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Browsing by Author "Bittner, M."
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Conveying facial expressions to blind and visually impaired persons through a wearable vibrotactile device. Geest, Th.M. van der ; Buimer, H.P. ; Bittner, M. ; Kostelijk, T. ; Nemri, A. ; Wezel, R.J.A. van ; Zhao, Y.2018, Article / Letter to editor (vol. 13, iss. 3, (2018))In face-to-face social interactions, blind and visually impaired persons (VIPs) lack access to nonverbal cues like facial expressions, body posture, and gestures, which may lead to impaired interpersonal communication. In this study, a wearable sensory substitution device (SSD) consisting of a head mounted camera and a haptic belt was evaluated to determine whether vibrotactile cues around the waist could be used to convey facial expressions to users and whether such a device is desired by VIPs for use in daily living situations. Ten VIPs (mean age: 38.8, SD: 14.4) and 10 sighted persons (SPs) (mean age: 44.5, SD: 19.6) participated in the study, in which validated sets of pictures, silent videos, and videos with audio of facial expressions were presented to the participant. A control measurement was first performed to determine how accurately participants could identify facial expressions while relying on their functional senses. After a short training, participants were asked to determine facial expressions while wearing the emotion feedback system. VIPs using the device showed significant improvements in their ability to determine which facial expressions were shown. A significant increase in accuracy of 44.4% was found across all types of stimuli when comparing the scores of the control (mean±SEM: 35.0±2.5%) and supported (mean±SEM: 79.4±2.1%) phases. The greatest improvements achieved with the support of the SSD were found for silent stimuli (68.3% for pictures and 50.8% for silent videos). SPs also showed consistent, though not statistically significant, improvements while supported. Overall, our study shows that vibrotactile cues are well suited to convey facial expressions to VIPs in real-time. Participants became skilled with the device after a short training session. Further testing and development of the SSD is required to improve its accuracy and aesthetics for potential daily use. -
Enhancing Emotion Recognition in VIPs with Haptic Feedback. 2016, Article in monograph or in proceedings (Poster presented at the HCI International conference 2016, Toronto, 19-22 July 2016.)
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Enhancing Emotion Recognition in VIPs with Haptic Feedback. 2016, Article in monograph or in proceedings (Project: Smart glasses for visually impaired persons, pp. 157-163)The rise of smart technologies has created new opportunities to support blind and visually impaired persons (VIPs). One of the biggest problems we identified in our previous research on problems VIPs face during activities of daily life concerned the recognition of persons and their facial expressions. In this study we developed a system to detect faces, recognize their emotions, and provide vibrotactile feedback about the emotions expressed. The prototype system was tested to determine whether vibrotactile feedback through a haptic belt is capable of enhancing social interactions for VIPs. The system consisted of commercially available technologies. A Logitech C920 webcam mounted on a cap, a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 carried in a mesh backpack, an Elitac tactile belt worn around the waist, and the VicarVision FaceReader software application, which recognizes facial expressions. In preliminary tests with the systems both visually impaired and sighted persons were presented with sets of stimuli consisting of actors displaying six emotions (e.g. joy, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust) derived from the validated Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set and Warsaw Set of Emotional Facial Expression Pictures with matching audio by using nonlinguistic affect bursts. Subjects had to determine the emotions expressed in the videos without and, after a training period, with haptic feedback. An exit survey was conducted aimed to gain insights into the opinion of the users, on the perceived usefulness and benefits of the emotional feedback, and their willingness of using the prototype as assistive technology in daily life. Haptic feedback about facial expressions may improve the ability of VIPs to determine emotions expressed by others and, as a result, increase the confidence of VIPs during social interactions. More studies are needed to determine whether this is a viable method to convey information and enhance social interactions in the daily life of VIPs.
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