This paper introduces Glissade, a digital pen that generates balance shifting feedback by changing the weight distribution of the pen. A pulley system shifts a brass mass inside the pen to change the pen's center of mass and moment of inertia. When the mass is stationary, the pen delivers a constant yet natural sensation of weight, which can be used to convey a status. The pen can also generate a variety of haptic clues by actuating the mass according to the tilt or rotation of the pen, two commonly-used auxiliary pen input channels. Glissade demonstrates new possibilities that balance shifting feedback can bring to digital pen interactions. We validated the usability of this feedback by determining the recognizability of six balance patterns – a mix of static and dynamic patterns chosen based on our design considerations – in two controlled experiments. The results show that, on average, the participants could distinguish between the patterns with a 94.25% accuracy. At the end, we demonstrate a set of novel interactions enabled by Glissade and discuss the directions for future research.

We propose generating two-dimensional skin stretch feedback on the user's legs. Skin stretch is useful cutaneous feedback to induce the perception of virtual textures and illusory forces and to deliver directional cues. This feedback has been applied to the head, body, and upper limbs to simulate rich physical properties in virtual reality (VR). However, how to expand the benefit of skin stretch feedback and apply it to the lower limbs, remains to be explored. Our first two psychophysical studies examined the minimum changes in skin stretch distance and stretch angle that are perceivable by participants. We then designed and implemented Gaiters, a pair of ungrounded, leg-worn devices, each of which is able to generate multiple two-dimensional skin stretches on the skin of the user's leg. With Gaiters, we conducted an exploratory study to understand participants' experiences when coupling skin stretch patterns with various lower limb actions. The results indicate that rich haptic experiences can be created by our prototype. Finally, a user evaluation indicates that participants enjoyed the experiences when using Gaiters and considered skin stretch as compelling haptic feedback on the legs.

The human ear is highly sensitive and accessible, making it especially suitable for being used as an interface for interacting with smart earpieces or augmented glasses. However, previous works on ear-based input mainly address gesture sensing technology and researcher-designed gestures. This paper aims to bring more understandings of gesture design. Thus, for a user elicitation study, we recruited 28 participants, each of whom designed gestures for 31 smart device-related tasks. This resulted in a total of 868 gestures generated. Upon the basis of these gestures, we compiled a taxonomy and concluded the considerations underlying the participants' designs that also offer insights into their design rationales and preferences. Thereafter, based on these study results, we propose a set of user-defined gestures and share interesting findings. We hope this work can shed some light on not only sensing technologies of ear-based input, but also the interface design of future wearable interfaces.

We propose integrating an array of skin stretch modules with an head-mounted display (HMD) to provide two-dimensional skin stretch feedback on the user's face. Skin stretch has been found effective to induce the perception of force (e.g. weight or inertia) and to enable directional haptic cues. However, its potential as an HMD output for virtual reality (VR) remains to be exploited. Our explorative study firstly investigated the design of shear tactors. Based on our results, Masque has been implemented as an HMD prototype actuating six shear tactors positioned on the HMD's face interface. A comfort study was conducted to ensure that skin stretches generated by Masque are acceptable to all participants. The following two perception-based studies examined the minimum changes in skin stretch distance and stretch angles that are detectable by participants. The results help us to design haptic profiles as well as our prototype applications. Finally, the user evaluation indicates that participants welcomed Masque and regarded skin stretch feedback as a worthwhile addition to HMD output.

This paper presents a low complexity speech coder with the adaptive Minimum-Maximum Scalar Quantization (MMSQ) method suitable for binaural communication in hearing aids. Compared to the fixed rate MMSQ, the adaptive MMSQ can achieve similar or better compression ratio with 13dB SNR improvement. The final codec implementation with 0.18um CMOS process only costs 6K gate count with 118uW power consumption.