TickleFoot: Design, Development and Evaluation of a Novel Foot-Tickling Mechanism That Can Evoke Laughter

Tickling is a type of sensation that is associated with laughter, smiling, or other similar reactions. Psychology research has shown that tickling and laughter can significantly relieve stress. Although several tickling artifacts have been suggested in prior work, limited knowledge is available if those artifacts could evoke laughter. In this article, we aim at filling this gap by designing and developing a novel foot-tickling mechanism that can evoke laughter. We first developed an actuator that can create tickling sensations along the sole of the foot utilising magnet-driven brushes. Then, we conducted two studies to identify the most ticklish locations of the foot’s sole and stimulation patterns that can evoke laughter. In a follow-up study with a new set of participants, we confirmed that the identified stimuli could evoke laughter. From the participants’ feedback, we derived several applications that such a simulation could be useful. Finally, we embedded our actuators into a flexible insole, demonstrating the potential of a wearable tickling insole.

Creating and Augmenting Keyboards for Extended Reality with the K eyboard A ugmentation T oolkit

This article discusses the Keyboard Augmentation Toolkit (KAT), which supports the creation of virtual keyboards that can be used both for standalone input (e.g., for mid-air text entry) and to augment physically tracked keyboards/surfaces in mixed reality. In a user study, we firstly examine the impact and pitfalls of visualising shortcuts on a tracked physical keyboard, exploring the utility of virtual per-keycap displays. Supported by this and other recent developments in XR keyboard research, we then describe the design, development, and evaluation-by-demonstration of KAT. KAT simplifies the creation of virtual keyboards (optionally bound to a tracked physical keyboard) that support enhanced display —2D/3D per-key content that conforms to the virtual key bounds; enhanced interactivity —supporting extensible per-key states such as tap, dwell, touch, swipe; flexible keyboard mappings that can encapsulate groups of interaction and display elements, e.g., enabling application-dependent interactions; and flexible layouts —allowing the virtual keyboard to merge with and augment a physical keyboard, or switch to an alternate layout (e.g., mid-air) based on need. Through these features, KAT will assist researchers in the prototyping, creation and replication of XR keyboard experiences, fundamentally altering the keyboard’s form and function.

Development of Audiovisual-Based PowToon Animation Video on Chemical Bonds for Tenth Grade

This research aimed to develop an audiovisual-based PowToon animation video on the subject matter of chemical bonds and analyze the quality of the audiovisual-based animated video as learning media to study chemical bonds based on the assessment of material experts, media experts, chemistry teachers, and students’ responses. This research used development research methods (R&D) with a 4D development model (Define, Design, Development, and Dissemination). However, the 4D development model was limited to the dissemination stage in this research. The product is an animated video, which is in the form of mp4, containing chemical bond materials. Based on product quality assessment by a material expert, it gained a percentage of 84.375% with very good (VG) category; from the media expert’s assessment, it obtained a percentage of 96.428% with very good (VG) category; and according to assessment by chemistry teachers of high school, it got a percentage of 98.48% in the very good (VG) category. The product was responded to positively by students with a percentage of 95%. Based on the results of assessments, the animated video can be used as an alternative media for the chemistry learning process in the classroom

Design and Development of Maritime Data Security Management Platform

Since the e-Navigation strategy was put forward, various countries and regions in the world have researched e-Navigation test platforms. However, the sources of navigation data are multi-source, and there are still difficulties in the unified acquisition, processing, analysis and application of multi-source data. Users often find it difficult to obtain the required comprehensive navigation information. The purpose of this paper is to use e-Navigation architecture to design and develop maritime data security management platform, strengthen navigation safety guarantee, strengthen Marine environment monitoring, share navigation and safety information, improve the ability of shipping transportation organizations in ports, and protect the marine environment. Therefore, this paper proposes a four-layer system architecture based on Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, and designs a unified maritime data storage, analysis and management platform, which realizes the intelligent, visualized and modular management of maritime data at shipside and the shore. This platform can provide comprehensive data resource services for ship navigation and support the analysis and mining of maritime big data. This paper expounds on the design, development scheme and demonstration operation scheme of the maritime data security management platform from the system structure and data exchange mode.

