motor learning

More multi-touch in the news!

| Michelle Annett

I am super excited that the tabletop I built for the Glenrose was featured in an article in the Wall Street Journal today (as well as a few other places)! It’s great to not only see the impact that the table has had on the Glenrose, but also see all the great research into technology-based rehabilitation interventions that is being conducted at other institutions. I hope that all this publicity will encourage more HCI researchers to think about entering into this awesome field and providing clients in therapy programs with some exciting, engaging technology to work with!

  • “Playing on a tablet as therapy”. Wall Street Journal, July 2011.
  • “Smartphones, Tablets Provide Therapy for Autism, Other Disabilities”. Mobiledia.com, July 2011. Also appeared on Forbes.com, July 2011.

We need participants for our user study!! [Updated]

| Michelle Annett

Update: Due to the overwhelming number of responses we have received, we are no longer looking for participants! Thank you very much to all of those who volunteered for our study!Dr. Walter Bischof, Fraser Anderson, and I have just started running a user study and are looking for people in the Edmonton area to participate! In our study, you will get to wear a super nifty motion capture jacket, have your muscular activity recorded by EMG electrodes, and use one of the AIRTouch multi-touch tabletops that Fraser and I have built. We are using all of these technologies to compare different rehabilitation activities: those performed on a multi-touch tabletop and those performed on a traditional table. The information collected during our study will be used to evaluate the potential of multi-touch tabletops in rehabilitation programs.

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We are looking for people who are 18 years of age or older who weigh less than 220 lbs (due to the sizes of motion capture jackets that we have). The study will take place in the AMMI Lab (Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta) and will take approximately one hour. Participants will receive $15 CAD for participating in the study and an additional $5 CAD if all tasks in the study are completed. The study is running from July 18th, 2011 to August 5th, 2011.

For more information and/or to schedule a convenient time to participate, please contact our research assistant, Gauri Chaggar, at chaggar1@ualberta.ca.

Tabletop Research in the News

| Michelle Annett

On October 20 and 22, the Glenrose held pseudo-press conferences to share the success of my multi-touch tabletop and it’s activities with the local Edmonton and St. Albert media. To date between 40 and 50 patients have used the tabletop, and many patients and therapists reported that it has produced many great results. I hope that these positive benefits will continue with new patients and that we will be able to make a few more tabletops for the Glenrose. I also hope that we can get many more tabletops into other hospitals and clinics around Alberta as well. If you would like more information on this project, please don’t hesitate to contact me!


Media links:

New CyberPsychology and CyberTherapy Papers

| Michelle Annett

I just found out that I have two papers (along with Fraser Anderson) that were accepted at CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology 15 to be held in Seoul, Korea in June (during the World Cup of Soccer)! I am very happy that I get to go back to CT & CP again this year, because I had a great time last year when it was held in Italy. As soon as I am able, I will post pictures, videos, and our accepted papers!

AIRWall

| Michelle Annett

Inspired by the success of our AIRTouch project, Fraser and I wanted to adapt the multi-touch activities that I created for the AIRTouch system to a much larger surface. We used our large rear-projected “Disney” screen, a Wiimote, an off-the-shelf NEC projector, an inexpensive Bluetooth dongle (Deal Extreme is awesome), and a custom IR ‘light pen’ to make our AIRWall system. We initially used Johnny Chung Lee’s Wiimote software (he is the nicest guy) to handle the tracking of the IR ‘light pen’, and then later built our own.

Fraser’s IR Light Pen

A few of the activities that we tested on the AIRWall can be seen here: