Welcome to the December 2020 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.

Quadriplegic Pilots Race for Gold in Cybathlon Brain Race
IEEE Spectrum
Emily Waltz
November 30, 2020

In the Cybathlon 2020, the second cyborg Olympics, quadriplegic pilots used brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to race computer avatars via thought-controlled commands. Participants wore electrode caps that read the electrical activity of their brains using electroencephalography. Algorithms interpreted the neural signals as commands, enabling the pilots to direct an avatar through a computer game set up as a racetrack with straights and turns, and sections requiring headlights to be activated. Pilots directed avatars by thinking about physical movements. The winning Italian team, piloted by Paralympic swimmer Francesco Bettella, completed the race in two minutes 52 seconds. The Cybathlon's goal is to encourage engineers to develop BCIs and other cyborg systems sufficiently simple and reliable for people to use in real-world environments.

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Tech Makes It Possible to Digitally Communicate Through Human Touch
Purdue University News
Kayla Wiles
December 3, 2020

A prototype device designed by Purdue University engineers enables touch-based digital communication, in which users link their wearable or implantable devices to readers or scanners via their fingertips. The technology keeps signals in the body by pairing them in an Electro-Quasistatic range that is significantly lower on the electromagnetic spectrum than Bluetooth communication, facilitating tactile information transfer. Surfaces everywhere would require appropriate hardware to recognize the user's finger; the wearable device's software also would need to be configured to send signals through the body to the fingertip, and be able to deactivate to prevent indiscriminate transfers of information to every surface equipped to receive it. Purdue's Shreyas Sen said, "Think of big touchscreens ... the only information that the computer receives is the location of your touch. But the ability to transfer information through your touch would change the applications of that big touchscreen."

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Academics, Video Game Makers Team Up
Associated Press
Kelvin Chan
November 16, 2020

Researchers from the U.K.'s Oxford University used data from video game makers to investigate the impact of video games on mental health. The Oxford team analyzed survey responses from 2,756 people over 18 who played "Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville," as well as 518 individuals who played "Animal Crossing: New Horizons." Game companies Electronic Arts and Nintendo supplied information on how much time respondents spent playing each game, which the Oxford researchers said was a small but significant positive factor in participants' well-being; they added that the level of enjoyment derived from a game could be a more critical factor for well-being than time spent playing. Oxford's Andrew Przybylski said deeper academic collaboration with game makers is necessary "to study how games impact a wider, and more diverse, sample of players over time. We'll need more and better data to get to heart of the effects of games, for good or ill, on mental health."

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The Hot New Covid Tech Is Wearable, Constantly Tracks You
The New York Times
Natasha Singer
November 15, 2020

Sports leagues, factories, and nursing homes are deploying new wearable devices that constantly monitor users for Covid-19. Companies and industry analysts say the trackers fill a critical void in pandemic safety, as many virus-screening tools used by employers and colleges are not designed to identify the approximately 40% of asymptomatic people with the virus. When infections began spiking in the spring, many professional U.S. football and basketball teams were already using sports performance monitors from German company Kinexon. The firm adapted its sensors for the pandemic, debuting SafeZone, a system that logs close contacts between players or coaches and emits a warning light if they get within six feet of each other. Civil rights and privacy experts warn that the proliferation of wearable continuous-monitoring devices could give rise to new forms of surveillance that endure beyond the pandemic.

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FDA Approves Prescription-Only Apple Watch App for PTSD Nightmares
New Atlas
Rich Haridy
November 10, 2020

NightWare, a prescription-only app for the Apple Watch, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help patients suffering from recurrent nightmares associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The app spends up to 10 nights learning a user's sleep patterns to create a unique sleep profile, after which it tracks heart rate and body movement to detect nightmares. Users experiencing a nightmare will feel mild vibrations through their Apple Watch, which are meant to disrupt the nightmare without waking them. The FDA indicates that NightWare should be used as part of a broader treatment protocol that includes medications or psychotherapy.

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Man Born Without Hand Gets Metal Gear Solid 3D-Printed Bionic Arm
VentureBeat
Dean Takahashi
November 10, 2020

Daniel Melville, who was born without a right hand, now has a three-dimensionally (3D)-printed bionic arm based on the Metal Gear Solid video game series, thanks to a collaboration between U.K.-based Open Bionics and Metal Gear Solid publisher Konami. Melville's new "Hero Arm" artificial limb features a multi-grip bionic hand, which Open Bionics custom-manufactured via 3D printing, 3D scanning, and software. The Hero Arm can be accessorized with magnetic clip-on covers. Open Bionics was founded with the goal of producing affordable, accessible bionic limbs through 3D-printing and scanning. Its Hero Arm is helping to improve the lives of hundreds of upper-limb amputees.

