Welcome to the September 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.

Customizing Avatars to Look More Like You Improves Learning in Virtual Environments
University of Bath (U.K.)
August 9, 2023

A study by researchers at the U.K.'s University of Bath found that people learn better in virtual reality (VR) environments if the avatar for the virtual instructor is customized to look like themselves. The study involved 97 participants learning beginner's dance moves from avatars on a screen or VR headset, with one routine taught by an avatar users customized to have similar physical characteristics to themselves, and another by an avatar with a different gender and physical characteristics. The researchers found participants were better able to learn the dance moves demonstrated by the physically similar avatar, with a bigger impact when training via VR than a screen. University of Bath's Izzy Fitton said, "Our study shows that even minimal customization to increase representation could make a big difference in improving effectiveness of training programs run in a virtual learning environment."

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Doctors Carry Out Revolutionary AR Robotic Spinal Surgery
The Jerusalem Post
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
August 20, 2023

A 25-year-old man seeking care at Shaare Zadek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel, recently became the first person to undergo surgery to repair an unstable spinal fracture with robot-guided, augmented reality (AR)-assisted imaging. A surgical spine robot helped the surgical team precisely and successfully install screws along the spinal column to repair the fracture. Dr. Cezar Mizrahi, the neurosurgeon who performed the procedure while outfitted with an AR headset, said, "I had all the patient's vital information, including the CT images, displayed directly in front of me. I could look one way and see the lineup of the surgical screws that I had planned out before the procedure and then look down and see the surgical field magnified." Immediately after surgery, the patient was able to walk unassisted.

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Headband Seeks Early Signs of Alzheimer's During Sleep
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Kelsea Pieters
August 23, 2023

Scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Washington University in St. Louis enabled an electroencephalography (EEG) headband device to detect a digital biomarker of brain activity in sleep indicative of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer's disease. The headband can record EEG signals from the biomarker and detect brain wave patterns associated with memory reactivation in sleep, recognizing interplay between those readings and Alzheimer's-related molecular changes. The University of Colorado School of Medicine's Brice McConnell said, "Identifying these early biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease in asymptomatic adults can help patients develop preventative or mitigation strategies before the disease advances."

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ALS Patient Pioneering Brain-Computer Connection
Japan Today
Andrew Leeson; Julie Jammot
August 24, 2023

Australian Rodney Gorham, who has ALS, is part of Synchron's human trial of the "stentrode," an 8-millimeter stent implanted in his brain to detect neural activity. With the stentrode, Gorham can use his eyes and mind to communicate via computer or play video games. The stentrode, which Synchron hopes will be approved by health authorities next year, features eye-tracking technology that allows users to point to icons on a computer screen; users "click" the icons by thinking of a motion. Because people's minds "speak" differently, Sychron's Tom Oxley said a common neural language is needed for computers to understand the user's intent. Said Oxley, "That's a very interesting challenge we are facing now. Building a system that is not just for one person, but for millions of people."

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Oceanographic Research Framework Provides Potential for Broader Access to Deep Sea Exploration
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
August 24, 2023

Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago developed the Shared Autonomy for Remote Collaboration (SHARC) framework to widen access to deep-sea exploration. SHARC "enables remote participants to conduct shipboard operations and control robotic manipulators using only a basic Internet connection and consumer-grade hardware, regardless of their prior piloting experience," according to the researchers. Multiple remote operators wearing virtual reality (VR) goggles can collaborate in real time through the framework using speech and hand gestures to relay goal-directed commands in a three-dimensional workspace environment. SHARC-facilitated human-robot interaction taps robots and human operators' complementary strengths to delegate tasks between them.

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Exterior Autonomous Vehicle Displays Could Keep Cyclists Safe
University of Glasgow (U.K.)
August 9, 2023

Human-computer interaction researchers and psychologists at the U.K.'s University of Glasgow say exterior digital displays on self-driving cars could help protect cyclists. The researchers' findings build on earlier work suggesting future-generation autonomous vehicles should "learn the language of cyclists" to safely share roads with people on bicycles. They held workshops with cyclists to explore how external human-machine interfaces could communicate with riders. These consultations yielded four models of potential communication: displays on windscreens, side windows, and mirrors showing digital driver avatars making hand and head signals; exterior displays of traffic signs alerting cyclists whether the car was going to yield or proceed; roof-mounted displays of emoticons; and a "LightRing" of light-emitting diodes that communicates with cyclists and pedestrians via color and animation.

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Texas Team Incorporates Haptics into Wearable Tech
The Engineer
August 30, 2023

Rice University engineers have developed a wearable, textile-based device that uses haptic input to compensate for visual and auditory deficiencies. The system reportedly programs haptic cues within the devices' textile structure via fluidic control, requiring "only a very limited number of electronic inputs to provide sophisticated haptic stimulation," according to Rice's Daniel Preston. Wearables incorporating the device include a belt and textile sleeves, with a small carbon dioxide tank on the belt inflating pouches on the sleeves through airtight circuits. The researchers used these haptic cues to direct a user along a mile-long route through Houston streets, and to relay directions that users followed to outline invisible Tetris pieces in a field. Rice's Barclay Jumet suggested integrating the textiles with navigational systems could enable clothing to "tell users which way to go without taxing their already-overloaded visual and auditory senses."

