Dissertation is published
Sometimes, it has been quite a journey, but now the dissertation about
the TAOs is published and can be downloaded
directly from this server .
Alternatively, you can visit the
publication server page
of the Bielefeld University.
It summs up the previous publications on the TAOs and puts them into a larger context including background information on the reasearch field. We also present an overview on the hardware and software extensions and develop an initial set of design guidelines for developing surface-based acutated multi-modal tangible user interfaces.
For readers interested in a printed version, this can be ordered via Amazon Print on Demand .
ScienceFair 2013 in BielefeldAgain, I participated in the ScienceFair. This time I was quite successful! Actually I won. ;-)
The first part of the price money (1000 EUR) I’m going to spend on a new mobile robot platform (a 3pi by Polulu) for my research and a set of new batteries for the existing TAOs. I think the rest will go into my upcoming relocation.
Press release (German): Sieger der [science fair] stehen fest
Currently I’m not going to publish poster, as the content is based on yet unpublished parts of my thesis.
ScienceFair 2012 in BielefeldEspecially for my German fellows (German only):
Letzte Woche habe ich im Rahmen der diesjährigen “<perspektive>” hier an der Uni Bielefeld mit meinem Projekt an der ScienceFair teilgenommen. Ich veröffentliche das Poster hier erneut für die Allgemeinheit – es erklärt den Grundgedanken meines Forschungsprojekts nämlich in allgemeinverständlichem Deutsch und nicht wie sonst auf Englisch. Wer mir also bisher nicht so ganz folgen konnte, kann es nun noch mal in aller Ruhe in Schrift mit netten Bildern versuchen.
After the TEI2012The TEI2012 is over and I must say that it really was a great success!
You find my publication under this link .
Thank you so much! That was great!
Impressions of KingstonI safely arrived in Kingston where this year’s TEI conference is being held and I started my stay with a little walk around the town. Find some pictures on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ursus_explorans/sets/72157629389042137/
I will post more pictures during my visit here and later Montreal (very likely). Enjoy and stay tuned! :-)
TEI2012Last week I finally registered for the TEI2012 and organized my stay in Canada. Is there anybody else attending the Studio “Designing and Building Inexpensive Flexible Circuits” or the Snow-shoeing at Little Cataraqui Conservation Area?
See you in Kingston! ;-)
...and a new year has begunThe most recent development is an accepted paper for the TEI2012 conference, which will take place in Kingston, Ontario, Canada from February 19th till 22nd. The title is “An integrated multi-modal actuated Tangible User Interface for distributed collaborative planning”. I’m really looking forward to this trip, since I already know that I will meet friends, I made last year in Orlando. Furthermore I will have the opportunity to visit former fellow students and friends from Bielefeld who moved to Montreal.
This year will also be my last year as a grant holder for my PhD. So I’m going to finish my thesis in the course of 2012. If everything goes right, there will be at least one journal paper submission this year.
2012 will be again a year full of work (I think there won’t be any more years with less things to do). But I’m sure I will have enough motivation to cope with all this. :-)
Happy new year and all the best for 2012, Eckard
The old year is over...2011 was a year full of work. There was the AMiRE and the HCII.
My colleague Risto and I organized a Special Session at the ICIRA. So many more little things happened and some you may have realized through following me on Twitter.
Recapitulation: AMIRE2011The International Symposium on Autonomous Minirobots in Research and Edutainment (AMiRE) is over and I’d like to tell you a bit about my experience.
Ohrenblicke podcast features Interactive Auditory Scatter plotLast year Siegfried Saerberg visited us in Bielefeld (again, thank you very much for your visit and for featuring us!). Mr. Saerberg is project manager of Blinde und Kunst e.V. (society for the blind and art) and wanted to interview my supervisor Dr. Thomas Hermann and myself for the podcast Ohrenblicke (ear sights). The topic of the current issue is “About witches’s brooms, graphs, and solar winds - sonification in our everyday life, arts, and sciences” and also Tony Stockman and Robert Alexander get featured. The issue covers several sonifications, including my Interactive Auditory Scatter plot (IAS).
You can find the podcast under this link (german only).
Enjoy!
ICIRA2011: Deadline of paper submission extendedThe conference secretary of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2011) informed me that the deadline for the submission of full papers is April 30, 2011.
So you have still time to submit full papers for the ICIRA2011, including the special session “Tangibility in Human-Machine Interaction” which I organize together with my colleague Risto Kõiva .
You can find all updated important dates under: http://www.icira2011.org/index.php?id=11 .
Also see the announcement about the special session: Call for Papers: “Tangibility in Human-Machine Interaction”.
Call for Papers: Tangibility in Human-Machine InteractionTogether with my colleague Risto Kõiva I’m organizing a special session, which will take place during the International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA), held in Aachen from December 06 - 09, 2011. The topic of the special session is “Tangibility in Human-Machine Interaction” and addresses researchers working on (actuated) tangible user interfaces (TUIs) or robotics (tactile sensing and object manipulation with humanoid robotic hands).
