Given that most cues exchanged during a social interaction are nonverbal (e.g., facial expressions, hand gestures, body language), individuals who are blind are at a social disadvantage compared to ...their sighted peers. Very little work has explored sensory augmentation in the context of social assistive aids for individuals who are blind. The purpose of this study is to explore the following questions related to visual-to-vibrotactile mapping of facial action units (the building blocks of facial expressions): (1) How well can individuals who are blind recognize tactile facial action units compared to those who are sighted? (2) How well can individuals who are blind recognize emotions from tactile facial action units compared to those who are sighted? These questions are explored in a preliminary pilot test using absolute identification tasks in which participants learn and recognize vibrotactile stimulations presented through the Haptic Chair, a custom vibrotactile display embedded on the back of a chair. Study results show that individuals who are blind are able to recognize tactile facial action units as well as those who are sighted. These results hint at the potential for tactile facial action units to augment and expand access to social interactions for individuals who are blind.
Societal infrastructure is built with vision at the forefront of daily life. For those with severe visual impairments, this creates countless barriers to the participation and enjoyment of life’s ...opportunities. Technological progress has been both a blessing and a curse in this regard. Digital text together with screen readers and refreshable Braille displays have made whole libraries readily accessible and rideshare tech has made independent mobility more attainable. Simultaneously, screen-based interactions and experiences have only grown in pervasiveness and importance, precluding many of those with visual impairments.Sensory Substitution, the process of substituting an unavailable modality with another one, has shown promise as an alternative to accommodation, but in recent years meaningful strides in Sensory Substitution for vision have declined in frequency. Given recent advances in Computer Vision, this stagnation is especially disconcerting. Designing Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs) for vision for use in interactive settings that leverage modern Computer Vision techniques presents a variety of challenges including perceptual bandwidth, human-computer-interaction, and person-centered machine learning considerations. To surmount these barriers an approach called Personal Foveated Haptic Gaze (PFHG), is introduced. PFHG consists of two primary components: a human visual system inspired interaction paradigm that is intuitive and flexible enough to generalize to a variety of applications called Foveated Haptic Gaze (FHG), and a person-centered learning component to address the expressivity limitations of most SSDs. This component is called One-Shot Object Detection by Data Augmentation (1SODDA), a one-shot object detection approach that allows a user to specify the objects they are interested in locating visually and with minimal effort realizing an object detection model that does so effectively.The Personal Foveated Haptic Gaze framework was realized in a virtual and real-world application: playing a 3D, interactive, first person video game (DOOM) and finding user-specified real-world objects. User study results found Foveated Haptic Gaze to be an effective and intuitive interface for interacting with dynamic visual world using solely haptics. Additionally, 1SODDA achieves competitive performance among few-shot object detection methods and high-framerate many-shot object detectors. The combination of which paves the way for modern Sensory Substitution Devices for vision.
Participation in recreational activities is important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle; however, obesity rates are climbing, particularly among individuals with visual impairments (VI). One of the ...contributing factors to the high obesity rates is the lack of accessible physical activities available for people with disabilities to participate in. Many of the current activities suggested to individuals with VI require teams and organization, and do not support inclusion between individuals with VI and those without. One solution to this is to create a mobile system for disc golf that facilitates accessibility for individuals with VI. Disc golf has become increasingly popular since its inception in the 1960s, and much of its popularity is likely due to its accessibility; with limited required equipment, free public courses, and a gentle learning curve for beginners, disc golf is an easy activity to become involved in. It would be an ideal activity to address physical activity and social needs for individuals with VI; however, the game is highly dependent on visual cues for locating goal points, avoiding obstacles, and finding one’s disc. This project aims to extend accessibility of disc golf by designing a theoretical auditory notification and GPS mapping system. This system is intended to be integrated into existing disc golf courses without affecting how the game is currently played, and its implementation would allow both individuals with and without VI to play the game simultaneously with one another.
For individuals who are blind, much of social interactions are inaccessible: The majority of information exchanged is non-verbal, e.g., facial expressions and body language. Little work has been done ...toward building social assistive aids for individuals who are blind. This work presents a mapping between facial action units and vibrotactile representations that may be presented through haptic displays. We present a study exploring how well individuals who are blind can learn to recognize universal emotions of happy, sad, surprise, anger, fear and disgust from vibrotactile facial action units. Results show promising recognition accuracy and subjective feedback, demonstrating that individuals who are blind can learn to understand the emotional content of facial movements presented through vibrations.
As digital worlds become ubiquitous via video games, simulations, virtual and augmented reality, people with disabilities who cannot access those worlds are becoming increasingly disenfranchised. ...More often than not the design of these environments focuses on vision, making them inaccessible in whole or in part to people with visual impairments. Accessible games and visual aids have been developed but their lack of prevalence or unintuitive interfaces make them impractical for daily use. To address this gap, we present Foveated Haptic Gaze, a method for conveying visual information via haptics that is intuitive and designed for interacting with real-time 3-dimensional environments. To validate our approach we developed a prototype of the system along with a simplified first-person shooter game. Lastly we present encouraging user study results of both sighted and blind participants using our system to play the game with no visual feedback.
Trainers and therapists provide critical support and guidance as individuals undergo long-term exercise programs. Unfortunately, without this guidance, individuals who undergo home therapy or ...training are unable to determine whether or not they are making meaningful progress, and, as a result, many give up prior to completion of their programs. To address these issues, the authors propose a toolkit for the design of games that support motor skill learning and relearning consisting of three main components: (1) an "intelligent stick" hardware interface, (2) motion authoring software for the design of new motion patterns, and (3) a framework for mapping elements of game design to skill learning. Prototypes for the first two components have been developed, and results from an initial usability study involving 9 participants are presented and discussed.
Outpatient stroke rehabilitation is often lengthy and expensive due to patients' lack of functional use of the impaired arm outside of the clinic caused by "learned non-use." Learned non-use is ...detrimental to stroke recovery, often resulting in chronic disability. To overcome learned non-use, a wearable "personal assistant" solution is proposed that employs ubiquitous cueing to stimulate patient use of the paretic arm while outside of therapy sessions. A pilot user study is presented that evaluated stroke survivors' tolerance and acceptance of cueing, and the usability of the proposed implementation.
Feedback related to motor performance is integral to improving the control, timing and coordination of movements. However, motor learning traditionally occurs within a group setting, limiting the ...quality of instruction and feedback. Even during one-on-one instruction, there are impediments to feedback such as physical separation between trainer and trainee, common in many sports such as snowboarding and swimming. We propose an inexpensive solution for real-time vibrotactile positioning and speed feedback that can complement traditional motor learning, and is compatible with existing vibrotactile motor instructions. We present a psychophysical study that examined participants' initial reactions to feedback stimuli pertaining to position and speed adjustments. Results support the proposed design in terms of both usability and naturalness, and provide insight into participants' conceptualization of feedback signals and feedback for rotational movements.
Outpatient stroke rehabilitation is often lengthy and expensive due to patients' lack of functional use of the impaired arm outside of the clinic caused by "learned non-use." Learned non-use is ...detrimental to stroke recovery, often resulting in chronic disability. To overcome learned non-use, a wearable "personal assistant" solution is proposed that employs ubiquitous cueing to stimulate patient use of the paretic arm while outside of therapy sessions. A pilot user study is presented that evaluated stroke survivors' tolerance and acceptance of cueing, and the usability of the proposed implementation.
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