Welcome to the October 2018 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.

Eye-Tracking Glasses Are All You Need to Control This Drone
IEEE Spectrum
Evan Ackerman
September 20, 2018

Roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and New York University collaborated on the development of a drone control system using a pair of lightweight eye-tracking glasses and a compact computer. The gaze-tracking system includes an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and high-definition camera, with the glasses connected to a portable Nvidia Jetson TX2 central-processing unit and graphics-processing unit. The user simply has to look at the drone, and the camera on the glasses will detect it via a deep neural network, and calculate how far away it is based on its apparent size. The user then fixes his/her gaze on another location, the glasses translate that location into a vector for the drone, and the system sends a command to the drone to fly there. The researchers hope their system eventually will enable people with little drone experience to safely fly drones in situations where finding a dedicated drone pilot might not be realistic.

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Memory-Jogging Robot to Keep People Sharp in 'Smart' Retirement Communities
Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine
Steve Gillman
September 25, 2018

Three European retirement communities are using a robot called ENRICHME, created by researchers at the University of Lincoln in the U.K., to remind older residents where they have put things and help them exercise. The university’s Nicola Bellotto said the robot was developed as part of a project designed “to assist and monitor people with cognitive impairments and offer basic interactions to help a person maintain their cognitive abilities for longer.” In trials at retirement homes in the U.K., Greece, and Poland, the robot traveled through each facility providing reminders about medication and offering regular physical and mental exercise. In each community where it was deployed, the robot was connected to sensors installed throughout buildings to monitor the movements and activities of participants. The robot also was equipped with a thermal camera to measure the temperature of a person in real time, and calculate their respiration and heartbeat to determine whether they were experiencing high levels of stress related to a particular activity.

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Grace Hopper Confab Offers Optimism Amid #MeToo, Supreme Court Hearings
CNet
Erin Carson
September 30, 2018

This year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) upheld a positive outlook despite coinciding with volatile U.S. Senate hearings over sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. GHC has become particularly relevant with the advent of the #MeToo movement, with speakers stressing to attendees how the movement has been an empowering and solidarity-fostering development. #MeToo was a focus of discussion throughout, and one session had employees from Atlassian and Salesforce discussing the need for hosting "uncomfortable" conversations at work that help establish the type of environment where women can voice their concerns without fear. GHC emphasizes the idea that even the voice of a single individual can have an impact for those who come next, a central theme of the #MeToo era.

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New Virtual Reality Program Teaches Children About Road Safety
CBC.CA
September 2, 2018

Researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada have developed a virtual reality program that teaches children how to cross the street using real-life scenarios. The new system immerses the children in a pedestrian environment, enabling researchers to see their reactions and how well they pay attention to their surroundings. The program has them traverse a two-lane road where there is a blind curve or a hill, or cross a street from a point between parked cars. In a study of 130 children aged seven to 10, those trained in street-crossing techniques using the virtual reality system made 75% to 98% fewer road-crossing errors following the test compared to untrained children. Said Guelph’s Barbara Morrongiello, "It's a very tailored approach to learning. We try to make it so each child has a fun experience and wants to continue to play it."

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Multi-Joint, Personalized Soft Exosuit Breaks New Ground
Wyss Institute at Harvard
Benjamin Boettner
September 17, 2018

Harvard University researchers funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have developed an automatic tuning method for a mobile multi-joint exosuit that customizes the suit based on how an individual’s body is responding to it, resulting in significant energy savings. Explained Harvard’s Conor Walsh, “We previously demonstrated that it is possible to use online optimization methods that by quantifying energy savings in the lab automatically individualize control parameters across different wearers. However, we needed a means to tune control parameters quickly and efficiently to the different gaits of soldiers at the Army outside a laboratory.” The new tuning method uses exosuit sensors to optimize the positive power delivered at the ankle joints to assist with leg movements during the walking cycle. Walsh added that further development and new training approaches “could help further enhance individualization effects and enable wearers that initially respond poorly to exosuits to adapt to them as well and benefit from their assistance.”

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Smiling Doesn't Necessarily Mean You're Happy
Brighton and Sussex Medical School
September 7, 2018

Researchers at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) in the U.K. have demonstrated that smiling is not necessarily a sign of happiness. BSMS' Harry Witchel said people often behave as if socially engaged during one-to-one human-computer interaction (HCI). Witchel had 44 test subjects aged 18 to 35 sit alone in a room and play a geography quiz game while their faces were recorded. Afterward, they rated their subjective experience on a scale of 12 emotions as their spontaneous facial expressions were analyzed by computers to assess how much they were smiling. Witchel said the analysis "showed that in these human-computer interaction experiments, smiling is not driven by happiness; it is associated with subjective engagement, which acts like a social fuel for smiling, even when socializing with a computer on your own."

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New Research Shows What In­flu­en­ces the Types of Apps You Use
University of Helsinki
Minna Merilainen-Tenhu
September 5, 2018

Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland, along with colleagues in Ireland and the U.K., determined the country in which a person lives is the single greatest factor influencing the kinds of applications they use. The researchers studied the data of 25,323 Android users who used 54,776 mobile apps in 44 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. Their results showed English-speaking countries, along with Japan and South Korea, had the highest app usage, while the lowest app usage was in the “Mixed” group of countries, consisting of Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, and India. The researchers also found socioeconomic factors play an important role, while occupation, education, and how much money a person has in savings also are important factors in determining app usage.

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Purdue Develops AR Tools to Help Healthcare Workers Save Lives in War Zones, Natural Disasters, Rural Areas
Purdue University News
Chris Adam
September 5, 2018

Purdue University researchers have created augmented reality (AR) tools to connect healthcare professionals in remote areas with more experienced surgeons and physicians around the world. The AR headset worn by users in the field is designed to replace modern telestrator technology, which uses a separate video screen and freehand sketches to provide feedback. The new system features a transparent headset screen display that enables the user to see the patient in front of them, along with real-time on-screen feedback from remote experts. The system uses computer-vision algorithms to track and align virtual notes and marks from the remote specialist with the surgical region in front of the doctor in the field. Purdue's Edgar Rojas Munoz says, "Our technology allows trainees to remain focused on the surgical procedure and reduces the potential for errors during surgery."

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Haptic Armband Lets You Feel the Sensation of Stroking in VR
Venture Beat
Dean Takahashi
September 2, 2018

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering have developed a haptic armband that could make virtual reality more lifelike by giving the wearer a sense of touch. The prototype armband, which enables users to feel the sensation of a finger moving along the arm, is actually a sleeve that wraps around the forearm and has a row of wired speakers on it. USC's Heather Culbertson said her work aims to improve social virtual reality, or social haptics. The purpose of the new armband is to convey social touch cues from one person to another within the virtual reality environment via haptics. Culbertson said, "This device is a way to create those stroking sensations, because those are very common in creating and displaying sympathy or sadness or love."

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Snapshots of the Future: Tool Learns to Predict User's Gaze in Headcam Footage
University of Tokyo
September 12, 2018

Researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan have developed a computational tool that learns from footage captured by a headcam to accurately forecast where a user's gaze will next be targeted. They say the tool could help video-linked technologies to predict a user's actions and provide suitable guidance for the next step. The team integrated visual saliency with "gaze prediction," in which artificial intelligence learns sequences of actions from existing footage and applies the knowledge to predict the direction of the user's gaze in new footage. The University of Tokyo’s Yifei Huang said the system could be used in the context of tasks performed in offices or factories, or even in medical situations “such as assessing where a surgeon is focusing and offering guidance on the most appropriate steps to be taken next in an operation.”

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