Recent Developments and Applications of Haptic Devices

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Comments: Manoj, Franck

This paper basically collects all the major haptic devices and technologies for comparison. It separates various input devices by degrees of freedom. It also presents some glove based devices and discusses vibration and hydraulics, among other things.

EyeDraw: enabling children with severe motor impairments to draw with their eyes

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Comments: Franck, Murat

EyeDraw is a system which runs using an Eyegaze system to allow drawing with the eyes. Many disabled people have used eye-tracking systems for years to use a computer and to communicate. The EyeDraw system was developed and tested with 4 users. With feedback from the users, a 2nd version was developed and some improvements were made to enable easier use. Users gave positive feedback, though drawing was still difficult. The paper mentions a 3rd version under development.

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The EyeDraw system is the most successful application I have seen for drawing with the eyes. It seems to solve the Midas touch problem somewhat, and the users can actually draw with it.

Coming to Grips with the Objects We Grasp: Detecting Interactions with Efficient Wrist-Worn Sensors

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This paper aims to recognize gestures by attaching an accelerometer and an RFID transmitter to a wrist worn device. The idea is that we know what device is being used due to RFID tags placed on devices, and the accelerometer data paired with the device ID can be used to classify the current gesture. A "box test" was performed in which various items were placed into and removed from the box using different RFID antenna types, different objects, and with different subjects. A long term study was also conducted in which the bracelet was worn for an entire day to test real world applications.

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I think the idea of this paper is nice, and if RFID tags were present in all our everyday items, much information could be obtained about how users interact on a day to day basis. I think it would only work well with a high number of tagged items, so if that doesn't happen, I don't know how useful this will be.