Gestures are a promising candidate as an input modality for ambient computing where conventional input modalities such as touchscreens are not available. Existing works have focused on gesture recognition using image sensors. However, their cost, high battery consumption, and privacy concerns made cameras challenging as an always-on solution. This paper introduces an efficient gesture recognition technique using a miniaturized 60 GHz radar sensor. The technique recognizes four directional swipes and an omni-swipe using a radar chip (6.5 × 5.0 mm) integrated into a mobile phone. We developed a convolutional neural network model efficient enough for battery powered and computationally constrained processors. Its model size and inference time is less than 1/5000 compared to an existing gesture recognition technique using radar. Our evaluations with large scale datasets consisting of 558,000 gesture samples and 3,920,000 negative samples demonstrated our algorithm’s efficiency, robustness, and readiness to be deployed outside of research laboratories.

Over the past years the technology push and the creation of new technological materials made available on the market many new smart materials. Smart Material Interfaces (SMIs) want to take advantage of these materials to overcome traditional patterns of interaction, leaving behind the "digital feeling" by a more continuous space of interaction, tightly coupling digital and physical world by means of the smart materials' properties. With this workshop about SMIs, we want to draw attention to the emerging field, stimulating research and development in interfaces that make use of smart materials and encourage new and different modalities of interaction.

In this paper we describe a co-located suite of games on a tabletop device to support social competence training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This suite has been designed to use patterns of collaboration to support therapists in their use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). In this paper, we discuss the observations collected during a field study where two therapists used the system for social competence training sessions with 8 children. We conclude with lessons learned from meshing software enhanced collaboration within the CBT model.

This article presents the design of Iromec, a modular robot companion tailored towards engaging in social exchanges with children with different disabilities with the aim to empower them to discover a wide rage of play styles from solitary to social and cooperative play. In particular this paper focuses on the user-centred design approach taken to develop a robot able to engage in meaningful interaction with different typologies of disable children - Autistic children, Moderate Mentally Retarded children and Severe Motor Impaired children. Modularity and configurability contribute to the flexibility of the system in creating rewarding games that can be easily understood by the child and can promote fun and learning. Other key features of the system are the combination of autonomous and user-controlled behaviour and a strong emphasis on identity and expressiveness that can be dynamically adapted during play. A main contribution of this work is the lessons learned in applying a user-centred perspective in designing the robot: from user requirements to concept design, from the initial prototype evaluation to the redesign and the final testing.

The workshop addresses the emerging field of research on robotics, assistive technologies and interaction design promoting play for physically, visually, and hearing impaired children and for emotionally and mentally handicapped children. Interactive devices including toys, pets and educational tools as well as interactive collaborative environments may represent a unique opportunity for disable children to full engage in play and have fun. The Creative Interactive Play workshop presents a collection of innovative interactive technologies and case studies for inclusive play and discusses the challenges and opportunities they can bid to disabled children.

This article presents the design of Iromec, a modular robot companion tailored towards engaging in social exchanges with children with different disabilities with the aim to empower them to discover a wide rage of play styles from solitary to social and cooperative play. In particular this paper focuses on the design of play scenarios and specific robot features for engaging in meaningful interaction with different typologies of disable children - Autistic children, Moderate Mentally Retarded children and Severe Motor Impaired children. Modularity and configurability contribute to the flexibility of the system in creating rewarding games that can be easily understood by the child and can promote fun and learning. Other key features of the system are the combination of autonomous and user-controlled behaviour and a strong emphasis on identity and expressiveness that can be dynamically adapted during play.

This paper outlines the use of modular robotics to encourage and facilitate nonverbal communication during therapeutic intervention in dementia care. A set of new socially interactive modular robotic devices called rolling pins (RPs) has been designed and developed to assist the therapist in interacting with dementia-affected patients. The RPs are semitransparent plastic tubes that are capable of measuring their orientation and the speed of their rotation; at a local level, they have three types of feedback: red, green, and blue light, sound, and vibration. The peculiarity of the RPs is that they are able to communicate with each other or with other devices equipped with the same radio communication technology. The RPs are usually used in pairs, as the local feedback of an RP can be set depending not only on its own speed and orientation but also on the speed and the orientation of the peer RP. The system is not used as a therapeutic toolpersebut as a facilitator and a mediator of social dynamics during normal therapy to counteract social isolation that can result in dementia through the loss of social skills. An experiment is reported that shows that by using the RPs, the patients participated in the activity by coordinating their behavior with the therapist and imitating the same interaction patterns generated by the therapist.