| Entertainment Computing, Social Transformation and the Quantum Field | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-8 | |
| Matthias Rauterberg | |||
| The abstract should summaritinment computing is on its way getting an
established academic discipline. The scope of entertainment computing is quite
broad (see the scope of the international journal Entertainment Computing). One
unifying idea in this diverse community of entertainment researchers and
developers might be a normative position to enhance human living through social
transformation. One possible option in this direction is a shared 'conscious'
field. Several ideas about a new kind of field based on quantum effects are
presented and discussed. Assuming that social transformation is based on a
shared collective unconscious I propose designing entertainment technology for
a new kind of user experience that can transform in a positive manner the
individual unconscious and therefore the collective unconscious as well. Our
ALICE project can be seen as a first attempt in this direction. Keywords: culture; social responsibility; entertainment; computing; quantum field | |||
| Non-verbal Full Body Emotional and Social Interaction: A Case Study on Multimedia Systems for Active Music Listening | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 9-18 | |
| Antonio Camurri | |||
| Research on HCI and multimedia systems for art and entertainment based on
non-verbal, full-body, emotional and social interaction is the main topic of
this paper. A short review of previous research projects in this area at our
centre are presented, to introduce the main issues discussed in the paper. In
particular, a case study based on novel paradigms of social active music
listening is presented. Active music listening experience enables users to
dynamically mould expressive performance of music and of audiovisual content.
This research is partially supported by the 7FP EU-ICT Project SAME (Sound and
Music for Everyone, Everyday, Everywhere, Every Way, www.sameproject.eu). Keywords: non-verbal full-body multimodal interfaces; emotion; social signals; sound
and music computing; active listening | |||
| Home Exercise in a Social Context: Real-Time Experience Sharing Using Avatars | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 19-31 | |
| Yasmin Aghajan; Joyca Lacroix; Jingyu Cui; Aart van Halteren; Hamid Aghajan | |||
| This paper reports on the design of a vision-based exercise monitoring
system. The system aims to promote well-being by making exercise sessions
enjoyable experiences, either through real-time interaction and instructions
proposed to the user, or via experience sharing or group gaming with peers in a
virtual community. The use of avatars is explored as means of representation of
the user's exercise movements or appearance, and the system employs
user-centric approaches in visual processing, behavior modeling via history
data accumulation, and user feedback to learn the preferences. A preliminary
survey study has been conducted to explore the avatar preferences in two user
groups. Keywords: Exercise monitor; avatars; pose analysis; experience sharing; social
networks; user acceptance | |||
| Generating Instructions in a 3D Game Environment: Efficiency or Entertainment? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 32-43 | |
| Roan Boer Rookhuiszen; Mariët Theune | |||
| The GIVE Challenge was designed for the evaluation of natural language
generation (NLG) systems. It involved the automatic generation of instructions
for users in a 3D environment. In this paper we introduce two NLG systems that
we developed for this challenge. One system focused on generating optimally
helpful instructions while the other focused on entertainment. We used the data
gathered in the Challenge to compare the efficiency and entertainment value of
both systems. We found a clear difference in efficiency, but were unable to
prove that one system was more entertaining than the other. This could be
explained by the fact that the set-up and evaluation methods of the GIVE
Challenge were not aimed at entertainment. Keywords: instructions; 3D environment; Natural Language Generation; game; evaluation;
efficiency vs. entertainment | |||
| Interactive Documentary: A Production Model for Nonfiction Multimedia Narratives | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 44-55 | |
| Insook Choi | |||
| This paper presents an interactive production model for nonfiction
multimedia, referred to as interactive documentary. We discuss the design of
ontologies for authoring interactive documentary. A working prototype supports
the use of reasoning for retrieving, composing, and displaying media resources
in real-time. A GUI is designed to facilitate concept-based navigation which
enables queries across media resources of diverse types. A dual-root-node data
design links ontological reasoning with metadata, which provides a method for
defining hybrid semantic-quantitative relationships. Our application focuses on
archiving and retrieving non-text based media resources. The system
architecture supports sensory-rich display feedback with real time
interactivity for navigating documents' space. We argue an experience of
narratives evolves through the performitivity in the interactive narrative
structure when the constituents are mediated by common ontology. The
