[Electronics-talk] oh no! this kind of thing again! FW: smartpants/or smartypants?

Sat May 2 04:34:37 UTC 2015

Hi,

Here’s another of those really weird articles. 

Thanks

lauren

Blessings in Jesus’ name.

God’s grace:“Plunge a sponge into Lake Erie. Did you absorb every drop? Take a deep breath. Did you suck the oxygenout of the atmosphere? Pluck a pine needle from a

tree in Yosemite. Did you deplete the forest of foliage? Watch an ocean wave crash against the beach. Will there never be another one?” –Max Lucado 

my digital evangelism blog:w w w . ask in jesus name . o r g 

my latest book is at:

w w w . a u d I b l e . c o m 

Cats Are Terrifically Superb:

W w w . c a t l I n e s . c o m

(take out the spaces to activate the links)

From: Lauren Merryfield [mailto:lauren at catlines.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 9:56 AM
To: lauren at catlines.com
Subject: smartpants/or smartypants?

Smart Pants Could Keep You From Walking into Things

There may be help on the way for people so buried in their phone screens that they walk into poles and holes. Thousands of injuries every year are caused by distracted walking, now some researchers have come up with a way to steer walkers clear of obstacles: smart pants. They describe the pants as “cruise control for pedestrians.” Electrical stimulation in the pants would actually activate your muscles and physically steer you out of the way. You wouldn’t even have to interrupt your texting to think about moving your leg.

smartpants

The system would work in conjunction with a smartphone app using its location capabilities to steer the walker. In addition to protecting distracted walkers, a system of this kind could be an amazing help to the visually impaired. Right now it’s still in the experimental stage.

You can learn more about the experiment here. <http://hci.uni-hannover.de/papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf> 

Cruise Control for Pedestrians: Controlling Walking

Direction using Electrical Muscle Stimulation

Max Pfeiffer

1

, Tim D

̈

unte

1

, Stefan Schneegass

2

, Florian Alt

3

, Michael Rohs

1

1

University of Hannover

2

University of Stuttgart

3

University of Munich

Human-Computer Interaction                                  VIS                               Media Informatics Group

Hannover, Germany                             Stuttgart, Germany                         Munich, Germany

firstname at hci.uni-hannover.de     stefan.schneegass at vis.uni-stuttgart.de       florian.alt at ifi.lmu.de

ABSTRACT

Pedestrian navigation systems require users to perceive, in-

terpret, and react to navigation information. This can tax cog-

nition as navigation information competes with information

from the real world. We propose

actuated navigation

, a new

kind of pedestrian navigation in which the user does not need

to attend to the navigation task at all. An actuation signal is

directly sent to the human motor system to influence walk-

ing direction. To achieve this goal we stimulate the sartorius

muscle using electrical muscle stimulation. The rotation oc-

curs during the swing phase of the leg and can easily be coun-

teracted. The user therefore stays in control. We discuss the

properties of actuated navigation and present a lab study on

identifying basic parameters of the technique as well as an

outdoor study in a park. The results show that our approach

changes a user’s walking direction by about 16

/m on average

and that the system can successfully steer users in a park with

crowded areas, distractions, obstacles, and uneven ground.

Author Keywords

Pedestrian navigation; electrical muscle stimulation; haptic

feedback; actuated navigation; wearable devices

ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.2 Information Interfaces and Presentation: User

Interfaces – Input devices and strategies; Haptic I/O.

INTRODUCTION

Navigation systems have become ubiquitous. While today we

use them mainly as commercial products in our cars and on

our smartphones, research prototypes include navigation sys-

tems  that  are  integrated  with  belts  [

22

]  or  wristbands  [

10

].

These systems provide explicit navigation cues, ranging from

visual feedback (e.g., on a phone screen) via audio feedback

(e.g., a voice telling the direction in which to walk) to tactile

feedback (e.g., indicating the direction with vibration motors

on the left or right side of a belt).

