Welcome to the April 2023 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.

Experimental Research Projects, Advanced Prosthetics Restore Sense of Touch
CBS News
March 26, 2023

Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated that a brain-machine interface could be used in conjunction with sensors in prosthetic hands to both stimulate movement and create a sensation of touch. However, the electrodes eventually are limited by the buildup of scar tissue at implant sites in the brain, which is why researchers are working on technology that would eliminate the use of prosthetics altogether. Case Western Reserve University researchers are working to restore complete functionality in the body parts of patients experiencing paralysis by bypassing the spine and transmitting motor and sensor impulses through ports in the patient's skull and a computer. The brain impulses are routed through the computer to implants in the patient's limb that trigger movement.

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Exoskeleton That Lets Wheelchair Users Walk Again Draws Royal Attention
EuroNews
Luke Hurst
March 2, 2023

Spanish medical technology manufacturer ABLE Human Motion showcased an exoskeleton for wheelchair users that drew the interest of Spain's King Felipe VI at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona. The device enables victims of spinal cord injuries to stand and walk again. ABLE Human Motion's Katlin Kreamer explained, "It's a device that you strap on around your legs, and then there's a motor at the knee and at the hip that drives the motion of walking for you to be able to walk again, for somebody who doesn't have sensation or movement in their legs from a spinal cord injury." Spinal injury victim Ricard Hernandez, who was able to play table tennis with the Spanish king at MWC 2023, said he can use the device "completely autonomously, simply with a remote control that I carry on a crutch or walker, which I use to control all the functions with two buttons."

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Mind-Control Robots a Reality
University of Technology Sydney (Australia)
March 20, 2023

Researchers at Australia's University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the Australian Army, and that nation’s Defense Innovation Hub have realized thought-controlled robots via biosensors. Conductive graphene sensors worn over the back of one’s scalp detect brainwaves from the visual cortex. Operators of the system wear a head-mounted augmented reality lens that shows white flickering squares; the biosensor picks up brainwaves when the user concentrates on a particular square, and a decoder translates the signal into commands. Australian Army soldiers used the brain-machine interface to remote-control a Ghost Robotics quadruped with up to 94% accuracy. UTS' Chin-Teng Lin said the sensors can transmit nine commands in as little as two seconds.

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In-Home Tool Monitors Health of Elderly Residents
University of Waterloo (Canada)
March 23, 2023

Researchers at Canada's University of Waterloo developed an unobtrusive in-home monitoring system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and wireless technology to identify emerging health problems in elderly people. The system collects data continuously without requiring those being monitored to wear a device, and alerts health care providers to falls or other emergencies. The wall-or ceiling-mounted system features a wireless transmitter that sends low-power waveforms across the interior living space, with a receiver capturing the waveforms as they bounce off the resident and objects in the space and transmitting them to an AI engine. Waterloo's George Shaker said, "Currently, the system can alert care workers to a general decline in mobility, increased likelihood of falls, possibility of a urinary tract infection, and the onset of several other medical conditions."

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Could Smartphone Cameras Help Diagnose Anemia?
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
March 7, 2023

Researchers in Ghana collaborated with a team at the U.K.'s University College London on a study involving the use of smartphone images to diagnose anemia. The goal is to increase anemia screenings among children in low-income countries, given the impact of the condition on developmental growth. The researchers found it was possible to predict blood hemoglobin levels using smartphone images of the inner lower eyelids, the whites of the eyes, and the inner lips, where skin pigmentation is low. They determined this to be a less-expensive and quicker method for identifying the most severe types of anemia, as well as milder cases that are likely to be medically significant.

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3D-Printed Insoles Measure Pressure Directly in Shoe
ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
Peter Rüegg
March 15, 2023

A three-dimensionally printed insole developed by researchers at Switzerland's ETH Zurich, Empa (the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), and École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne uses integrated sensors to measure sole pressure during any activity directly in the shoe. This eventually could help assess athletic performance or physiotherapy progress. The sensors can detect whether the user is walking, running, climbing stairs, or carrying heavy loads. A mixture of silicone and cellulose nanoparticles comprise the base of the insole, upon which a layer of conductive ink containing silver is printed, followed by the sensors and conductors, which are coated with silicone. The surfaces of the silicone layers were treated with hot plasma to ensure good adhesion between the layers. An interface built into the sole reads the data generated by the sensors.

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Germany, Lacking Health Workers, Taps Robots for Elder Care
Voice of America News
March 19, 2023

Scientists in Germany are developing robots for the elder-care sector to offset a health worker shortage. One such robot, the humanoid "Garmi," is intended to diagnose, care for, and treat patients. Garmi stands on a wheeled platform, and is equipped with a black screen where two attached circles function as eyes. About a dozen researchers constructed Garmi in collaboration with medical practitioners at the Technical University of Munich's Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence. The institute's Abdeldjallil Naceri envisions an ATM-like "technology hub" where people can receive medical examinations from robots, whose diagnoses physicians can assess remotely.