consequential experience identifies a renewed practice of oral tradition where
the accumulative sensorial propositions inform narratives, such as in
performance practice. Keywords: Documentary; ontology; authoring; media production; cognitive architecture;
oral tradition; GUI; interaction design | |||
| A Design Approach to Decentralized Interactive Environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 56-67 | |
| Harm van Essen; Pepijn Rijnbout; Mark de Graaf | |||
| We are exploring a design approach to the implementation of decentralized
intelligent environments. We adopt the research through design process by
creating an infrastructure of physical, interactive objects and explore the
potential of a decentralized philosophy in four design iterations. Open-ended
play serves as a fruitful context for design cases. Iterations of prototyping
and user testing facilitate the exploration of emergence. One of the design
outcomes is a simple decentralized system for soccer training which proved to
be very successful on challenge and motivation, and inspired players to invent
a range of games, both competitive and cooperative. Keywords: open-ended play; decentralized systems; research-through-design; ubiquitous
computing | |||
| Accessible Gaming through Mainstreaming Kinetic Controller | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 68-77 | |
| Yolanda Garrido; Álvaro Marco; Joaquín Segura; Teresa Blanco; Roberto Casas | |||
| Leisure is a very important aspect in our everyday life; and gaming is one
of the main ways to it. Depending on the particular situation of each person,
the way of playing could be very different. Motivation, preferences, skills,
knowledge are some of the factors that influences this experience. When the
person has a disability, additional agents come to scene such as cognitive
level and mobility. Besides the design of the game, these factors clearly
affect how the person interacts with the game; its user interface. In this
paper we present a tool that allows people with disabilities to play games with
a normalized user interface. This tool a) manages several wireless kinetic
remote controllers, e.g. the Wiimotes; b) can be configured to capture any
voluntary movements users could do and c) convert them into the specific inputs
required by existing adapted games. As a result, users with disabilities can
experience and enjoy games that were previously inaccessible to them. Keywords: user interface; people with disabilities; accessibility; games; kinetic
controllers; design for all | |||
| Interactive Play Objects: The Influence of Multimodal Output on Open-Ended Play | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 78-89 | |
| Eva Hopma; Tilde Bekker; Janienke Sturm | |||
| In this paper we investigate how providing multiple output modalities
affects open-ended play with interactive toys. We designed a play object which
reacts to children's physical behavior by providing multimodal output and we
compared it with a unimodal variant, focusing on the experience and creativity
of the children. In open-ended play children create their own games inspired by
the interaction with a play object. We show how the modalities affect the
number of games played, the type and diversity of games that the children
created, and the way children used the different feedback modalities as
inspiration for their games. Furthermore, we discuss the consequences of our
design choices on open-ended play. Keywords: open-ended play; creativity; social interaction; interactive toys; children;
multimodality; design | |||
| Swinxsbee: A Shared Interactive Play Object to Stimulate Children's Social Play Behaviour and Physical Exercise | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 90-101 | |
| Martijn Jansen; Tilde Bekker | |||
| This paper describes a study on the influence of personal and shared play
objects on the amount of social interaction. The study makes use of Swinxs, a
commercially available game console that uses the strength of digital games to
facilitate physically active games that can be played indoor or outdoor. A
Frisbee-like object called Swinxsbee has been designed to support new game
possibilities for Swinxs and stimulate social interaction. The results of a
user evaluation show that children playing with shared objects engage in more
social interaction than children playing with personal objects. Furthermore we
observed that when games require much physical activity, this might have a
negative influence on the level of social interaction, while games demanding
creativity might have a positive influence. Keywords: intelligent play objects; head-up play; social play behaviour | |||
| Affective Interface Adaptations in the Musickiosk Interactive Entertainment Application | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 102-109 | |
| L. Malatesta; A. Raouzaiou; L. Pearce; K. Karpouzis | |||
| The current work presents the affective interface adaptations in the
Musickiosk application. Adaptive interaction poses several open questions since
there is no unique way of mapping affective factors of user behaviour to the
output of the system. Musickiosk uses a non-contact interface and implicit
interaction through emotional affect rather than explicit interaction where a
