Assignment 1 - Paper Reading #2

Intro:

• Paper reading #2: Touché: Enhancing Touch Interaction on Humans, Screens, Liquids, and Everyday Objects
• Reference information:
• Munehiko Sato, Ivan Poupyrev, and Chris Harrison. 2012. Touché: enhancing touch interaction on humans, screens, liquids, and everyday objects. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 483-492. DOI=10.1145/2207676.2207743 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2207676.2207743 

Author Bios:

• Munehiko Sato - Walt Disney Research, Pittsburgh, PA & The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

• Publication years: 2008-2012
• Publication count: 6
• Citation count: 2
• Obtained B.E. in Engineering Synthesis (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Tokyo in 2006
• Obtained M.S. in Mechano-Informatics from Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo in 2009
•  Studied as an exchange student at Helsinki University of Technology in 2006-2007 where he worked in a 3D virtual reality research group
• In 2011, he worked as a research intern at the Interaction Group of Disney Research with Dr. Ivan Poupyrev.

• Ivan Poupyrev - Senior Research Scientist, Walt Disney Research, Pittsburgh, USA

• Publication years: 2012-2012
  
• Publication count: 1
• Citation count: 0
• Worked as a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories and the Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International in Japan. 
• In 1992, obtained M.S. with honors from Moscow Airspace University in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science.

• Chris Harrison - Walt Disney Research, Pittsburgh, PA & HCI Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

• Publication years: 2007-2012
• Publication count: 46
• Citation count: 154
•  Research interests: novel input methods and interaction technologies, input devices, interaction techniques, sensors, inexact and inattentive interaction 
• 3rd year Ph.D. student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University

Summary:

The authors conducted a study using their new capacitive touch sensing technology that give rich touch and gesture sensitivity to a variety of objects. Most relevant touch sensing technologies use aperiodic electrical signal at one frequency that, when touched by a human, changes the signal. By measuring the degree of signal change, touch events can be detected. However, this Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing uses a range of signal frequencies to detect not only a touch event, but how the object is being touch. All that sis needed for SFCS is a touch pad sensor and a simple piece of wire that was grounded. The study consisted of 5 experiments (not all pictures could be downloaded) where a total of 24 participants were trained to touch 5 different objects (tank of water, cell phone, table, door knob, and hands) in a certain way, and based on the frequency of the signal, a touch gesture was to be guessed by SFCS. The figures below show the different signals that are generated when an object (even liquid) is touched in a certain way.

Related work not referenced in the paper:

1. PocketTouch: through-fabric capacitive touch input - This paper is similar because it talks about using capacitive touch sensing to enable eyes-free operation of a phone. Although it uses one signal to determine a touch event, it uses a similar type of touch sensing to operate a phone.
2. Pulse – Tangible Touch - This paper demonstrates how capacitive sensing can be used with a flexible screen to generate physical buttons on a phone. Uses single signal sensing, but similar use of  capacitive sensing to detect a motion toward the screen and generates a button if necessary.
3. Evaluating Capacitive Touch Input on Clothes - Demonstrates how sensors put in clothes/accessories and capacitive touch sensing could be used to control common items. One study used an apron with buttons, that used capacitance to sense touch, to control a television.
4. Scanning FTIR: Unobtrusive Optoelectronic Multi-Touch Sensing through Waveguide Transmissivity Imaging - Discusses capacitance sensing to a degree, but talks about a new way to determine multi-touch using transparent screens that are easily integrated with current flat screen systems.
5. Augmenting Touch Interaction Through Acoustic Sensing - Discusses how sound can be used to sense touch. It does not discuss capacitance but it demonstrates how acoustics can be used to recognize how an object is being touched.
6. CapStones and ZebraWidgets: sensing stacks of building blocks, dials and sliders on capacitive touch screens - Talks about how specially designed tangible objects such as blocks and dials can be used with current capacitance touch screens to play games and perform other tasks, such as raising brightness and changing volume.
7. AnglePose: Robust, Precise Capacitive Touch Tracking via 3D Orientation Estimation - The technique described in the paper uses capacitance to determine whether a finger placed on a screen is changing its pitch and/or yaw. This would be mainly used for pointing applications and is an idea that can bring forth novel interactions
8. Headphones with Touch Control - This paper talks about using a capacitive touch interface for headphones. This would allow the headphones to detect whether headphones were being put in or pulled out or being tapped on. Similar to the current paper based on the fact it uses capacitive touch sensing.
9. New mobile UI with hand-grip recognition - This paper is relate because it is based on the assumption that gesture sensing is possible. It is about a user interface for phones that configures the phone to the right application based on the user's perceive intentions. Intentions are determined by grip-pattern and gestures.
10. ZeroTouch: an optical multi-touch and free-air interaction architecture - Similar to current paper by sensing gestures, however it does not use capacitance to sense touch event/gesture. Optical sensors are used to determine gestures.
    
    The work I ready was novel to a certain extent. There are plenty of studies using capacitive touch, but the work I read used capacitive touch and multiple frequencies to examine gesture recognition. In that sense, the work I read is novel.
    
    Evaluation: 
    
    The work was evaluated quantitatively. The authors trained 24 participants on how to perform certain gestures and then asked each person to simulate that gesture 30 times, for each of the N gestures, and recorded whether or not the Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technique determined the gesture correctly. This measure was used to illustrate the percentage of a correct gesture determination. The results below show the average percent of an accurate gesture determination for the 5 objects with, both N and N-1 amount of gestures. The data shows as the amount of gestures trying to be determined went down, the percentage of an accurate determination increased. This was a subjective evaluation because all results were determined based on hard calculations and percentages. It was systemic as well, dealing with different people, multiple gestures, and multiple objects to test the SFCS system.
    
    

    

    Real-time, per-user classification accuracy
    for five example applications.

    
     
    
    
    
    Discussion:
    
    I thought this paper was a really good idea and innovative in touch sensing. The simplicity of installing this gesture sensing technique is cool, and the idea could be applied to many real world situations. For example, gripping a door handle tightly as you close the door could mean that you intend for the door to be locked. This is an extremely useful technology, I think, and is pretty new. It is similar to a lot of touch sensing technology because it uses capacitance to determine a touch. But, it is new in the sense that it uses more than one signal frequency to determine a touch and what kind of touch (gesture).  Its a cool, new technology that could be used to make common items into smart items.