Welcome to the June 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.

A Brain Implant Changed Her Life. Then It Was Removed Against Her Will
MIT Technology Review
Jessica Hamzelou
May 25, 2023

An international group of ethicists suggests the removal of a life-improving brain implant from an Australian epileptic because the manufacturer went bankrupt might constitute a human rights violation. Rita Leggett received the implant, which gave advance warning of seizures so she could control them with medication, as part of a clinical trial. Leggett developed what the ethicists call a symbiotic relationship with the implant; she benefited from the algorithm that helped predict her seizures, while the algorithm used recordings of the woman’s brain activity to become more accurate. The ethicists explained, "Being forced to endure removal of the [device] ... robbed her of the new person she had become with the technology. The company was responsible for the creation of a new person ... as soon as the device was explanted, that person was terminated."

Full Article

Reflective Documentation Tool Leads to CHI 2023 Best Paper Award
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Aaron Seidlitz
May 30, 2023

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign computer science professor Sarah Sterman was named to receive the Best Paper Award at CHI 2023 for "Kaleidoscope: A Reflective Documentation Tool for a User Interface Design Course." The paper drew from Sterman's prior studies on how designers use documentation and version control systems to enhance various creative practices. The resulting documentation tool, Kaleidoscope, centralizes the creative process for user interface design students by displaying a project's complete history across multiple media types. Said Sterman, "As an HCI researcher, I'm thinking about how to design our software tools to help us develop and maintain effective creative processes."

Full Article

I, Robot: Remote Proxy Collaborates on Your Behalf
Cornell Chronicle
Louis DiPietro
May 11, 2023

The ReMotion robot created by Cornell University scientists can serve as a stand-in for remote collaborators by echoing their movements in real time and communicating body language that standard virtual environments cannot convey. ReMotion features a monitor as its head, omnidirectional wheels, and game-engine software for its brain. The remote user wears a device called Neckface that tracks their head and body movements, which the robot automatically mirrors. Nearly all users who worked with ReMotion said they felt a heightened sense of co-presence and behavioral interdependence compared to an existing telerobotic system, as well as higher shared attention among collaborators.

Full Article

Ankle Exosuit for Community Walking Aims to Give Post-Stroke Wearers Greater Independence
Harvard University John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Kat J. McAlpine
May 30, 2023

Researchers at Harvard University's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) developed an ankle exosuit to help stoke survivors improve their gait during their daily routines. The community-use ankle exosuit keeps the user's toes up during the foot's swing phase and prevents them from catching their toes on the ground using a passive actuator that flexes and performs like a spring. It also features a mobile app that allows users to operate the device themselves. A machine learning algorithm uses data from sensors at the foot, shank, and pelvis to estimate propulsion and assess how effectively the user is walking.

Full Article

Brain-Computer Interfaces Could Give Locked-In Patients a Voice
Smithsonian
Marla Broadfoot
May 26, 2023

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) could offer the hope of restoring communication to patients unable to communicate, as recent scientific evidence showed the technology can decode internal speech. California Institute of Technology researchers found a BMI could identify brain patterns generated when a tetraplegic subject internally "spoke" six words and two pseudowords with more than 90% accuracy using a relatively simple decoding algorithm after only 15 minutes of training. An interface developed by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley, helped paralyzed patients communicate in full sentences when they tried mouthing the words coded for each letter of the Roman alphabet. By feeding hours of data to machine learning algorithms, the researchers were able to decode 92% of a subject's sentences in one or two attempts.

Full Article

Smart Ring for Healthcare, Extended Reality
Penn State News
May 31, 2023

The OmniRing created by Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) researchers can facilitate healthcare, as well as extended reality applications. The smart ring combines inertial measurement sensors that capture its location, speed, and rotation, with photoplethysmography sensors that measure blood circulation with infrared light. Penn State's Mahanth Gowda said the sensor data provides insights into the wearer's stress level and mood, which can be the basis for prescribing meditation and relaxation regimens. The researchers said the OmniRing can detect three-dimensional hand and finger motions, and they aim to add American Sign Language recognition, in addition to heart rate and oxygen saturation monitoring capabilities. Said Gowda, "We are currently exploring deeper applications at the intersection of sensing, machine learning, and Edge Internet of Things to extend the capabilities of what can be achieved in the convenient small size of a ring."

