Welcome to the March 2022 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.

New Technology Bringing Home Ukraine's Tragedy
The Washington Post
Steven Zeitchik
March 2, 2022

Cutting-edge immersive technologies like Polish developer 11 Bit Studios' videogame "This War of Mine" are helping people understand and vicariously experience the horror of wars like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The game adopts the perspective of civilians rather than combatants, emphasizing the human cost. "There's something about virtual reality and augmented reality that is very suited to war because VR and AR can convey war's dilemmas like nothing else," said Kyiv resident and VR designer Alexey Furman. In 2020 he helped produce the AR experience of activists imprisoned by Russia as "an effective way for people to understand what it's like to be a victim of the Russian political system." Meanwhile, the developers of the Kyiv-based Reface app, which lets users swap their faces onto the bodies of famous people in videos, have watermarked each face-swapping image with messaging to promote solidarity with Ukraine.

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Edge AI Detects COVID-19 from Smartwatch Sensors
Princeton University Electrical and Computer Engineering News
Molly Sharlach
February 28, 2022

The CovidDeep app developed using research from Princeton University can quickly and accurately predict COVID-19 infection by combining smartwatch sensors, a health questionnaire, and edge artificial intelligence. Researchers collected data from 87 individuals, both COVID-19 positive and negative, symptomatic and asymptomatic, which included smartwatch sensor readings on heart rate, skin temperature, and galvanic skin response, while clinicians measured participants’ blood pressure and oxygen saturation levels and answered a questionnaire indicating whether each participant had COVID symptoms. The researchers used a subset of the data to train neural network models to predict a patient’s COVID-19 status, and another to test the resulting models, finding them to be 98.1% accurate. They later validated the method with a larger field trial.

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Spinal Implant Gets Paralyzed People Up and Walking
Ars Technica
John Timmer
February 8, 2022

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) have developed a spinal implant that can help individuals who are paralyzed walk with assistance. The implant features 16 electrodes that control which nerve bundles are stimulated. The researchers built a computer model for each of three individuals who received the implant as part of the trial. The volunteers, who had lost the use of their legs, had their neural activity monitored while their legs were moved to determine which nerve bundles were associated with specific muscles. The researchers found that each participant was able to take steps on a treadmill while supported, on the same day the model was trained. After three days of fine-tuning the model, each participant could walk around a room with support, stand unassisted, and walk with a walker. Two of the volunteers regained the ability to exert some voluntary muscle control in their legs.

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Wearable Armband Helps Users of Prosthetic Hands 'Get a Grip'
Florida Atlantic University News Desk
Gisele Galoustian
February 11, 2022

Florida Atlantic University researchers found that electromyogram control and a wearable soft robotic armband could help provide greater dexterity to users of prosthetic hands, who can control only one grasp function at a time with current myoelectric prosthetic hands. The armband’s soft actuators convey a proportional sense of contact forces, and vibrotactile stimulators indicate whether the grasped object had been broken. The researchers found study participants using the dexterous artificial hand could grasp and transport two objects at the same time with the help of multiple channels of haptic feedback. Their efforts were successful, even when their view of both objects was obstructed.

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Forget Handheld VR Controllers: A Smile, Frown, Clench Will Suffice
University of South Australia
February 18, 2022

An international team of researchers from Australia, New Zealand, and India taught a virtual reality (VR) system to recognize different facial expressions using an EEG headset. The researchers used neural processing techniques to capture a user's smile, frown, and clenched jaw, with each expression triggering specific actions in VR environments. Said the University of South Australia's Mark Billinghurst, "A smile was used to trigger the 'move' command; a frown for the 'stop' command, and a clench for the 'action' command, in place of a handheld controller performing these actions." The researchers tested the use of facial-expression controls in virtual environments; Billinghurst noted that "people reported feeling more immersed in the VR experiences controlled by facial expressions."

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Smart Necklace Recognizes English, Mandarin Commands
Cornell Chronicle
Tom Fleischman
February 14, 2022

Cornell University researchers have developed a smart necklace for silent speech recognition. The device, called "SpeeChin," uses an infrared (IR) camera mounted on a three-dimensionally (3D) printed necklace case hung from a chain to capture images of skin deformation in the neck and face. Those images are used to identify silent commands, which could be useful for people who cannot speak or in situations where vocalized speech is inappropriate. Said Cornell's Ruidong Zhang, "This device has the potential to learn a person's speech patterns, even with silent speech." In initial tests, the necklace was found to recognize commands in English and Mandarin with average accuracy rates of 90.5% and 91.6%, respectively.

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Combining Traditional Mandala Coloring, Brain Sensing Technologies to Aid Mindfulness
Lancaster University (U.K.)
February 16, 2022

Researchers at the U.K.'s Lancaster University have developed a prototype system that can monitor a person's brain signals while they are coloring mandalas, and provide real-time feedback on their mindfulness levels. The prototype, called "Anima," features a tablet that is used to color mandala shapes and a headset featuring a commercially available EEG monitor to read the wearer's brain signals. A second display shaped like an artist's palette is located in the user's periphery and features colors that change in saturation and brightness to show their levels of mindfulness. Said Lancaster's Claudia Dauden Roquet, "There has been little attention within human-computer interaction research looking at mindfulness techniques that use fine motor skills, such as coloring intricate details on mandalas, or meditation beads. Our findings offer new insight into these areas that could also help inspire new classes of mindfulness technologies."

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Amazon's Voice Assistant Alexa to Start Seeking Doctor Help
Associated Press
Tom Murphy; Anne D'Innocenzio
February 28, 2022

Through a partnership between Amazon and telemedicine provider Teladoc Health, owners of Amazon Echo devices can receive medical help through the Alexa voice assistant. Users need only create an Alexa voice ID and tell the voice assistant they wish to speak to a doctor. This will connect them to a Teladoc call center, and they will receive a callback from a Teladoc physician on the device. Teladoc's Chris Savarese said Amazon cannot access, record, or store the content of the calls. The calls initially will be audio-only, but video is expected to be added soon. Kate McCarthy at research firm Gartner said Amazon's healthcare segment in its cloud computing division is tasked with developing new healthcare services and products, which eventually could involve using Alexa and sensors to monitor patients after a hospital stay.

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Stroke Rehabilitation Through Music
IEEE Spectrum
Michelle Hampson
February 15, 2022

Researchers at Denmark's Aalborg University Copenhagen have developed a musical biofeedback system to improve the rehabilitation experience for patients who have suffered strokes. The system guides patients through rehabilitation exercises using synthesized music that matches their movements. Comprised of wireless motion sensors strapped to the patients' ankles and/or back, the system offers different musical-feedback training modes: one in which the user's movement creates the music, one in which music is played continuously but the tone or pitch changes with the user's movement, and one that provides negative feedback if the user's movement deviates from the goal. Aalborg's Prithvi Ravi Kantan said, "Patients need to be at a cognitive level where they can understand the feedback and act upon it."

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A Minecraft Build Can Be Used to Teach Almost Any Subject
Concordia University (Canada)
Patrick Lejtenyi
February 22, 2022

Darren Wershler at Canada's Concordia University taught a course on the history and culture of modernity in the Minecraft videogame world. He hosted the class in the game server, with instructions, in-class communication, and coursework almost entirely conducted within the Minecraft environment and over the messaging application Discord. Students decided on group projects that would be developed in the Minecraft world and that focused on issues of modernity covered in Wershler's lectures and readings. The game was set in the Survival mode in which students were attacked by marauders, which Wershler said highlights the real possibility of failure. "Educators at the high school, college, and university levels can use these principles and tools to teach a whole variety of subjects within the game," he said.

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Ending the Chatbot's 'Spiral of Misery'
The New York Times
Steve Lohr
March 3, 2022

Researchers, industry executives, and analysts say customer service chatbots will become more humanlike and helpful in the coming years through advances in artificial intelligence (AI), ending the "spiral of misery" for customers. Conversational AI suppliers are developing software tools that companies tailor and train on their own data. IBM Research's Aya Soffer said improving the technology begins with a better understanding of call-center operations, and working with other firms to sift through and analyze calls between customers and agents. While early chatbots were programmed with a preset series of questions and answers, Soffer said current innovations hinge on "teaching the system to understand and tease out a person's intent." A lack of chatbot training data is a sore point for companies, which some new AI technology could address by automatically generating more data or learning from less amounts of data.

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MagTrack Technology Opens Doors for Independent Operation of Smartphones, Computers, Other Devices for Wheelchair Users
Georgia Tech News Center
March 3, 2022

Rehabilitation services provider Brooks Rehabilitation and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) used the results of their completed study on MagTrack assistive technology to develop a user-ready version that allows power wheelchair users to drive their wheelchairs and control connected devices using an alternative, multimodal controller. The technology includes the Head-Tongue Controller (HTC), which lets users perform various tasks via tongue and head movements; advanced data processing and machine learning models translates such motions into target-specific commands. Tests involving patient volunteers with tetraplegia showed they could conduct simple and advanced driving tasks as fast, and even faster, with the MagTrack's HTC compared to their personal, alternative controllers.

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AI Tutoring Outperforms Expert Instructors in Neurosurgical Training
McGill University Newsroom (Canada)
February 22, 2022

An artificial intelligence (AI) tutoring system can outperform expert human instructors in a remote environment, according to researchers at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) at Canada's McGill University. The researchers were studying the use of AI tutoring systems in teaching medical students how to perform virtual brain tumor removal surgeries using a neurosurgical simulator. Seventy medical students were divided into three groups; one received instruction and feedback from an AI tutor and the second from a remote expert instructor, while the third group received no instruction at all. The researchers found students who worked with the Virtual Operative Assistant (VOA) learned surgical skills 2.6 times faster, and performed 36% better, than those who watched a live feed of surgical simulations and received feedback from remote instructors. The Neuro's Rolando Del Maestro said, "Artificially intelligent tutors like the VOA may become a valuable tool in the training of the next generation of neurosurgeons."

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