gesture, sound or other input directly maps to an output behaviour -- as in
traditional entertainment applications. PAD model is used for characterizing
the different affective states and emotions. Keywords: affective interaction; adaptive interaction; interactive entertainment; PAD
model | |||
| iTheater Puppets Tangible Interactions for Storytelling | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 110-118 | |
| Oscar Mayora; Cristina Costa; Andrei Papliatseyeu | |||
| In this paper we present preliminary work on iTheater, an interactive
integrated system for story-creation and storytelling, dedicated to young
children. Based on the analogy with hand puppets' theatre, the system aims to
create an interactive environment where children will be able to give life to
their imaginary characters by creating, editing and recording computer
animations in a simple and exciting way, through the movement and tactile
manipulation of traditional hand puppets. The system merges the familiarity of
use of physical objects with the engaging richness of expression of sounds,
images and animations. The iTheater is conceived as a creative flexible toolkit
to create and tell stories, taking advantage of the new opportunities based on
the multimedia and interactive technologies. Keywords: Tangible interfaces; children; puppetry; edutainment; new hardware
technology for interaction and entertainment | |||
| Automatic and Interactive Key Posture Design by Combing the PIK with Parametric Posture Splicing | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 119-130 | |
| Shilei Li; Bing Wu; Jiahong Liang; Jiongming Su | |||
| Key posture design is commonly needed in computer animation. This paper
presents an automatic and interactive whole body posture designing technique by
combining the PIK (prioritized inverse kinematics) with the proposed parametric
human posture splicing technique. The key feature of PIK is that the user can
design a posture by adding high level constraints with different priorities.
However, the PIK is essentially a numerical IK algorithm which relies on the
iterative optimization starting from a good enough initial posture to get the
final result. To speed up the running efficiency and ensure the lifelikeness of
the final posture, the parametric posture splicing technique is proposed to
generate the initial guess of the PIK. According to the set of the high level
constraints, the whole body is divided into some partial parts, whose postures
are then generated by the parametric posture synthesis from a single posture
database. Then an initial posture guess with some main characteristics of the
finally acceptable posture can be generated approximately by splicing these
partial body postures together. Starting from this initial guess and with all
constraints considered at different priority levels, the PIK can be initialized
with a bias defined by this particularly initial guess and iterated step by
step to get a final posture. The total process of the whole body posture
generation is automatic and interactive. The experimental results show that
this combination method can not only improve the computation efficiency of the
PIK but also can simultaneously ensure the naturalness of the final posture. Keywords: character animation; posture designing; prioritized inverse kinematics;
parametric posture splicing | |||
| Web-Enabled 3D Game Playing for Looped Knight's Tour | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 131-142 | |
| Gregory C. L. Lum; David Y. Y. Yun | |||
| This paper elucidates the development of a 3D graphics display environment
that facilitates the finding of a closed Loop Knight's Tour (LKT) that uniquely
covers each grid in a 3D rectangular box. When LKT is played as a solitaire
game in 3D space, it is not only mentally challenging but also difficult for
the player to visualize the current or past (occupied) positions and to
consider any follow-on possibilities (open grids). These graphic facilities
simplify the visualization the global box as occupied and open grids and allow
the convenient examination of the sequential chain of knight's moves. Relevant
information and valuable relations are computed and displayed to assist the
player in choosing the next grid to occupy and closing the ends to form a loop.
This graphic game environment is Web enabled via Google's SketchUp. An online
community may be developed as users challenge one another by increasingly
difficult configurations. Keywords: knight's tour; closed-loop; 3D grid box; solitaire game; community
challenges; growing solved database; Web interaction; Google; SketchUp | |||
| Robosonic: Randomness-Based Manipulation of Sounds Assisted by Robots | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 143-152 | |
| Filipe Costa Luz; Rui Pereira Jorge; Vasco Bila | |||
| In this text, we intend to explore the possibilities of sound manipulation
in a context of augmented reality (AR) through the use of robots. We use the
random behaviour of robots in a limited space for the real-time modulation of
two sound characteristics: amplitude and frequency. We add the possibility of
interaction with these robots, providing the user the opportunity to manipulate
the physical interface by placing markers in the action space, which alter the
behaviour of the robots and, consequently, the audible result produced.
