Physical Buttons Research Articles

Programming and Debugging of Multi-layer Elevator with Teaching Function

With the development of modern economy and urban life, elevator has become an indispensable means of transportation in people's daily life. The traditional relay elevator control system greatly reduces the reliability and safety of the elevator system due to the large mechanical and electromagnetic inertia of the relay itself. In order to ensure that the elevator operation is efficient, energy-saving, safe and reliable, the elevator control mode must be improved. Programmable logic controller (PLC), developed according to the needs of sequential logic control, is an electronic device for digital operation specially designed for industrial environment application. PLC has fast processing speed and high reliability, which can ensure the normal, safe and reliable operation of the elevator. The elevator controlled by touch screen is convenient and operable, which has become the choice of more and more high-end elevators. Traditional elevator control methods often rely on physical buttons, which are prone to wear and failure after a long time of use, affecting the normal operation of the elevator. The touching screen control mode is more durable, and the operation is more intuitive and easy. Passengers can quickly select their destination floor with just a touch of the screen, greatly enhancing the elevator experience.

SwivelTouch: Boosting Touchscreen Input with 3D Finger Rotation Gesture

Today, touchscreens stand as the most prevalent input devices of mobile computing devices (smartphones, tablets, smartwatches). Yet, compared with desktop or laptop computers, the limited shortcut keys and physical buttons on touchscreen devices, coupled with the fat finger problem, often lead to slower and more error-prone input and navigation, especially when dealing with text editing and other complex interaction tasks. We introduce an innovative gesture set based on finger rotations in the yaw, pitch, and roll directions on a touchscreen, diverging significantly from traditional two-dimensional interactions and promising to expand the gesture library. Despite active research in estimation of finger angles, however, the previous work faces substantial challenges, including significant estimation errors and unstable sequential outputs. Variability in user behavior further complicates the isolation of movements to a single rotational axis, leading to accidental disturbances and screen coordinate shifts that interfere with the existing sliding gestures. Consequently, the direct application of finger angle estimation algorithms for recognizing three-dimensional rotational gestures is impractical. SwivelTouch leverages the analysis of finger movement characteristics on the touchscreen captured through original capacitive image sequences, which aims to rapidly and accurately identify these advanced 3D gestures, clearly differentiating them from conventional touch interactions like tapping and sliding, thus enhancing user interaction with touch devices and meanwhile compatible with existing 2D gestures. User study further confirms that the implementation of SwivelTouch significantly enhances the efficiency of text editing on smartphones.

Substitute Buttons: Exploring Tactile Perception of Physical Buttons for Use as Haptic Proxies

Buttons are everywhere and are one of the most common interaction elements in both physical and digital interfaces. While virtual buttons offer versatility, enhancing them with realistic haptic feedback is challenging. Achieving this requires a comprehensive understanding of the tactile perception of physical buttons and their transferability to virtual counterparts. This research investigates tactile perception concerning button attributes such as shape, size, and roundness and their potential generalization across diverse button types. In our study, participants interacted with each of the 36 buttons in our search space and provided a response to which one they thought they were touching. The findings were used to establish six substitute buttons capable of effectively emulating tactile experiences across various buttons. In a second study, these substitute buttons were validated against virtual buttons in VR. Highlighting the potential use of the substitute buttons as haptic proxies for applications such as encountered-type haptics.

PopTouch: A Submillimeter Thick Dynamically Reconfigured Haptic Interface with Pressable Buttons.

