ElderGadget Blog

Via Technology-Supported Human World Interaction

Today I came across the ElderGadget Blog when I was searching for technology that might be helpful to my father, who recently spent the last few weeks in an intensive care unit.

Here are a few things I found on the blog, including what I found when I followed a link to the bindependent website:

Smart Table: A Broadband Communication System for the Elderly


ID Studiolab, Delft University of Technology, NL
"The smart system is aimed to prevent possible social isolation between elderly people and their social contacts. It consists of the Smart Table and the Smart Messenger, which provide easy and intuitive way for elderly people to benefit from the advantage of communication technology and improve the satisfaction of their social activities."

"During the design research, a working prototype is made and evaluated by a user test. The Smart Table offers people a way to use broadband communication without the need for a computer. The television will be used for video communication (web-cam) and the table as user-interface. On the table contact persons can be selected and images and video can be shared. The elderly person can capture images that will be shared instantly. The contact person can select images from his or her computer, which will be projected on the table of the elderly person". (TU Delft - Faculty Industrial Design Engineering - Master Design for Interaction - Project Interactive Technology Design - Vincent Steurs & Juin-Yi Huang)


Demy Kitchen Safe Touchscreen Reader



Photo Watch


Clarity-C900: Amplified Big Button Cell Phone

911 Guardian: "Tiny wearable speakerphone"


Extra Large TV Remote Control

SmartShopper: Electronic grocery-list maker



Bierley's ColorMouse Video Magnifier

Voice Pod: Digital recording and playback system

RELATED

Live from CES - Dakim's Brain Fitness Keeps Seniors Sharp

Dakim Brain Games

Previous post: Ubiquitous Computing - Grandpa and grandkids use a webcam and Skype across the miles

YouTube Vlogger: Geriatric1927

Geriatric Gripes and Grumbles

Interactive Displays 2009 Conference: Tuesday, April 21 -Thursday April 23, Hilton San Jose, California

The Interactive Displays Conference, sponsored by Intertech Pira, will highlight an interesting mix of existing and emerging interactive display technologies and applications. The conference will be held at the Hilton in San Jose, California, from Tuesday, April 21st through Thursday, April 23rd.

The pre-conference seminar will feature Sakuya Morimoto, of CANESTA, who will present his company's innovative single-chip 3D image sensor technology that supports gesture interaction.
Keynote speakers will be Jeff Han, of Perceptive Pixel, and Steven Bathiche, of Microsoft US.

Some Highlights:

Pre-conference Seminar: Gesture Navigation in the World of Digital Contents, Enabled by a Single-Chip 3D Image Sensor Presenter: Sakuya Morimoto, Senior Director, Business Development in Asia, CANESTA, Japan

Related:
Hitachi at CES 2009: Use of Canesta's 3D sensor to control television and home systems using hand gestures.


"With the wave of a hand, with the shake of a hand, you can control volume, you can actually change the channels, watch your favorite program...the most exciting thing, I think, is that you can actually control your temperature and the lighting in the room, the environmental lighting. So..it is very unique technology that is out there.."

Another demonstration of Hitachi's gesture interaction using the Canesta's 3=D Depth camera:



When a TV Remote is Just Too Much Effort, Wave -Jennifer Bergen, PC Magazine
CANESTA Corporate Fact Sheet (pdf)

How does Canesta's Electronic Perception Technology Work?
"Canesta’s electronic perception technology forms 3-D, real time moving images in a single chip through patented methods which use light photons to “range” the image, similar to radar. The silicon sensor chip develops 3-D depth maps at a rate in excess of 30 frames per second, and then performs additional processing on these depth maps to resolve the images into application specific information that can easily be processed by embedded processor(s) in the end-use device or machine. Since Canesta’s software starts with a three-dimensional view of the world, provided immediately by the hardware, it has a substantial advantage over classical image processing software that struggles to construct three-dimensional representations using complex mathematics, and images from multiple cameras or points of view. This dramatic reduction in complexity makes it possible to embed the processing software directly into the chips themselves so they may be used in the most cost-conscious applications."


