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Research: the Human Media Interaction research group

The Chair of Human Media Interaction is the main research group responsible for the Master’s programme in Interaction Technology. Its activities focus on multimodal interaction: from brain computer interfaces to social robots. Working at the interface between computer science and the social sciences, the group investigates, designs and evaluates novel forms of human-computer interaction. 

Examples of our research
Interactive Playground

The interactive systems we create range from wearable devices and smart material interfaces to ambient environments. Example applications include ambient entertainment, interactive playgrounds, mediated social touch, and smart material based visitor guiding systems.

Conversational and Interactive Agents

Using computer vision and speech technology, we observe the human conversational participant’s body and head movements, facial expressions, and paralinguistic vocalizations and detect social cues. These are used to model the interaction, and to generate the agent’s appropriate conversational behavior.

Storytelling and Serious Games

We work on mobile, distributed multi-device coaching and multimodal training games, using embodied agents and interactive narrative to provide context-adaptive feedback. Examples of application areas are social awareness training for police or motivational health coaching for rehabilitating people.

Brain-computer Interaction

We have developed and evaluated BCI-controlled games incorporating custom BCI pipelines, using various types of feedback as well as various mappings of mental tasks to in-game actions. We also look at the impact of brain-computer interfaces on society and ethical and moral issues related to the research, development and exploitation of such neurotechnologies.

Language and Multimedia: Analysis, Retrieval and Interaction

We researche models for the automatic analysis of data by exploiting the synergy between information retrieval, speech and language processing, and database technology.

 
  • A multi-modal serious game with intelligent virtual characters. A game for the training of social skills of police officers (improving their social awareness). Players of the game have to resolve a conflict with a group of loitering juveniles; they interact with virtual characters (the juveniles) in a 3D environment using a full-body immersive virtual reality system.
  • The Fun Robotic Outdoor Guide: turns autonomous outdoor robots into viable location-based service providers.
  • A tactile sleeve for social touch: What are the effects of mediated social touch? When two persons both wear a sleeve, a touch to the sleeve of one person is felt as a vibration on the sleeve of the other person. This way, the tactile sleeve for social touch enables two people to touch each other over a distance.
  • Mixed reality technology to enhance dining experiences: exploring the use of mixed reality technology to digitally (using visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile stimuli) enhance the experience of consuming food and beverages.
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