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Robot Puts on Shirts One Sleeve at a Time
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
Stacey Federoff
August 29, 2023

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute designed a robotic system that helps humans dress, accounting for various body shapes, arm poses, and clothing selections through artificial intelligence. The researchers used reinforcement learning to reward the robot each time it correctly placed a garment further along a person's arm, improving the system's learned-dressing strategy success rate. They trained the robot to manipulate clothing and dress people through simulation, accounting for the apparel's characteristics. The team assessed the system in 510 dressing experiments across participants with distinct body shapes, arm poses, and five garments. The system could fully pull the sleeve of each garment onto the arm for most participants, dressing 86% of the length of their arms.

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Digital Headset Could Help Athletes Resume Play After Concussion
News-Medical.net
Danielle Ellis
August 11, 2023

Researchers at the universities of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and South Australia designed a new digital headset that quantifies changes in brain function. Medical technology company MindRhythm has licensed the device, which measures alterations in "headpulse," or nuanced exertions on the skull during heart contractions. The researchers used the headset on 101 young adults who suffered 44 concussions while playing Australian Rules Football; the changes it detected persisted on average 12 days longer than symptoms. UCSF's Wade S. Smith said, "We believe that [the headset] can provide critical objective biometric measures that can be used by athletes and medical professionals to decide when to return to play."

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'Mind-Reading' System Can Recreate What Your Brain Is Seeing
EuroNews
Roselyne Min
August 21, 2023

An artificial intelligence (AI) system developed by researchers at the National University of Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) can produce an image of an object being viewed by the user based on an analysis of their brain wave patterns. MinD-Vis ultimately could help individuals with motor issues communicate or be integrated into virtual reality headsets so users can navigate the metaverse with their minds. The researchers are building a dataset based on the brain scans of 58 individuals exposed to 1,200 to 5,000 images during an MRI scan. CUHK's Jiaxin Qing said, "It can understand your brain activities just like ChatGPT understands the natural languages of humans. And then it will translate your brain activities into a language that the Stable Diffusion can understand."

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Soft Robotic Implant Monitors Scar Tissue to Self-Adapt for Personalized Drug Treatment
University of Galway (Ireland)
August 30, 2023

Researchers at Ireland's University of Galway and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology harnessed soft robotics and artificial intelligence to create a drug-dispensing implant that can alter its shape to maintain dosage and circumvent scar tissue. The implantable device features a conductive porous membrane that can detect cellular pore blockage by scar tissue. The researchers correlated electrical impedance and scar tissue formation on the membrane, then developed and implemented an algorithm to anticipate the required number and force of actuations to realize consistent drug dosing no matter the amount of fibrosis. They also investigated via simulation the device's potential to deliver medication over time within fibrotic capsules of differing thicknesses.

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Stroke Rehab at Home is Near
University of Houston News
Laurie Fickman
August 8, 2023

A low-cost, portable device created and tested by University of Houston (UH) researchers brings at-home rehabilitation from a stroke closer to reality. UH's Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, Hugh Roy, and Lillie Cranz Cullen said they "designed and validated a wireless, easy-to-use, mobile, dry-electrode headset for scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings for closed-loop brain-computer (BCI) interface and Internet of Things applications." The prototype BCI incorporates five EEG electrodes into an electrode bracket covering the brain's sensorimotor cortices; three skin sensors measuring eye movement and blinks; and a head motion-measuring inertial movement unit to provide a portable brain-body imaging system. The system's adjustable headset allows patients to control a robotic arm or exoskeleton through the BCI to assist in rehab.

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Bots Better at Beating CAPTCHA Tests Than Humans
New Scientist
Matthew Sparkes
August 8, 2023

A multi-institutional team of researchers demonstrated that bots could beat humans at passing Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs) used to check the humanity of website visitors. The researchers found 120 of the world's 200 most popular sites used CAPTCHAs, then enlisted 1,000 people online to each take 10 tests on these sites. They discovered humans took between nine and 15 seconds to solve distorted-text CAPTCHAs with only 50% to 84% accuracy, while bots completed the tests in less than a second with 99.8% accuracy. The University of California, Irvine's Andrew Searles said, "There's no easy way using these little image challenges or whatever to distinguish between a human and a bot any more."

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Fact-Checking Can Influence Recommender Algorithms
Cornell Chronicle
Tom Fleischman
August 2, 2023

Cornell University's J. Nathan Matias experimented with a 14-million-member Reddit community to find the social news website's recommender algorithms could be manipulated into dropping suspicious articles from its rankings by suggesting readers fact-check them. Matias and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher programmed software to observe when community members submitted a link for discussion. The software then assigned the discussion to controls who took no action; readers were encouraged to fact-check the article and comment with links to advance evidence refuting the article's claims, or to consider down-voting the article. Matias learned that simply encouraging fact-checking caused an average 25-spot drop in story rankings.

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