When infants are hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) due to prematurity, low birth weight, or congenital conditions, families are physically separated from their infants. In particular, young siblings are frequently restricted from visiting due to infection control and safety considerations. Our preliminary web-based survey revealed a gap between parents’ desire for sibling visitation and the actual opportunities available. To address this issue, we investigated the potential of a multisensory online visitation approach. We adopted an embodied online visitation system that connects the NICU and a pediatric outpatient via a network, allowing siblings and parents to experience real-time audiovisual information of the infant combined with heartbeat-synchronized vibrotactile feedback. Compared to conventional screen-based visitation, the multisensory system was associated with increased perceived closeness to the infant. Siblings generally exhibited positive feelings, and parents valued the opportunity to share the experience as a family. These findings point to the design value of enabling shared family co-experience as a means of supporting sibling–infant bonding in healthcare contexts.

Prolonged hospitalization in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) limits family–infant interaction, affecting parental mental health and bonding. We proposed a multisensory embodied online visitation system that supports family–infant interaction despite physical separation through a chest-held device delivering live video and vibrotactile heartbeat sensation from the infant. Preliminary interviews with families suggested that the system enhanced a sense of holding the infant, while also revealing design issues related to device tactile qualities. Based on families’ feedback, we prepared six texture types and evaluated them with NICU nurses who routinely care for neonates. The bean bag cushion with an embedded vibrotactile actuator ranked highest, as it better evoked the act of holding an infant by fitting naturally in the arms. Qualitative insights further highlighted softness and deformability as key factors. These findings inform device design for enhancing embodiment in online visitation and supporting family-centered neonatal care.

Prolonged hospitalization of newborns (e.g., extremely preterm infants or extremely low birth weight infants) in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) often limits physical interactions between parents and their infants, potentially impairing parental mental health and parent-child bonding.Research has shown that skin-to-skin contact reduces postpartum depression and enhances parental sensitivity.However, in-person visitation is often restricted by factors such as time and geographical barriers.This study introduces an online system for embodied communication, where families hold a haptic feedback device with a display against their chest as if holding an infant.The device allows families to view live video of their infant while feeling their infant's heartbeat through vibrotactile feedback.The system was evaluated against two types of online visitation: screen-based visuals only and screen-based visuals with vibrotactile feedback.The proposed system improved parents' psychological closeness to their infant, giving a sense of holding their infant and offering comfort.These findings emphasize the value of multisensory interfaces in family-centered neonatal care.

Tactile sensation contributes to sensory-motor control and facilitates skillful manipulation of objects. If the tactile sensation can be shared between two partners, the state of each partner can be partially observed by the other, and the possibilities for cooperative work may be expanded. Recently, examples of utilizing tactile sensation in human-robot cooperative work have been proposed. For cooperative work between people, it is necessary to investigate the basic ability of humans to identify other person's motions and operations by tactile presentation. To avoid hindering work performed with the hands and fingertips, the sensation must be presented elsewhere. This study investigates the possibility of identifying other person's tool operations by presenting tactile information induced on his/her finger with a wearable vibrator on the arm. A wearable skin vibration sensor was employed to acquire tactile information during an experiment in which five different tool operations were tested. This sensor measures skin vibration while directly touching the target. We proposed a non-linear signal processing function to adjust the intensity of the skin vibration to within the range of human sensitivity for tactile presentation. We compared vibrotactile stimulation between the non-linear and linear corrections, and then conducted experiments on identifying operations. The results showed that the non-linear correction increased small signals and enhanced the variance of large signals, and that operations were significantly identified by tactile presentation to the arm.

A monitoring system that does not disturb learners' motivation and attention is important, especially in online learning with massive numbers of participants. We propose a learning system, called the finger trail learning system (FTLS), that can monitor participants' learning attitude by means of their finger movements. On the display of the FTLS, letters are presented with low contrast in the initial state, and the contrast of the letters changes to high when they are traced by learners. We implemented the FTLS as an iOS application and confirmed that the software can be utilized to monitor learners' attitudes. In addition, we compared trails of finger movements between participants with high and low performance. The results show that the trail of finger movements recorded by the FTLS can be an index of learners' attitudes.

As a low-cost information display in public spaces, we achieved a multi-slit display by the arrangement of LED columns. Multi-slits visually present an image pattern through columns of slits that are arranged several spaces wide. They cannot be perceived image by stop patterns, but they can be perceived by scroll patterns. In this paper, we experimentally show that stereoscopic vision is possible by presenting binocular parallax images that impart the beam direction from slits.

Empathy is important for our society and individuals, since it is what facilitates our interactions and connections to the other people around us. Our experience-based installation "empathetic heartbeat" aims to have the participant remind the existence of his/her heart in the internal body and recognize that our bodies are medium for feeling empathy with others. Here we describe the concept of the installation and participant's experience.

In this paper, we propose novel software to read text documents with tablet PCs and describe its installation plan. The software, "Yu bi Yomu," was developed as an iOS application, supposing to work on the Apple iPad. In that software, the contrast of displayed texts is changed dynamically in response to users' trailing behavior. In the installation, we will project the displays of tablet PCs operating "Yu bi Yomu" onto large screens attached to the wall or floor. The installation using this novel software provides new reading experiences.

When a single column of light sources flashes quickly in a temporal pattern during a horizontal saccade eye movement, two-dimensional images can be perceived in the space neighboring the light source. This perceptual phenomenon has been applied to light devices for visual arts and entertainment. However, a serious drawback in exploiting this perceptual phenomenon for a visual information display is that a two-dimensional image cannot be viewed if there is any discrepancy between the ocular motility and the flicker timing. We overcame this drawback by combining the saccade-based display with an electro-ocular-graph-based sensor for detecting the saccade. The saccade onset is measured with the electro-ocular-graph-based sensor in real time and the saccade-based display is activated instantaneously as the saccade begins. The psychophysical experiments described in this article demonstrates that the method that we used can detect saccades with low latency and allows the saccade-based display to convey visual information more effectively than when the light sources continuously blink regardless of the observer's eye movements.