[Electronics-talk] oh no! this kind of thing again! FW: smartpants/or smartypants?
cheez
cheez at cox.net
Sat May 2 05:19:02 UTC 2015
I wonder if one pees his smart pants will he get electrocuted.
Sent from my iPhone
> On May 1, 2015, at 9:34 PM, Lauren Merryfield via Electronics-talk <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
> 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)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Electronics-talk mailing list
> Electronics-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Electronics-talk:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/electronics-talk_nfbnet.org/cheez%40cox.net
More information about the Electronics-Talk
mailing list