The interactions with touchscreens rely heavily on vision: The virtual buttons and virtual sliders on a touchscreen provide no mechanical sense of the object they seek to represent. This work presents PopTouch: a 500µm thick flexible haptic display that creates pressable physical buttons on demand. PopTouch can be mounted directly on touchscreens or any other smooth surface, flat, or curved. The buttons of PopTouch are independently controlled hydraulically amplified electrostatic zipping taxels (tactile pixels) that generate 1.5mm of out of plane displacement. When pressed by the user, the buttons provide intuitive mechanical feedback thanks to a snap-through characteristic in their force-displacement profile. The snap-through threshold can be as high as 4 N, and is tuned by design and actuation parameters. This work presents two versions of PopTouch: a transparent PopTouch for integration on Touchscreens with built-in touch sensing, such as smartphones and a sensorized PopTouch, with embedded thin-film piezoelectric sensors on each taxel, for integration on substrates without built-in touch sensing, such as a steering wheel. PopTouch adds static and vibrating button-like haptics to any device thanks to its thin profile, flexibility, low power consumption (6mW per button), rapid refresh rate (2Hz), and freely configured array format.

Read for me: developing a mobile based application for both visually impaired and illiterate users to tackle reading challenge

Abstract In recent years, there have been several attempts to help visually impaired and illiterate people to overcome their reading limitations through developing different applications. However, most of these applications are based on physical button interaction and avoid the use of touchscreen devices. This research mainly aims to find a solution that helps both visually impaired and illiterate people to read texts present in their surroundings through a touchscreen-based application. The study also attempts to discover the possibility of building one application that could be used by both type of users and find out whether they would use it in the same efficiency. Therefore, a requirements elicitation study was conducted to identify the users’ requirements and their preferences and so build an interactive interface for both visually impaired and illiterate users. The study resulted in several design considerations, such as using voice instructions, focusing on verbal feedback, and eliminating buttons. Then, the reader mobile application was designed and built based on these design preferences. Finally, an evaluation study was conducted to measure the usability of the developed application. The results revealed that both sight impaired and illiterate users could benefit from the same mobile application, as they were satisfied with using it and found it efficient and effective. However, the measures from the evaluation sessions also reported that illiterate users had used the develop app more efficiently and effectively. Moreover, they were more satisfied, especially with the application’s ease of use.

Accessibility first: detecting frustration in web browsing for visually impaired and sighted smartphone users

AbstractSmartphone adoption has become increasingly prevalent in modern society, reflecting the widespread integration of these devices into various aspects of daily life, yet accessibility and usability problems persist. Smartphones pose numerous challenges to individuals with visual impairments (VI). This is due to smaller screen sizes, lack of physical buttons, and prevalent problems. These challenges frustrate users as they are unable to accomplish their goals. In this paper, the physiological response of VI and sighted individuals are compared and examined. The participant's frustration is measured through physiological signals. The GSR is the signal captured to detect the user's frustration caused by the superimposed accessibility and usability web-related issues. GSR, being less obtrusive, is an effective way to measure frustration. There were 13 VI and 16 sighted participants. Using a within-subject and between-subject design, participants completed four tasks, each was completed under frustrating and non-frustrating conditions while wearing an Empatica E4 wristband to collect GSR data. Challenges were both group-specific and mutual. A slowed internet connection and constant page refreshes are frustrating tasks for sighted participants. VI participants faced an unsearchable drop-down list and an inaccessible menu. Pop-up ads and session timeout are common tasks. Among VI participants, there was no significant difference between frustrating and non-frustrating tasks. When VI participants experienced a session timeout, they significantly showed a higher level of arousal. When comparing the physiological responses of sighted and VI participants in the page refresh and session timeout tasks, the results show that the arousal level is significantly higher in VI participants, primarily due to accessibility issues.

Haptic Feedback Device Using 3D-Printed Flexible, Multilayered Piezoelectric Coating for In-Car Touchscreen Interface.