We intend to demonstrate through the agents, programming of random processes and direct manipulation of this application, that it is possible to generate empathy in interaction and obtain specific audible results, which would be difficult to otherwise reproduce due to the infinite loops that the interaction promotes. Keywords: Augmented Reality; Robots; Sound; Agents; Randomness; Communication;
Collaborative Composing | |||
| Turning Shortcomings into Challenges: Brain-Computer Interfaces for Games | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 153-168 | |
| Anton Nijholt; Boris Reuderink; Danny Oude Bos | |||
| In recent years we have seen a rising interest in brain-computer interfacing
for human-computer interaction and potential game applications. Until now,
however, we have almost only seen attempts where BCI is used to measure the
affective state of the user or in neurofeedback games. There have hardly been
any attempts to design BCI games where BCI is considered to be one of the
possible input modalities that can be used to control the game. One reason may
be that research still follows the paradigms of the traditional, medically
oriented, BCI approaches. In this paper we discuss current BCI research from
the viewpoint of games and game design. It is hoped that this survey will make
clear that we need to design different games than we used to, but that such
games can nevertheless be interesting and exciting. Keywords: Brain-computer Interfacing; Multimodal Interaction; Game Design | |||
| Immersion in Movement-Based Interaction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 169-180 | |
| Marco Pasch; Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze; Betsy van Dijk; Anton Nijholt | |||
| The phenomenon of immersing oneself into virtual environments has been
established widely. Yet to date (to our best knowledge) the physical dimension
has been neglected in studies investigating immersion in Human-Computer
Interaction (HCI). In movement-based interaction the user controls the
interface via body movements, e.g. direct manipulation of screen objects via
gestures or using a handheld controller as a virtual tennis racket. It has been
shown that physical activity affects arousal and that movement-based
controllers can facilitate engagement in the context of video games. This paper
aims at identifying movement features that influence immersion. We first give a
brief survey on immersion and movement-based interfaces. Then, we report
results from an interview study that investigates how users experience their
body movements when interacting with movement-based interfaces. Based on the
interviews, we identify four movement-specific features. We recommend them as
candidates for further investigation. Keywords: Movement-based interaction; exertion; immersion; engagement; flow; games;
entertainment | |||
| Mood Swings: An Affective Interactive Art System | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 181-186 | |
| Leticia S. S. Bialoskorski; Joyce H. D. M. Westerink; Egon L. van den Broek | |||
| The progress in the field of affective computing enables the realization of
affective consumer products, affective games, and affective art. This paper
describes the affective interactive art system Mood Swings, which interprets
and visualizes affect expressed by a person. Mood Swings is founded on the
integration of a framework for affective movements and a color model. This
enables Mood Swings to recognize affective movement characteristics as
expressed by a person and display a color that matches the expressed emotion.
With that, a unique interactive system is introduced, which can be considered
as art, a game, or a combination of both. Keywords: Mood Swings; affect; colors; movement; interaction | |||
| Navigating a Maze with Balance Board and Wiimote | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 187-192 | |
| Wim Fikkert; Niek Hoeijmakers; Paul van der Vet; Anton Nijholt | |||
| Input from the lower body in human-computer interfaces can be beneficial,
enjoyable and even entertaining when users are expected to perform tasks
simultaneously. Users can navigate a virtual (game) world or even an
(empirical) dataset while having their hands free to issue commands. We
compared the Wii Balance Board to a hand-held Wiimote for navigating a maze and
found that users completed this task slower with the Balance Board. However,
the Balance Board was considered more intuitive, easy to learn and 'much fun'. Keywords: H.5.2. User interfaces; Evaluation; Input devices and strategies | |||
| Experiences with Interactive Multi-touch Tables | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 193-200 | |
| Wim Fikkert; Michiel Hakvoort; Paul van der Vet; Anton Nijholt | |||
| Interactive multi-touch tables can be a powerful means of communication for
collaborative work as well as an engaging environment for competition. Through
enticing gameplay we have evaluated user experience on competitive gameplay,
collaborative work and musical expression. In addition, we report on our
extensive experiences with two types of interactive multi-touch tables and we
introduce a software framework that abstracts from their technical differences. Keywords: Interactive table display; User and developer experience | |||
| The Hyper-trapeze: A Physically Active Audio-Visual Interface for Performance and Play | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 201-206 | |
| Anne Hoekstra; Christoph Bartneck; Michael J. Lyons | |||
| This paper reports the design, implementation, and application of a new
interface for augmenting performance and play on the low flying trapeze.
