Noritaka Osawa

Effect of Button Size and Location When Pointing with Index Finger on Smartwatch

Users control smartwatches through touch screen interfaces such as smartphones. However, because smartwatches are very small and users’ postures differ depending on the device, control using touch screens needs to be adapted for smartwatches. Users tap buttons on the touch screen to control the smartwatch, so speed and accuracy of button input are required. Users’ button input speed and accuracy are affected by displayed button size and location. In this study, we investigated the effects of button size and location when pointing with the index finger on a smartwatch. The results suggest that the pointing error rate is significantly affected by button size and location. The error rates became lower as the buttons became larger and when the buttons were located near the center of the screen.

An immersive system for editing and playing music on network-connected computers

A prototype system for immersive music editing and playing has been developed. The system enables one to edit musical notes and control playing in an immersive virtual environment using multimodal interfaces. The immersive virtual reality is suitable as a natural interface for many people. One can manipulate musical notes by hand, learn to read a musical score and understand the relationship between the score and sounds. The prototype system was implemented with the Java programming language, the Java3D class library, the JavaSound class library and an original library called it3d. It works on a personal computer or a group of computers connected with a fast local area network where one computer executes the application body and others process input/output. The system is portable and expected to work on a wide range of hardware platforms.

iFarm: Development of cloud-based system of cultivation management for precision agriculture

Precision agriculture is aimed at optimizing farming management and it requires records of agricultural work. Farmers conventionally write records on paper but it is difficult and tedious to check past agricultural-work data and control the cost of agricultural products. A system of cultivation management, iFarm, is proposed, which was developed to support efficient farming management. The system consists of smartphone applications, Web browsers and a cloud server. Farmers on farmland can easily refer to work plans, enter field data into the cloud system, and share them with head office in real time by using smartphones. Farmers at head office can analyze data in the cloud system with a Web browser and estimate farming costs and form work plans based on their analyses.

Adjustment and control methods for precise rotation and positioning of virtual object by hand

A rotation adjustment method for precisely and efficiently manipulating a virtual 3D object by hand in an immersive virtual environment is proposed. A relative direction between both hands adjusts the rotation of the virtual object. This adjustment method also uses spherical linear interpolation based on quaternion algebra to scale down rotations, making small rotation adjustment easier. The scaled adjustment enables a user to precisely manipulate the virtual object. Activation of the rotation adjustment is controlled by the distance between both hands or by the distance between the thumb and forefinger. This rotation adjustment method was implemented as well as the translational position, viewpoint, and release adjustment methods. Combinations of these adjustment and control methods were evaluated in an experiment. The experimental results suggest that the rotation adjustment method helps a user who cannot precisely control rotation by his/her hand pinching a virtual object.

Daily Activity Recognition Based on Acceleration of Both Wrists

Activity recognition is useful in applications for daily life, including automatic patient monitoring and working-state analysis. Even though some studies have developed methods to recognize daily activities, misclassification has been found to occur frequently for activities that involve small hand movements. This paper evaluates a method that uses acceleration data from both wrists and machine learning classifiers to recognize deskwork activities with small hand movements. The acceleration data are measured using sensors attached on both of the user’s wrists. The maximum, minimum, average, and Fourier transform coefficients of the segmented time series are extracted as features from the measured acceleration data. Combination of two types of features were evaluated to classify four deskwork activities with the support vector machine (SVM) and random forest algorithms. SVMs with the basic statistical feature vectors of both hands achieved the highest recognition accuracy, i.e., an accuracy of 0.94 for all participants. The results revealed that the acceleration data from both wrists can effectively recognize deskwork activities.

Three-Finger-Tap Methods for Navigation in 3D Scenes on Tablet

This paper proposes two three-finger-tap methods designed for navigation in three-dimensional (3D) scenes. The proposed methods can be implemented in 3D applications installed on a tablet. One method integrates rotation, scaling, and translation (RST) into the specification of a triangle as a region of interest. The other is a point-of-interest (POI) method using multi-touch techniques without a virtual widget. Two experiments showed that the proposed methods perform better than a conventional RST method in two kinds of 3D scenes. Moreover, questionnaire results support the conclusion that the two methods not only performed better than a conventional POI method, but also enabled users to interact as freely and precisely as with a conventional RST method.

Enhancements to Support Functions of Distributed Pair Programming Based on Action Analysis

Pair programming is a practice of software development where two programmers work together to create programs. It is important for students to understand and learn effective pair programming in software engineering. A pair of programmers at distributed sites can program in pairs by using a support system including text chats or synchronized editors. It is important to enable effective communication in distributed pair programming as well as in collocated human dialogue. We conducted experiments to collect information about students activities, communications, and answers to questionnaires. These collected data were analyzed to clarify functions that enhanced distributed pair programming. The analysis revealed that it is important for support systems to facilitate easy communication in pairs and for them to have functions that enable appropriate partner changes and role switching.