A 58-dBΩ 20-Gb/s inverter-based cascode transimpedance amplifier for optical communications

This work presents a high-gain broadband inverter-based cascode transimpedance amplifier fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process. Multiple bandwidth enhancement techniques, including input bonding wire, input series on-chip inductive peaking and negative capacitance compensation, are adopted to overcome the large off-chip photodiode capacitive loading and the miller capacitance of the input device, achieving an overall bandwidth enhancement ratio of 8.5. The electrical measurement shows TIA achieves 58 dBΩ up to 12.7 GHz with a 180-fF off-chip photodetector. The optical measurement demonstrates a clear open eye of 20 Gb/s. The TIA dissipates 4 mW from a 1.2-V supply voltage.

Building a Realistic Virtual Simulator for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Teleoperation

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) support humans in performing an increasingly varied number of tasks. UAVs need to be remotely operated by a human pilot in many cases. Therefore, pilots require repetitive training to master the UAV movements. Nevertheless, training with an actual UAV involves high costs and risks. Fortunately, simulators are alternatives to face these difficulties. However, existing simulators lack realism, do not present flight information intuitively, and sometimes do not allow natural interaction with the human operator. This work addresses these issues through a framework for building realistic virtual simulators for the human operation of UAVs. First, the UAV is modeled in detail to perform a dynamic simulation in this framework. Then, the information of the above simulation is utilized to manipulate the elements in a virtual 3D operation environment developed in Unity 3D. Therefore, the interaction with the human operator is introduced with a proposed teleoperation algorithm and an input device. Finally, a meta-heuristic optimization procedure provides realism to the simulation. In this procedure, the flight information obtained from an actual UAV is used to optimize the parameters of the teleoperation algorithm. The quadrotor is adopted as the study case to show the proposal’s effectiveness.

The Study of Bending and Twisting Input Modalities in Deformable Interfaces

The deformable input provides users with the ability of physical operation equipment to interact with the system. In order to facilitate further development in flexible display interactive technology, we devised FlexSheet, an input device that can simulate the deformation environment. This paper presents two forms of deformation input, bending and twisting, with regard to three selection techniques. We conduct a controlled experiment to select discrete targets by combining two input forms and three selection strategies, taking into account the influence of visual feedback. Further, we use the deformation angle to reflect the degree of deformation and map it to the experimental variables. In accordance with the experimental results, we analyze the experimental performance under three evaluation indexes and prove the viability of our selection technology in bending and twisting input modes. Finally, we provide suggestions on the control level in bending and twisting input modes, respectively.

Natural, Wearable Game Controllers

<p>Natural, wearable game controllers explores how people interact with games and their potential uses. Since the early days of personal computing video games have been used for more than just fun. Such uses include exploration education, simulation of real world environments and the study of human thought processes (Wolf, 2008). As well as video games being used in a wide variety of settings, there has also been considerable variation in the way we interact with them - from basic mouse and keyboard interaction to the introduction of non-traditional gaming systems such the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect. These different inputs can be fall within a spectrum of abstract and natural game controllers. This thesis looks at the difference between the two and applies this to the creation of a natural wearable game controller. The aim of this thesis was to create a customised human-computer interface (HCI) input device, using a reliable piece of hardware with accompanying software a user could interact with. Through design experiments a wearable game controller was created in the form of a wrap band. Once the wrap band was developed the next step was to see how it could be used as a game controller. Design experiments were conducted, focusing on integration with a pre-existing game, using it as an exercise assessment tool and developing a specific game which could be used for rehabilitation.The area of rehabilitation gaming is broad so this thesis focuses on Weight Bearing Asymmetry (WBA). This is a condition where a person does not evenly distribute their weight between their feet. This thesis explores a range of hardware and software design experiments to see how wearable technology can be used to create a new way of interacting with video games. It looks at the benefits of using wearable technology and gaming for rehabilitation, it’s limitations and future applications of this technology. The thesis concludes that natural wearable game controllers do have potential real world application in both gaming and rehabilitation.</p>

Natural, Wearable Game Controllers

<p>Natural, wearable game controllers explores how people interact with games and their potential uses. Since the early days of personal computing video games have been used for more than just fun. Such uses include exploration education, simulation of real world environments and the study of human thought processes (Wolf, 2008). As well as video games being used in a wide variety of settings, there has also been considerable variation in the way we interact with them - from basic mouse and keyboard interaction to the introduction of non-traditional gaming systems such the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect. These different inputs can be fall within a spectrum of abstract and natural game controllers. This thesis looks at the difference between the two and applies this to the creation of a natural wearable game controller. The aim of this thesis was to create a customised human-computer interface (HCI) input device, using a reliable piece of hardware with accompanying software a user could interact with. Through design experiments a wearable game controller was created in the form of a wrap band. Once the wrap band was developed the next step was to see how it could be used as a game controller. Design experiments were conducted, focusing on integration with a pre-existing game, using it as an exercise assessment tool and developing a specific game which could be used for rehabilitation.The area of rehabilitation gaming is broad so this thesis focuses on Weight Bearing Asymmetry (WBA). This is a condition where a person does not evenly distribute their weight between their feet. This thesis explores a range of hardware and software design experiments to see how wearable technology can be used to create a new way of interacting with video games. It looks at the benefits of using wearable technology and gaming for rehabilitation, it’s limitations and future applications of this technology. The thesis concludes that natural wearable game controllers do have potential real world application in both gaming and rehabilitation.</p>

Real-Time Facial Emotion Recognition Framework for Employees of Organizations Using Raspberry-Pi