This study focuses on the development of a piezoelectric device capable of generating feedback vibrations to the user who manipulates it. The objective here is to explore the possibility of developing a haptic system that can replace physical buttons on the tactile screen of in-car systems. The interaction between the user and the developed device allows completing the feedback loop, where the user's action generates an input signal that is translated and outputted by the device, and then detected and interpreted by the user's haptic sensors and brain. An FEM (finite element model) via ANSYS multiphysics software was implemented to optimize the haptic performance of the wafer structure consisting of a BaTiO3 multilayered piezocomposite coated on a PET transparent flexible substrate. Several parameters relating to the geometric and mechanical properties of the wafer, together with those of the electrodes, are demonstrated to have significant impact on the actuation ability of the haptic device. To achieve the desired vibration effect on the human skin, the haptic system must be able to drive displacement beyond the detection threshold (~2 µm) at a frequency range of 100-700 Hz. The most optimized actuation ability is obtained when the ratio of the dimension (radius and thickness) between the piezoelectric coating and the substrate layer is equal to ~0.6. Regarding the simulation results, it is revealed that the presence of the conductive electrodes provokes a decrease in the displacement by approximately 25-30%, as the wafer structure becomes stiffer. To ensure the minimum displacement generated by the haptic device above 2 µm, the piezoelectric coating is screen-printed by two stacked layers, electrically connected in parallel. This architecture is expected to boost the displacement amplitude under the same electric field (denoted E) subjected to the single-layered coating. Accordingly, multilayered design seems to be a good alternative to enhance the haptic performance while keeping moderate values of E so as to prevent any undesired electrical breakdown of the coating. Practical characterizations confirmed that E=20 V/μm is sufficient to generate feedback vibrations (under a maximum input load of 5 N) perceived by the fingertip. This result confirms the reliability of the proposed haptic device, despite discrepancies between the predicted theory and the real measurements. Lastly, a demonstrator comprising piezoelectric buttons together with electronic command and conditioning circuits are successfully developed, offering an efficient way to create multiple sensations for the user. On the basis of empirical data acquired from several trials conducted on 20 subjects, statistical analyses together with relevant numerical indicators were implemented to better assess the performance of the developed haptic device.

A chipless light switch for smart‐homes

AbstractThe limited and inconvenient functionality of conventional light switches is out of pace with current advancements in wireless sensors. A chipless RFID light switch (CLS) that is passive, battery‐free and relocatable and maintains the convenience of having physical buttons for controlling lightbulbs or other electrical devices is introduced. These characteristics have been achieved by attaching single‐pole‐single‐through toggle switches to the edges of radio frequency spiral resonators. The status of the switches activates or deactivates the resonators, allowing the CLS tag to passively communicate the status of the switches. A CLS tag with two ID resonators (used for tag identifications), and two measurement resonators [MRs] (connected with switches and used to communicate the status of the switches) was designed and fabricated using a 1‐mm‐thick FR4 substrate. Measurement results showed resonant frequencies at 1115 and 1220 MHz corresponding to the ID resonators and frequencies at 848 and 971 MHz corresponding to the MRs. Turning the switches OFF and ON successfully activated and deactivated the MRs.

Speed Control of Induction Motor by Using Voice Recognition Using Bluetooth

The project's goal is to develop a voice recognition and Bluetooth communication-based system for managing an induction motor's speed. The system is made up of two primary components: the speech recognition module, which is in charge of understanding user voice instructions, and the motor control module, which regulates to response to user voice commands. A speech recognition algorithm processes the user's vocal commands after being captured by the voice recognition module's microphone. control module receives the commands from the algorithm via Bluetooth communication. PWM method is used by the module to adjust the speed of induction after receiving commands. Without the use of physical buttons or switches, voice recognition technology offers customers a simple and practical way to adjust the motor's speed. The study shows that voice recognition technology and Bluetooth connectivity may be used to regulate the speed of induction motors, providing a practical and user-friendly solution for a variety of applications. Key Word: Induction motor, voice recognition, pulse-width modulation.

