Increased levels of interactivity and multi-sensory stimulation have been shown to enhance the immersion of Virtual Reality experiences. We present the AirRes mask that enables users to utilize their breathing for precise natural interactions with the virtual environment without suffering from limitations of the sensing equipment such as motion artifacts. Furthermore, the AirRes mask provides breathing resistance as novel output modality that can be adjusted in real-time by the application. In a user study, we demonstrate the mask’s precision measurements for interaction as well as its ability to use breathing resistance to communicate contextual information such as adverse environmental conditions that affect the user’s virtual avatar. Our results show that the AirRes mask enhances virtual experiences and has the potential to create more immersive scenarios for applications by enforcing the perception of danger or improving situational awareness in training simulations, or for psychotherapy by providing additional physical stimuli.

The accurate assessment of nutrition information is a challenging task, but crucial for people with certain diseases, such as diabetes. An important part of the assessment of nutrition information is portion estimation, i.e. volume estimation. Given the volume and the food type, the nutrition information can be computed on the basis of the food type specific nutrition density. Recently mobile devices with depth sensors have been made available for the public (Google's project tango platform). In this work, an app for mobile devices with a depth sensor is presented which assists users in portion estimation. Furthermore, we present the design of a user study for the app and preliminary results.

Patients with Frozen Shoulder suffer from a decreased mobility and pain. Exercise-based physiotherapy is a common treatment and patients mostly perform the exercises at home. Correct exercise performance and compliance are the main issues in home-based therapy of Frozen Shoulder patients. To support patients diagnosed with Frozen Shoulder, a multimodal 3D smartphone app was designed, developed and evaluated. Additional to ten potential users, one physician, five physiotherapists, three computer scientists, two 3D artists and one HCI specialist were involved in the co-creation process. The app was evaluated by five patients during a three-week pilot study, which showed the feasibility of our approach. Exercise correctness, usage of multimodal instructions and user satisfaction were analyzed. Exercise correctness was nearly perfect and the interactive 3D animation was used for exercise instructions. Satisfaction using the app was rated very high according to SUS score. The results confirm that the co-creation process led to an effective, highly satisfactory and actually used system.

Accurate assessment of nutrition information is an important part in the prevention and treatment of a multitude of diseases, but remains a challenging task. We present a novel mobile augmented reality application, which assists users in the nutrition assessment of their meals. The user sketches the 3D form of the food and selects the food type. The corresponding nutrition information is automatically computed.