There is a significant interest in facial emotion recognition in the fields of human–computer interaction and social sciences. With the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the field of human behavioral prediction and analysis, especially human emotion, has evolved significantly. The most standard methods of emotion recognition are currently being used in models deployed in remote servers. We believe the reduction in the distance between the input device and the server model can lead us to better efficiency and effectiveness in real life applications. For the same purpose, computational methodologies such as edge computing can be beneficial. It can also encourage time-critical applications that can be implemented in sensitive fields. In this study, we propose a Raspberry-Pi based standalone edge device that can detect real-time facial emotions. Although this edge device can be used in variety of applications where human facial emotions play an important role, this article is mainly crafted using a dataset of employees working in organizations. A Raspberry-Pi-based standalone edge device has been implemented using the Mini-Xception Deep Network because of its computational efficiency in a shorter time compared to other networks. This device has achieved 100% accuracy for detecting faces in real time with 68% accuracy, i.e., higher than the accuracy mentioned in the state-of-the-art with the FER 2013 dataset. Future work will implement a deep network on Raspberry-Pi with an Intel Movidious neural compute stick to reduce the processing time and achieve quick real time implementation of the facial emotion recognition system.

Silent EEG-Speech Recognition Using Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Network with 85% Accuracy of 9 Words Classification

In this work, we focus on silent speech recognition in electroencephalography (EEG) data of healthy individuals to advance brain–computer interface (BCI) development to include people with neurodegeneration and movement and communication difficulties in society. Our dataset was recorded from 270 healthy subjects during silent speech of eight different Russia words (commands): `forward’, `backward’, `up’, `down’, `help’, `take’, `stop’, and `release’, and one pseudoword. We began by demonstrating that silent word distributions can be very close statistically and that there are words describing directed movements that share similar patterns of brain activity. However, after training one individual, we achieved 85% accuracy performing 9 words (including pseudoword) classification and 88% accuracy on binary classification on average. We show that a smaller dataset collected on one participant allows for building a more accurate classifier for a given subject than a larger dataset collected on a group of people. At the same time, we show that the learning outcomes on a limited sample of EEG-data are transferable to the general population. Thus, we demonstrate the possibility of using selected command-words to create an EEG-based input device for people on whom the neural network classifier has not been trained, which is particularly important for people with disabilities.

Haptic User Interface of a Cable-Driven Input Device to Control the End Effector of a Surgical Telemanipulation System

In robotic telemanipulation for minimally-invasive surgery, lack of haptic sensation and non-congruent movement of input device and manipulator are major drawbacks. Input devices based on cable-driven parallel mechanisms have the potential to be a stiff alternative to input devices based on rigid parallel or serial kinematics by offering low inertia and a scalable workspace. In this paper, the haptic user interface of a cable-driven input device and its technical specifications are presented and assessed. The haptic user interface allows to intuitively control the gripping movement of the manipulator’s end effector by providing a two-finger precision grasp. By design, the interface allows to command input angles between 0° and 45°. Furthermore, interaction forces from the manipulator’s end effector can be displayed to the user’s twofinger grasp in a range from 0 N to 6 N with a frequency bandwidth of 17 Hz.

DualRing

We present DualRing, a novel ring-form input device that can capture the state and movement of the user's hand and fingers. With two IMU rings attached to the user's thumb and index finger, DualRing can sense not only the absolute hand gesture relative to the ground but also the relative pose and movement among hand segments. To enable natural thumb-to-finger interaction, we develop a high-frequency AC circuit for on-body contact detection. Based on the sensing information of DualRing, we outline the interaction space and divide it into three sub-spaces: within-hand interaction, hand-to-surface interaction, and hand-to-object interaction. By analyzing the accuracy and performance of our system, we demonstrate the informational advantage of DualRing in sensing comprehensive hand gestures compared with single-ring-based solutions. Through the user study, we discovered the interaction space enabled by DualRing is favored by users for its usability, efficiency, and novelty.

РОЗРОБКА СИСТЕМИ РУЧНОГО РОБОТА-МАНІПУЛЯТОРА З ДИСТАНЦІЙНИМ УПРАВЛІННЯМ

The aim of this research work is to research and develop a system of a hand-like remote-controlled robotic arm. Devices of this design are currently in demand in many areas of human life, in particular during rescue operations. The described device must be able to hold an object of arbitrary shape using a gripper, has acceptable positioning and control accuracy. Such a device can be used to work in a harmful or hazardous environment, thereby minimizing the harmful effects on humans. The control system of such a device must provide a protocol for transferring data from the input device to the end handle of the manipulator to perform the corresponding movement. To start the development process, market analysis was conducted, in the process of which several similar products were identified and compared against each other and the system being developed. As a result of that analysis, comparison table was created listing the main features of the system being developed in comparison to existing solutions on the market, to check whether it will be competitive at the current market.In this article, such system is proposed and later developed with the analysis of modern technical components and taking into account the accompanying scientific and technical research. In the course of the work, the analysis of existing technical solutions was carried out, the principles of operation of individual components were considered, and the process of developing the final system was described. As a processor device, it was decided to use the Arduino Uno and Arduino Nano microprocessor boards, which provide convenient tools for working with ATmega microprocessors with high performance and energy efficiency.As a result of this work, functional, logical and electrical circuits were created and described, which were used to create a working prototype of the system, as well as a diagram of the model of the manipulator body, which was printed using a 3D printer. Using the created circuits, a working prototype of the described system was built, which was successfully tested, a demonstration of which is given in the work. The created one can be integrated as a subsystem into a larger-scale project.