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

缺乏身体活动是视力障碍者的一个严重健康问题。 特别是，视力障碍儿童由于各种原因，包括害怕受伤、父母和教师的安全考虑以及缺乏与之一起锻炼的视力指导，参加体育教育、娱乐和运动项目的机会有限。 PI的假设是，视频游戏，这已被确定为一个促成因素，越来越多的久坐不动的行为，儿童一般和相关的更高水平的肥胖，可能会提供一个解决方案。 一种新类型的“exergames”使用上半身和/或下半身的姿势（例如针对虚拟目标的步骤，拳击和踢腿），为玩家提供沉浸式体验，使他们参与足够高的中度到剧烈的身体活动，以产生健康益处。PI在这个项目中的目标是研究如何设计和构建本体感受显示器，以促进盲人青少年的运动游戏。 本体感觉，感觉一个人的身体及其部位的位置和方向的能力，是一种内感受性感觉模态，不同于外感受性感觉模态，如视觉，触觉和听觉，并且作为反馈模态在很大程度上尚未被探索。 在执行手势时，我们通常将联合收割机视觉和本体感受信息结合，但是一旦已经记住了目标的位置，单独的本体感受反馈就足以将用户的肢体的位置与目标相关联。 由于目标的位置主要是视觉上获取的，因此对于具有视觉障碍的用户来说，手势很难执行。 本项目将测试盲人在运动游戏中使用本体感受显示器获取目标方向时可以执行全身手势的假设。在先前的工作中，PI已经探索了单个本体感受显示器，通过让用户用手持方向感知设备扫描水平线来获取水平面中目标的方向;使用振动触觉提示来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。 初步结果已经证明，盲人用户可以在使用本体感受显示器获取到目标的方向的平面中执行瞄准目标的上身姿势。 本计画将借由下列方式，大幅增进我们对本体感受显示的了解：（1）量化离散本体感受显示的空间与时间解析度;（2）发展有效的平面点传送扫描策略（指向空间中的点的方向），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可以执行全身定向姿势的功效;以及（4）确定使用本体感受显示器执行的全身定向姿势的节奏序列是否可以使用音频提示来记忆。 通过生成涉及全身姿势的exergames的经验数据，该项目将开发本体感受显示的基本和变革性理解，以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较高，而且由于普遍缺乏身体活动的机会，往往表现出运动发育迟缓。 通过开发开放源代码的运动游戏，可以使用商业现成的控制器技术进行游戏，而无需视力向导的帮助，并且受伤的风险最小，该项目将增加这一弱势群体成员现有的锻炼和社交机会。 更一般地，因为本体感受显示器可以使用通常已经存在于移动的设备中的低成本技术来实现，所以这些显示器可以最终促进为每个人开发鲁棒的无耳和无眼形式的交互（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他的课程中引人注目的设计项目的基础。 PI还将开展外展工作，例如为有视力障碍的K-12学生（和其他少数民族）举办夏令营，以吸引他们学习计算机科学和STEM。

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.