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BikeVR
(2020)
While becoming more and more aware of the ongoing climate change, eco-friendly means of transport for all citizens are moving further into focus. In order to be able to implement specific measures, it is necessary to better understand and emphasize sustainable transportation like walking and cycling through focused research. When developing novel traffic concepts and urban spaces for non-motorized traffic participants like bicycles and pedestrians, traffic and urban planning must be focused on their needs. To provide rare qualitative factors (such as stress, the perception of time and attractiveness of the environment) in this context, we present an audiovisual VR bicycle simulator which allows the user to cycle through a virtual urban environment by physically pedaling and also steering. Virtual Reality (VR) is a suitable tool in this context, as study participants find identical and almost freely definable (virtual) urban spaces with adjustable traffic scenarios. Our preliminary prototype proved to be promising and will be further optimized and evaluated.
Tactile maps may contribute to the orientation of blind people or alternatively be used for navigation. In the past, the generation of these maps was a manual task which considerably limited their availability. Nowadays, similar to visual maps, tactile maps can also be generated semi-automatically by tools and web services. The existing approaches enable users to generate maps by entering a specific address or point of interest. This can in principle be done by a blind user. However, these approaches actually show an image of the map on the users display which cannot be read by screen readers. Consequently, the blind user does not know what is on the map before it is printed. Ideally, the map selection process should give the user more information and freedom to select the desired excerpt. This paper introduces a novel web service for blind people to interactively select and automatically generate tactile maps. It adapts the interaction concept for map selection to the requirements of blind users whilst supporting multiple printing technologies. The integrated audio review of the map’s contents allows earlier feedback to review if the currently selected map extract corresponds to the desired information need. Changes can be initiated before the map is printed which, especially for 3D printing, saves much time. The user is able to select map features to be included in the tactile map. Furthermore, the map rendering can be adapted to different zoom levels and supports multiple printing technologies. Finally, an evaluation with blind users was used to refine our approach.
Tactile maps can be useful tools for blind people for navigation and orientation tasks. Apart from static maps, there are techniques to augment tactile maps with audio content. They can be used to interact with the map content, to offer extra information and to reduce the tactile complexity of a map. Studies show that audio-tactile maps can be more efficient and satisfying for the user than pure tactile maps without audio feedback. A major challenge of audio-tactile maps is the linkage of tactile elements with audio content and interactivity. This paper introduces a novel approach to link 3D printed tactile maps with mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, in a flexible way to enable interactivity and audio-support. By integrating conductive filaments into the printed maps it seamlessly integrates into the 3D printing process. This allows to automatically recognize the tactile map by a single press at its corner. Additionally, the arrangement of the tactile map on the mobile device is flexible and detected automatically which eases the use of these maps. The practicability of this approach is shown by a dedicated feasibility study.
CapCodes: Capacitive 3D Printable Identification and On-screen Tracking for Tangible Interaction
(2019)
Electronic markers can be used to link physical representations and virtual content for tangible interaction, such as visual markers commonly used for tabletops. Another possibility is to leverage capacitive touch inputs of smartphones, tablets and notebooks. However, existing approaches either do not couple physical and virtual representations or require significant post-processing. This paper presents and evaluates a novel approach using a coding scheme for the automatic identification of tangibles by touch inputs when they are touched and shifted. The codes can be generated automatically and integrated into a great variety of existing 3D models from the internet. The resulting models can then be printed completely in one cycle by off-the-shelf 3D printers; post processing is not needed. Besides the identification, the object's position and orientation can be tracked by touch devices. Our evaluation examined multiple variables and showed that the CapCodes can be integrated into existing 3D models and the approach could also be applied to untouched use for larger tangibles.
Tactile maps support blind and visually impaired people in orientation and to familiarize with unfamiliar environments. Interactive approaches complement these maps with auditory feedback. However, commonly these approaches focus on blind people. We present an approach which incorporates visually impaired people by visually augmenting relevant parts of tactile maps. These audiovisual tactile maps can be used in conjunction with common tablet computers and smartphones. By integrating conductive elements into 3D printed tactile maps, they can be recognized by a single touch on the mobile device's display, which eases the handling for blind and visually impaired people. To allow multiple elevation levels in our transparent tactile maps, we conducted a study to reconcile technical and physiological requirements of off-the-shelf 3D printers, capacitive touch inputs and the human tactile sense. We propose an interaction concept for 3D printed audiovisual tactile maps, verify its feasibility and test it with a user study. Our discussion includes economic considerations crucial for a broad dissemination of tactile maps for both blind and visually impaired people.