A mobile e-learning application for enhancement of basic mathematical skills in visually impaired children

Although smartphones are equipped with accessibility functions, they still pose significant problems for visually impaired people. Sometimes these functions cannot fulfil the expectations of users. Early mobile devices had physical buttons and a keypad, and visually impaired users could navigate around the keypad using the tactile markers on the buttons. However, the lack of tactile markers makes it much more difficult to operate a touchscreen device. This paper describes an e-learning platform that is designed to improve the accessibility of smartphone applications for students who are visually impaired but have some useful vision. A User-Centered Design approach was used to develop an effective solution for visually impaired students. A study was conducted during the development of the described platform, and the results showed that our suggested design improves task completion time as compared to the initial version. Participants also expressed higher levels of satisfaction when using the improved design of this platform. The modified design was also assessed using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS), and the results indicate that it is quite reliable and rated well among visually impaired children. Furthermore, developers can use our suggested design guidelines such as clear navigation, color contrast, immediate feedback, icon arrangements, button and text size in the development of new applications.

Testing Road Vehicle User Interfaces Concerning the Driver’s Cognitive Load

This paper investigates the usability of touch screens used in mass production road vehicles. Our goal is to provide a detailed comparison of conventional physical buttons and capacitive touch screens taking the human factor into account. The pilot test focuses on a specific Non-driving Related Task (NDRT): the control of the on-board climate system using a touch screen panel versus rotating knobs and push buttons. Psychological parameters, functionality, usability and, the ergonomics of In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) were evaluated using a specific questionnaire, a system usability scale (SUS), workload assessment (NASA-TLX), and a physiological sensor system. The measurements are based on a wearable eye-tracker that provides fixation points of the driver’s gaze in order to detect distraction. The closed road used for the naturalistic driving study was provided by the ZalaZONE Test Track, Zalaegerszeg, Hungary. Objective and subjective results of the pilot study indicate that the control of touch screen panels causes higher visual, manual, and cognitive distraction than the use of physical buttons. The statistical analysis demonstrated that conventional techniques need to be complemented in order to better represent human behavior differences.

플립식 폴더블 폰 물리적 버튼의 인간공학적 설계

Objective: The main purpose of this research is to study the physical button shape of the flip-type foldable phone, which can provide optimal usability and operational satisfaction during a one-handed gripping.<BR><BR>Background: Foldable phones which with larger screens and two different states (Unfolded, Folded) brings difficulties due to poor operability and grip comfort. Furthermore, the physical button of the smartphone has not yet been properly researched to guarantee optimal performance. Therefore, there is a need to ergonomically determine the shape and layout of the physical button that can manipulate the device stably and effectively that is mainly used with one hand.<BR><BR>Method: In this paper, two usability experiments were designed and conducted. In the prior experiment, 8 button length combinations of 2 buttons (9~17, 9~20.5, 9~24, 13~17, 13~20.5, 13~24, 17~20.5, 17~24mm) and 3 combinations of protrusion of 2 buttons (PYVY: both power and volume buttons are protruded, PYVN: power button is protruded while volume button is not, PNVY: power button is not protruded, and volume button is). So, a total of 24 combinations were tested. The dependent variables were evaluated by collecting the operability preference (7-point scale) as a subjective index, and the error rate as an objective index. In the main experiment, 6 physical button layouts were provided, and the optimal layout was obtained in two states by collecting and evaluating the user

Where's My Button? Evaluating the User Experience of Surface Haptics in Featureless Automotive User Interfaces

Advancements in user interface technologies and demands of design engineering led to increasing implementation of large and mostly flat interactive surfaces in automotive. Recent discussions in the context of in-vehicle usage of touchscreens advocate for the use of haptic feedback to restore the explore- and feel-qualities typically experienced in traditional physical button interfaces that contribute to intuitive, eyes-free, and tactually rich interactions. Haptic technologies that include a friction modulation approach seem especially promising to convey a high-quality feeling. This research reports an experience-oriented evaluation of an electrostatic friction haptic display in an in-vehicle direct touch interaction context. The evaluation was based on an automotive multitask setting (primary driving-task and secondary target-selection-task) with a 2 × 2 feedback modality design (factors haptic/audio with levels absent/present). The objective variables (response time, errors, and performance on the primary task) did not differ between feedback modalities. Any additional feedback to a visual baseline enhanced the user experience, with the multimodal feedback being preferred by most participants. Surface haptics was perceived as a novel yet unexpected type of haptic feedback. We discuss the implications for the haptic design of programmable friction displays and provide an initial set of guidelines for this innovative technology.

