José Pascual Molina

VITAKI: A Vibrotactile Prototyping Toolkit for Virtual Reality and Video Games

The use of haptics in virtual reality and video games has received growing attention as a means of enhancing the sensation of immersion in these environments. The sensation of touching virtual objects not only augments the impression of reality but also can improve the performance. However, the design of haptic interactions is not an easy task, and it usually needs a great effort due to the absence of powerful prototyping toolkits. Thus, this article proposes a vibrotactile prototyping toolkit for Eccentric Rotating Mass actuators named VITAKI. The main objective of this platform is to facilitate the prototyping and testing procedures of new vibrotactile interaction techniques for Virtual Reality and video games. A detailed description of the design of the system is provided, presenting the hardware and software elements that make up the VITAKI toolkit. In addition, its application to two different examples to illustrate its use is provided. Finally, a preliminary evaluation of this toolkit is presented. This evaluation is divided into two main stages. On one hand, a study of Olsen’s criteria is performed to analyze its general capabilities. On the other hand, a comparison with previously presented proposals is included too. These two analyses, together with other experiments where the devices created with the toolkit were tested by end users, highlight its main features and its advantages over other proposals.

Model-Based Design of Adaptive User Interfaces through Connectors

For a long time standard desktop applications have ruled the market. Nevertheless, the availability of information has made the user demand new interaction techniques in completely different contexts and devices, but requesting the same functionality. With this new situation application design should be able to adapt to these differences. To design these adaptive interfaces the specification of these user interfaces should support plasticity at runtime. In this paper a first approach is proposed to support these plasticity features from a formal point of view within a model-based user interface design methodology. Connector paradigm is used to coordinate the communication between Concrete Interaction Objects and Abstract Interaction Objects in a flexible way enough to support adaptivity.

Bridging the Gap: Developing 2D and 3D User Interfaces with the IDEAS Methodology

Most user interface development methodologies have been conceived based on experience from the development of traditional PC-based systems. However, computer and display technologies are changing. Sizes range from large surrounding displays to small mobile devices. Besides, 3D graphics is no longer limited to graphics workstations, as most PCs are shipped with specialized hardware, and 3D standards are being developed for mobile devices. User interface engineering should not be left out of this progress. With that concern in mind, the IDEAS methodology is presented, a novel environment which allows the development of both 2D and 3D user interfaces. A case of study is used to show the details of the proposed development process.

Wireless Multisensory Interaction in an Intelligent Rehabilitation Environment

Today, the population is aging, and this is becoming a problem for current health systems, as each day it has to invest more money in treating the elderly. Rehabilitation of elderly patients with physical disabilities is one of these problems that everyday incur greater overhead to health care. This paper provides a gerontechnology-based solution by proposing a multisensory system for rehabilitation in an intelligent environment. The proposal enables helping needed people and thus reducing the cost of health care.

Comparison of Force and Vibrotactile Feedback with Direct Stimulation for Texture Recognition

In this paper a study is conducted in order to evaluate three different strategies of haptic feedback for texture discrimination in virtual environments. Specifically, both force and vibrotactile feedback have been evaluated, as well as the direct use of the sense of touch, to detect different textures. To this end, a force feedback Phantom device, a custom built vibrotactile data glove and paper palpable prototypes, which represent an ideal model of tactile feedback, have been compared. These three methods have been used to detect two types of patterns, one formed by different geometrical shapes, and the other with different grooves width. Results show that the vibrotactile data glove has a notable behaviour in the detection of textures where the frequency of tactile stimuli varies, and it is even useful to detect more complex textures.

Enhancing collaborative manipulation through the use of feedback and awareness in CVEs

In the research community, Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) developers usually refer to the terms awareness and feedback as something necessary to maintain a fluent collaboration when highly interactive task have to be performed. However, it is remarkable that few studies address the effect that including special kind of awareness has on the task performance and the user experience. This paper proposes how to face the implementation of awareness in order to be taken into account early in the development of a CVE. In addition, it is also described an experiment that was carried out to evaluate the effect of providing some visual cues, showing that users tend to make more mistakes when they are not provided.

Identifying Virtual 3D Geometric Shapes with a Vibrotactile Glove

The emergence of off-screen interaction devices is bringing the field of virtual reality to a broad range of applications where virtual objects can be manipulated without the use of traditional peripherals. However, to facilitate object interaction, other stimuli such as haptic feedback are necessary to improve the user experience. To enable the identification of virtual 3D objects without visual feedback, a haptic display based on a vibrotactile glove and multiple points of contact gives users an enhanced sensation of touching a virtual object with their hands. Experimental results demonstrate the capacity of this technology in practical applications.

Evaluation of Text Input Techniques in Immersive Virtual Environments

This chapter describes six different text input techniques and their evaluation. Two techniques stand out from the others. First, a mobile phone keyboard turn out to be a valuable option, offering high typing speed and low typing errors. Second, handwritten character recognition did not perform as good as expected. All findings from this and previous experiments are collected in a proposed guidance tool which will promote their application in future projects.

Multi-camera systems for rehabilitation therapies: a study of the precision of MicrosoftKinect sensors Project partially supported by Spanish Ministerio de Economíay Competitividad/FEDER (Nos. TIN2012-34003 and TIN2013-47074-C2-1-R) and FPU Scholarship (FPU13/03141) from the Spanish Government A preliminary version was presented at the 13th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, June 3–4, 2015, Spain

This paper seeks to determine how the overlap of several infrared beams affects the tracked position of the user, depending on the angle of incidence of light, distance to the target, distance between sensors, and the number of capture devices used. We also try to show that under ideal conditions using several Kinect sensors increases the precision of the data collected. The results obtained can be used in the design of telerehabilitation environments in which several RGB-D cameras are needed to improve precision or increase the tracking range. A numerical analysis of the results is included and comparisons are made with the results of other studies. Finally, we describe a system that implements intelligent methods for the rehabilitation of patients based on the results of the tests carried out.

The development of glove-based interfaces with the TRES-D methodology

The development of 3D user interfaces is mostly focused on technology and the ways of using it, and so the main concerns are the selection of hardware, software and interaction techniques. The process of development itself is as important as these issues, but it is usually ignored or poorly documented. This paper introduces the TRES-D methodology, and illustrates its application in the development of three different glove-based interfaces, not only to show the benefits of using these devices, but also the benefits of using such a methodological framework.