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Amazon's Panorama Box Lets Firms Check If Staff Follow Coronavirus Rules
BBC News
December 2, 2020

Amazon has developed a solution for determining whether staff are complying with coronavirus safety protocols, by retrofitting a box to existing security cameras to use off-the-shelf artificial intelligence applications. An Amazon spokeswoman said the AWS Panorama system was designed to improve industrial operations and workplace safety, rather than for employee surveillance. She said the box does not come pre-equipped with any facial recognition capabilities, while all machine learning functions occur on the device "and [relevant data] never has to leave the customer's facility." Amazon said AWS Panorama interfaces with IP cameras, allowing workplaces to track employees "and get notified immediately about any potential issues or unsafe situations so you can take preemptive action." Mary Towers at the U.K.'s Trades Union Congress cited a report warning of potentially negative effects "on workers' well-being, right to privacy, data protection rights, and the right not to be discriminated against."

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Studies Outline Key Ethical Questions Surrounding Brain-Computer Interface Tech
North Carolina State University
November 10, 2020

Researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State) are offering guidance on the outstanding ethical issues associated with brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies. An overarching question at the core of future research on BCI ethics is, "What would be the most legitimate public policies for regulating the development and use of various BCI neurotechnologies by healthy adults in a reasonably just, though not perfect, democratic society?" Said NC State's Veljko Dubljevic, "That question is long, technical, and steeped in scholarship of ethics and policy of new technology, but it's critical to guiding the development of BCIs." The researchers also consider machine-augmented intelligence and authenticity, or the extent to which an individual feels their abilities and accomplishments are their own. They note concerns about authenticity have not been addressed adequately, because most proposed cognitive enhancement BCI devices are therapeutic in nature.

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Device Puts Music in Your Head—No Headphones Required
Associated Press
Louise Dixon
November 12, 2020

Israeli company Noveto Systems has unveiled a prototype device that uses software to beam sound directly to a listener without requiring the use of headphones. The SoundBeamer 1.0 system uses a three-dimensional sensing module that tracks ear positions and transmits audio via ultrasonic waves to create sound pockets by the user's ears. Noveto said users can hear sound in stereo, or in a spatial three-dimensional mode that generates sound around the listener. Users can change the SoundBeamer 1.0's settings to have sound follow them around when they move their head, while moving out of the beam's path silences the audio signal. Noveto's Ayana Wallwater said, "It sounds like a speaker, but no one else can hear it ... it's supporting you and you're in the middle of everything. It's happening around you."

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VR Helps Measure Vulnerability to Stress
EPFL (Switzerland)
Nic Papageorgiou
November 23, 2020

A virtual reality (VR) test developed by behavioral scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) can measure a person's vulnerability to psychogenic stressors while exploring immersive environments. Study participants were immersed in three different stressful VR scenarios. High-density locomotion data collected from the first two scenarios was analyzed using machine-learning methods, which yielded a model to predict changes in heart-rate variability in the third scenario. The researchers found the model could predict stress vulnerability to a different stressful VR challenge and outperforms other stress-prediction tools. EPFL's Carmen Sandi observed that "capturing behavioral parameters of how people explore two novel virtual environments is enough to predict how their heart-rate variability would change if they were exposed to highly stressful situations; hence, eliminating the need of testing them in those highly stressful conditions."

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This Touch-Sensitive Glove Is Made From Stretchy Optical Fibers
New Scientist
Karina Shah
November 12, 2020

Researchers at Cornell University have created a touch-sensitive glove using optical fibers made from elastomeric polyurethane cables that transmit light from an LED. When the cables are bent, stretched, or put under pressure, the light is interrupted. Parts of the fibers were dyed different colors, in order to change the color of the light as the fibers are distorted, allowing the researchers to analyze the light patterns to estimate the location and type of distortion in the glove. Said Cornell's Rob Shepherd, "You don't want a stiff sensor in a soft robot because it is limiting what the robot can do." The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Andrew Spielberg said the glove’s sensors show promise because they can measure "so many deformation modes at once—bend, stretch, and press."

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