Musicians with significant mobility limitations, face unique challenges in being able to use their bodies to interact with fans during live performances. In this paper we present the results of a collaboration between a professional DJ with advanced Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and a group of technologists and researchers culminating in two public live performances leveraging human augmentation technologies to enhance the artist’s stage presence. Our system combines Brain Machine Interface, and accelerometer based trigger, to select pre-programmed moves performed by robotic arms during a live event, as well as for facilitating direct physical interaction during a “Meet the DJ” event. Our evaluation includes ethnographic observations and interviews with the artist and members of the audience. Results show that the system allowed artist and audience to feel a sense of unity, expanded the imagination of creative possibilities, and challenged conventional perceptions of disability in the arts and beyond.

During the grieving process, physical objects often serve as catalysts for remembering and honouring the relationship with departed loved ones. Leveraging a participatory design approach, we created Be.side, a fully customisable multi-modal artefact that incorporates scent, sound, and heartbeat stimulation and acts as a touch-point between the deceased and the bereaved. We conducted a four-week study with three participants to understand how the artefact, continuously attuned to each participant, helped to continue bonds with the deceased. Our results show that Be.side’s bespoke elements helped participants to evoke memories of the deceased. Participants created personalised rituals for remembrance. They sustained bonds by not only interacting with Be.side but also participating in the research. Finally, highlighting that remembrance can both provide comfort and deepen sadness, we discuss future design considerations.

Skin temperature is an important physiological factor for human hand dexterity. Leveraging this feature, we engineered an exoskeleton, called DexteriSync, that can dynamically adjust the user’s finger dexterity and induce different thermal perceptions by modulating finger skin temperature. This exoskeleton comprises flexible silicone-copper tube segments, 3D-printed finger sockets, a 3D-printed palm base, a pump system, and a water temperature control with a storage unit. By realising an embodied experience of compromised dexterity, DexteriSync can help product designers understand the lived experience of compromised hand dexterity, such as that of the elderly and/or neurodivergent users, when designing daily necessities for them.

TeleStick is a system that records and replicates tactile experience and visual information using common types of camera and video monitor environment. TeleStick uses a stick-type device with a tactile microphone attached to a camera so that it is consistently visible in the video, and records video and with tactile and audio information using stereo 2ch. The users can feel as if they were in the video as they watch it while holding a stick-type device with a speaker and a vibrator.

We propose a drawing method to create large-scale pictures in public space. We use a property of anisotropic reflection to show images on the grass field. We created a prototype of roller type device which can control the angle of grass. We observed that our system entertains people in public exhibition.

In this paper, we propose an electric power management system for delivering power to home appliances with mobile robots. With our system, the user places an appliance without power cables freely within the home, and a robot provides the appliance with the electric power required for its operation. In addition to providing explanations of a usage scenario and a theoretical analysis, we demonstrate a prototype implementation. The robot of the prototype autonomously locates the target appliance, transfers its battery power to the appliance, and returns to the home position to recharge its battery. The validation study showed our proof-of-concept prototype worked as expected by the theory.

We devised a display technology that utilizes the phenomenon whereby the shading properties of fur change as the fibers are raised or flattened. One can erase drawings by first flattening the fibers by sweeping the surface by hand in the fiber's growth direction, and then draw lines by raising the fibers by moving the finger in the opposite direction. These material properties can be found in various items such as carpets in our living environments. We have developed three different devices to draw patterns on a "fur display" utilizing this phenomenon: a roller device, a pen device and pressure projection device. Our technology can turn ordinary objects in our environment into rewritable displays without requiring or creating any non-reversible modifications to them. In addition, it can be used to present large-scale image without glare, and the images it creates require no running costs to maintain.

This paper introduces an input and output device that enables illumination, bi-directional data communication, and position sensing on a soft cloth. This "LightCloth" is woven from diffusive optical fibers. Since the fibers are arranged in parallel, the cloth has one-dimensional position information. Sensor-emitter pairs attached to bundles of contiguous fibers enable bundle-specific light input and output. We developed a prototype system that allows full-color illumination and 8-bit data input by infrared signals. We present as an application a chair with a LightCloth cover whose illumination pattern is specified using an infrared light pen. Here we describe the implementation details of the device and discuss possible interactions using the device.

We propose an AR-based painting interface that enables users to design an illumination distribution for a real room using an array of computer-controlled lights. Users specify an illumination distribution of the room by painting on the image obtained by a camera mounted in the room. The painting result is overlaid on the camera image as contour lines of the target illumination intensity. The system runs an optimization interactively to calculate light parameters to deliver the requested illumination condition. In this implementation, we used actuated lights that can change the lighting direction to generate the requested illumination condition more accurately and efficiently than static lights. We built a miniature-scale experimental environment and ran a user study to compare our method with a standard direct manipulation method using widgets. The results showed that the users preferred our method for informal light control.

Human-robot interaction (HRI) tasks in everyday environments will require people to direct or lead a robot as they walk in close proximity to it. Tasks that exemplify this interaction include a robotic porter, carrying heavy suitcases, or a robot carrying groceries. As many users may not be robotics experts, we argue that such interaction schemes must be accessible, easy to use and understand. In this paper, we present a dog-leash interface that enables a person to lead a robot simply by holding the leash, following a dog-leash interaction metaphor. We introduce variants on dog-leash robotic interaction, present our original interface implementation, and detail our formal qualitative evaluation, exploring how users perceive and accept the dog leash robotic interaction.

This paper introduces a simple algorithm for non-prehensile object transportation by a pushing robot on a flat surface. We assume that the global position and orientation of the robot and objects are known. The system computes a dipole field around the object and moves the robot along the field. This simple algorithm resolves many subtle issues in implementing reliable pushing behaviors, such as collision avoidance, error recovery, and multi-robot coordination. We verify the effectiveness of the algorithm via several experiments with varying robot and object form factors. Although object delivery by pushing and motion control by a vector field are not new, the proposed algorithm offers easier implementation with fewer parameter adjustments because of its mode-less definition and scale-invariant formulation.