IEEE CG&A Article

Recently, a co-authored article entitled ‘XR4ED: An Extended Reality Platform for Education’ was published at IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. It presents the overall architecture and objectives of the EU-funded project dedicated to XR for education, called Extended Reality for Education (XR4ED). The goal is to provide a platform where educators will be able to build XR teaching experiences without the need to have programming or 3D modeling expertise.

The article describes the platform and focuses on a key aspect of collaborative and social XR, which is the use of avatars. We show initial results on a) a marketplace which is used for populating educational content into XR environments, b) an intelligent augmented reality assistant that communicates between nonplayer characters and learners, and c) self-avatars providing nonverbal communication in collaborative VR.

More information:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10640174

Rehabilitation Robots Read Brainwaves

A team of scientists has developed a system that allows a robot to communicate with a patient using a headset that detects neural activity. The scientists developed the system which is led by the National Robotarium’s Human Robot Interaction (HRI) team, in partnership with the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. The socially assistive robots can process the user’s brain signals to understand their intended movements. As such, they can act as robotic rehabilitation coaches. It could turn out to be another great use case for medical robotics. The robots used in the study were programmed to help patients adhere to their rehabilitation routines without the intervention of a human medical practitioner. They can provide personalized support based on the patient’s individual requirements. Such systems could be used to help stroke and brain injury victims rehabilitate limb impairments. The headset the researchers developed for the trial uses a brain computer interface (BCI), that can read neural activity.

According to the researchers behind the project, roughly 80 percent of acute stroke and brain injury survivors suffer an upper limb impairment, which can drastically affect their quality of life. However, rehabilitating limb movement requires repetitive exercises, which can be a problem for stroke and brain injury survivors. Often, they also suffer from forgetfulness, meaning roughly 70 percent don’t complete their prescribed rehabilitation routines. Over a three-month period, the team carried out a trial with 16 stroke and brain injury survivors. Six therapists were present to record and test the system’s capacity for understanding user intention and providing motivation. They set out to determine whether the robots could read brain waves and provide real-time examples of the movements the patients had to perform. The researchers also questioned the patients to determine how effective the robots were are motivating and guiding them through their exercises.

More information:

https://interestingengineering.com/health/headset-equipped-robot-coaches-stroke-patients

DNA-Collecting Robot Fish

Some 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the nearest sea, engineering students at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich are hard at work on cutting-edge robots that may change the way the world’s oceans are studied. Eve the robotic fish swings its silicone tail side to side, powered by pumps hidden inside, as it glides fluidly through Lake Zurich’s chilly water, where it is being tested by SURF-eDNA. The student-led group has spent the past two years building a school of soft robotic fish – of which Eve is the latest.

Eve’s ability to camouflage itself as a fish isn’t its only utility. The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is also equipped with a camera to film underwater, and sonar, which when paired with an algorithm, allows it to avoid obstacles. The AUV also features a filter to collect DNA from the environment, known as eDNA, as it swims. The eDNA particles can be sent to a laboratory for sequencing to determine what species live in the body of water. The students hope that Eve will be able to give scientists a more detailed picture of the oceans and their inhabitants.

More information:

https://edition.cnn.com/science/switzerland-dna-collecting-robot-fish-hnk-spc/index.html