Welcome to the August 2021 SIGCHI edition of ACM TechNews.

ACM TechNews - SIGCHI Edition is a sponsored special edition of the ACM TechNews news-briefing service focused on issues in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This service serves as a resource for ACM-SIGCHI Members to keep abreast of the latest news in areas related to HCI and is distributed to all ACM SIGCHI members the first Tuesday of every month. ACM TechNews is a benefit of ACM membership and is distributed three times per week on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays to over 100,000 ACM members from over 100 countries around the world. ACM TechNews provides timely coverage of established and emerging areas of computer science, the latest trends in information technology, and related science, society, and technology news. For more information on ACM TechNews and joining the ACM, please click. The Interactions mobile app is available for free on iOS, Android, and Kindle platforms. Download it today and flip through the full-color magazine pages on your tablet or view it in a simplified low-bandwidth text mode on your phone. And be sure to check out the Interactions website, where you can access current and past articles and read the latest entries in our ever-expanding collection of blogs.

Father Builds Exoskeleton to Help Wheelchair-Bound Son Walk
Reuters
Yiming Woo
July 26, 2021

Jean-Louis Constanza of French robotics manufacturer Wandercraft designed a robot exoskeleton to help his wheelchair-bound son Oscar walk. Oscar, who suffers from a neurological disorder, is fastened to the outer frame of the exoskeleton by his shoulders, chest, waist, knees, and feet; it lifts him up and simulates walking in response to his spoken commands. Constanza said the exoskeleton has been sold to dozens of hospitals in France, Luxembourg, and the U.S., for about $176,000 each. The device is not yet available for private purchase or individual use, but Wandercraft has a personal exoskeleton in development.

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Could AI Keep People 'Alive' After Death?
The Wall Street Journal
Asa Fitch
July 3, 2021

Scientists and entrepreneurs are exploring the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to generate digital personas of people after their deaths, which could evolve and influence companies or world events. Examples include Replika, an application that learns to produce chatbot replicas of people, and HereAfter AI, which records and uses people's life stories to craft replicas that ‘live’ within smart speakers. Microsoft has patented a technique that employs data from social media, voice recordings, and writings "to train a chatbot to converse and interact in the personality of the specific person." Digital personas may become capable of learning and developing beyond the originator's death, effecting a form of immortality. This raises ethical questions, such as whether virtual personas should have rights, and whether it is permissible to replicate historical or living people without their consent.

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A Way to Prepare Doctors for Difficult Conversations
University of Rochester NewsCenter
Bob Marcotte
July 15, 2021

A virtual "patient" developed by researchers at the University of Rochester can help train doctors to communicate effectively with late-stage cancer patients and their families so they can make realistic decisions about their treatment. SOPHIE (Standardized Online Patient for Healthcare Interaction Education) was created using nearly 400 recorded conversations between late-stage cancer patients and their oncologists. The researchers developed and applied algorithms to the transcripts of these conversations to measure the ability of doctors to communicate clearly with patients. Physicians were given feedback on their speaking rate, turn-taking, types of questions asked, and sentiment trajectory (the use of positive words and phrases associated with increased patient understanding). Rochester's Ronald Epstein said, "The online format can provide training at a fraction of the cost and be made available to physicians worldwide."

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Liquid Metal Sensors, AI Could Help Prosthetic Hands 'Feel'
Florida Atlantic University
Gisele Galoustian
July 14, 2021

Researchers at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) used stretchable liquid metal sensors on each fingertip of a prosthetic hand to help provide the sensation of touch. The researchers trained four machine learning algorithms to test the hand’s ability to distinguish between 10 different complex surfaces at different speeds as its individual fingertips made a sliding motion along those surfaces. The integration of tactile information from sensors on the fingertips demonstrated a new form of hierarchical intelligence, as they simultaneously distinguished between complex, multi-textured surfaces. FAU's Erik Engeberg said, "We believe that these tactile details could be useful in the future to afford a more realistic experience for prosthetic hand users through an advanced haptic display, which could enrich the amputee-prosthesis interface and prevent amputees from abandoning their prosthetic hand."

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Red Dead Redemption Research: 'Gamers Learn About Nature'
BBC News
July 13, 2021

The popular computer game "Red Dead Redemption 2" (RDR2) trains players to identify actual wildlife and predict animal behavior, according to scientists at the U.K.'s University of Exeter and Truro, and Penwith College. RDR2 takes place in the southern and western U.S. in 1899, and is populated by animals such as white-tailed deer, jackrabbits, alligator snapping turtles, and lake sturgeon. The researchers challenged over 500 RDR2 gamers to identify photos of animals, and on average each could identify 10 of 15 animals in a quiz, three more than non-gamers. Truro and Penwith College's Ned Crowley said, "We don't expect big-budget games to include messages about conservation, but educators and conservationists can learn from the techniques used in games—such as making things immersive, and having each action mean something in terms of wider progress in the game."

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Healthcare Chatbots Boom but Can't Replace Doctors
The Washington Post
Rachel Lerman
July 26, 2021

Chatbot use has exploded among health systems and insurers due the coronavirus pandemic, pushing scientists and healthcare professionals to demand more data about the technology's accuracy. Many chatbots, trained on thousands of pieces of medical literature, use artificial intelligence to understand symptoms, match them to likely ailments, and predict likely outcomes. Many chatbots employed to screen for coronavirus tests still use methods similar to simple decision trees, although Brown University's Hamish Fraser says some companies are beginning to incorporate actual machine learning. However, Andrew Le at healthcare chatbot developer Buoy Health says the goal for chatbots is not to supplant doctors, but to “replace the act of searching for symptoms, being scared, and feeling not sure what to do."