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or

classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed

for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation

on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM

must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish,

to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a

fee. Request permissions from Permissions at acm.org.

CHI’15, April 18–23, 2015, Seoul, South Korea.

Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

ACM 978-1-4503-3145-6/15/04...$15.00

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702190

Figure 1. A user is absorbed in his reading, not noticing the lamppost.

Actuated navigation automatically steers him around the obstacle.

An obvious drawback of such solutions is the need for users

to pay attention to navigation feedback, process this informa-

tion, and transform it into appropriate movements. Moreover,

navigation information may be misinterpreted or overlooked.

The need to cognitively process navigation information is par-

ticularly  inconvenient  in  cases  where  the  user  is  occupied

with other primary tasks, such as listening to music, being en-

gaged in a conversation, or observing the surroundings while

walking through the city. To avoid intrusions into the primary

task we envision future navigation systems to guide users in a

more casual [

17

] manner that, in the best case, does not even

make them aware of being guided on their way.

As a new kind of pedestrian navigation paradigm that primar-

ily addresses the human motor system rather than cognition,

we propose the concept of

actuated navigation

. Instead of de-

livering navigation

information

, we provide an

actuation

sig-

nal that is processed directly by the human locomotion system

and affects a change of direction. In this way, actuated nav-

igation may free cognitive resources, such that users ideally

do not need to attend to the navigation task at all.

In this paper we take a first step towards realizing this vision

by presenting a prototype based on electrical muscle stimula-

tion (EMS) to guide users. In particular, we apply actuation

signals  to  the  sartorius  muscles  in  the  upper  legs  in  a  way

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

such that the user slightly turns in a certain direction. With

our system the user stays in control or can give it away: The

system does not cause walking movements, but only slightly

rotates the leg in a certain direction while the user is actively

walking. The user can easily overwrite the direction by turn-

ing the leg. If the user stops, the system does not have any

observable effect, as the EMS signal is not strong enough to

rotate the leg when the foot is resting on the ground.

The contribution of this work is twofold. First, we introduce

the notion of actuated navigation and present a prototype im-

plementation based on electrical muscle stimulation. Second,

we present findings of (a) a controlled experiment to under-

stand how walking direction can be controlled using EMS and

(b) a complementary outdoor study that explores the potential

of the approach in an ecologically valid setting.

In the following, we discuss the properties of actuated navi-

gation and present the two studies in detail. The results show

that our approach can successfully modify a user’s walking

direction while maintaining a comfortable level of EMS. We

found an average of 15.8

/m deviation to the left and 15.9

/m

deviation to the right, respectively. The outdoor study shows

that  the  system  can  successfully  steer  users  in  a  park  with

crowded  areas,  distractions,  obstacles,  and  uneven  ground.

Participants  did  not  make  navigation  errors  and  their  feed-

back revealed that they were surprised how well it worked.

RELATED WORK

We draw upon related work that uses novel output modalities

for pedestrian navigation systems, in particular tactile feed-

back. In addition to that, we present work on Electrical Mus-

cle Stimulation (EMS) that is applied to (a) provide tactile

feedback to the user and (b) stimulate the muscle resulting in

movement. Moreover, we discuss options for actuating mus-

cles to modify the walking direction.

Pedestrian Navigation

Pedestrian  navigation  systems  and  mobile  city  guides  have

been widely researched in the past [

1

], with a focus on how

to present rich map information on small displays and how to

support the user in matching the current position and orien-

tation to the displayed information. Approaches include pro-

viding photorealistic panoramic images from 3D city models

rather than symbolic 2D map data [

14

], automatically rotating

virtual maps to correspond to the user’s orientation in the real

world [

19

], and coupling paper maps to virtual information

using mobile augmented reality approaches [

15

].

It is widely recognized in the literature that navigation and

wayfinding tasks can put a high cognitive workload on users

and distract from the environment. Reducing workload and

distraction are prime concerns of pedestrian navigation sys-

tems [

7

,

14

,

16

] and are the main motivation for our work.

