Touch Devices Research Articles

56‐2: Optical Touch Screen Integrated With Fingerprint Recognition

An optical touch panel integrated with fingerprint recognition function has been proposed and confirmed. Through tactical design with slanted grating and appropriate pitch, efficient coupling of waveguide mode for touch sensing and sufficient non‐overlapping area for fingerprint detecting were obtained simultaneously, meaning great potential for intelligent touch devices.

What Will It Take to End the HIV/AIDS Epidemic? Linking the Most Disenfranchised Into Care Through Outreach

The 2015 National HIV/AIDS Strategy renewed its goal of increasing access to care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and called for an increased focus on linkage to care efforts. As many PLWHA face multiple barriers to care and live on the margins of society, adoption of intensive outreach activities is necessary to engage the most disenfranchised PLWHA into care and to ultimately end the HIV epidemic. The Bay Area Network for Positive Health (BANPH), comprising 12+ agencies, established a network outreach model for our linkage-to-care project to engage the hardest-to-reach populations in the San Francisco Bay Area. During the years 2010-2013, BANPH agencies conducted street outreach, analyzed internal tracking systems to identify out-of-care individuals and individuals experiencing tenuous care, and surveyed participants using Apple iPod Touch devices. During the 3-year project, BANPH agencies engaged 602 out-of-care PLWHA and linked 440 to care. On average, outreach workers made 10 contact attempts with a client to link them to care. Sixty-three percent of participants were linked to care on an average of 56 days after initial contact. Factors, including lack of case management, lack of transportation, competing concerns, substance abuse, and HIV stigma, were significantly associated with linkage-to-care outcomes. Intensive outreach efforts could help to reduce barriers to care for hard-to-reach PLWHA, but these efforts require a tremendous amount of time and resources. A network outreach model could help facilitate sharing of limited resources and increase regional outreach capacity for linkage-to-care programs.

DRAW-A-PIN: Authentication using finger-drawn PIN on touch devices

This paper presents Draw-A-PIN, a user authentication system on a device with a touch interface that supports the use of PINs. In the proposed system, the user is asked to draw her PIN on the touch screen instead of typing it on a keypad. Consequently, Draw-A-PIN could offer better security by utilizing drawing traits or behavioral biometrics as an additional authentication factor beyond just the secrecy of the PIN. In addition, Draw-A-PIN inherently provides acceptability and usability by leveraging user familiarity with PINs. To evaluate the security and usability of the approach, Draw-A-PIN was implemented on Android phones and 3203 legitimate finger-drawn PINs and 4655 forgery samples were collected through an extensive and unsupervised field experiment over 10 consecutive days. Experimental results show that Draw-A-PIN achieves an equal error rate of 4.84% in a scenario where the attacker already knows the PIN by shoulder surfing. Finally, results from a user study based on the System Usability Scale questionnaire confirm that Draw-A-PIN is highly usable.

Use of Delta Robot as an Active Touch Device in Immersive Case Scenarios

The paper presents a new approach to creating interactive simulations for testing tactile interaction with the user, which involves use of a low-cost device. The role of the haptic (touch) device and its functionality is achieved by using a manipulator with a parallel kinematic structure (Delta robot). This required the development of methods of integrating a robot with the selected Virtual Reality (VR) systems. Therefore, a new element was introduced into the virtual environment - a device to simulate real objects. In the Virtual Environment (VE), user interacted with a simulated object, and the task of the Delta robot was moving into a position which enabled the interaction. In this way, VE has become more responsive because it corresponded to the behavior of the user, who can move and interact with digital objects and directly experience their physical properties (e.g. size, shape). According to the authors, this type of application will be able in the future to support the effectiveness of virtual training, with particular emphasis on educational simulation (e.g. to perform procedural tasks).

Technology and Dynamic Pathways: How to Improve Nursing Care, Documentation, and Efficiency