Further information about the conference can be found here and information about the special sessions are provided here . The submission deadline for full papers is April 15, 2011. Accepted papers will after a peer-review be published as proceedings of ICIRA2011 in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI).
Hope to see you in Aachen!
Hack a Day writes about Interactive Auditory Scatter PlotThanks to the authors of Hack a Day! They posted about the Interactive Auditory Scatter Plot on their blog :
“This setup helps to represent data in a meaningful way to for visually impaired people. It uses a combination of physical objects to represent data clusters, and audio feedback when manipulating those objects. In the video after the break you’ll see that the cubes can orient themselves to represent data clusters. The table top acts as a graphing field, with a textured border as a reference for the user. A camera mounted below the clear surface allows image processing software to calculate the locations for the cubes. Each cube is motorized and contains an Arduino and ZigBee module, listening for positioning information from the computer that is doing the video processing. Once in position, the user can move the cubes, with modulated noise as a measure of how near they are to the heart of each data cluster.
The team plans to conduct further study on the usefulness of this interactive data object. We certainly see potential for hacking as this uses off-the-shelf components that are both inexpensive, and easy to find. It certainly reminds us of a multitouch display with added physical tokens .”
Thank you very much for mentioning this work! Just a little correction: The pitch of the “modulated noise” (a sawtooth synthesizer) is not mapped to the distance between the cluster prototype and the object, but to the local data density in the neighborhood of the object.
Interactive Auditory Scatter Plot appeared on Infosthetics BlogThe “Interactive Auditory Scatter Plot” just appeared on the Information Aesthetics Blog :
“How do you visualize complex data for people… who cannot see? Researchers at the Bielefeld University (Germany) propose a sophisticated solution [uni-bielefeld.de]: they combined a set of physical objects that can autonomously move with sonification, or the generation of data-driven sounds. This non-visual visualization method should allow visually impaired people to explore multivariate data through the alternative representation of scatterplots. Based on some past insights on multi-touch enabled visual display, this approach overcomes the obvious problems in terms of visualization and interaction.
How does it work? The researchers created a 2D transformation of the spatially distributed data into the audio-haptic domain. First, a set of cube objects physically move to locations that correspond to the most explicit data clusters on a horizontal screen. These constellations can then be perceived (i.e. felt) by users. By moving a physical object over a screen, specific sounds are emitted so that the local characteristics of the data distribution can be distinguished. Or, in other words, the frequency of a continuously emitted sonic stream corresponds to the local density of the data. When an object is released, a local data sonogram is created, yielding an audible spherical sweep through the data space at the location of the object. Still sounds too complex? Then watch a demonstration video below.”
Thank you very much, Andrew
Interactive Auditory Scatter Plot Paper is freely availableThe paper “Tangible Active Objects and Interactive Sonification as a Scatter Plot Alternative for the Visually Impaired” , presented at ICAD2010 in Washington D.C. , is now freely available. You can download it under the following link:
Feel free to contact me through my recently updated website (more information and in the Bielefeld University’s web design).
Enjoy
CITEC Summer SchoolBecause I’m a member of the organizing committee, I should do some advertisement: It is still time to apply (until 5th of July) to the CITEC Summer School 2010 in September, organized by the Graduate School Cognitive Interaction Technology !
This year the first Summer School of an annual series will take place here in Bielefeld from 6-11th September 2010. This years topic is “The Structure of Cognitive Motion: From Analysis to Synthesis”
Preparing for ICAD2010 + Publication of student projectTo prepare for ICAD2010 in Washington D.C. I created a research page on the web page of our research group: TAOs Here I collect all information about this research project.
A group of students created an Interactive Mobile Steat (IMS) in the winter term 2009/10, based on the TAO architecture. Although creating hardware is tricky and time consuming, they did a really great job! BTW: They continue working together in a second project where again the TAOs play a central role. So stay tuned!
As already posted, my first official article (as first author) about the TAOs “Tangible Active Objects and Interactive Sonification as a Scatter Plot Alternative for the Visually Impaired” was submitted to the ICAD2010 and accepted. So I’m preparing for the flight on Thursday and my talk on Friday. ;-)
Back with an accepted paperThis year started with serious trouble in my private live (a member of my family was critically ill, but is getting better now). That’s why I haven’t posted any entries until now, which I’m very sorry about. Troubles got better and are still getting better. Nevertheless I got it managed, to write my first very own paper and submitted it to the ICAD2010 .
Yesterday evening the notification of acceptance arrived. I’m so happy, that the time and the hard work was worth it (and will be ;-)).
So keep an eye on the ICAD2010 in Washington, D.C.
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Conferences 12
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Conferences (12) Publications (4) Appearance (3) Presentations (2)