Tactile materials play a major role in making information available to blind people and support their understanding for spatial matters. Due to the complex manual manufacturing process there is still a lack of suitable models for the visually impaired. Millions of 3D models are currently available on the internet and can be searched by dedicated retrieval sites. Most of them can be printed by 3D printers; however, this often isn't a trivial task even for sighted users. Blind peoples' self-dependence could be drastically increased if they were able to autonomously print 3D models at home. This paper analyses the individual tasks to actually print 3D models and adapts them to steps accessible for blind people. We introduce a workflow for the combined use of 3D printing software and consumer hardware. We verified our approach by a formal user study with visually impaired people which showed its feasibility.
Nowadays, 3D models can be downloaded from the internet and increasingly be printed by low cost 3D printers. In the future, blind people could benefit from this tendency. Unfortunately, many of these models are rather complex and not appropriate for the purely tactile exploration. To obtain quantitative data about how 3D printable models for blind people should be constructed, the tactile exploration can be recorded by video. However, the analysis of these videos is quite time consuming and expensive. Additionally, inaccuracies and masking effects may impede the use of this technique. In this paper we introduce a novel approach to automatically equip existing 3D models with a mesh of conductive wires which enable a touch sensitive surface for the printed 3D objects. These touch sensing 3D models can be printed in one turn by off-the-shelf 3D printers and used as an alternative to video recording. It allows exact registration of when and where the 3D object has been touched. In our multi-touch solution, particular attention has been paid to limit the number of necessary wires between 3D object and sensing electronics. Finally, our approach is evaluated by a feasibility study.
SmartTactMaps: A Smartphone-Based Approach to Support Blind Persons in Exploring Tactile Maps
(2019)
Despite increasing digitalization of our society many blind persons still have very limited access to predominantly pictorial information such as maps. In this paper we introduce a novel approach to improve the accessibility of maps for blind users by utilizing the abilities of standard smartphones. A major issue of tactile maps is the limited discriminability of the humans' tactile sense. Textual annotation of maps is crucial, but adds much complexity to tactile maps. Additionally, only few Braille labels can be accommodated to maintain legibility. In our approach we link smartphones with adapted tactile maps which transforms the physical maps into interactive surfaces using both the tactile and the auditory modality. We integrate machine readable metadata into these maps which can be recognized by the smartphones' camera to immediately obtain detailed map descriptions from a free global database. During tactile exploration of the map, blind users can request auditory explanations by interacting with the mobile application. An experimental application and a user study demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.
Small mobile devices such as smartwatches are a rapidly growing market. However, they share the issue of limited input and output space which could impede the success of these devices in future. Hence, suitable alternatives to the concepts and metaphors known from smartphones have to be found. In this paper we present InclineType a tilt-based keyboard input that uses a 3-axis accelerometer for smartwatches. The user may directly select letters by moving his/her wrist and enters them by tapping on the touchscreen. Thanks to the distribution of the letters on the edges of the screen, the keyboard dedicates a low amount of space in the smartwatch. In order to optimize the user input our concept proposes multiple techniques to stabilize the user interaction. Finally, a user study shows that users get familiar with this technique with almost no previous training, reaching speeds of about 6 wpm in average.
3D-Druck für blinde Menschen
(2019)
Neben herkömmlichen taktilen Drucktechniken für blinde Menschen findet auch der 3D-Druck zunehmend Verbreitung. Während anfängliche Ansätze beabsichtigten, mit dieser alternativen Drucktechnologie qualitativ ähnliche Druckresultate zu erzielen, nutzen neuere Ansätze deren Potenzial, um interaktive Drucke zu erstellen. Ausgehend von dieser Entwicklung verschafft dieser Artikel einen Überblick über wesentliche Ansätze für die Erstellung von vielfältigen taktilen Materialen mittels 3D-Druckern. Er zeigt dabei insbesondere den Wandel von statischen zu interaktiven Ansätzen auf. Dabei muss bei Letzteren eine Kopplung zwischen den taktilen 3D-Drucken und elektronischen Entitäten erfolgen, welche durch unterschiedliche Sensorik umgesetzt werden kann. Zukünftige Entwicklungen könnten es erlauben, die Interaktion des Benutzers mit der kompletten Oberfläche von 3D-Drucken sensorisch zu erfassen und somit komplexe neue Interaktionsmöglichkeiten zu erschließen, welche blinden wie auch sehenden Menschen hilfreich sein können.