Background: Approximately 60% of adverse events in skilled nursing facilities are likely preventable. This provides an opportunity to improve care and decrease costs for ill, and especially aged, patients. The primary line of defense against adverse events in these facilities are the nurses caring for these patients each day. Nurses are responsible for recognizing early warning signs of illness and preventing falls and other complications. The care of patients with multiple comorbidities requires nurses to attend to an often overwhelming set of interacting details. Objective: Our goal is to operationalize standards of care that can be implemented by nursing staff at skilled nursing and long-term care facilities in a manner complementing their natural workflow and facilitating patient interaction and shift documentation. To improve point of care patient management, nurses require a mobile solution that can guide their patient care unobtrusively. Methods: Nurses at a Boston-area 100-bed skilled nursing/long-term care facility used our solution consisting of an app on a mobile device together with a Web-based administration and reporting system. Our custom software running on an iPod Touch device implements an adaptive methodology for succinctly guiding nurses through a systematic review of systems, a physical exam, a fall risk protocol, and other assessments suitable to their roles in the nursing facility. Dynamically created checklists that prescribe appropriate and immediate nursing interventions are automatically presented to the nurses following each assessment based on the data collected. The software utilizes behavioral “nudges” to nurse-users to minimize errors and improve speed of data entry. Additionally, a custom content creation system allows for high-level abstraction of protocol logic, enabling real-time improvement and customization of complex protocol algorithms without the need for error-prone software programming. These methods facilitate automated reporting that aids the structured thought processes of providers and caregivers. Results: Pilot results were acquired using qualitative surveys and free-form interviews. Nurses reported a high facility after only an initial 15-minute training session. All nurses confirmed that having access to an efficient and mobile care facilitation device improved the likelihood of identifying patient complications. They also felt that a mobile documentation system lowered error rates by encouraging real-time documentation. Furthermore, systematic data gathering provided an improved level of documentation both in terms of comprehensiveness and clarity. Nurses claimed the system increased efficiency and lowered the overall time required for combined patient assessment and documentation. Most importantly, staff satisfaction was highly positive, encouraging continued usage of the intervention. Conclusions: Technological interventions at skilled nursing facilities, when implemented to address the point-of-care needs of nursing personnel, can positively impact quality improvement goals, empower nursing staff, and improve patient care. The suite of tools developed here enables the operationalization of standards of care with sufficient comprehensiveness to address a sufficient portion of the complexity faced in daily nursing duties. We conclude that access to real-time protocols has a highly beneficial effect on nursing care. [iproc 2016;2(1):e31]

Leveraging finger identification to integrate multi-touch command selection and parameter manipulation

Identifying which fingers are touching a multi-touch surface provides a very large input space. We describe FingerCuts, an interaction technique inspired by desktop keyboard shortcuts to exploit this potential. FingerCuts enables integrated command selection and parameter manipulation, it uses feed-forward and feedback to increase discoverability, it is backward compatible with current touch input techniques, and it is adaptable for different touch device form factors. We implemented three variations of FingerCuts, each tailored to a different device form factor: tabletop, tablet, and smartphone. Qualitative and quantitative studies conducted on the tabletop suggests that with some practice, FingerCuts is expressive, easy-to-use, and increases a sense of continuous interaction flow and that interaction with FingerCuts is as fast, or faster than using a graphical user interface. A theoretical analysis of FingerCuts using the Fingerstroke-Level Model (FLM) matches our quantitative study results, justifying our use of FLM to analyse and validate the performance for the other device form factors.

Assessment of an Electronic Intervention in Young Women with Heavy Menstrual Bleeding

Study Objective, Design, Setting, Participants, Interventions, and Main Outcome MeasuresBleeding disorders (BD) occur in up to 50% of adolescents with heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB). This presents unique challenges to health care providers because of the complexity of treating the condition and such complexity can result in difficulty with patients understanding basic information about their condition, limit communication with medical providers, and patient compliance. The aim of the study was to use an electronic approach to enhance patient compliance with medications used to treat their HMB, and to provide educational access to adolescents with BD. This was a prospective cohort study involving patients in a Young Women's Bleeding Disorder Clinic at a single children's hospital. Subjects were given an iPod Touch (Apple Inc, Cupertino, CA) device (ITD), preloaded with the iPeriod (Winkpass Creations) application. Participants recorded information about their BD that they learned about on BD Web sites, and menses, and medications. Electronic and charted data were collected to monitor compliance with prescribed treatment regimens. All ITD allowed Wi-Fi access to allow teens to explore BD Web sites and knowledge was assessed. ResultsTwenty-three of 45 subjects completed the study. The mean age was 14.1 ± 1.9 years. Subjects who were compliant with the ITD (group 1), charted on baseline symptoms, menstrual flow (83.3%), cramps (100%, 23/23), breakthrough bleeding (95.6%, 22/23), mood (95.6%, 22/23), and medication use (91.7%) for a mean of 9.3 ± 3.1 months. Subjects who were nonusers (group 2) did not report on symptoms, their condition, or medication use in the device (n = 22). More than 75% (17/23) of subjects in group 1 used hormones alone or hormones with antifibrinolytic agents to control HMB. No subjects stopped or missed medications who were in group 1 intentionally, and also there were 9 enrollees within this same group who missed a medication related to awaiting the prescription to be filled from pharmacy. In group 2, 17 enrollees missed medications, resulting in 19% (4/22) of these enrollees being admitted to hospital for 1-2 days. In addition, enrollees in group 2 missed more medications on average compared with group 1. No subjects in group 1 required admission for HMB treatment failure during the study period, compared with those in group 2 (P = .006). All subjects in group 1 reported accessing Web sites using their ITD to learn about their BD. Groups 1 and 2 did not differ in the number of medications that were prescribed during the time frame (P = .77) or the number of follow-up clinic visits (P = .49). Furthermore, those in group 1 reported fewer breakthrough bleeding episodes than those in group 2 according to clinic notes (P = .03). Users of the ITD were given a set of knowledge questions. Group 2 subjects were not consistent users of the ITD use and did not complete the knowledge questions. Group 1 and 2 could not be compared with regard to knowledge as a result. ConclusionITD is an excellent tool for adolescents with HMB and BD to allow self-monitoring, provider monitoring, and improve educational access through engaging technology; compliance with device use was associated with several parameters suggestive of improved clinical outcomes.

