Kohei Matsumura

Universal earphones: earphones with automatic side and shared use detection

We present universal earphones that use both a proximity sensor and a skin conductance sensor and we demonstrate several implicit interaction techniques they achieve by automatically detecting the context of use. The universal earphones have two main features. The first involves detecting the left and right sides of ears, which provides audio to either ear, and the second involves detecting the shared use of earphones and this provides mixed stereo sound to both earphones. These features not merely free users from having to check the left and right sides of earphones, but they enable them to enjoy sharing stereo audio with other people.

How does telenoid affect the communication between children in classroom setting

It needs to be investigated how humanoid robots may affect people in the real world when they are employed to express the presence, a feel of being there, in tele-communication. We brought Telenoid, a tele-operated humanoid robot, into a classroom at an elementary school to see how schoolchildren respond to it. Our study is exploratory and we focused on the social aspects that might facilitate communication between schoolchildren. We found that Telenoid affected the way children work as group. They participated in the group work more positively, became more spontaneous, and differentiated their roles. We observed that Telenoids limited capability led them to change their attitudes so that they could work together. The result suggests that the limited functionality may facilitate cooperation among participants in classroom setting.

Promoting Socialization of Schoolchildren Using a Teleoperated Android: An Interaction Study

Our research focuses on the social aspects of teleoperated androids as new media for human relationships and explores how they can contribute and encourage people to associate with others. We introduced Telenoid, a teleoperated android with a minimalistic human design, to elementary school classrooms to see how children respond to it. We found that Telenoid encourages children to work cooperatively and facilitates communication with senior citizens with dementia. Children differentiated their roles spontaneously and cooperatively participated in group work. In another class, we applied Telenoid to remote communication between schoolchildren and assisted living residents. The children felt relaxed about continuing their conversations with the elderly and positively participated in them. The results suggest that limited functionality may facilitate cooperation among participants, and varied embodiments may promote the learning process of the association with others, even those who are unfamiliar. We propose a teleoperated android as an educational tool to promote socialization.

CarCast: a framework for situated in-car conversation sharing

In this paper, we propose a situated in-car conversation sharing framework. People often have conversations in the car. In those conversations, people talk about their points of interest that they have just passed. These conversations may contain valuable information because the conversations reflect situations such as seasons and passengers own experiences. However, in-car conversations are transient and cannot be shared to others. We therefore aim to share these valuable in-car conversation with others. This paper describes a framework of our in-car conversation sharing system and discusses challenges to realize it.

The role of body movement in learning to play the shaker to a samba rhythm: An exploratory study

Rhythm is an essential element of music, but how we acquire it has not been investigated in detail. Some argue that learners acquire rhythms mentally, and others argue that body movements are involved. This study, therefore, investigated how body movements affect the rhythmic performances of learners in the course of rhythm acquisition. We used accelerometers to measure the arm and lumbar accelerations of 17 participants who took samba lessons regularly for 10 months. Detailed analyses revealed that all learners who learnt to play the shaker to a samba rhythm exhibited samba-like rhythmic patterns in both lumbar and arm movements. This indicates that the coordination contributing to the lumber movement has something to do with the acquisition of samba rhythm, and this is consistent with the argument that body movements are involved in acquiring rhythms.

Treasure hunt game to persuade visitors to walk around a shopping mall

In this paper, we propose a treasure hunting game aimed at changing shopping behavior. Shopping malls consist of various tenants such as shops and restaurants, enabling visitors to find many kinds of goods and services in one place. Realizing this multiplier effect, the shopping mall manages to announce the shops they have and encourage visitors to walk around all over the mall. However, visitors tend to visit particular tenants that they know well and do not pay much attention to other unfamiliar ones. With such buying behavior, malls lose their appeal. We thus aimed to persuade mall visitors to visit unfamiliar shops through playing a game. We designed the treasure hunt game on a smart phone by introducing some gamification techniques. In the game, a participant looks for virtual treasures that are hidden in tenants, and the treasure emits a wireless beacon signal. An individuals smartphone presents the beacon signal status and text hints to provide clues to find the treasures, so the participant walks around the shopping mall to hunt for the treasures. As the result of our user study, we confirmed that the proposed method motivates participants to walk around the shopping mall while hunting for the treasure. Further analysis suggested that our method suits shopping activities of groups such as families.

What Are You Talking About While Driving?: An Analysis of In-car Conversations Aimed at Conversation Sharing

In this study, we propose an in-car conversation sharing system. People frequently converse in a car. In these conversations, people often talk about points of interest that they have just passed. Because we believe that they contain useful information, the aim of our study is to share the conversations. To develop such a system, we needed to know about the characteristics of in-car conversations. Consequently we collected 120 in-car conversations with their locations over a 10-month period. Our analysis showed that many types of conversation take place in a car; but of the greatest interest is when the subject of conversation is a specific location or area. We discuss the requirements for an in-car conversation sharing system to guide our on-going research.

Synthesis of omnidirectional movie using a set of key frame panoramic images

We aim to provide an interactive and entertaining environment for users to better enjoy and stay motivated during indoor training. We are now developing a virtual treadmill-based training system that will allow users to experience walking or running around various real scenes. The images are displayed according to the users speed. We use a set of key frame 360-degree panoramic images on a grid to synthesize, in real-time, an omnidirectional movie for any possible path the user takes. The playback smoothness of the synthesized movie depends on the separation (grid pitch) between key frames. Preliminary experimental results help us determine the largest playback grid pitch without compromising the playback smoothness.

Vetrina Attori: Scene Seek Support System Focusing on Characters in a Video

In most video services, users watch only the scenes they are interested in, and look back on the scenes they have watched in the past. In these situations, users typically use a seek bar for seeking scenes of the video. They often have to operate the seek bar many times to get to the desired playback position. In this paper, we aim to support the seeking of specific scenes from video contents. In our preliminary study, we found that users seek scenes depending on when each character appears in the video. Therefore, we designed a system to support seeking scenes using the information of characters. We evaluated the usefulness of our proposed system by comparing it with an existing system. According to our qualitative evaluation, we confirm that our proposed system could ease scene seeking.

When should the Health Promotion Agent Recommend the User to Walk?: Approach for Searching an Appropriate Walking Pattern for the User

Walking 8,000 steps in a day is one of the important criteria to maintain our health. However, we often miss a chance to walk due to the difficulty to keep our motivation toward our health in a daily life. We propose an algorithm to search an appropriate daily walking pattern from the users past walking record. The searched walking patterns are used for making a health promotion agent recommend an effective timing to walk. With this recommendation, users will not miss the timing when they can walk. In this study, we focused on designing the algorithm for searching a daily walking pattern, which satisfied both conditions, achieving 8,000 steps a day and being similar to the current user walking record. In a pilot performance study, it was revealed that the proposed algorithm can narrow down the walking pattern candidates and properly search the walking pattern similar to the current user walking record.