Tactile glove provides subtle guidance to objects in vicinity

ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2012) — Researchers at HIIT and Max Planck Institute for Informatics have shown how computer-vision based hand-tracking and vibration feedback on the user's hand can be used to steer the user's hand toward an object of interest. A study shows an almost three-fold advantage in finding objects from complex visual scenes, such as library or supermarket shelves.

Finding an object from a complex real-world scene is a common yet time-consuming and frustrating chore. What makes this task complex is that humans' pattern recognition capability reduces to a serial one-by-one search when the items resemble each other.

Researchers from the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics have developed a prototype of a glove that uses vibration feedback on the hand to guide the user's hand towards a predetermined target in 3D space. The glove could help users in daily visual search tasks in supermarkets, parking lots, warehouses, libraries etc.

The main researcher, Ville Lehtinen of HIIT, explains "the advantage of steering a hand with tactile cues is that the user can easily interpret them in relation to the current field of view where the visual search is operating. This provides a very intuitive experience, like the hand being 'pulled' toward the target."

The solution builds on inexpensive off-the-shelf components such as four vibrotactile actuators on a simple glove and a Microsoft Kinect sensor for tracking the user's hand. The researchers published a dynamic guidance algorithm that calculates effective actuation patterns based on distance and direction to the target.

In a controlled experiment, the complexity of the visual search task was increased by adding distractors to a scene. "In search tasks where there were hundreds of candidates but only one correct target, users wearing the glove were consistently faster, with up to three times faster performance than without the glove," says Dr. Antti Oulasvirta from Max Planck Institute for Informatics.

Dr. Petteri Nurmi from HIIT adds: "This level of improvement in search performance justifies several practical applications. For instance, warehouse workers could have gloves that guide them to target shelfs, or a pedestrian could navigate using this glove. With the relatively inexpensive components and the dynamic guidance algorithm, others can easily build their own personal guidance systems."

The research paper will be presented at the 25th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology UIST'12 in Boston, MA, USA on 7/10 October, 2012.

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Smartphone app can track objects on the battlefield as well as on the sports field

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2012) — University of Missouri researchers have developed new software using smartphones' GPS and imaging abilities that determine the exact location of distant objects as well as monitor the speed and direction of moving objects. The software could eventually allow smartphone-armed soldiers to target the location of their enemies. On the home front, the software could be used by everyone, including golfers judging distance to the green and biologists documenting the location of a rare animal without disturbing it.

"The great advantage of a smartphone is that it provides so many tools in a single, readily available, relatively inexpensive package," said Qia Wang, a doctoral student in MU's College of Engineering who led the development of the software. "For example, on the battlefield, a soldier needs a rangefinder, compass, GPS and other tools to do reconnaissance before calling in an air strike. With our software, the soldier can have all those instruments in one device that can be purchased off the shelf. When that soldier returns from war, she can use the same software to protect her family by clocking a speeder near her children's school and catching the culprit on video."

Wang and his colleagues developed their software to locate and track:

Targets of known size -- When the size of the target is known, a single image is enough to pinpoint the target's location. The software computes the latitude and longitude of the target using the smartphones' GPS location, compass reading and the distance to the target based on the relative size of the target in the image compared to its known real-life size.Targets of unknown size -- If the exact size of a target is unknown, the software uses two images to triangulate the location of the target.Moving targets -- By taking a short video of a moving target, the smartphone software can calculate how fast the target is moving and in what direction it is going.

"Currently, our software is limited by the physical abilities of smartphone hardware, but the devices are improving rapidly," Wang said. "We anticipate that improvements in GPS accuracy, battery life and camera resolution will allow our software to make even more accurate observations. We also are making our software more user-friendly."

The targeting and tracking software is not available commercially yet. A prototype version has been created and is currently being tested. More algorithms and methods are being developed to improve the speed and accuracy. Details on the programming and functionality of the software were presented by Wang and his colleagues at the Geospatial InfoFusion II conference and published in the Proceedings of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

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