HCC: Small: Proprioceptive Displays to Engage Blind Users into Healthy Whole Body Interaction

HCC：小：本体感受显示器让盲人用户参与健康的全身互动

• 批准号: 1118074
• 负责人: Eelke Folmer
• 金额: $ 41.02万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-15 至 2015-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1118074&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: HCC; Small; Proprioceptive; Displays; Engage

Lack of physical activity is a serious health concern for individuals with visual impairments. In particular, children with visual impairments have limited access to physical education, recreation, and athletic programs for a variety of reasons including fear of injury, safety concerns of parents and teachers, and lack of sighted guides with whom to exercise. The PI's hypothesis is that video games, which have been identified as a contributing factor to the increasingly sedentary behavior of children in general and associated higher levels of obesity, may provide a solution. A new genre of "exergames" use upper and/or lower-body gestures (such as steps, punches, and kicks directed at virtual targets), to provide players with an immersive experience that engages them in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity that is high enough to yield health benefits. The PI's goal in this project is to investigate how proprioceptive displays can be designed and built to facilitate exercise games for blind adolescents. Proprioception, the ability to sense the position and orientation of one's body and its parts, is an interoceptive sensory modality distinct from exteroceptive sensory modalities such as sight, touch, and hearing, and has remained largely unexplored as a modality of feedback. In performing a gesture we generally combine visual and proprioceptive information, but once the location of a target has been memorized proprioceptive feedback alone is sufficient for relating the position of the user's limb to the target. Since the location of a target primarily is acquired visually, gestures are difficult to perform for users with visual impairments. This project will test the hypothesis that whole body gestures can be performed by blind users in exergames when target direction is acquired using a proprioceptive display.In prior work, the PI has explored single proprioceptive displays for acquiring the direction to a target in a horizontal plane by having users scan a horizontal line with a hand-held orientation aware device; a vibrotactile cue was used to indicate when the device was pointed at the target, with target direction conveyed to the user using proprioception. Preliminary results have demonstrated that blind users can perform an upper body gesture aimed at a target in a plane where direction to the target is acquired using a proprioceptive display. This project will significantly advance our understanding of proprioceptive displays by: (1) quantifying spatial and temporal resolutions of discrete proprioceptive displays; (2) developing efficient scanning strategies for conveying points in a plane (directions to points in a space) using an analog proprioceptive display and determining the effectiveness of using multiple proprioceptive displays; (3) investigating the efficacy with which whole-body directed gestures can be performed using proprioceptive displays; and (4) establishing whether rhythmic sequences of whole-body directed gestures performed using a proprioceptive display can be memorized using audio cues. Through generation of empirical data with exergames that involve whole-body gestures, this project will develop a fundamental and transformative understanding of proprioceptive displays in order to articulate a set of principles for their design. Broader Impacts: Children with visual impairments have significantly higher levels of obesity and often exhibit delays in motor development caused by a general lack of opportunities to be physically active. Through development of open-source exergames that can be played using commercial off-the-shelf controller technology without the aid of a sighted guide and with minimal risk of injury, this project will increase existing exercise and socialization opportunities for members of this vulnerable population. More generally, because proprioceptive displays can be implemented using low cost technology that is often already present in mobile devices, these displays may ultimately facilitate the development of robust ear- and eye-free forms of interaction for everyone (e.g., for motor rehabilitation or sports training). This research will directly involve both graduate and undergraduate students, and the PI will use this work as the basis for compelling design projects in his courses. The PI will also develop outreach efforts such as summer camps for K-12 students with visual impairments (and other minorities) in order to attract them to computer science and STEM.

对于视力障碍人士来说，缺乏体力活动是一个严重的健康问题。 特别是，由于多种原因，有视力障碍的儿童接受体育教育、娱乐和运动项目的机会有限，包括担心受伤、家长和老师的安全担忧以及缺乏有视力的指导者一起锻炼。 PI 的假设是，电子游戏可能提供解决方案，因为电子游戏已被确定为儿童久坐行为日益增多以及肥胖程度升高的一个促成因素。 一种新类型的“运动游戏”使用上半身和/或下半身姿势（例如针对虚拟目标的脚步、拳打和脚踢），为玩家提供身临其境的体验，让他们参与中度至剧烈的身体活动，足够高以产生健康益处。 PI 在该项目中的目标是研究如何设计和构建本体感受显示器来促进盲人青少年的运动游戏。 本体感觉，即感知身体及其部位的位置和方向的能力，是一种内感受感觉方式，不同于视觉、触觉和听觉等外感受感觉方式，并且作为一种反馈方式，在很大程度上尚未被探索。 在执行手势时，我们通常结合视觉和本体感觉信息，但是一旦记住了目标的位置，仅本体感觉反馈就足以将用户肢体的位置与目标相关联。 由于目标位置主要通过视觉获取，因此对于有视觉障碍的用户来说很难执行手势。 该项目将测试这样的假设：当使用本体感受显示器获取目标方向时，盲人用户可以在运动游戏中执行全身手势。在之前的工作中，PI 已经探索了单个本体感受显示器来获取水平面中目标的方向让用户使用手持式方向感知设备扫描水平线；振动触觉提示用于指示设备何时指向目标，并使用本体感觉将目标方向传达给用户。 初步结果表明，盲人用户可以针对平面中的目标执行上半身手势，其中使用本体感受显示器获取目标方向。 该项目将通过以下方式显着增进我们对本体感受显示的理解：（1）量化离散本体感受显示的空间和时间分辨率； (2) 使用模拟本体感受显示器开发用于传送平面中的点（空间中的点的方向）的有效扫描策略，并确定使用多个本体感受显示器的有效性； (3) 研究使用本体感受显示器执行全身定向手势的功效； (4)确定是否可以使用音频提示来记忆使用本体感受显示器执行的全身定向手势的节奏序列。 通过使用涉及全身手势的运动游戏生成经验数据，该项目将对本体感受显示产生基本和变革性的理解，以便阐明其设计的一套原则。 更广泛的影响：有视力障碍的儿童肥胖程度明显更高，并且由于普遍缺乏身体活动的机会而经常表现出运动发育迟缓。 通过开发开源运动游戏，可以使用商业现成的控制器技术来玩，无需视力指导的帮助，并且受伤风险最小，该项目将为这一弱势群体的成员增加现有的锻炼和社交机会。 更一般地说，由于本体感受显示器可以使用移动设备中通常已经存在的低成本技术来实现，因此这些显示器最终可能会促进为每个人开发强大的无耳和无眼交互形式（例如，用于运动康复或运动）训练）。 这项研究将直接涉及研究生和本科生，PI 将使用这项工作作为其课程中引人注目的设计项目的基础。 PI 还将开展外展活动，例如为有视力障碍的 K-12 学生（和其他少数群体）举办夏令营，以吸引他们学习计算机科学和 STEM。