Sensors were used to gauge the motion of the trapeze and performer, mapping the
data to control interactive sound and animation. The interface was tested in
the context of a new multimedia composition entitled "Autumn". Keywords: trapeze; performance interface; exertainment; exertion interface | |||
| Dead on Arrival: Adapting Games to Finish at a Given Time or Location | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 207-212 | |
| Arne von Öhsen; Jörn Loviscach | |||
| Casual and other games often serve as time-killing applications, be it on
the commuter train or in the back seat of a shared car. When one arrives at the
destination, the game has to be interrupted or aborted, which is annoying or
even frustrating. Hence, we propose to continuously adapt the game's level of
difficulty to the estimated remaining time to arrival. This can be preset as a
number of minutes or can continuously be estimated from the player's position
in relation to a predefined destination. Our dungeon-style prototype is based
on an automated engine for content placement and can also make use of GPS data.
We report on preliminary results from user tests. Keywords: game difficulty adaptation; automated content creation; GPS; location-based
service; casual games | |||
| Design and Implementation of a Mobile Exergaming Platform | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 213-220 | |
| Laurent Prévost; Olivier Liechti; Michael J. Lyons | |||
| This paper describes the design, implementation, and initial testing of a
reusable platform for the creation of pervasive games with geo-localization
services. We concentrate on role-playing games built by combining several types
of simpler mini-games having three major components: Quests; Collectables; and
Non-player characters (NPC). Quests encourage players to be active in their
physical environment and take part in collaborative play; Collectables provide
motivation; and NPCs enable player-friendly interaction with the platform. Each
of these elements poses different technical requirements, which were met by
implementing the gaming platform using the inTrack pervasive middle-ware being
developed by our group. Several sample games were implemented and tested within
the urban environment of Kyoto, Japan, using gaming clients running on mobile
phones from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile provider. Keywords: pervasive computing; exergaming; location-based service | |||
| Affective Pacman: A Frustrating Game for Brain-Computer Interface Experiments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 221-227 | |
| Boris Reuderink; Anton Nijholt; Mannes Poel | |||
| We present the design and development of Affective Pacman, a game that
induces frustration to study the effect of user state changes on the EEG
signal. Affective Pacman is designed to induce frustration for short periods,
and allows the synchronous recording of a wide range of sensors, such as
physiological sensors and EEG in addition to the game state. A self-assessment
is integrated in the game to track changes in user state. Preliminary results
indicate a significant effect of the frustration induction on the EEG. Keywords: Brain-Computer Interfaces; EEG; physiological sensors; frustration;
affective computing; Pacman | |||
| Stay Tuned! An Automatic RSS Feeds Trans-coder | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 228-233 | |
| Patrick Salamin; Alexandre Wetzel; Daniel Thalmann; Frédéric Vexo | |||
| News aggregators are widely used to read RSS feeds but they require the user
to be in front of a screen. While moving, people usually do not have any
display, or very small ones. Moreover, they need to perform actions to get
access to the news: download a tool, choose to generate audio files from the
news, and send them to e.g. an MP3 player. We propose in this paper a system
that automatically detects when the user leaves the computer room and directly
sends the trans-coded news onto the user Smartphone. All the aggregated news
are then transmitted to the user who can listen to them without any action. We
present in this paper such a system and the very promising results we obtained
after testing it. Keywords: User context awareness; RSS reader; Trans-coding; Geo-localization | |||
| An Experiment in Improvised Interactive Drama | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 234-239 | |
| Ivo Swartjes; Mariët Theune | |||
| To inform the design of interactive drama systems, we investigate the
