our results show that if users are feeling tired their kinetic energy would decrease. We can compute this kinetic energy from the velocity of the arm movement during the usage of the haptic device.