Whole-Body Vibration Exposures in Undeground Coal Mining Operations

Studies conducted on surface coal mining equipment have identified whole-body vibration as a significant hazard. Operators of underground mobile equipment, particularly shuttle cars and transport vehicles, are likely to be exposed to significant levels of whole-body vibration. To date, measuring whole-body vibration from underground mining mobile equipment has been difficult due to the strict guidelines governing the use of electrical equipment in underground mines. This paper presents data obtained from two low-methane coal mines using an iOS application installed on iPod Touch devices. The majority of measurements taken from a range of mobile plant and equipment in use at the underground coal mines exceeded the ISO2631.1 Health Guidance Caution Zone. Further investigations are being undertaken to develop a thorough understanding of whole-body vibration exposures to which operators of mobile equipment used in underground coal mines are exposed and the opportunities for application of this information to assist mine site safety, health and risk management processes.

Domain independent regulative norms for evaluating performance of assistive solutions

When considering touch devices, hand dexterity becomes an issue for the elderly population. Solutions to this issue ought to be on the supportive side while not diminishing the autonomy of the users. According to self-determination theory, this implies being autonomy supportive. This idea inspires two concepts introduced in this paper, the undesirable interruption and tolerated failure. Both can be computationally represented using a normative system approach. This representation permits to quantify the performance of a system in terms of norm violations and punishments. The normative system approach applicability is essayed in a case study with a touch operated remote control for a smart TV. The case study is realized through a simulation framework that allows to describe the expected user behaviours as well as emulating the assisting solution, the remote control in this case.

An Exploration of the Interaction Between Touch Avoidance and the Pleasant Touch (C-Tactile Afferent) System.

C-tactile (CT) afferent fibers are optimally stimulated by slow gentle stroking, and an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between stroking velocity and pleasantness ratings of this type of touch. This study investigated whether an additional and potentially important variable, touch avoidance, interacts with this relationship. While a typical U-shaped velocity-pleasantness relationship was expected, those high in touch avoidance were expected to rate CT-targeted touch (1-10 cm/s) as less pleasant than those low in touch avoidance. Thirty-five participants rated the pleasantness of a brush stroked across their forearm at five velocities (0.3, 1, 3, 10, 30 cm/s) administered by a custom-built touch stimulator ("the touch device"). Participants also completed two self-report measures of touch avoidance. There was an inverted U-shaped relationship between velocity and pleasantness ratings, and high touch avoidance resulted in a downward shift of this curve. The downward shift was across all velocities, including those that do not maximally engage CT afferents. It appears that touch avoidance reduces the pleasantness of all kinds of touch in a similar way, and it is unlikely to be specifically related to CT afferent functioning. Other potential mechanisms leading to touch avoidance are discussed.

Implementation of a Touch Screen Panel With Triangle Twist Sensor Pattern and Controller IC

In this paper, a cost-effective touch screen panel with triangle twist (TAT) sensor pattern and its calibration algorithm are proposed. For touch detection, the proposed touch screen panel consists of one drive line to receive sensing information from two sensing lines. The proposed touch screen panel reduces the number of signal lines and bonding pads by about 42% compared to conventional touch screen panels, which decrease both the manufacturing difficulty and costs. By a simple calibration algorithm for the proposed touch screen panel with a TAT sensor pattern in a micro controller unit, the touch performance with respect to accuracy, precision, and linearity is considerably enhanced. The proposed touch screen panel shows reliable touch accuracy with errors less than 2 mm. As shown in the implementation results, the proposed touch screen panel is very effective in reducing manufacturing costs of touch devices, which suffer from implementation issues of signal lines caused by adopting a huge number of touch sensors.

