Digitally presenting physiological signals as biofeedback to users raises awareness of both body and mind. This paper describes the effectiveness of conveying a physiological signal often overlooked for communication: breathing. We present the design and development of digital breathing patterns and their evaluation along three output modalities: visual, audio, and haptic. We also present Breeze, a wearable pendant placed around the neck that measures breathing and sends biofeedback in real-time. We evaluated how the breathing patterns were interpreted in a fixed environment and gathered qualitative data on the wearable device's design. We found that participants intentionally modified their own breathing to match the biofeedback, as a technique for understanding the underlying emotion. Our results describe how the features of the breathing patterns and the feedback modalities influenced participants' perception. We include guidelines and suggested use cases, such as Breeze being used by loved ones to increase connectedness and empathy.

Mirror Puppeteering is a system for easily creating gestures ("animations") for robotic toys, custom robots, and virtual characters. Lay users can record animations by simply moving a robot's limbs in front of a webcam. Makers and hobbyists can use the system to easily set up their custom-built robots for animation. Gamers and amateur animators can real-time control or save animations for virtual characters. Our system works by tracking circular markers on the robot's surface and translating these into motor commands, using a calibration map between marker locations in camera space and motor angles. New robots can be quickly set up for Mirror Puppeteering without knowledge of the robot's 3D structure, as we demonstrate on several robots. In a user study, participants found our method more enjoyable, usable, easy to learn, and successful than traditional animation methods.

Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) encounter great difficulties mastering self-feeding. We set out to assess the self-feeding skills of young children with CP via a novel instrumented spoon that monitors upper extremity biomechanics involved in eating. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process, consisting of a focus group with domain experts, and rapid-prototyping. We discuss the physical, assessment and safety requirements for the spoon. In addition, we explain the potential of tangible interfaces to provide professional caregivers with valuable information regarding each child.

Typically developing children usually master selffeeding by the age of three years. However, children with Cerebral Palsy and other developmental disabilities encounter great difficulties acquiring this instrumental ability. In an effort to motivate young eaters in the process of acquiring selffeeding abilities, we set out to develop ExciteTray a customized selffeeding assistive technology. We describe the initial stages of an iterative design process consisting of interviews with domain experts, rapidprototyping, and evaluations with children. Based on our findings, we formulated preliminary design principles for a selffeeding assistive technology: draw attention without causing distraction; motivate the child during the various stages of selffeeding; facilitate facetoface interaction between caregiver and child; adapt feedback to the cognitive and motor ability of each child. We explain how these principles were implemented in a prototype, discuss safety considerations and describe future work.

We present a method for rapidly prototyping interactive robot skins using flexible 3D printed material and analogue air pressure sensors. We describe a set of building blocks for presenting affordances for different manipulations (twist, bend, stretch, etc.). Each building block is a hollow air chamber that can be printed as an integral part of the skin to easily add sensing capabilities over any broad area. Changes in volume caused by manipulating the chambers are captured using air pressure sensors; the sensors can be plugged in and removed, allowing rapid iteration on new designs. We demonstrate our method by prototyping three robot skins that attach to the Keepon Pro armature. With fully operational robot skins, we can study the dependencies between appearance, movement, and interactions at a deeper level than would previously be possible at the concept stage.

We present a method for designing and constructing rugged and soft multi-point sensors. Interactions applied to a soft material are reduced to structural units of deformation. These structures can then be embedded and instrumented anywhere inside a soft sensor. This simplification lets us design complex, durable sensors in easily manufacturable ways. In particular, we present a construction method of layering electronics between silicone pours to easily create sensors for arbitrary combinations of these deformations. We present several prototype sensors and discuss applications including toys, games, and therapy.

We present a new tongue input device, the tongue joystick, for use by an actor inside an articulated-head character costume. Using our device, the actor can maneuver through a dialogue tree, selecting clips of prerecorded audio to hold a conversation in the voice of the character. The device is constructed of silicone sewn with conductive thread, a unique method for creating rugged, soft, low-actuation force devices. This method has application for entertainment and assistive technology. We compare our device against other portable mouth input devices, showing it to be the fastest and most accurate in tasks mimicking our target application. Finally, we show early results of an actor inside an articulated-head costume using the tongue joystick to interact with a child.