Summary: We introduce SATURNO, a shadow-pushing lamp that helps users to focus more on tasks at the desk environment. Hanged from the ceiling, the wide oval ring-shaped SATURNO detects the location information of the user's hand from infrared proximity sensors. When the user simply reach out the hand to the position that s/he wants to brighten up to diminish interrupting shadows, it gives more light to the part detected and reduces other lights that makes irritating shadows, which looks like a pushing shadows. The gentle un-touching interaction of managing the brightness of each lights and the overall shape design of SATURNO can support users' concentration, especially delicate working like drawing or taking notes.

Keywords: Design for people with disabilities; User interface design; Exoskeleton; Glove Interface

Summary: This paper presents an evaluation and recommendations for the improvement of the user interface (UI) of medical exoskeleton robots for people with mobility disorders. Existing UIs of currently available medical exoskeletons lack the flexibility to serve a diverse user group who require more customization. A UI prototype consisting of a glove with buttons attached on fingertips, and a display module for user feedback and/or instruction was developed and evaluated. For the evaluation of this UI prototype, multiple usability tests, guerrilla tests, interviews, and surveys were conducted with several crutch and manual wheelchair users. Finally, a set of final Glove UI design recommendations is illustrated based on the test subjects and interviewees' feedback; finger glove, two buttons, singleton walking method, and adjustable display position. A more thorough evaluation on this improved UI with more potential users of medical exoskeletons with various physical abilities remains as future work.

Keywords: Event detection; wireless sensor networks; survey

Summary: In typical wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor nodes have limited resources such as battery power, computing capability and memory. Creating an event detection method comprising with those resource limitations is not an easy task and this sets several challenges. In this paper, we first describe challenges in event detection in WSNs. Then, we investigate the previous studies that have been done for solving those challenges.

Keywords: Event Recognition; Event Type Classification; TimeML; Time-Bank; WordNet; Combined Features

Summary: The goal of this research is to devise a method for recognizing and classifying TimeML events in a more effective way. TimeML is the most recent annotation scheme for processing the event and temporal expressions in natural language processing fields. In this paper, we argue and demonstrate that unit feature dependency information and deep-level WordNet hypernyms are useful for event recognition and type classification. The proposed method utilizes various features including lexical semantic and dependency-based combined features. The experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms a state-of-the-art approach, mainly due to the new strategies. Especially, the performance of noun and adjective events, which have been largely ignored and yet significant, is significantly improved.

Summary: We introduce IP over Xylophone Players (IPoXP), a novel Internet protocol between two computers using xylophone-based Arduino interfaces. In our implementation, human operators are situated within the lowest layer of the network, transmitting data between computers by striking designated keys. We discuss how IPoXP inverts the traditional mode of human-computer interaction, with a computer using the human as an interface to communicate with another computer.

Keywords: human-centered design, information interfaces and presentation, pen and tactile input, pen-based uis and education, user-centered design

Summary: Pen-based Flash Cards Application ("application") offers the flexibility of handwritten input while benefiting a wide set of users to increase their memory retention. It is particularly useful in learning mathematics where typing the material using a keyboard can be difficult. In this study, we describe the observations and major findings in a two-year case study in an eighth-grade geometry class. We found that this application may enhance teacher-student interaction, increase autonomy in students for self-guided learning, and encourage collaborative learning.