Biomechanical analysis of upper limb during the use of touch screen: motion strategies identification

Nowadays touch technology is growing and developers try to make it ever more intuitive and easier to use. This present work focused on the upper limb joint coordination during the achievement of puzzles on touch screen. A 5-inch and 10-inch devices were used to perform 9 and 16 pieces puzzles dragged with digits. The conclusions showed an increase in joint solicitation with the number of piece and the touch screen size. Moreover, three interactions strategies proved to be an evidence: the ‘wrist strategy’ preferentially implying wrist flexion/extension, the ‘elbow strategy’ preferentially implying the elbow flexion/extension and the ‘neutral strategy’ mobilising equally the two joints. From an ergonomic point of view, the data about how the upper limb segments are mobilised while interacting with the screen could be relevant to increase the adaptability of the devices to the user, including users with motor impairments.Practitioner Summary: Information about the biomechanical organisation of movement during interaction with touch devices appears relevant in order to develop applications adapted to the motor capacities of users. From the analysis of joint angles when performing several times a puzzle with healthy subjects, three motor strategies were highlighted.

Using a Touch-Based, Computer-Assisted Learning System to Promote Literacy and Math Skills for Low-Income Preschoolers

The use of touch-based technologies by young children to improve academic skills has seen growth outpacing empirical evidence of its effectiveness. Due to the educational challenges low-income children face, the stakes for providing instructional technology with demonstrated efficacy are high. The current work presents an empirical study of the use of a touch-based, computer-assisted learning system by low-income preschoolers. A description of the system’s design is provided with attention to young children’s interaction with touch devices, learner engagement, and pedagogically-based delivery of academic content. Children in 18 low-income child-care preschool classrooms were assessed on literacy and math skills in the fall and again in the spring. Target children used the iStartSmart learning system throughout the academic year, while control children did not have access to the system. Compared to controls, children using the learning system made significant gains on external standardized measures of literacy and math. Children who spent more time using the system and those who reached the upper levels of skill understanding showed the strongest improvement in test scores. The findings contribute to the currently sparse literature by illuminating that for at-risk early learners, touch-based, computer-assisted instructional technology shows promise as an educational tool.

BezelCursor

The authors present BezelCursor, a novel one-handed thumb interaction technique for target acquisition on mobile touch screens of various sizes. Their technique combines bezel-initiated interaction and pointing gesture to solve the problem of limited screen accessibility afforded by the thumb. With a fixed, comfortable grip of a mobile touch device, a user may employ the tool to easily and quickly access a target located anywhere on the screen, using a single fluid action. Unlike the existing technologies, the authors' technique requires no explicit mode switching to invoke and can be smoothly used together with commonly adopted interaction styles such as direct touch and dragging. Their user study shows that BezelCursor requires less grip adjustment, and is more accurate or faster than the state-of-the-art techniques when using a fixed secure grip.

Effects of mediated social touch on affective experiences and trust.

This study investigated whether communication via mediated hand pressure during a remotely shared experience (watching an amusing video) can (1) enhance recovery from sadness, (2) enhance the affective quality of the experience, and (3) increase trust towards the communication partner. Thereto participants first watched a sad movie clip to elicit sadness, followed by a funny one to stimulate recovery from sadness. While watching the funny clip they signaled a hypothetical fellow participant every time they felt amused. In the experimental condition the participants responded by pressing a hand-held two-way mediated touch device (a Frebble), which also provided haptic feedback via simulated hand squeezes. In the control condition they responded by pressing a button and they received abstract visual feedback. Objective (heart rate, galvanic skin conductance, number and duration of joystick or Frebble presses) and subjective (questionnaires) data were collected to assess the emotional reactions of the participants. The subjective measurements confirmed that the sad movie successfully induced sadness while the funny movie indeed evoked more positive feelings. Although their ranking agreed with the subjective measurements, the physiological measurements confirmed this conclusion only for the funny movie. The results show that recovery from movie induced sadness, the affective experience of the amusing movie, and trust towards the communication partner did not differ between both experimental conditions. Hence, feedback via mediated hand touching did not enhance either of these factors compared to visual feedback. Further analysis of the data showed that participants scoring low on Extraversion (i.e., persons that are more introvert) or low on Touch Receptivity (i.e., persons who do not like to be touched by others) felt better understood by their communication partner when receiving mediated touch feedback instead of visual feedback, while the opposite was found for participants scoring high on these factors. The implications of these results for further research are discussed, and some suggestions for follow-up experiments are presented.