I will highlight some of the featured presentations in future blog posts:

Steven Bathiche, Director of Research, Applied Sciences Group, Entertainment and Devices Division MICROSOFT, US
Guillaume Largillier, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder, STANTUM, France
Jeff Han, PERCEPTIVE PIXEL, US
Mark Fihn, Publisher, VERITAS ET VISUS, US
Derek Mitchell, Conference Producer, INTERTECHPIRA, US
Vinita Jakhanwal, Principal Analyst, Small/Medium Displays, ISUPPLI CORPORATION, US
Joseph Carsanaro, President and CEO F-ORIGIN, US
Tommi Ilmonen, CEO MULTITOUCH OY, Finland
Stephen Sedaker, Director of Component Sales WACOM TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION, US
Brad Gleeson, Managing Director, Business Development TARGETPATH GLOBAL LLC., US
Henry Kaufman, President and Founder, TACTABLE, US
Christophe Ramstein, Chief Technology Officer, IMMERSION CORPORATION, US
Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO, PIXEL QI, US
John Newton, Chief Technology Officer, NEXTWINDOW, New Zealand
Herve Martin, CEO, SENSITIVE OBJECT, France
Scott Hagermoser, Gaming Business Unit Manager 3M TOUCH SYSTEMS, US
Bob Cooney, Vice President, Business Development, ECAST, US
Brent Bushnell, Chief Technology Officer UWINK, US
Stephan Durach, Head, Technology Office, BMW GROUP, US
Jeff Doerr, Senior Manager, Business Development Self Service Solutions Group, FLEXTRONICS, US
Andy Wilson, Senior Researcher, Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group, MICROSOFT, US
Mats W. Johansson, Chief Executive Officer, EON REALITY, US
Lenny Engelhardt, Vice President for Business Development, N-TRIG, Israel
Dr Paul Diefenbach, Director, RePlay Lab, DREXEL UNIVERSITY, US
Andrew Hsu, Technical Marketing and Strategic Partnerships Manager, SYNAPTICS, US
Dean LaCoe, Business Development Manager, GESTURETEK, Canada
Keith Pradhan, Global Director of Product Management, TYCO ELECTRONICS, ELO TOUCHSYSTEMS, US
Jerry Bertrand, Managing Member/Acting CEO, MICROSCENT, LLC, US
Frederic Kaplan, CEO and Co-Founder, OZWE, Switzerland

Related

Visionary Jeff Han and Microsoft's Steven Bathiche to Keynote at Interactive Displays 2009

An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV : uxTV 2008

I missed this one!



Jeremy Vaught, the administrator of the New Media Facebook group, posted about the the First International Conference on Designing Interactive User Experiences for TV and Video, held October 22-24, 2008 in Silicon Valley, California. The conference was sponsored by Microsoft Mediaroom, and ifip (International Federation for Information Processing).

According to the conference website, the papers from the conference can be found in the ACM digital library, AICPS: UZTV'08.

Featured speakers included Jakob Nielson (usability guru), Elissa Lee (Sr. Director of Research, TiVo), Gunthar Hartwig (User Experience, YouTube), and Dale Herigstad (Chief Creative Officer, Schematic).

Here is a sample of the topics covered during the conference:

Designing for User Experience: What to Expect from Mobile 3D TV and Video?
(Satu Jumisko-Pyykko, Mandy Weitzel, & Dominik Strohmeier)

The Concept of Interactivity - revisited: Four new typologies for a new media landscape
(Jens F. Jensen)

The Interactive Television User Experience So Far
(William Cooper)

Absolute Pointing and Tracking based Remote Control for Interactive User Experience
(John Sweetser, Anders Grunnet-Jepsen, and Gopal Panchanathan, ThinkOptics Inc.)

Network Analysis of Massively Collaborative Creation of Multimedia Contents: Case Study of Hatsune Miku videos on Nico Nico Duoga (Masahiro Hamasaki, Hideaki Takeda, Takuichi Nishimura)

The uxtv08 website has links to information about the various demos that were presented at the conference. To save you time, I've linked them below:

Demos

Data Driven Interactive 'Lower Third' - Vikram Singh

Dynamic TV: a New Inter-tainment Paradigm for Television - Marina Geymonat, Rossana Simeoni, Monica Perrero, Elena Guercio, Maurizio Belluati, Agnese Vellar and Roberto Montanari

Interactive advertising on n-tv plus - Kathrin Damian, Christian Bopp, Lars-Eric Mann

Interactive Live Demo of Fraunhofer FOKUS Media Interoperability Lab - Oliver Friedrich, Robert Seeliger, Benjamin Zachey, Christian Riede and Stefan Arbanowski

Microsoft Windows Media Center - Linda Chan

Microsoft Mediaroom - Linda Chan and David Giusti

Multi-dimensional Direct Pointing Remote Control for Interactive User Experience - John Sweetser, Anders Grunnet-Jepsen and Gopal Panchanathan

Tarae: Prototype of new interface design for digital TV browsing and navigation system - Hyun Suk Kim, Joung Young Lee and Sang Pil Hwang