Full Article

Ceiling Robots Can Reconfigure Room Lights, Curtains
New Scientist
Jeremy Hsu
May 10, 2023

University of Chicago researchers engineered small robots to cling to ceilings and rearrange rooms by adding magnets to Sony's Toio consumer devices. The modifications enable the robots to attach to mats with metal plates on a ceiling. Multiple robots can collaborate to execute more complex three-dimensional motions, like turning and pointing a hanging light or following a walking person to maintain personal space illumination. The platform also supports ThrowIO, a project equipping robots with a two-armed prong and an angled wedge in order to push objects magnetically attached to the ceiling, as well as to detach and drop objects.

Full Article

AI-Powered Monocle Seeks to Add Sparkle to Dull Human Chats
Reuters
Nathan Frandino
May 25, 2023

Stanford University computer science student Bryan Chiang led the development of RizzGPT, an augmented reality eyepiece which generates responses to real-time conversations and displays them on Brilliant Labs' augmented reality eyepiece. RizzGPT records conversations using the monocle's microphone, converts them to text, and obtains a response using OpenAI's ChatGPT. The monocle's internal projector displays the response in front of the user's eye. Chiang said, "RizzGPT basically uses [artificial intelligence] to provide you charisma on demand, and so it listens to your current ongoing conversation, and it tells you exactly what to say next." Chiang explained, "It's merely meant as this sort of assistive aid to help you think about things that you might have forgotten."

Full Article

Amputees Feel Warmth in Their Missing Hand
EPFL (Switzerland)
May 19, 2023

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), Italy's Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, and Italian prosthetic and rehabilitation corporation Centro Protesi Inail collaborated on the development of bionic technology that allows amputees to sense objects' temperatures. The researchers found amputees felt temperature in their phantom limbs when thermal electrodes applied temperature feedback to the skin of their residual limbs. They engineered the MiniTouch sensor to provide thermal feedback by placing it on an amputee's prosthetic finger, enabling them to ascertain what they are touching by sensing the object's heat conductivity. EPFL's Silvestro Micera said, "For the first time, after many years of research in my laboratory showing that touch and position information can be successfully delivered, we envisage the possibility of restoring all of the rich sensations that one's natural hand can provide."

Full Article

Scientists Discover Brain Signals for Chronic Pain
The Guardian
Ian Sample
May 22, 2023

University of California, San Francisco (UC San Francisco) researchers have decoded the brain signals for chronic pain and trained an algorithm to predict pain based on electrical signals in the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). They obtained data to train the algorithm from patients with intractable chronic pain following a stroke or loss of a limb via surgically implanted electrodes. The patients completed multiple daily surveys on the strength and type of pain and recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the OFC using a remote handset. UC San Francisco's Prasad Shirvalkar said the hope was to use the research "to develop personalized brain stimulation therapies for the most severe forms of pain."

Full Article

Self-Driving Cars Lack Social Intelligence in Traffic
University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
May 30, 2023

Scientists in Denmark’s University of Copenhagen (KU), Sweden's Stockholm and Linköping universities, and the U.K.'s Kings College London found self-driving vehicles struggle in traffic because of social codes they do not understand. The researchers analyzed 18 hours of footage of self-driving cars in various traffic situations from 70 YouTube videos, and saw the vehicles running into trouble particularly when trying to understand when they should yield to pedestrians and other traffic. KU's Barry Brown partly attributes the problem to the fact that "we take the social element [of traffic] for granted," while it must be programmed into systems like autonomous vehicles.

Full Article

VR System Lets You Stop, Smell the Roses
Scientific American
Simon Makin
May 9, 2023

Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong and China's Beihang University have created a virtual reality augmentation interface that can deliver odors to users. The olfactory device uses scent-infused paraffin wax pads that dispense smells when heated by an electrode. A temperature-sensing thermistor controls odor intensity, while a magnetic induction coil controls a metal plate that diverts heat to cool the electrode and turn off the scent. The interface is designed as a device worn on the top lip with two odor generators, and as a nine-generator-equipped face mask.

Full Article

Good vs. Evil: How the Urge to Win Drives Gaming Decisions
The Lighthouse (Macquarie University, Australia)
May 23, 2023

Scientists at Australia's Maquarie University designed a computer game to assess the effect of meters that score the morality of players' decisions. The game casts players as an usher in a cinema confronted with a psychopath, who must make choices that include whether they should harm or kill someone to save others, with a meter measuring morality. Tests showed most players ignore meters when the moral choice is straightforward, but use them when the choice is morally ambiguous. Maquarie's Malcolm Ryan said the goal of this research is "to improve [computer games] as a designer, not just because they are fun, but because I want to see them become like more mature works of art and literature, able to deal with serious topics of morality."

Full Article