Tactile and Haptic Navigation

To reduce the reliance on the visual and auditory modalities,

particularly  as  users  engage  with  processing  cues  from  the

physical surroundings, vibration feedback has been suggested

as an alternative. Jacob et al. present feedback on the mobile

phone  as  soon  as  it  is  pointed  to  the  correct  direction  [

9

].

However, this requires active exploration of the surroundings

to enable guidance. Pielot et al. developed a haptic compass

for off-the-shelf mobile phones worn in the pocket [

16

]. The

target  direction  is  encoded  with  a  two-pulse  vibration  pat-

tern. NaviRadar [

18

] is able to communicate arbitrary direc-

tions around the user based on a radar sweep metaphor. An-

other approach is to present the direction by applying vibra-

tion feedback to a specific position on the body. Users then

map  the  body  position  to  the  direction  they  need  to  take.

This has, for instance, been done with two vibrating wrist-

bands [

10

]. To provide directional information, Tsukada and

Yasumura [

22

] used a belt containing eight vibrators equally

spaced around the user’s torso. The system activates the vi-

brator that matches the target direction. To achieve more fine-

grained  direction  indication  Heuten  et  al.  [

7

]  extended  this

approach and developed a spatially continuous tactile display

by interpolating the intensity between adjacent vibrators.

Haptic navigation systems generate a force to convey direc-

tion.  Amemiya  and  Sugiyama  [

2

]  built  a  handheld  indica-

tor  that  provides  direction  cues  to  the  user  via  a  pseudo-

attraction  force.  The  force  is  generated  by  a  linear  micro-

actuator  that  moves  a  weight  quickly  in  the  navigation  di-

rection.  It  then  moves  back  slowly  such  that  the  user  does

not sense it. HapMap [

8

] also displays direction haptically:

A servomotor in a handheld casing (formed like a piece of

handrail) tilts right or left to generate a perceivable torque.

Pull-Navi [

11

] is a head-mounted device that communicates

direction by pulling the ears in 3D. PossessedHand [

21

] actu-

ates the hand to indicate walking direction haptically.

Augmented Walking

Active manipulation of walking has been explored for naviga-

tion and to enhance the walking experience. Gilded Gait [

20

]

aims at simulating different ground textures by providing tac-

tile feedback through multiple vibrators embedded in insoles.

The user can perceive deviations from the path through mod-

ified or missing tactile feedback. CabBoots [

5

] is an experi-

mental system that tilts the soles of shoes to guide the user

left or right. This approach requires relatively strong actua-

tion forces and mechanics to achieve tilting.

Most closely related to our idea are Fitzpatrick et al. [

4

] and

Maeda et al. [

13

] who manipulate the user’s sense of balance

through galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS). By applying

GVS, the vestibular system is disturbed so that the user au-

tomatically sways in a specific direction. In this approach, a

small DC voltage is applied between the mastoid processes

(positioned behind the ears) such that a current of 0.5-1.0 mA

results. This leads to a decreased firing rate in vestibular affer-

ents on the anodal side. GVS lets people sway towards the an-

ode. GVS modifies human behavior directly. No attention is

required. GVS can be used to modify walking direction. How-

ever, it has been found that visual input overrides vestibular

disturbances [

4

]. The latter report walking experiments from

a starting position towards a target with eyes open and shut.

In  contrast  to  our  approach,  GVS  effects  the  sense  of  bal-

ance and mainly effects swaying the upper body in a particu-

lar direction, whereas our approach actuates human muscles

and effects a leg rotation in a particular direction. Except for

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite.Pielot%3A2010%3APVW%3A1851600

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite.Pielot%3A2010%3APVW%3A1851600

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite.Amemiya%3A2009%3AHHW%3A1639642

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite

papers/pfeiffer2015CHICruise.pdf#cite