In office environments, achieving flexible workspace configurations by adjusting the position, height, and curvature of partitions is crucial for accommodating diverse worker needs, but implementing such flexibility typically introduces system complexities. We present OrigamiWalls, a robotic partitioning system that addresses this trade-off by using origami structures to permit diverse configurations without requiring high-degree-of-freedom actuation. Based on expert insights, we explore the OrigamiWalls design space and report on the implementation of the desktop-scale and floor-scale prototypes utilizing the Tachi-Miura polyhedron structure. These prototypes can transition continuously between three distinct forms (no wall, curved wall, and flat wall) with high expansion ratios (up to 660%) using a single reel-type linear actuator. Our preliminary user study with our desktop-scale prototype suggests that origami-based shape changes are perceived to enable task-adaptive workspace configurations and support workers’ task transitions unobtrusively and safely.

Smartphone usage in public spaces can raise privacy concerns, in terms of shoulder surfing and unintended camera capture. In real-world public space settings, we investigated the impact of tangible privacy-enhancing tools (here: screen filter and camera slider) on smartphone users’ reported privacy perception, behavioral adaptations, usability and social dynamics. We conducted a mixed-method, in-the-wild study (N = 22) using off-the-shelf smartphone privacy tools. We investigated subjective behavioral transition by combining questionnaires with semi-structured interviews. Participants used the screen filter and the camera slider for two weeks; they reported changes in attitude and behavior after using a screen filter including screen visibility and comfort when using phones publicly. They explained decreased privacy-protective behaviors, such as actively covering their screens, suggesting a shift in perceived risk. Qualitative findings about the camera slider suggested underlying psychological mechanisms, including privacy awareness and concerns about social perception, while also offering insights regarding the tools’ effectiveness.

Generative AI tools can provide people with the ability to create virtual environments and scenes with natural language prompts. Yet, how people will formulate such prompts is unclear—particularly when they inhabit the environment that they are designing. For instance, it is likely that a person might say, “Put a chair here,” while pointing at a location. If such linguistic and embodied features are common to people’s prompts, we need to tune models to accommodate them. In this work, we present a Wizard of Oz elicitation study with 22 participants, where we studied people’s implicit expectations when verbally prompting such programming agents to create interactive VR scenes. Our findings show when people prompted the agent, they had several implicit expectations of these agents: (1) they should have an embodied knowledge of the environment; (2) they should understand embodied prompts by users; (3) they should recall previous states of the scene and the conversation, and that (4) they should have a commonsense understanding of objects in the scene. Further, we found that participants prompted differently when they were prompting in situ (i.e. within the VR environment) versus ex situ (i.e. viewing the VR environment from the outside). To explore how these lessons could be applied, we designed and built Ostaad, a conversational programming agent that allows non-programmers to design interactive VR experiences that they inhabit. Based on these explorations, we outline new opportunities and challenges for conversational programming agents that create VR environments.

The CoM-ZMP model represents the dominant behaviour of bipedal locomotion with surface contact. However, once the centre of mass (CoM) position goes out of a predefined spatial plane, the horizontal dynamics of the model can couple with its vertical dynamics to be nonlinear. This study theoretically investigates the properties of the 3-dimensional zero moment point (ZMP), lying apart from the actual ground to resolve the coupling. The presented discussion includes the compatibility of the 3D ZMP with ZMPs used in preceding research, such as the linear inverted pendulum mode, the existence of a virtual repellent point considering the arbitrary vertical CoM motion, the parameter invariance of the CoM-ZMP model, and feasible regions of the ZMP.

Room-scale VR has been considered an alternative to physical office workspaces. For office activities, users frequently require planar input methods, such as typing or handwriting, to quickly record annotations to virtual content. However, current off-the-shelf VR HMD setups rely on mid-air interactions, which can cause arm fatigue and decrease input accuracy. To address this issue, we propose UbiSurface, a robotic touch surface that can automatically reposition itself to physically present a virtual planar input surface (VR whiteboard, VR canvas, etc.) to users and to permit them to achieve accurate and fatigue-less input while walking around a virtual room. We design and implement a prototype of UbiSurface that can dynamically change a canvas-sized touch surface's position, height, and pitch and yaw angles to adapt to virtual surfaces spatially arranged at various locations and angles around a virtual room. We then conduct studies to validate its technical performance and examine how UbiSurface facilitates the user's primary mid-air planar interactions, such as painting and writing in a room-scale VR setup. Our results indicate that this system reduces arm fatigue and increases input accuracy, especially for writing tasks. We then discuss the potential benefits and challenges of robotic touch devices for future room-scale VR setups.

We propose WaddleWalls, a room-scale interactive partitioning system using a swarm of robotic partitions that allows occupants to interactively reconfigure workspace partitions to satisfy their privacy and interaction needs. The system can automatically arrange the partitions’ layout designed by the user on demand. The user specifies the target partition’s position, orientation, and height using the controller’s 3D manipulations. In this work, we discuss the design considerations of the interactive partition system and implement WaddleWalls’ proof-of-concept prototype assembled with off-the-shelf materials. We demonstrate the functionalities of WaddleWalls through several application scenarios in an open-planned office environment. We also conduct an initial user evaluation that compares WaddleWalls with conventional wheeled partitions, finding that WaddleWalls allows effective workspace partitioning and mitigates the physical and temporal efforts needed to fulfill ad hoc social and privacy requirements. Finally, we clarify the feasibility, potential, and future challenges of WaddleWalls through an interview with experts.

This paper presents a method for biped gait generation along a predefined curve with fully stretched knees. First, we design a spatial gait pattern as a function of the traveled distance on the path without considering dynamics. Then, a consistent dynamic walking motion is obtained by optimization that minimizes the zero-moment point and the speed errors while considering the trade-off between kinematics and dynamics. This method generalizes the spatially quantized dynamics-based gait generation, which is our former method restricted to straight paths, to walk on arbitrary curves. The generated gaits are validated by dynamic simulation.

We explore BouncyScreen, an actuated 1D display system that enriches indirect interaction with a virtual object by pseudo-haptic feedback mechanics enhanced through the screen's physical movements. We configured a proof-of-concept prototype of BouncyScreen with a flat-screen mounted on a mobile robot. When the user manipulates a virtual object using virtual reality (VR) controllers, the screen moves in accordance with the virtual object. We conducted psychophysical studies to examine how BouncyScreen's physical movements would affect users' pseudo-haptic perceptions and interaction experiences. Our preliminary study using a weight discrimination task for object pushing interaction showed that BouncyScreen offers identical pseudo-force feedback to the vision-based pseudo-haptic technique. We conducted a follow-up psychophysical study using a weight magnitude estimation task for object pushing and bumping interactions. The results reveal that a users' perceived weight magnitude is enhanced by the screen's physical motion under different characteristics depending on interaction styles (i.e., pushing and bumping). Our study also confirmed that the screen's synchronous physical motions significantly enhance the reality of the interaction and the sense of presence. We close this paper with some applications and use suggestions for BouncyScreen in future HMD-free flat-screen 3D user interface systems.

We present “Be Bait!”, a unique virtual fishing experience that allows the user to become a bait by lying on the hammocks, instead of holding a fishing rod. We implement the hammock-based locomotion method with haptic feedback mechanisms. In our demonstration, users can enjoy exploring a virtual underwater world and fighting with fishes in direct and intuitive ways.