• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.277-284
• /
• 2011

In tangible augmented reality (AR) environments for virtual prototyping, the user interacts with virtual products by manipulating tangible objects with his or her hands, but the user often encounter awkward situations in which his or her hands are occluded by augmented virtual objects, which reduces both immersion and ease of interaction. In this paper, we present how to resolve such hand region occlusion in order to enhance natural interaction and immersive visualization. In the AR environment considered, we use two types (product-type and pointer-type) of tangible objects for tangible user interaction with a virtual product of interest. Holding the tangible objects with his or her hands, the user can create input events by touching specified regions of the product-type tangible object with the pointer-type tangible object. We developed a method for resolving hand region occlusion frequently arising during such user interaction, It first detect hand region in a real image and refines the rendered image of the virtual object by subtracting the hand region from the rendered image, Then, it superimposes the refined image onto the real image to obtain an image in which the occlusion is resolved. Incorporated into tangible AR interaction for virtual prototyping of handheld products such as cellular phones and MP3 players, the method has been found by a preliminary user study that it is not only useful to improve natural interaction and immersive visualization of virtual products, but also helpful for making the users experience the products' shapes and functions better.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.374-383
• /
• 2013

Various interaction techniques have been studied for providing the feeling of touch and improve immersion in augmented reality (AR) environments. Tangible AR interaction exploiting two types (product-type and pointer-type) of simple objects has earned great interest for cost-effective design evaluation of digital handheld products. When the sizes of markers attached to the objects are kept big to obtain better marker recognition, the pointer-type object frequently and significantly occludes the product-type object, which deteriorates natural visualization and level of immersion in an AR environment. In this paper, in order to overcome such problems, we propose tangible AR interaction using fingertip touch combined with small-sized markers. The proposed approach facilitates the use of convex polygons to recover the boundaries of AR markers which are partially occluded. It also properly enlarges the pattern area of each AR marker to reduce the sizes of AR markers without sacrificing the quality of marker detection. We empirically verified the quality of the proposed approach, and applied it in the process of design evaluation of digital products. From experimental results, we found that the approach is comparably accurate enough to be applied to the design evaluation process and tangible enough to provide a pseudo feeling of manipulating virtual products with human hands.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.77-88
• /
• 2008

Nowadays personal users create a variety of multi-media contents and share them with others through various devices over the Internet since the concept of user created content (UCC) has been widely accepted as a new paradigm in today's multi-media market, which has broken the boundary of contents providers and consumers. This paradigm shift has also introduced a new business model that makes it possible for them to create their own multi-media contents for commercial purpose. This paper proposes a tangible virtual studio using augmented reality to author multi-media contents easily and intuitively for personal broadcasting and personal content generation. It provides a set of tangible interfaces and devices such as visual markers, cameras, movable and rotatable arms carrying cameras, and miniaturized set. They can offer an easy-to-use interface in an immersive environment and an easy switching mechanism between tangible environment and virtual environment. This paper also discusses how to remove inconsistency between real objects and virtual objects during the AR-enabled visualization with a context-adaptable tracking method. The context-adaptable tracking method not only adjusts the locations of invisible markers by interpolating the locations of existing reference markers, but also removes a jumping effect of movable virtual objects when their references are changed from one marker to another.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.17 no.6
• /
• pp.417-425
• /
• 2012

In recent years, great attention has been paid to using simple physical objects as tangible objects to improve user interaction in augmented reality (AR) environments. In this paper, we address AR-based user interaction using tangible objects, which has been used as a key component for virtual design evaluation of engineered products including digital handheld products. We herein consider the use of two types (product-type and pointer-type) of tangible objects. The user creates input events by touching specified parts of the product-type object with the pointer-type object, and the virtual product reacts to the events by rendering its visual and auditory contents on the output devices. The product-type object is used to reflect the geometric shape of a product of interest and to determine its position and orientation in the AR environment. The pointer-type object is used to recognize the reference position of the pointer (or finger) in the same environment. The rapid prototype of the product is employed as a good alternative to the product-type object, but various alternatives to the pointer-type object can be considered according to fabrication process and touching mechanism. In this paper, we present four alternatives to the pointer-type object and investigate their strong and weak points by performing experimental comparison of their various aspects including interaction accuracy, task performance, and qualitative user experience.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2011

In this paper, we propose an AR-based tangible interaction using a finger fixture for virtual evaluation of digital handheld products. To realize tangible interaction between a user and a product in a computer-vision based AR environment, we uses two types of tangible objects: a product-type object and a finger fixture. The product-type object is used to acquire the position and orientation of the product, and the finger fixture is used to recognize the position of a finger tip. The two objects are fabricated by RP technology and AR markers are attached to them. The finger fixture is designed to satisfy various requirements with an ultimate goal that the user holding the finger fixture in his or her index finger can create HMI events by touching specified regions (buttons or sliders) of the product-type object with the finger tip. By assessing the accuracy of the proposed interaction, we have found that it can be applied to a wide variety of digital handheld products whose button size is not less than 6 mm. After performing the design evaluation of several handheld products using the proposed AR-based tangible interaction, we received highly encouraging feedback from users since the proposed interaction is intuitive and tangible enough to provide a feeling like manipulating products with human hands.

• Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.1 no.4
• /
• pp.289-297
• /
• 2014

Although big-sized markers are good for accurate marker recognition and tracking, they are easily occluded by other objects and deteriorate natural visualization and level of immersion during user interaction in AR environments. In this paper, we propose an approach to exploiting the use of rectangular markers to support tangible AR interaction based on fingertip touch using small-sized markers. It basically adjusts the length, width, and interior area of rectangular markers to make them more suitably fit to longish objects like fingers. It also utilizes convex polygons to resolve the partial occlusion of a marker and properly enlarges the pattern area of a marker while adjusting its size without deteriorating the quality of marker detection. We obtained encouraging results from users that the approach can provide better natural visualization and higher level of immersion, and be accurate and tangible enough to support a pseudo feeling of touching virtual products with human hands or fingertips during design evaluation of digital handheld products.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
• /
• v.31 no.10
• /
• pp.1356-1363
• /
• 2004

We propose Tangible Media Control System (TMCS), which allows users to manipulate media contents with physical objects in an intuitive way. Currently, most people access digital media contents by exploiting GUI. However, It provides limited manipulations of the media contents. The proposed system, instead of mouse and keyboard, adopts two types of tangible objects, i.e RFID-enabled object and tracker-embedded object. The TMCS enables users to easily access and control digital media contents with the tangible objects. In addition, it supports an interactive media controller which users can synthesize media contents and generate new media contents according to users' taste. It also offers personalized contents, which is suitable for users' preferences, by exploiting context such as user's profile and situational information. Therefore. the proposed system can be applied to various interactive applications such as multimedia education, entertainment and multimedia editor.

• Educational Technology International
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.199-228
• /
• 2018

The main purposes of this study were (a) to analyze the research trend of educational use of tangible technology, (b) to identify tangible learning mechanisms, and potential benefits of learning with tangible technology, and (c) to provide references and future research directions. We conducted a systematic literature review to search for academic papers published in recent five years (from 2013 to 2017) in the major databases. Forty papers were coded and analyzed by the established coding framework in four dimensions: (a) basic publication information, (b) learning context, (c) learning mechanism, and (d) learning benefits. Overall, the results show that tangible technology has been used more for young learners in the kindergarten and primary school contexts mainly for science learning, to achieve both cognitive and affective learning outcomes, by coupling tangible objects with tabletops and desktop computers. From the synthesis of the review findings, this study suggests that the affordances of tangible technology useful for learning include embodied interaction, physical manipulations, and the physical-digital representational mapping. With such technical affordances, tangible technologies have the great potential in three particular areas in education: (a) learning spatial relationships, (b) making the invisible visible, and (c) reinforcing abstract concepts through the correspondence of representations. In conclusion, we suggest some areas for future research endeavors.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.51-62
• /
• 2019

Objective: To develop and verify the usability of a cognitive rehabilitation system with diverse cognitive functional levels based on tangible objects for the elderly population. Methods: A study was conducted to investigate the system's strengths and weaknesses by upgrading it with responses from two groups of 15 patients and 4 occupational therapists. After undergoing three forms of training - regarding executive function, memory, and concentration for a total of 20-30 min, the participants were asked to answer a structured questionnaire about contents of the three forms of training, hardware including the tablet PC functioning as a CPU and display media and tangible objects, and satisfaction of experiential usage of the system. Results: Both groups responded that the most interesting training area was executive function while the least interesting was concentration. Six participants reported that the size of the screen of the tablet PC was inappropriate, and five responded that the size of the tool was inappropriate. All therapists and 40% of the patients responded that they were satisfied with this system. Conclusion: This system's features include easy manipulation of tangible tools for performing training tasks, easy selection of and training in cognitive areas based on users' needs, and automatic adjustment of difficulty level based on users' performance. The training environment was designed to be similar to the natural environment by using tangible objects in both hands as input devices for the system, and the system was considered as an alternative to the lack of community cognitive rehabilitation specialists.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.209-216
• /
• 2008

This paper presents a novel approach to design evaluation of portable consumer electronic (PCE) products using augmented reality (AR) based tangible interaction and functional behavior simulation. In the approach, the realistic visualization is acquired by overlaying the rendered image of a PCE product on the real world environment in real-time using computer vision based augmented reality. For tangible user interaction in an AR environment, the user creates input events by touching specified regions of the product-type tangible object with the pointer-type tangible object. For functional behavior simulation, we adopt state transition methodology to capture the functional behavior of the product into a markup language-based information model, and build a finite state machine (FSM) to controls the transition between states of the product based on the information model. The FSM is combined with AR-based tangible objects whose operation in the AR environment facilitates the realistic visualization and functional simulation of the product, and thus realizes faster product design and development. Based on the proposed approach, a product design evaluation system has been developed and applied for the design evaluation of various PCE products with highly encouraging feedbacks from users.