Antti Sand

A hand-held immaterial volumetric display

We have created an ultralight, movable, “immaterial” fogscreen. It is based on the fogscreen mid-air imaging technology. The hand-held unit is roughly the size and weight of an ordinary toaster. If the screen is tracked, it can be swept in the air to create mid-air slices of volumetric objects, or to show augmented reality (AR) content on top of real objects. Interfacing devices and methodologies, such as hand and gesture trackers, camera-based trackers and object recognition, can make the screen interactive. The user can easily interact with any physical object or virtual information, as the screen is permeable. Any real objects can be seen through the screen, instead of e.g., through a video-based augmented reality screen. It creates a mixed reality setup where both the real world object and the augmented reality content can be viewed and interacted with simultaneously. The hand-held mid-air screen can be used e.g., as a novel collaborating or classroom tool for individual students or small groups.

Creating Immersive Audio and Lighting Based Physical Exercise Games for Schoolchildren

We have created story-based exercise games utilizing light and sound to encourage children to participate in physical exercise in schools. Our reasonably priced technological setup provides practical and expressive means for creating immersive and rich experiences to support physical exercise education in schools. Studies conducted in schools showed that the story and drama elements draw children into the world of the exercise game. Moreover, children who do not like traditional games and exercises engaged in these activities. Our experiences also suggest that childrens imagination plays a great role in the design and engagement into exercise games, which makes co-creation with children a viable and exciting approach to creating new games.

Bidirectional touch interaction for immaterial displays

In this paper, we present an immaterial mid-air display with touchscreen capability and aerial tactile feedback. By augmenting a projected desktop fogscreen display with a 3D camera for touch detection and a focusable, modulated ultrasonic phased array for tactile feedback generation, very convincing yet completely immaterial user interfaces were constructed. A typical feedback response is delivered within 2 ms with a positional resolution of 2 mm and an active spot size of 10 mm at 100 mm distance. By combining a number of the tileable ultrasonic arrays, a tighter focus with much higher intensity can be produced.

Schoolchildren’s user experiences on a physical exercise game utilizing lighting and audio

Abstract Motivated by the troubling news on decreased exercise amount and increased obesity among children and adolescents, we investigated the possibilities of interactive lighting technology in encouraging children to participate in physical exercise in schools. We have created a story-driven physical exercise game based on light and sound utilizing a reasonably priced technological setup. The game has been evaluated with several groups of schoolchildren during physical education classes. The results show that a physical exercise game enhanced with lighting and audio keeps schoolchildren motivated both mentally and physically even after several playtimes. In subjective evaluations, participants still found the story of the game interesting after three playtimes, and were eager to exercise this way again.

Mixed reality with multimodal head-mounted pico projector

Many kinds of displays can be used for augmented reality (AR). Multimodal head-mounted pico projector is a concept, which is little explored for AR. It opens new possibilities for wearable displays. In this paper we present our proof-of-concept prototype of a multimodal head-mounted pico projector. Our main contributions are the display concept and some usage examples for it.

Emerging application areas and challenges of automatic face analysis

In the future world of ubiquitous computing, various computing devices will be thoroughly and invisibly embedded into different environments of our daily living. These smart machines will not only actively perceive and respond to human presence and behaviour, but also support friendly intelligent interaction with a user – interaction that resembles mechanisms of human–human communication. This vision of the future and the fact that the face is one of the most important means of human natural communication have motivated the idea of exploiting automatic face analysis in the settings of ubiquitous interaction. In this paper, we review several emerging application areas of automatic face analysis in different interactive spaces, including urban environments. We discuss challenges and differences in applying automatic face analysis in indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as issues that arise from privacy protection concerns and publics social acceptability of this new technology.

Remote Expert for Assistance in a Physical Operational Task

We created a mobile asymmetric collaboration system that allows a remote expert to assist a nomadic operative in a maintenance task. We explored the use of a virtual reality headset and several cameras and controls that (1) are easy to setup by the operative on the site, (2) enable the expert to better understand the situation on the site (be more immersed) and (3) offer the expert various flexible interface options to study the environment and to act on the devices on the site independent of the operative. The preliminary results indicate that the expert appreciates the opportunity for 360 degreeview and the flexibility of using detailed controls on a close-up camera view.

Light-weight immaterial particle displays with mid-air tactile feedback

Immaterial mid-air displays formed of flowing light-scattering particles are becoming feasible for displaying information in thin air and interacting with it. With light-weight desktop fogscreens and low-cost hand tracking, the user can easily and unobtrusively interact with virtual information. Any real objects can be seen or reached through the screen, as it is permeable and almost intangible. However, no tactile feedback can be perceived when interacting with a mid-air display. Our contribution in this paper is the construction of an interactive mid-air fogscreen employing ultrasonic phased arrays in order to create mid-air tactile feedback. The feedback is suitable for small desktop-sized fogscreens. This creates a mixed reality setup where real objects and e.g., augmented reality content can be brought closer together conceptually and physically. In an experimental evaluation of the mid-air tactile feedback for the fogscreen we found no statistically significant difference in performance, but the mid-air tactile feedback was slightly preferred over no tactile feedback by the users. They found the tactile feedback as more engaging.