SIS Assoc Prof Archan Misra and His Colleagues Win MOE Tier 2 Grant for Study on Wearable Computing Technologies

Archan MISRA
Associate Professor of Information Systems
SMU School of Information Systems

Co-project Investigators:
Richard DAVIS and Youngki LEE, Assistant Professors of Information Systems, SMU School of Information Systems

Project Title: Multi-Device Adaptive Gestures & Interfaces (MAGI): Creating a Wearable Ecosystem

Overview:

Imagine a virtual reality game that is able to capture the swing of an ‘imaginary’ tennis racket, and the release of an ‘imaginary’ tennis ball via wrist-worn wearable devices such as a smart watch or a smart band. At the same time, the trajectory of the ball is instantly displayed on a heads-up display (e.g., Google Glass).

This scenario illustrates one of the promises of wearable computing whereby sensing (capturing of physical movements) and output modalities (providing a natural interaction experience) are harnessed to create new, “life-immersive” applications that integrate seamlessly with real-world activities and human actions. To help realise this vision, the proposed project focuses on building the fundamental technologies to support the synchronised coordination of a group of wearable devices.

The market for consumer-grade wearable devices has expanded immensely over the last year, with the market size estimated to reach at least US$12 billion by 2018. Currently, such wearable devices provide very primitive forms of coordination, such as displaying smartphone text messages on the smart watch. There are several disadvantages to this. First, it cannot coordinate multiple devices fast enough to make the experience seamless for users. Second, it lacks the capability to detect complex movements and gestures. Third, it provides limited understanding of the types of multi-device user interfaces that appeal most to users.

To tackle these challenges, the project will combine advances across three key computing areas: real-time gesture recognition, user interface design, and embedded software systems. To enable applications to capture and understand movements, the researchers will develop new statistical stream mining algorithms to recognise complex multi-limb gestural patterns with low latency, while keeping energy overheads within acceptable bounds.

They will also investigate the design principles of multi-device interfaces, and create new interaction patterns that are appealing and distraction-free, so that users can benefit from the different user interfaces offered by such wearable devices (e.g., sound, text, video and touch). Finally, to make these techniques usable in commercial wearable devices, the researchers will release open-source implementations of these techniques for popular mobile operating system platforms.

In creating new wearable driven paradigms for application to the gaming, entertainment and education domains, the proposed research has the potential to help enhance Singapore’s multi-billion dollar digital media sector.

Back to Research@SMU Issue 17 (Aug 2014)