Valentin Schwind

Design and evaluation of a layered handheld 3d display with touch-sensitive front and back

Touch screens became truly pervasive through the success of smartphones and tablet PCs. Several approaches to further improve the interaction with touch screens have been proposed. In this paper we combine and extend two of these trends. We present a mobile 3D screen that consists of a stack of displays and is touch sensitive on both display sides. This design makes the screen independent from the users view angle. Using a touch-sensitive back enables back-of-device interaction to avoid the fat-finger problem. Combining back-of-device interaction with a transparent display also avoids occlusion of the users finger on the back through the device. Through a study we investigate how back and front touch improves interaction with 3D content and show how back-of-device interaction is improved if the user can actually see the finger on the back.

Tactile Drones - Providing Immersive Tactile Feedback in Virtual Reality through Quadcopters

Head-mounted displays for virtual reality (VR) provide high-fidelity visual and auditory experiences. Other modalities are currently less supported. Current commercial devices typically deliver tactile feedback through controllers the user holds in the hands. Since both hands get occupied and tactile feedback can only be provided at a single position, research and industry proposed a range of approaches to provide richer tactile feedback. Approaches, such as tactile vests or electrical muscle stimulation, were proposed, but require additional body-worn devices. This limits comfort and restricts provided feedback to specific body parts. With this Interactivity installation, we propose quadcopters to provide tactile stimulation in VR. While the user is visually and acoustically immersed in VR, small quadcopters simulate bumblebees, arrows, and other objects hitting the user. The user wears a VR headset, mini-quadcopters, controlled by an optical marker tracking system, are used to provide tactile feedback.

Determining the Characteristics of Preferred Virtual Faces Using an Avatar Generator

Video game developers continuously increase the degree of details and realism in games to create more human-like characters. But increasing the human-likeness becomes a problem in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon that predicts negative feelings of people towards artificial entities. We developed an avatar creation system to examine preferences towards parametrized faces and explore in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon how people design faces that they like or reject. Based on the 3D model of the Caucasian average face, 420 participants generate 1341 faces of positively and negatively associated concepts of both gender. The results show that some characteristics associated with the Uncanny Valley are used to create villains or repulsive faces. Heroic faces get attractive features but are rarely and little stylized. A voluntarily designed face is very similar to the heroine. This indicates that there is a tendency of users to design feminine and attractive but still credible faces.

Exploring notifications in smart home environments

Notifications are a core mechanism of current smart devices. They inform about a variety of events including messages, social network comments, and application updates. While users appreciate the awareness that notifications provide, notifications cause distraction, higher cognitive load, and task interruptions. With the increasing importance of smart environments, the number of sensors that could trigger notifications will increase dramatically. A flower with a moisture sensor, for example, could create a notification whenever the flower needs water. We assume that current notification mechanisms will not scale with the increasing number of notifications. We therefore explore notification mechanisms for smart homes. Notifications are shown on smartphones, on displays in the environment, next to the sending objects, or on the users body. In an online survey, we compare the four locations in four scenarios. While different aspects influence the perceived suitability of each notification location, the smartphone generally is rated the best.

Is there an uncanny valley of virtual animals? A quantitative and qualitative investigation

Abstract Approaching a high degree of realism, android robots, and virtual humans may evoke uncomfortable feelings. Due to technologies that increase the realism of human replicas, this phenomenon, which is known as the uncanny valley , has been frequently highlighted in recent years by researchers from various fields. Although virtual animals play an important role in video games and entertainment, the question whether there is also an uncanny valley for virtual animals has been little investigated. This paper examines whether very realistic virtual pets tend to cause a similar aversion as humanlike characters. We conducted two empirical studies using cat renderings to investigate the effects of realism, stylization, and facial expressions of virtual cats on human perception. Through qualitative feedback, we gained deeper insight into the perception of realistic computer-generated animals. Our results indicate that depicting virtual animal-like characters at realism levels used in current video games causes negative reactions just as the uncanny valley predicts for humanlike characters. We conclude design implication to avoid that sensation and suggest that virtual animals should either be given a completely natural or a stylized appearance. We propose to further examine the uncanny valley by the inclusion of artificial animals.

