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Touch input on modern smartphones can be tedious, especially if the touchscreen is small. Smartphones with integrated projectors can be used to overcome this limitation by projecting the screen contents onto a surface, allowing the user to interact with the projection by means of simple hand gestures. In this work, we propose a novel approach for projector smartphones that allows the user to remotely interact with the smartphone screen via its projection. We detect user's interaction using the built-in camera, and forward detected hand gestures as touch input events to the operating system. In order to avoid costly computations, we additionally use built-in motion sensors. We verify the proposed method using an implementation for the consumer smartphone Samsung
Galaxy Beam equipped with a deflection mirror.
Tactile graphics play an essential role in knowledge transfer for blind people. The tactile exploration of these graphics is often challenging because of the cognitive load caused by physiological constraints and their complexity. The coupling of physical tactile graphics with electronic devices offers to support the tactile exploration by auditory feedback. Often, these systems have strict constraints regarding their mobility or the process of coupling both components. Additionally, visually impaired people cannot appropriately benefit from their residual vision. This article presents a concept for 3D printed tactile graphics, which offers to use audio-tactile graphics with usual smartphones or tablet-computers. By using capacitive markers, the coupling of the tactile graphics with the mobile device is simplified. These tactile graphics integrating these markers can be printed in one turn by off-the-shelf 3D printers without any post-processing and allows us to use multiple elevation levels for graphical elements. Based on the developed generic concept on visually augmented audio-tactile graphics, we presented a case study for maps. A prototypical implementation was tested by a user study with visually impaired people. All the participants were able to interact with the 3D printed tactile maps using a standard tablet computer. To study the effect of visual augmentation of graphical elements, we conducted another comprehensive user study. We tested multiple types of graphics and obtained evidence that visual augmentation may offer clear advantages for the exploration of tactile graphics. Even participants with a minor residual vision could solve the tasks with visual augmentation more quickly and accurately.
3D models are an important means for understanding spatial contexts. Today these models can be materialized by 3D printing, which is increasingly used at schools for people with visual impairments. In contrast to sighted people, people with visual impairments have so far, however, neither been able to search nor to print 3D models without assistance. This article describes our work to develop an aid for people with visual impairments that would facilitate autonomous searching for and printing of 3D models. In our initial study, we determined the requirements to accomplish this task by means of a questionnaire and developed a first approach that allowed personal computer-based 3D printing. An extended approach allowed searching and printing using common smartphones. In our architecture, technical details of 3D printers are abstracted by a separate component that can be accessed via Wi-Fi independently of the actual 3D printer used. It comprises a search of the models in an annotated database and 3D model retrieval from the internet. The whole process can be controlled by voice interaction. The feasibility of autonomous 3D printing for people with visual impairments is shown with a first user study. Our second user study examines the usability of the user interface when searching for 3D models on the internet and preparing them for the materialization. The participants were able to define important printing settings, whereas other printing parameters could be determined algorithmically.
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.
Tactile maps may support blind persons in orientation and understanding geographical relations, but their availability is still very limited. However, recent technologies such as 3D printers allow to autonomously print individual tactile maps which can be linked with interactive applications. Besides geographical depictions, textual annotation of maps is crucial. However, this often adds much complexity to tactile maps. To limit tactile complexity, interactive approaches may help to complement maps by the auditive modality. The presented approach integrates barcodes into tactile maps to allow their detection by standard smartphones' cameras. Automatically, more detailed map data is obtained to auditively support the exploration of the tactile map. Our experimental implementation shows the principal feasibility and provides the basis of ongoing comprehensive user studies.
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.
Virtual reality is currently experiencing a comeback. A considerable market has developed for VR computer games and educational applications. Some solutions integrate tracked devices which allow users to freely move within a certain space. Virtual 3D model can be visually explored, implemented collision detected allows users to get a feedback for instance by sound or vibration. For research projects there are several approaches which offer to get the actual feedback for the fingers of a hand, when the users virtually touches the surface of a 3D model. However, in the consumer market currently no product is sold which offers this direct feedback for the whole hand. In this paper we introduce a low-cost hand exoskeleton which is usable in conjunction with commodity hardware. It covers each of the five fingers of the user's hand, its design is open-source, low-cost, can be customized and 3D printed by individuals. It aims at improving the haptic perception of users, bases of a popular physical computing platform and is designed to be assembled even by electronically unexperienced users. We show the integration of our lean interface of the wireless exoskeleton into exemplary VR environment and describe a calibration process which is flexible for customizations.
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.
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.
The efficiency of text input by today’s smartphones is significantly limited by the small extents of the virtual keyboard displayed for allowing alphanumeric inputs. Future smartphones will integrate projectors which allow to project multimedia content as well as the smartphones’ dialogs. This paper introduces a concept to project the whole smartphone’s display onto a surface allowing the user to realize text inputs by interacting with the virtual keyboard projection. This projection is analyzed by standard image processing algorithms. Finally, an experimental implementation shows the feasibility of this concept.