Kazuhiko Nakamura

Tele echo tube: beyond cultural and imaginable boundaries

Currently, human-computer interaction (HCI) is primarily focused on human-centric interactions; however, people experience many nonhuman-centric interactions during the course of a day. Interactions with nature, such as experiencing the sounds of birds or trickling water, can imprint the beauty of nature in our memories. In this context, this paper presents an interface of such nonhuman interactions to observe peoples reaction to the interactions through an imaginable interaction with a mythological creature. Tele Echo Tube (TET) is a speaking tube interface that acoustically interacts with a deep mountain echo through the slightly vibrating lampshade-like interface. TET allows users to interact with the mountain echo in real time through an augmented echo-sounding experience with the vibration over a satellite data network. This novel interactive system can create an imaginable presence of the mythological creature in the undeveloped natural locations beyond our cultural and imaginable boundaries. The results indicate that users take the reflection of the sound as a cue that triggers the nonlinguistic believability in the form of the mythological metaphor of the mountain echo. This echo-like experience of believable interaction in an augmented reality between a human and nature gave the users an imaginable presence of the mountain echo with a high degree of excitement. This paper describes the development and integration of nonhuman-centric design protocols, requirements, methods, and context evaluation.

A Real-Time Streaming and Detection System for Bio-Acoustic Ecological Studies After the Fukushima Accident

Acoustic ecology data have been used for a broad range of soundscape investigations. Counting sounds in a given soundscape is considered an effective method in ecology studies that provides comparative data for evaluating the impact of human community on the environment. In 2016, Kobayashi and Kudo collected a particularly valuable dataset containing recordings from within the exclusion (i.e., difficult-to-return-to) zone located 10 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the Omaru District (Namie, Fukushima, Japan). These audio samples were continuously transmitted as a live stream of sound data from an unmanned remote sensing station in the area. In 2016, the first portion of their collected audio samples covering the transmitted sound recordings from the station was made available. Such data cover the bioacoustics in the area. This paper describes the methodologies by which we processed these recordings, in extreme conditions, as preliminary eco-acoustic indexes for demonstrating possible correlations between biodiversity variation and preexisting radioecology observations. The variations in some of these vocalizations were also studied.

Playful rocksalt system: animal-computer interaction design in wild environments

Interactions with nature, such as experiencing the unexpected encounters with wildlife in a forest, can imprint the beauty of nature in our memories. In this context, this paper presents an experimental interface of such non-verbal interaction for HCI application designs through an imaginable interaction with nature by a Playful Rocksalt system. In order to make the experience, this study achieves the goal through two subsystes, Panorama-viewer of forest and Remote animal sensing. The former is an application by which users can look out over the forest landscape in all directions with a gyro-sensor inside PDA. The latter is a virtual system that allows users living in remote urban areas to interact with wild deer in a forest in real time. This novel design shows users how to realize a forest experience through the in their hands. This paper presented the Playful Rocksalt System by introducing interfaces and related discussion.

A Study on Environmental Education in Local Forests within the Framework of the SSH Research Program for Reducing Burdens on Teachers

Discussing ways of collaborative education between high schools and universities is one of the important targets in the Super Science High School (SSH) project. For producing better educational effects, it is desirable to collaborate between them as frequently as possible. However, frequent collaboration causes additional burden to the teacher on the university side as the result of effort made to prepare lectures and time for giving them. This study aims at reducing these burdens by adopting two approaches. Firstly, several graduate students were employed as teachers and the lectures were given by these teachers whilst paying attention to keeping the quality of the local forest research program. Secondly, a database lecture records was established so that several teachers can share what they conducted in the lectures with each other. As a result of the first approach, the burden of time required for implementation was not reduced sufficiently. However, the burden caused due to preparing for the lectures was eased. On the other hand, the trial establishment of the database showed its effectiveness from the viewpoint of sharing information on lecture content among several teachers, although some problems remain to be solved.