Using Mobile Touch Devices to Provide Flexible Classroom Assessment Techniques

Classroom assessment techniques (CATs) are ungraded activities in a classroom setting that provide feedback to the teacher and to the students themselves, on the current state of student learning and understanding, which can subsequently drive corrective actions where necessary. Student response systems (SRSs) provide a technological solution for CATs whereby students can respond anonymously and instructors can provide instant feedback. However, existing systems have tended to suffer from constrained input, limiting the quality of the student responses. In particular, existing SRSs typically only employ well known form based input metaphors such as the multiple-choice selection and text-box input. These input types are not well suited to responses that require significant graphic or symbolic elements such as equations, circuit diagrams, and other drawings. These SRSs also have logistical issues in relation to portability and ownership of the equipment. In this paper, the authors present an SRS designed from the ground up to support CATs with freeform input to fulfil the needs of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) classroom, though the solution is applicable to any learning environment in which freeform input is valuable. To mitigate logistical issues, the solution employs touch based Android tablets and smart phones commonly owned by students and a freely downloadable student app. This paper details the design of teacher and student interaction, including instructor preparation prior to class. The authors also examine some of the issues surrounding freeform graphic and symbolic input on a range of device form factors and the particular solutions that they found effective. A summary of their ongoing evaluation of this system is also outlined within.

Transferring Data from Smartwatch to Smartphone through Mechanical Wave Propagation.

Inspired by the mechanisms of bone conduction transmission, we present a novel sensor and actuation system that enables a smartwatch to securely communicate with a peripheral touch device, such as a smartphone. Our system regards hand structures as a mechanical waveguide that transmits particular signals through mechanical waves. As a signal, we used high-frequency vibrations (18.0–20.0 kHz) so that users cannot sense the signals either tactually or audibly. To this end, we adopted a commercial surface transducer, which is originally developed as a bone-conduction actuator, for mechanical signal generation. At the receiver side, a piezoelement was adopted for picking up the transferred mechanical signals. Experimental results have shown that the proposed system can successfully transfer data using mechanical waves. We also validate dual-frequency actuations under which high-frequency signals (18.0–20.0 kHz) are generated along with low-frequency (up to 250 Hz) haptic vibrations. The proposed method has advantages in terms of security in that it does not reveal the signals outside the body, meaning that it is not possible for attackers to eavesdrop on the signals. To further illustrate the possible application spaces, we conclude with explorations of the proposed approach.

프리엠퍼시스와 칼만 필터를 이용한 터치 잡음 제거

Recently, mobile devices with touch display panel are widely used. Accuracy and reaction speed of touch signal are very important in touch devices. Therefore, we need to develop an effective algorithm to reduce touch noise quickly and accurately. This paper proposes a touch noise reduction algorithm using Kalman filtering in consideration of signal motion. First, a specific pre-emphasis processing is applied to an input signal so as to maximize the effect of Kalman filtering. In other words, a pure signal in the touch signal increases but noise in the touch signal decreases. Next, motion of the signal is detected. Motion estimation is performed only if motion is detected. If we detect motion by using the only neighborhood of the signal, we can reduce about 75% of the computation in comparison with examining the entire area. Finally, Kalman filtering using the previous state of current signal is performed. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm suppresses touch noise sufficiently without degradation of the pure signal

UX Framework which should be considered for The Elderly Touch Device

UX Framework which should be considered for The Elderly Touch Device

Touchable area: An empirical study on design approach considering perception size and touch input behavior

As the use of mobile touch devices continues to increase, distinctive user experiences can be provided through a direct manipulation. Therefore, the characteristics of touch interfaces should be considered regarding their controllability. This study aims to provide a design approach for touch-based user interfaces. A derivation procedure for the touchable area is proposed as a design guideline based on input behavior. To these ends, two empirical tests were conducted through a smart phone interface. Fifty-five participants were asked to perform a series of input tasks on a screen. As results, touchable area with a desirable hit rate of 90% could be yielded depending on the icon design. To improve the applicability of the touchable area, user error was analyzed based on omission-commission classification. The most suitable design had a hit rate of 95% compared to 90 and 99%. This study contributes practical implications for user interaction design with finger-based controls. Relevance to industryThis research describes a distinctive design approach that guarantees the desired touch accuracy for effective use of mobile touch devices. Therefore, the results will encourage interface designers to take into account the input behavior of fingers from a user-centered perspective.