Buttons on Demand Sliding Mechanism Driven by Smart Materials and Mechanical Design

In this paper, we describe a novel human interaction platform in a car, called buttons on demand, that will serve as buttons inside the interior of a car, which can be called upon and activated when required but remain concealed and inactive when not required. The mechanism to obtain such interaction is driven by a combination of smart materials and mechanical design. The elaboration of smart materials and mechanical design employed to achieve this mechanism is discussed. A demonstration of how the buttons on demand mechanism described in this paper can potentially substitute or minimize the use of bulkier physical buttons in cars and provide the user with haptic and tactile feedback with low power consumption and fast response time is also presented.

Designing Programmable Toy’s Interfaces for Small Children

Programmable toys seek to help children in their first contacts with algorithms and facilitate the development of Computational Thinking. This article examines programmable toy interfaces and describes the design process for three programming interfaces for RoPE (Educational Programmable Robot). The first interface targets children aged from 3 to 6 years old and have colorful physical buttons. The second interface is a smartphone app that allows programming by fitting blocks and keeps the sync with the physical buttons of the toy. Finally, the third is a tangible block interface, designed to allow natural interaction and collaboration. A quantitative evaluation of the application showed that the use of physical buttons is more efficient than dragging blocks on a smartphone screen. We evaluated qualitatively the tangible interface through video and content analysis. The analysis shows that children often read the tangible blocks, which encouraged the debugging of an algorithm and collaboration between students.

Correction to: The extent of mobile accessibility coverage in WCAG 2.1: sufficiency of success criteria and appropriateness of relevant conformance levels pertaining to accessibility problems encountered by users who are visually impaired

People who are blind or visually impaired exhibit different interaction and access needs on mobile touchscreen devices. This is rooted in the reliance on non-visual access for using electronic devices. In comparison to regular computers, non-visual access to mobile touchscreen devices poses more challenges for reasons related to the lack of physical buttons, the limited size of touchscreens, and the reliance on gesture-based interaction. This paper aims at shedding light on the persistent accessibility-related problems that users who are blind or visually impaired are likely to encounter while interacting with mobile touchscreen devices, and whether or not these problems are sufficiently covered in the recent release of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). The study presented in this paper involved a total of 16 participants with visual impairment cases ranging from moderate vision loss to legal blindness. The results revealed a multitude of critical accessibility problems that are still being overlooked while developing mobile Apps and websites. After compiling all problems, a total of 34 major problems were identified. These problems were then classified into categories with identified nature, severity, and affected demographic. While many of these problems are mapped to existing accessibility guidelines delivered in WCAG 2.1, some problems either lack relevant success criteria in WCAG 2.1 or have insufficient conformance levels in WCAG 2.1. The paper concludes that despite the existence of different mobile-oriented guidelines in WCAG 2.1, there is still an obvious lack of adherence to these guidelines in mainstream mobile content. Moreover, the findings suggest there is room for improvement in WCAG 2.1 to cover more of the problems that users who are blind or visually impaired encounter on mobile touchscreen devices.

Operation of button feedback design within TV remote control applications for middle‐aged and older adult

AbstractTV remote control interfaces have gradually changed from traditional physical buttons to touch screens. However, vision, touch, and even learning abilities can become impacted with increasing age, resulting in an impaired ability to operate these interfaces and issues such as an increase in mistouches on the device and an increase in searching time. Fifty middle‐aged and older adult between the ages of 45 and 64 were recruited to investigate whether changes to the design of buttons and sound effects influence the time and error rates in interface task operations. The results showed that buttons whose background colors changed when pressed reduced task completion time, whereas buttons whose outlines thickened did not. In addition, on/off keys should be designed with reference to current remote control buttons and styled in a similar manner. Finally, sound feedback design may be added in the channel selection function to reduce operation time and error rates.

