Soh Masuko

A fitness game reflecting heart rate

Lack of exercise is known to be detrimental to health, and various exercise machines that can be used indoors in a convenient manner are available. However, because expertise is required to ascertain which exercise to do and for how long, people sometimes sustain injuries by exercising excessively and find it difficult to sufficiently benefit from exercising. Therefore, fitness machines with automatic controls are being developed so that people can exercise efficiently, and exercise programs are being designed with game elements to encourage regular exercise. Monotonous exercise makes it difficult for people to experience a sense of accomplishment while exercising, and if the degree of difficulty is not set properly, people cannot perform the appropriate amount of exercise. The present study proposes a fitness game method in which heart rate is measured in real time while playing a game and the contents of the game are actively adjusted based on heart rate, thus allowing users to perform sufficient amounts of exercise and experience a sense of accomplishment. A fitness game based on boxercise movements was designed based on the present method and then evaluated.

Head-eye Animation Corresponding to a Conversation for CG Characters

CG character animations, in which CG characters engage in conversations, are widely used in multimedia contents such as videos and games. In constructing such an animation, we should consider about many factors, such as the content of the utterance and the state of conversation, which necessitates a large amount of time and labor. To deal with this problem, this paper proposes a method, which generates the head‐eye movements of the CG characters synchronized with the conversation. In this method, so as to generate a composite head‐eye movement, the view line direction is divided into the head, eye and body rotations by sharing motion mechanism dynamically adjusted according to the view line direction. And letting the two modules generating the head and the eye movements share the same conversation state, head and eye movements synchronized with the conversation are generated. Finally, we apply the proposed method to the conversation scenes, and show that natural animation can be produced easily.

Interactive Study of WallSHOP: Multiuser Connectivity between Public Digital Advertising and Private Devices for Personalized Shopping

In this study, we present the design guidelines, implementation details, and user study results of WallSHOP, a novel interactive shopping experience that extends content sharing between public digital advertising and mobile devices. Multiple users can access and browse the content shown in public advertising displays from their mobile devices and interact with content using uniquely assigned cursors. WallSHOP supports content fetching from the display to users devices, allowing users to privately browse item details and initiate secure purchases. WallSHOP combines advantages of public and private displays, focusing on easy deployment and scalability in realistic scenarios because we implemented it using only standard web technology running on a web browser, without additional software installation.

WallSHOP: Multiuser Interaction with Public Digital Signage using Mobile Devices for Personalized Shopping

We propose WallSHOP, a novel interactive shopping experience that extends content sharing between publicly available digital signage and mobile devices. Multiple users can freely access and browse the content of public digital signage through a public network. Furthermore, users can interact with this content using a personalized cursor that can be controlled with a touch-screen mobile device. WallSHOP also supports pulling content from the digital signage to a users device, allowing users to browse through available products and privately perform checkouts by utilizing the advantages of both public and private displays. WallSHOP focuses on feasibility and scalability; therefore, it is implemented using only web-based components and does not require the installation of additional software.

AR-HITOKE: visualizing popularity of brick and mortar shops to support purchase decisions

We propose a shopping support system (AR-HITOKE) that visualizes the popularity of brick and mortar shops by aggregating online and offline information using augmented reality technology that can be understood intuitively. In the proposed method, 3D-animated human-shaped icons in queues and user comments are overlaid above a shops location on a physical map. Popularity is expressed visually by adjusting the queues length depending on offline sales data. We also visualize user comments related to each shop that are extracted from online reviews using our sentiment analysis framework. The proposed method offers new evaluation information for decision making in a physical environment and new online shopping experiences. Through exhibition of the proposed system at an actual event, we found that users are able to recognize the popularity of shops intuitively.

Cyber Chamber: Multi-user Collaborative Assistance System for Online Shopping

Recently, online shopping continues to thrive in modern societies, especially via tablets and smartphones; however, in current online shopping environments, there is insufficient support for shopping with several people, which is often what shoppers do together in the nonvirtual world. In this paper, we propose a novel system that provides a new online shopping experience for multiple users. Here, we developed Cyber Chamber, a system that enables users to interact with tablets and wall projection for each user to search items privately via their tablets and then share those publicly on the wall. To evaluate the effectiveness of our system, we performed experiments. From our results, we confirmed that our proposed system successfully supports the ease of discussion, information sharing, and ease with which multiple users can together consider combinations of goods.

AteGau: projector-based online fashion coordination system

We propose AteGau, a system that enables intuitive fashion coordination using both clothes from an online store and clothes from the users own wardrobe. In our prototype, a projector is used to project images of clothes from an online store next to the users real-world clothes. As an associated user interface, we implemented the tuck-in / tuck-out switcher, a clothes positioning guide and occasion selector. The user is able to make selections from a stores and real-world clothes to determine how they combine with each other.

Oz's Fitting Room: Fashion Coordination Support System by Digital Signage and Human-driven Virtual Agent

In this paper, we present the concepts, design guidelines, and implementation details of Ozs fitting room, a novel virtual fashion fitting system where a professional stylist proposes coordination and fitting garments virtually through a display, from behind a wall or remote location with a voice changer, so that the customer has the feeling of being advised by a virtual agent. We aim to remove the psychological barrier when the customer talks face-to-face with the store staff, while having the staff remain behind-the-scene to provide their expert knowledge.

Shopping Together: A Remote Co-shopping System Utilizing Spatial Gesture Interaction

In this paper, we introduce a remote co-shopping system–Shopping Together for two geographically separated people: an in-house user who remains in a house and an in-store user who goes to a shopping place. We support the two of users to achieve a real-time two-way spatial gestural interaction in the physical shopping world where the in-store user stays, with an attention awareness subsystem to enhance a common feeling. The in-house user accesses to the remote shopping venue with an immersive shopping feeling, while the in-store user experiences an augmented reality feeling. Through our system, users could accomplish a shopping task together and share a Shopping together feeling which means a sensation that they are going for purchase together in the same space.

Interactive Point System Supporting Point Classification and Spatial Visualization

Point system is structured marketing strategy offered by retailers to motivate customers to keep buying goods or paying for the services. However, current point system is not enough for reflecting where points come from. In this paper, concept of point classification is put forward. Points are divided into different categories based on source. We introduce mission into point system. Mission content is designed to guide consumption. In our system, point, mission and virtual pet will be spatially visualized using AR technique. The state of virtual pet depends on the evaluation for users. Users need to adjust themselves to keep their pets in a good state. Users can manipulate on the GUI or use gestures to interact with system.