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Recognition of human behavior plays an important role in context-aware applications. However, it is still a challenge for end-users to build personalized applications that accurately recognize their own activities. Therefore, we present CAPturAR, an in-situ programming tool that supports users to rapidly author context-aware applications by referring to their previous activities. We customize an AR head-mounted device with multiple camera systems that allow for non-intrusive capturing of user's daily activities. During authoring, we reconstruct the captured data in AR with an animated avatar and use virtual icons to represent the surrounding environment. With our visual programming interface, users create human-centered rules for the applications and experience them instantly in AR. We further demonstrate four use cases enabled by CAPturAR. Also, we verify the effectiveness of the AR-HMD and the authoring workflow with a system evaluation using our prototype. Moreover, we conduct a remote user study in an AR simulator to evaluate the usability. 

Machine tasks in workshops or factories are often a compound sequence of local, spatial, and body-coordinated human-machine interactions. Prior works have shown the merits of video-based and augmented reality (AR) tutoring systems for local tasks. However, due to the lack of a bodily representation of the tutor, they are not as effective for spatial and body-coordinated interactions. We propose avatars as an additional tutor representation to the existing AR instructions. In order to understand the design space of tutoring presence for machine tasks, we conduct a comparative study with 32 users. We aim to explore the strengths/limitations of the following four tutor options: video, non-avatar-AR, half-body+AR, and full-body+AR. The results show that users prefer the half-body+AR overall, especially for the spatial interactions. They have a preference for the full-body+AR for the body-coordinated interactions and the non-avatar-AR for the local interactions. We further discuss and summarize design recommendations and insights for future machine task tutoring systems. 

We present V.Ra, a visual and spatial programming system for robot-IoT task authoring. In V.Ra, programmable mobile robots serve as binding agents to link the stationary IoTs and perform collaborative tasks. We establish an ecosystem that coherently connects the three key elements of robot task planning , the human, robot and IoT, with one single mobile AR device. Users can perform task authoring with the Augmented Reality (AR) handheld interface, then placing the AR device onto the mobile robot directly transfers the task plan in a what-you-do-is-what-robot-does (WYDWRD) manner. The mobile device mediates the interactions between the user, robot, and the IoT oriented tasks, and guides the path planning execution with the embedded simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) capability. We demonstrate that V.Ra enables instant, robust and intuitive room-scale navigatory and interactive task authoring through various use cases and preliminary studies. 

We present V.Ra, a visual and spatial programming system for robot-IoT task authoring. In V.Ra, programmable mobile robots serve as binding agents to link the stationary IoTs and perform collaborative tasks. We establish an ecosystem that coherently connects the three key elements of robot task planning (human-robot-IoT) with one single AR-SLAM device. Users can perform task authoring in an analogous manner with the Augmented Reality (AR) interface. Then placing the device onto the mobile robot directly transfers the task plan in a what-you-do-is-what-robot-does (WYDWRD) manner. The mobile device mediates the interactions between the user, robot and IoT oriented tasks, and guides the path planning execution with the SLAM capability. 

We present GhostAR, a time-space editor for authoring and acting Human-Robot-Collaborative (HRC) tasks in-situ. Our system adopts an embodied authoring approach in Augmented Reality (AR), for spatially editing the actions and programming the robots through demonstrative role-playing. We propose a novel HRC workflow that externalizes user’s authoring as demonstrative and editable AR ghost, allowing for spatially situated visual referencing, realistic animated simulation, and collaborative action guidance. We develop a dynamic time warping (DTW) based collaboration model which takes the real-time captured motion as inputs, maps it to the previously authored human actions, and outputs the corresponding robot actions to achieve adaptive collaboration. We emphasize an in-situ authoring and rapid iterations of joint plans without an offline training process. Further, we demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of our workflow through HRC use cases and a three-session user study. 

Ani-Bot is a modular robotics system that allows users to control their DIY robots using Mixed-Reality Interaction (MRI). This system takes advantage of MRI to enable users to visually program the robot through the augmented view of a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). In this paper, we first explain the design of the Mixed-Reality (MR) ready modular robotics system, which allows users to instantly perform MRI once they finish assembling the robot. Then, we elaborate the augmentations provided by the MR system in the three primary phases of a construction kit's lifecycle: Creation, Tweaking, and Usage. Finally, we demonstrate Ani-Bot with four application examples and evaluate the system with a two-session user study. The results of our evaluation indicate that Ani-Bot does successfully embed MRI into the lifecycle (Creation, Tweaking, Usage) of DIY robotics and that it does show strong potential for delivering an enhanced user experience. 

The emerging simultaneous localizing and mapping (SLAM) based tracking technique allows the mobile AR device spatial awareness of the physical world. Still, smart things are not fully supported with the spatial awareness in AR. Therefore, we present Scenariot, a method that enables instant discovery and localization of the surrounding smart things while also spatially registering them with a SLAM based mobile AR system. By exploiting the spatial relationships between mobile AR systems and smart things, Scenariot fosters in-situ interactions with connected devices. We embed Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) RF units into the AR device and the controllers of the smart things, which allows for measuring the distances between them. With a one-time initial calibration, users localize multiple IoT devices and map them within the AR scenes. Through a series of experiments and evaluations, we validate the localization accuracy as well as the performance of the enabled spatial aware interactions. Further, we demonstrate various use cases through Scenariot. 

We present Ani-Bot, a modular robotics system that allows users to construct Do-It-Yourself (DIY) robots and use mixed-reality approach to interact with them. Ani-Bot enables novel user experience by embedding Mixed-Reality Interaction (MRI) in the three phases of interacting with a modular construction kit, namely, Creation, Tweaking, and Usage. In this paper, we first present the system design that allows users to instantly perform MRI once they finish assembling the robot. Further, we discuss the augmentations offered by MRI in the three phases in specific. 

We present iSoft, a single volume soft sensor capable of sensing real-time continuous contact and unidirectional stretching. We propose a low-cost and an easy way to fabricate such piezoresistive elastomer-based soft sensors for instant interactions. We employ an electrical impedance tomography (EIT) technique to estimate changes of resistance distribution on the sensor caused by fingertip contact. To compensate for the rebound elasticity of the elastomer and achieve real-time continuous contact sensing, we apply a dynamic baseline update for EIT. The baseline updates are triggered by fingertip contact and movement detections. Further, we support unidirectional stretching sensing using a model-based approach which works separately with continuous contact sensing. We also provide a software toolkit for users to design and deploy personalized interfaces with customized sensors. Through a series of experiments and evaluations, we validate the performance of contact and stretching sensing. Through example applications, we show the variety of examples enabled by iSoft.