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Using Radar to Predict Alzheimer's Disease, Fall Accidents
Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)
March 2, 2023

Researchers at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology developed a method for diagnosing cognitive illnesses and predicting fall accidents via radar sensors that can be installed in homes and health care facilities. The sensors capture a person's walking pattern, specifically step times, in real time and with high resolution. Chalmers' Xuezhi Zeng explained, "A healthy person normally has a regular gait. But a person at risk of fall accidents often has a large variation in step times." The sensors do not film the individual, helping to maintain their privacy. Said Zeng, "It can help health care staff to carry out a more reliable risk analysis and tailor interventions to achieve a significant effect early on. Hopefully it can help to solve a growing challenge for society."

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Human-AI Team Ups Could Slash Chip-Development Costs
IEEE Spectrum
Charles Q. Choi
March 20, 2023

Lam Research Corp. researchers found that combining human- and computer-developed microchip designs could halve development costs compared with designs produced by human experts alone. Currently, highly trained engineers manually develop semiconductor processes, each involving hundreds of steps. The researchers studied how optimization algorithms based on Bayesian reasoning could reduce the cost of developing semiconductors. As part of the study, human engineers were asked to create a recipe to produce a memory hole with a specific depth, width, and shape for the lowest possible cost. The researchers concluded that human engineers outperformed in the rough-tuning stage due to their experience and intuition, but computer algorithms performed better in the fine-tuning stage. Said Lam's Richard Gottscho, "You can take the best of what humans have to offer and the best of what data science and machines offer, put them together, and create a combination that performs better than either one alone."

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Wearable Health Sensor for Monitoring Muscle Atrophy
Ohio State News
Tatyana Woodall
March 17, 2023

Ohio State University's Allyanna Rice and Asimina Kiourti have manufactured a wearable electromagnetic sensor for detecting and monitoring muscle atrophy. The researchers combined transmitting and receiving coils with an "e-thread" conductor that zigzags along the fabric to amplify the elasticity of the device. When used with three-dimensionally-printed human calf models filled with ground beef, the sensor could quantify small-scale volume changes in limb size and monitor muscle atrophy of up to 51%. Analysis suggests the sensor could substitute for magnetic resonance imaging-facilitated monitoring. Rice said, "Our sensor is something that an astronaut on a long mission or a patient at home could use to keep track of their health without the help of a medical professional."

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VR Relaxes Patients During Wide-Awake Surgery
Futurity.org
Nardy Baeza Bickel
March 6, 2023

Researchers at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine found wide-awake patients were less anxious and more joyful while immersed in virtual reality (VR) during surgical procedures. The researchers compared patients who underwent traditional carpal tunnel release surgery in a hospital under monitored anesthesia or general anesthetic to those treated while awake and in VR, using local anesthesia. The former were twice as likely to report a neutral or negative experience, and lower enjoyment and higher anxiety scores, than the latter. Patients who had the awake surgery while using VR had higher enjoyment than non-VR-opting patients. Those with anxiety disorders more likely opted for VR and had lower anxiety and higher enjoyment.

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Amazon Wants You to Help Train Robots by Playing a Video Game
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
March 12, 2023

Amazon researchers have developed a video game that allows players to interact with virtual robots while generating data that can be used to train actual robots on how to behave in interactions with humans. The Alexa Arena game enables human players to help a virtual agent complete specific tasks. Said Sethu Vijayakumar at the U.K.'s University of Edinburgh, "Making it fun will get people to interact with it in a game-playing fashion, but, also, it’s generating realistic human behavioral data from it in which your agent, like your robot, is moving around and interacting." Even if Alexa Arena fails to generate a following, a virtual simulation is less expensive than real-world tests of human-robot interactions.

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AI's Victories in Go Inspire Better Human Game Playing
Scientific American
Emily Willingham
March 13, 2023

A study by researchers at City University of Hong Kong found that human players of the ancient strategy game Go improved their decision-making in game play following the 2016 defeat of then-world champion Lee Sedol by Google DeepMind's AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI). Data detailing the AI's decision-making was released in 2017. The researchers confirmed the trend using a database of 5.8 million moves recorded during games from 1950-2021. They developed a method for rating the decision-making quality of each move and a method for identifying novel human decisions during game play. The researchers determined that most novel moves occurred by move 35 in games after 2017, earlier than in prior years, and that human decision-quality rose after the 2016-2017 period. Said City University's Minkyu Shin, "Rather than viewing AI as a threat to human intelligence, we should embrace it as a valuable tool that can enhance our abilities."

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Cat Toys, Toaster Bots, and Scolding Lamps
IEEE Spectrum
Evan Ackerman
March 13, 2023

The theme of the 2023 ACM/IEEE Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Conference in Stockholm was "HRI for all," and student teams were asked to consider the overall theme and the Student Design Competition's theme of "Affordable Robots" in their entries. The goal was to identify affordable, impactful, scalable, and reliable use-cases with the potential for real-world application while also taking into account inclusion in terms of geography, gender, ethnicity, disability, and equity. The 20 student entries included Aimoji, a low-cost interaction kit that enables used toys to be upcycled as robots that allow for two-way interaction; Toubot, a pair of wearable, soft haptic robots that provide instant, emotional interactions between children and parents; clip-on robotic agents that interact with pets; Labo, which alters the posture and light of study/work lamps to get people away from their smartphones, and a toaster bot that toasts bread and playfully interacts with users.

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