Recent Advances in Design and Implementation of Satellite Gateways for Massive Uncoordinated Access Networks

This paper provides an overview of recent results of a design, development and performance evaluation study of satellite gateways to receive and manage the traffic from a large population of uncoordinated user terminals. In particular, direct satellite access scenarios for machine-to-machine communications and the Internet of Things have been targeted. Tests were carried out in a representative laboratory environment emulating realistic system scenarios. Performance results, as presented in this paper indicate that the proposed gateway architecture, based on an efficient access protocol, is capable of managing a very high number of uncoordinated terminals transmitting short messages with a low duty cycle. The applicability of the proposed solution to both geostationary and non-geostationary satellite systems has also been examined. The key concept of the gateway is based on a novel receiver architecture that implements the linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) spread spectrum signal detection and successive interference cancellation techniques. The receiver uses features such as a multi-stage detector together with a robust preamble detection. The end-to-end solution includes also the use of a new waveform with a quasi-constant envelope at the terminal to modulate and transmit data packets to be received and detected by the gateway via a satellite link.

A Framework for Femtech: guiding principles for developing digital reproductive health tools in the United States (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The United States has abysmal reproductive health indices that, in part, reflect stark inequities experienced by people of color and those with preexisting medical conditions. The growth of “femtech,” or technology-based solutions to women’s health issues in the public and private sectors, is promising; yet these solutions are often geared towards health literate, socioeconomically privileged, and relatively healthy white cis-women. In this viewpoint, we propose a set of guiding principles for building technologies that proactively identifies and addresses these critical gaps in health care for people from socially and economically marginalized populations who are capable of pregnancy, as well as those with serious chronic medical conditions. These guiding principles require that such technologies: 1) include community stakeholders in the design, development, and deployment of the technology, 2) are grounded in person-centered frameworks, and 3) address health disparities as a strategy to advance health equity and improve health outcomes.

Soft Transducer for Patient’s Vitals Telemonitoring with Deep Learning-Based Personalized Anomaly Detection

This work addresses the design, development and implementation of a 4.0-based wearable soft transducer for patient-centered vitals telemonitoring. In particular, first, the soft transducer measures hypertension-related vitals (heart rate, oxygen saturation and systolic/diastolic pressure) and sends the data to a remote database (which can be easily consulted both by the patient and the physician). In addition to this, a dedicated deep learning algorithm, based on a Long-Short-Term-Memory Autoencoder, was designed, implemented and tested for providing an alert when the patient’s vitals exceed certain thresholds, which are automatically personalized for the specific patient. Furthermore, a mobile application (EcO2u) was developed to manage the entire data flow and facilitate the data fruition; this application also implements an innovative face-detection algorithm that ensures the identity of the patient. The robustness of the proposed soft transducer was validated experimentally on five individuals, who used the system for 30 days. The experimental results demonstrated an accuracy in anomaly detection greater than 93%, with a true positive rate of more than 94%.

Design and Evaluation of Remote Driving Architecture on 4G and 5G Mobile Networks

Despite the progress in the development of automated vehicles in the last decade, reaching the level of reliability required at large-scale deployment at an economical price and combined with safety requirements is still a long road ahead. In certain use cases, such as automated shuttles and taxis, where there is no longer even a steering wheel and pedals required, remote driving could be implemented to bridge this gap; a remote operator can take control of the vehicle in situations where it is too difficult for an automated system to determine the next actions. In logistics, it could even be implemented to solve already more pressing issues such as shortage of truck drivers, by providing more flexible working conditions and less standstill time of the truck. An important aspect of remote driving is the connection between the remote station and the vehicle. With the current roll-out of 5G mobile technology in many countries throughout the world, the implementation of remote driving comes closer to large-scale deployment. 5G could be a potential game-changer in the deployment of this technology. In this work, we examine the remote driving application and network-level performance of remote driving on a recently deployed sub-6-GHz commercial 5G stand-alone (SA) mobile network. It evaluates the influence of the 5G architecture, such as mobile edge computing (MEC) integration, local breakout, and latency on the application performance of remote driving. We describe the design, development (based on Hardware-in-the-Loop simulations), and performance evaluation of a remote driving solution, tested on both 5G and 4G mobile SA networks using two different vehicles and two different remote stations. Two test cases have been defined to evaluate the application and network performance and are evaluated based on position accuracy, relative reaction times, and distance perception. Results show the performance of the network to be sufficient for remote driving applications at relatively low speeds (<40 km/h). Network latencies compared with 4G have dropped to half. A strong correlation between latency and remote driving performance is not clearly seen and requires further evaluation taking into account the influence of the user interface.