Optically Sensing Tongue Gestures for Computer Input

Summary:
Spinal cord injuries and other medical conditions often leave some patients severely paralyzed. Many of these patients are however still capable of higher level thinking and possess the ability to communicate with other people if there was an opportunity to. In this paper optical sensors were embedded into an orthodontic dental retainer. These sensors provided the possibility for communication through tongue movement. The idea of wearing a retainer to communicate is a simple solution to design for each user, as well as low profile solution so that the user would not have a large apparatus to draw further attention to their disability. To build this retainer a physical impression of the mouth is needed first. Then a tinfoil separating material is placed on the material to release the retainer when it is complete. The four proximity sensors are then added to the retainer (left, right, front back) and embedded in acrylic. Desktop software was then created to recognize the tongue gestures and provide feeback for them in a real-time system. This system recognizes a left swipe, right swipe, tap up and hold up gesture. An experiment was then done to see how users would react to the use of the retainer. Several laboratory experiments as well as a game of tetris were all designed to test the device. It was discovered that the shape of the tongue at various points in the mouth is often not under control of the user. The current prototype is a wired model, which would not work for real world use, and a wireless version is now in the design process. Additional work is being put into monitoring other mouth activity such as: jaw tension, movement and even chemical changes in the saliva.

Discussion:
I thought this was a very interesting area of research. Although my idea would contain playing video games in class using my tongue, I do believe that this would be a beneficial thing to discover greater use for because it would allow disabled people to communicate in a new way. I think this was a well thought up paper because they included several ideas for the future, which all seem very promising.

A Practical Pressure Sensitive Computer Keyboard

Summary:
Although there have been many successful advancements in the realm of computers, successful computer keyboards have only had minor changes made to them since their discovery. The problem with many of the advancements that could replace keyboards is that many of them have very significant cost barriers which prevent their use for the masses. This problem is solved with the design of pressure sensitive keyboard which uses sensors that are based on pressure sensitive ink which is placed under each key. The old version of keyboards uses a flexible membrane/rubber dome which provides a tactile sensation. When a key is pressed, the stack of 3 membranes deform through the hole in the spacer layer and make contact with the bottom sheet signifying that a button has been pressed. In this new version when a key is pressed, the top contact deforms through the spacer and makes more or less contact with the bottom layer depending on the pressure applied. This is achieved through the use of piezoresistive material, which is a special type of material that changes its resistence based on pressure. The pressure sensitive keyboard is a matrix of variable resisters, which each connect to a unique row and column. This will make the keyboard independently measure each resistor.
This design fixes the problem of "ghosting" (pressing multiple keys in the same row or column shorts another row). The basic idea of a pressure sensitive keyboard is to control the intensity of the pressure applied to each key and get extra information from it. The pressure sensitivity will allow users to express emotion through typing. Hard pressing to make bigger letters or bold font as well as pressing harder to run faster in a game. Some advantages of this design: Can be manufactured at a modest price, looks and feels like a regular keyboard, pressure sensitivity can be enabled in software which would allow users to use the new design at their own pace.

Discussion:
I think this is a very interesting idea and an important area of research because the potential uses of this would be very useful and would make using a keyboard more intuitive. I would like to see the pressure sensitivity used in a game as well. I think this would be very interesting because it is just natural if a monster is chasing you to want to run faster and press the keys harder. Overall I thought this was an interesting paper.

Abracadabra: Wireless, High-Precision, and Unpowered

Summary:

Abracadabra is a magnetically driven input technique which allows wireless, unpowered finger input for any mobile device that has a very small screen. The advantage of this is that it is a very powerful, yet inexpensive way to interact with the mobile device. This technology uses multi-axis magnetometers to figure out the orientation of the finger in relation to Earth's magnetic field. The major disadvantage of this technique is that the user has to interact with an additional object. One of the advantages is that it is possible to mount the sensor which pics up the magnets location (on the finger) behind the display which means that there is no loss in functionality on the screen. The second major advantage is that the sensor can be placed in the center of the object because it is on the back of the screen. This technique has been tested with small handheld, or wrist size devices and a magnet worn on the finger which overrides the Earth's magnetic field for a small area.

Discussion:

I believe that this is another very important area of research because todays technology is continually getting smaller and smaller which makes the interaction with these devices harder and harder. I believe that one of the problems with this technology is that it requires another thing for the user to use and gives the user something else that they could lose which would make the mobile device unusable. I belive that the next step for this technology would be to figure out a way for the device to monitor finger movements without the need for an external device (finger ring).

Contact Area Interaction with Sliding Widgets

Summary:
The problem with todays touchscreens are that they are based off of a mouse and cursor system which allows access to only single pixel selections. This makes the selecting of buttons difficult when multiple buttons are present. The solution to this is to design a selection region rather than single pixel selection. This would resolve the ambiguity as to which button is selected. By using a selection region the width of allowable interaction with the button is increased. The problem with wider controls is that it would limit the interactivity on devices with small surface area. Sliding buttons are the propsed solution to both of these problems (also known as Fat Finger Problem). When using sliding buttons every button would respond to the touch of a single button near it. Some of the advantages of an area based selection such as sliding widgets: allows easy targetting of small targets, removes ambiguity since everything responds to the fingers touch, resilient to parallax errors (hitting the wrong button), compatible with drag based interaction widgets, allows manipulation of multiple controls at the same time, and the contact information (size and shape of touch on screen) can be used. The biggest disadvantage is that it is possible to select multiple buttons when the user only wishes to select one. This requires another disambiguation mechanism.

Sliding buttons can also have multiple meanings to the same screen area. This means that the user touching a spot on the screen, and then dragging left could mean something different than touching a spot on the screen and dragging right. This also allows the designers to associate a direction with a meaning (flick left for foward and flick right for backward). Sliding buttons are a promising solution for improved accuracy on small targets on a touch screen, but require more thinking and designing to implement correctly.

Discussion:
This paper was interestig because it touches on a subject which is very important in the advancement of technology. With all of the new Ipods/Phones coming out that use this technology it is imperative that advancements with accuracy and ease of use be made in this area. The problems with the sliding buttons solution are that they are far more complex than regular buttons are because all the buttons respond to the touch. I believe that the next step in this field is going to be a way to make the implementation of sliding buttons easier.