BlinkBoard: Guiding and monitoring circuit assembly for synchronous and remote physical computing education.

Motivated by the necessity of guiding and monitoring students when assembling electronic circuits during in-class activities, we propose BlinkBoard, an augmented breadboard that enhances synchronous and remote physical computing classes. BlinkBoard uses LEDs placed on each row of a breadboard to guide, via four distinct blinking patterns, how to place and connect components and wires. It also uses a set of Input/Output pins to sense voltage levels or to generate voltage output at user-specified rows. Our hardware uses an open protocol of JSON commands and responses that can be used directly via a command line interface to control the hardware. Alternatively, these commands can be issued within a front-end graphical application hosted on a computer for a more user-friendly interface, and to ensure bidirectional and real-time communication between the instructor's guiding and monitoring panel, and all the students' remote BlinkBoards. The BlinkBoard hardware is affordable and simple, partially due to a customized circuit configured via a hardware description language that handles the LEDs' patterns with minimal load on the Arduino microcontroller. Finally, we briefly show BlinkBoard in use during a workshop with high-school students and an undergraduate design course.

Rendering Perceived Terrain Stiffness in VR Via Preload Variation Against Body-Weight.

PreloadStep is a novel platform that creates the illusion of walking on different types of terrain in Virtual Reality without requiring users to wear any special instrumentation. PreloadStep works by compressing a set of springs between two plates, with the amount of compression determining the perceived stiffness of the virtual terrain. The platform can render perception of stiffness by applying preload forces up to 824 N in different portions of the terrain, capable of changing stiffness illusion even while a user is standing on it. The effectiveness of PreloadStep was tested in two perception studies (perception thresholds and haptic-visual congruence studies) and an example application, with the results indicating that it is a promising method for creating engaging virtual terrain experiences.

ActivEarring: Spatiotemporal Haptic Cues on the Ears.

The symmetric configuration and the sensitivity of ears in addition to the long tradition of earrings as adornment open up the possibility for smart ear-worn devices. Taking advantage of these attributes, past research mostly focused on creating novel unobtrusive sensing input devices and auditory displays placed on the ear. Meanwhile, the tactile sensitivity of the ear has long been overshadowed by its auditory capacity, presenting the opportunity to investigate how ears can be exploited for unobtrusive tactile information transfer. With three studies and a total of 38 participants, we suggest the design of ActivEarring, a ear-worn device capable of imparting information by stimulating six different locations on both ears. We evaluated the performance of ActivEarring in a semi-realistic mobile condition and its practical use for information transfer with spatiotemporal patterns. Finally, we demonstrate that ActivEarring can be incorporated in common jewelry design, and present three applications that illustrate promising usage scenarios.