Physical Keyboards in Virtual Reality: Analysis of Typing Performance and Effects of Avatar Hands

Entering text is one of the most common tasks when interacting with computing systems. Virtual Reality (VR) presents a challenge as neither the users hands nor the physical input devices are directly visible. Hence, conventional desktop peripherals are very slow, imprecise, and cumbersome. We developed a apparatus that tracks the users hands, and a physical keyboard, and visualize them in VR. In a text input study with 32 participants, we investigated the achievable text entry speed and the effect of hand representations and transparency on typing performance, workload, and presence. With our apparatus, experienced typists benefited from seeing their hands, and reach almost outside-VR performance. Inexperienced typists profited from semi-transparent hands, which enabled them to type just 5.6 WPM slower than with a regular desktop setup. We conclude that optimizing the visualization of hands in VR is important, especially for inexperienced typists, to enable a high typing performance.

The Uncanny Valley and the Importance of Eye Contact

Abstract The Uncanny Valley hypothesis describes the negative emotional response of human observers that is evoked by artificial figures or prostheses with a human-like appearance. Many studies have pointed out the meaning of facial features, but did not further investigate the importance of eye contact and its role in decision making about artificial faces. In this study we recorded the number and duration of fixations of participants (N = 53) and recorded gaze movements and fixations on different areas of interest, as well as the response time when a participant judged a face as non-human. In a subsequent questionnaire, we grasped subjective ratings. In our analysis we found correlations between the likeability and the duration of eye fixations on the eye area. The gaze sequences show that artificial faces were visually processed similar to the real ones and mostly remained not assessed as artificial as long as the eye regions were not considered.

Self-Actuated Displays for Vertical Surfaces

Most current devices are passive regarding their locations by being integrated in the environment or require to be carried when used in mobile scenarios. In this paper we present a novel type of self-actuated devices, which can be placed on vertical surfaces like whiteboards or walls. This enables vertical tangible interaction as well as the device interacting with the user through self-actuated movements. In this paper, we explore the application space for such devices by aggregating user-defined application ideas gathered in focus groups. Moreover, we implement and evaluate four interaction scenarios, discuss their usability and identify promising future use cases and improvements.

Historical, Cultural, and Aesthetic Aspects of the Uncanny Valley

Artificial entities and systems are often designed according to human expectations, simulating human appearance, and behavior to improve social interactions between people and machines. The Uncanny Valley – first described by the roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 – causes an eerie feeling when people observe or interact with an anthropomorphic artificial character. This effect distorts smooth interaction or an emotional connection between humans and artificial figures. Associations between eeriness and human-like appearance or behavior can be seen in literature and art throughout all epochs of mankind’s history. This article focuses on examples from the human past that correlate with the eerie impact of artificial, human-like figures. A review of the history reveals that the Uncanny Valley is connected to aspects that have rarely been discussed: intentions, aesthetics, and cultural context. From the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus, fantasies of Pygmalion, demons of the Dark Ages, horror figures from romanticism up to the androids and zombies of today’s entertainment – human-like appearances as such or those in our imagination trigger both astonishment and discomfort. Therefore, we will see that the Uncanny Valley is jointly responsible for the negative image of artificial characters and continues to prevent a smooth social interaction until today.

Procedural Content Generation for Game Props? A Study on the Effects on User Experience

This work demonstrates the potentials of procedural content generation (PCG) for games, focusing on the generation of specific graphic props (reefs) in an explorer game. We briefly portray the state-of-the-art of PCG and compare various methods to create random patterns at runtime. Taking a step towards the game industry, we describe an actual game production and provide a detailed pseudocode implementation showing how Perlin or Simplex noise can be used efficiently. In a comparative study, we investigate two alternative implementations of a decisive game prop: once created traditionally by artists and once generated by procedural algorithms. 41 test subjects played both implementations. The analysis shows that PCG can create a user experience that is significantly more realistic and at the same time perceived as more aesthetically pleasing. In addition, the ever-changing nature of the procedurally generated environments is preferred with high significance, especially by players aged 45 and above.