experience of an interactor being part of a story that they can have a
fundamental influence on. Improvisational theatre might serve as a model for
this experience, where there is no pre-scripted plot; each of its actors shares
responsibility for the collaborative emergence of a story. This requires a
performer attitude from the interactor. We describe an experiment in which
improv actors create a story together with subjects who have no improv
experience, to find out how we can characterize this experience, and how it
might be achieved. Our results support a recent hypothesis that an interactor
in interactive drama might be treated as a collaborative performer rather than
an (antagonistic) player. Keywords: Interactive Storytelling; Dramatic Presence; Interactive Drama;
Improvisational Theatre | |||
| Big Fat Wand: A Pointing Device for Open Space Edutainment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 240-245 | |
| Toru Takahashi; Miki Namatame; Fusako Kusunoki; Takao Terano | |||
| This paper presents principles, functions, and experiments of a new
edutainment tool: Big Fat Wand (BFW). BFW is developed from a conventional
laser show device, however, it is modified to a small enough one to be used at
an open apace. BFW is connected to a laptop PC, which provides character,
symbol images, and/or animations. From experimental results, we conclude that
BFW is a good gear for a facilitator to educate and educate hearing-impaired
students. Keywords: Laser Show Device; Edutainment in an Open Space; Education for
Hearing-Impaired Students; Interactive Sessions | |||
| Enhancing Mediated Interpersonal Communication through Affective Haptics | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 246-251 | |
| Dzmitry Tsetserukou; Alena Neviarouskaya; Helmut Prendinger; Naoki Kawakami; Mitsuru Ishizuka; Susumu Tachi | |||
| Driven by the motivation to enhance emotionally immersive experience of
real-time messaging in 3D virtual world Second Life, we are proposing a
conceptually novel approach to reinforcing (intensifying) own feelings and
reproducing (simulating) the emotions felt by the partner through specially
designed system, iFeel_IM!. In the paper we are describing the development of
novel haptic devices (HaptiHeart, HaptiHug, HaptiTickler, HaptiCooler, and
HaptiWarmer) integrated into iFeel_IM! system, which architecture is presented
in detail. Keywords: Affective haptics; affective user interface; wearable devices | |||
| Opinion Elicitation in Second Life | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 252-257 | |
| Marijn van Vliet; Alena Neviarouskaya; Helmut Prendinger | |||
| The paper describes a novel method for opinion elicitation, which is based
on the popular 3D online world of "Second Life". Here people, as avatars, are
put into a somewhat realistic context related to the topic for which opinions
are sought. We hypothesize that this kind of concrete, interactive context
supports the evocation of opinions better than non-context methods, e.g. only
showing related images. To confirm our hypothesis, we conducted a small pilot
study, which compares the influence of static and interactive context methods
on the opinions expressed by subjects. The opinion elicitation scenario in
Second Life is supported by the automatic retrieval of opinions from the web.
The results of a study indicate that subjects show more reasoned opinions in
the interactive condition. A demo illustrating the content of this paper is
available. Keywords: Opinion elicitation; virtual worlds; avatars; subjectivity analysis | |||
| Hidden Markov Models Implementation for Tangible Interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 258-263 | |
| Piero Zappi; Elisabetta Farella; Luca Benini | |||
| Smart objects equipped with inertial sensors can recognize gestures and act
as tangible interfaces to interact with smart environments. Hidden Markov
Models (HMM) are a powerful tool for gesture recognition. Gesture recognition
with HMM is performed using the forward algorithm. In this paper we evaluate
the fixed point implementation of the forward algorithm for HMM to assess if
this implementation can be effective on resource constraint devices such as the
Smart Micrel Cube (SMCube). The SMCube is a tangible interfacet that embeds an
8-bit microcontroller running at 7.372 MHz. The complexity-performance trade
off has been explored, and a discussion on the critical steps of the algorithm
implementation is presented. Keywords: Smart Object; Hidden Markov Models; Tangible interfaces; Fixed point | |||