Wavelet Subband-Based Tensor for Smartphone Physical Button Inspection

A smartphone contains many critical components that are produced in highly automated and precisely monitored facilities throughout the complex manufacturing process. Even with the rapid development in the smartphone manufacturing industry today, the physical buttons are still existing on the smartphone because of the crucial importance of both in terms of their functionality and role. The smartphone’s physical buttons are small in size and have non-planar and shiny surfaces that lead to difficulty in detecting defects not only with human eyes but also with most AOI systems. Besides, most defects are tiny, with low contrast which is a huge challenge for deep learning models-based defect detection. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel framework based on machine vision named highlight defect region by using higher-order singular value decomposition of wavelet subband-based tensor (HHoWST) for real-time smartphone’s physical buttons quality inspection. First, a modern image acquisition system is designed to obtain a high-quality smartphone’s physical button image dataset with a total of 500 images containing 13,472 samples of six defect types. Next, a wavelet subband-based third-order tensor of the smartphone’s physical button color image is constructed. Finally, higher-order singular value decomposition is proposed to estimate the components that contain the global illumination information and highlight the defective regions of the image. The experiments performed on HHoWST images reveal that our proposed method significantly improves the defect detection efficiency of deep learning models, such as SSD, Faster R-CNN, and YOLOv5, especially the performance in detecting the tiny defect types.

A Cascaded Multimodal Natural User Interface to Reduce Driver Distraction

Natural user interfaces (NUI) have been used to reduce driver distraction while using in-vehicle infotainment systems (IVIS), and multimodal interfaces have been applied to compensate for the shortcomings of a single modality in NUIs. These multimodal NUIs have variable effects on different types of driver distraction and on different stages of drivers' secondary tasks. However, current studies provide a limited understanding of NUIs. The design of multimodal NUIs is typically based on evaluation of the strengths of a single modality. Furthermore, studies of multimodal NUIs are not based on equivalent comparison conditions. To address this gap, we compared five single modalities commonly used for NUIs (touch, mid-air gesture, speech, gaze, and physical buttons located in a steering wheel) during a lane change task (LCT) to provide a more holistic view of driver distraction. Our findings suggest that the best approach is a combined cascaded multimodal interface that accounts for the characteristics of a single modality. We compared several combinations of cascaded multimodalities by considering the characteristics of each modality in the sequential phase of the command input process. Our results show that the combinations speech + button, speech + touch, and gaze + button represent the best cascaded multimodal interfaces to reduce driver distraction for IVIS.

Data-driven vibrotactile rendering of digital buttons on touchscreens

Although mobile phones incorporate low-cost vibration motors to enhance touch-based interactions, it is not possible to generate complex tactile effects on their touchscreens. It is also difficult to relate the limited vibrotactile feedback generated by these motors to different types of physical buttons. In this study, we focus on creating vibrotactile feedback on a touchscreen that simulates the feeling of physical buttons using piezo actuators attached to it. We first recorded and analyzed the force, acceleration, and voltage data from twelve participants interacting with three different physical buttons: latch, toggle, and push buttons. Then, a button-specific vibrotactile stimulus was generated for each button based on the recorded data. Finally, we conducted a threealternative forced choice (3AFC) experiment with twenty participants to explore whether the resultant stimulus is distinct and realistic. In our experiment, participants were able to match the three digital buttons with their physical counterparts with a success rate of 83%. In addition, we harvested seven adjective pairs from the participants expressing their perceptual feeling of pressing the physical buttons. All twenty participants rated the degree of their subjective feelings associated with each adjective for all the physical and digital buttons investigated in this study. Our statistical analysis showed that there exist at least three adjective pairs for which participants have rated two out of three digital buttons similar to their physical counterparts.