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Augmented Reality System Changes How Humans, Robots Interact
Binghamton University News
Chris Kocher
July 8, 2021

The Augmented Reality for Robots Collaborating with a Human (ARROCH) system was designed to span the human-robot communication gap by enhancing a real-world view with various types of input, including sound and digital video. Researchers at Binghamton University (BU) and Chinese consumer electronics company OPPO collaborated on ARROCH, a wearable AR interface that enables simultaneous control of multiple robots while monitoring their locations and supplying feedback that influences subsequent actions. BU's Shiqi Zhang said, "We provide a bidirectional communication channel where the human can comment on the robot's plan or behaviors."

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Amazon.com Wants to Monitor You in Your Sleep, for Your Benefit
Bloomberg
Todd Shields; Matt Day
July 9, 2021

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has cleared Amazon.com to monitor consumers' sleep habits via a radar sensor that can perceive motion and "enable contactless sleep-tracing functionalities." The company said in a filing that the device records movement in three dimensions, so users can control its operation via gestures and movements. According to Amazon, "The use of Radar Sensors in sleep tracking could improve awareness and management of sleep hygiene, which in turn could produce significant health benefits for many Americans." The FCC previously had given permission to Google to use radar to enable touchless control of its Pixel smartphones.

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Audi's Tech Can Help You Beat Red Lights
Popular Science
Rob Stumpf
July 24, 2021

German automaker Audi has engineered the in-car Traffic Light Information (TLI) system to help drivers beat red lights. As a TLI-equipped vehicle travels down the road, its cellular radio downloads real-time updates on the status of nearby traffic lights via the Vehicle-to-Infrastructure and Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) frameworks being deployed by state and local governments. The vehicle then applies its global positioning system to locate itself in relation to these devices at a given time, and its instrument cluster will tell drivers how fast they must go to avoid being stopped by red lights. When a red light is unavoidable, the system will notify the driver, then start counting down the time remaining before the light turns green again.

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Study Explores Tensions Between IoT Device Owners, 'Incidental Users'
Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Daniel Tkacik
July 22, 2021

A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers evaluated potential conflicts between owners of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and incidental users, those who find themselves in environments in which someone else has set up a smart device. The team polled almost 400 U.S. adults on roughly 20 scenarios involving various smart devices and situations, and found those who owned IoT devices were more comfortable with the devices’ presence in other situations as well. Many respondents said they would prefer incidental users offer a clear reason for their discomfort around such devices before accommodating them. CMU's Camille Cobb said, "Even if most people most of the time are not concerned, a significant number of people are. We should do something about that. We should care."

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Bringing the Jury to the Crime Scene via 3D Headset
University of South Australia
July 22, 2021

Research by scientists at the University of South Australia (UniSA) supports the use of virtual reality (VR) in courtrooms to inform jurors' decisions. A team of UniSA researchers, legal professionals, police, and forensic scientists modeled the scene of a hit-and-run incident with a laser scanner to compare verdicts between "jurors" using three-dimensional headsets and those viewing photos from the scene. The study found participants viewing the scene via headset were 86.67% more likely to arrive at a Death by Dangerous Driving verdict than those who viewed photos. UniSA's Andrew Cunningham said that the jurors with the VR tools also had an easier time of piecing together the sequence of events. He said, "This provides unequivocal evidence that interactive technology leads to fairer and more consistent verdicts, and indeed could be the future of courtrooms."

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Wearable Brain-Machine Interface Turns Intentions into Actions
Georgia Tech Research News
Jerry Grillo
July 20, 2021

An international team led by Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) scientists built a wearable brain-machine interface (BMI) that enables the user to wirelessly operate a wheelchair or robotic arm by visualizing an action. Georgia Tech's Musa Mahmood said the BMI "uses an entirely different paradigm, involving imagined motor actions such as grasping with either hand, which frees the subject from having to look at too much stimuli." The motor imagery-based BMI combines wireless soft scalp electronics and virtual reality-facilitated prompts to improve brain signal acquisition. The team added a machine learning algorithm to try to address the issue of measuring brain signals accurately. The system's tests on four human subjects showed promise, although it has yet to be evaluated with disabled individuals.

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Humanoid Robot Keeps Getting Fired From His Jobs
The Wall Street Journal
Miho Inada
July 13, 2021

Japanese technology investor SoftBank Group's humanoid robot, Pepper, has been fired from various jobs for errors that undercut its implied intelligence. Pepper was programmed to act cheerfully, grasp human emotions, and engage in basic dialogue, but some of its managers say it fell short of the skills its makers claimed it would possess. Three Peppers were deployed by Tokyo-based nursing-home operator Ittokai in 2016 to lead singing and exercises, but Ittokai's Masataka Iida said residents soon lost interest due to the units' limited repertoire, and its tendency to take sudden ‘breaks’ because of mechanical errors. Attempts to market Pepper as a home companion fell flat because the robot could not engage in conversation or recall family members, even though a cloud connection would supposedly preserve such knowledge in case of a breakdown. Chiba Institute of Technology's Takayuki Furuta blames Pepper's failure on its inability to exhibit the human-level intelligence implied by its appearance.

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