A T-Shirt for sale with everyone’s names printed on it!

Social interaction within virtual environments is on the increase, in accordance with both the rising prevalence of personal computer technology and the numerous forms of traditional communication being converted to formats suitable for the digital era. This is evidenced firstly by the growing popularity of various virtual social communication activities such as online social networking, and secondly the increasing sophistication and depth of interaction these services provide.

Consequently, there is a continual demand for the improvement of the interface through which these interactions can take place. Current interfaces are highly limited as to the depth and type of information they can respond to from their user. The field of biofeedback contributes aspects that could be crucial to the development of improved interfaces. Although its original purpose was to be a form of medical treatment, the field readily overlaps with the fields in human-computer interface design. The acquisition of physiological data that was originally only intended for use as a feedback loop for patients can actually be used for a much wider variety of purposes as an interface to virtual reality.

With the introduction of biofeedback technology as an interface, there will be a profound change in the means and methodology with which humans can interact with their virtual environments, and subsequently socially within them. Its gradual adoption is enabling the production of interfaces that are both more intuitive to their users and capable of garnering a wider variety of input relevant to particular activities, for instance prospective virtual social environments of the future.

This dissertation examines how the adoption of biofeedback technology into the interfaces for virtual environments will affect social interaction within them by exploring the way that the technology can be adapted to meet the already recognisable requirements for this interaction.

Download

The Development of Biofeedback Interfaces and their Effect on Social Interaction in Virtual Environments

The DVDs ready for submission:

Digital Atmosphere

Terrain Spikes

Testing the spike generator for visual feedback on the terrain:

Pulse Rate Sensor

Sensor in the Handle

I’ve found out that the Analogue-to-Digital-Converter of my USB board is pretty sensitive and simply connecting my circuits resulted in extreme noise rather than a smooth stable reading. So in order to solve this I’ve placed some beefier 1uF (rather than the 0.1uF on my GSR circuit) capacitors between the output and the ground which seems to stabilise it perfectly.

Powerful LEDs

Hopefully they will illuminate the centre of my handle, which now has acrylic beads glued into the holes in order to catch the light. I took this photo with my light on, not in the dark…

Thermistor Circuit

Note the purple capacitor across the thermistor. Without it the circuit gives out a perfectly stable current, but the ADC doesn’t seem to think so.

Power Socket

After soldering my socket onto a small piece of board (with the intention of simply attaching the other circuits’ power wires) I thought that maybe I should do a diode bridge to ensure polarity. Hence it was a challenge but I nicked the diodes from a broken AC to DC transformer and managed to fit them onto the board with enough room for soldering the wires on the end. Now it doesn’t matter which way around you connect the power :)

Simple biofeedback measurement and amplification:

After I had started making finger grooves:

The two banksia nuts turned into the handle shape.

The next stage will be to hollow out the centre of the handle to allow light and wires through.

Diane Gromula

The biomorphic font changes according to biofeedback input from the user.

Something which I am now starting to accept is pretty typical of Microsoft’s code is that they do something totally differently to the way that they themselves have said it should be done, and don’t bother explaining WHY.

Nevertheless I shall persevere with adding this to my project with the intention of linking camera control to the joystick, but the responsiveness of the motion will be dependant on the strength of biofeedback signal.

Update: I discovered I was trying to fix an issue that didn’t exist when all that was required was including the dinput8.lib file to the project…