Student Projects
1. Contact Information:
University and Department: Sangmyung University Emotional Engineering
Team Members: Jae-un Park (Team leader), Sang-min Ahn, Sung-chul Mun
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Min-cheol Whang
Primary Email Address: eusm36@smu.ac.kr
Primary Telephone Number: (82)02-2287-5426
2. Project Information:
Project Title:
1. Developing game program for infant’s emotional education using web camera
2. Sound effect player by touch interface
List all parts (hardware, software, etc.) you used to design and complete your project:
1. Developing game program for infant’s emotional education using web camera
→ LabVIEW 8.6.1, VISION 8.6.1, Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX
2. Sound effect player by touch interface
→ LabVIEW 8.6.1, VISION 8.6.1, V-Gear Talkcam Tracer CCD(V-Gear, USA)
3. Describe the challenge your project is trying to solve:
1. Developing game program for infant’s emotional education using web camera
It is very important for infants to improve affective intelligence in order to overcome various social side-effects.
What is affective intelligence?
(1) The ability to evaluate others’ emotions and appropriately respond to them.
(2) The ability to effectively control own and others’ emotions and to solve some problems.
(3) The ability to utilize own emotions for achieving main goals in your life and for making your life better off.
Thus, this study was aimed at establishing an educational game program to develop infants’ affective intelligence.
2. Sound effect player by touch interface
The purpose of this study was to construct a Sound-effect-player system based on touch interface. Unlike previous sound effect makers, our system provides users with psychological pleasure by not education but simple repetition which is not deviated from the mental model.
This system recognizes the area of a hand through an infrared camera and creates imaginary balls at the same point touched by the hand. Users can move the balls and control the space and size of the panel where the balls can freely move. The sound effects are made by the movements of the balls. This system utilized the tabletop interface to create the balls, move them, and make sound effects, thereby providing auditory feedback as well as visual feedback to users.
.jpg)
4. Describe how you addressed the challenge through your project:
1. Developing game program for infant’s emotional education using web camera
1. System structure and development background
(1) Image acquisition of a hand and makers using a web camera.
(2) Image processing and operation by the program of “Play with the Pooh”.
(3) Image output by utilizing a projector.
.jpg)
2. Window configuration
The window in the “Play with the Pooh” consisted of an image-output section, a program stop button, and four gauging bars.
* The image-out put section enables users to interact with the Pooh in real time.
* The four bars display the current status of the Pooh.
.jpg)
3. Program process
.jpg)
3. 1. Image acquisition and processing
Extraction of the black-covered desk area(640(pixel)*240(pixel)*32(bit)) from the image area of (640(pixel)*480(pixel)*32(bit)) → Gray Scale → Threshold(100) → Morphology → Clamp.vi → Extraction of a hand
3. 2. Interaction
When the coordinates of a hand or markers accord with the coordinates of the Pooh, the interaction between users and the Pooh occurs, thereby it is possible to control the status bars of the Pooh.
3. 3. Change of state in the Pooh and Image output
The condition of the Pooh is differently displayed on the screen depending on whether or not users interact with the Pooh. The level of love gets changed by contacting with users’ hand. The level of cleanliness gets changed by the shower-towel-shaped marker including 16 coordinate points. The level of satiety differently gets altered by the marker like a pot of honey, which consists of nine coordinate points. The conditions of the Pooh are displayed on the screen through a projector in real time.
.jpg)
4. Conclusion
Infants might experience various things and create their own ego in natural and interesting ways. The “Play with the Pooh” can offer a good chance for infants to be affectively educated. Also, this study was significant in the sense that we made it possible to develop a user-centered interface system by not using expensive sensors but a web camera.
However, further research on enhancing the accuracy of recognizing movements should be followed because a web camera is a light-sensitive device. In addition, more studies on various contents that can improve affective intelligence of infants should be done in the near future.
2. Sound effect player by touch interface
1. System architecture
Our STI system is a vision-based tabletop display that can provide visual and auditory pleasure to users. In addition, even if the system was constructed by using a relatively inexpensive CCD(Charge-Coupled Device) camera, the higher resolution data could be obtained. The camera used in this study was a V-gear Talkcam Tracer CCD camera made in USA. We got rid of an infrared filter attached in the lens of the CCD web cam and stuck a visible rays cut-off filter in order to raise the accuracy in recognizing the movements of a hand. The rear-projection method in which a projector and a camera were set under the projection screen that attached projection foil was utilized. The method was actually based on the sensing principle of the FTIR(Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) that could extract the coordinates of the hand with an infrared camera.
.jpg)
2. Window configuration and Operational principle
The window configuration of the STI system is as shown in Figure 2.
This system was composed of six buttons to select balls, buttons to control the size and area of the panel, and three panels.
.jpg)
2.1. Software
This application is a sound-effect-play system that enables users to make their own music. It is possible to create imaginary balls just by touching the screen. The movement of imaginary balls can be caused by dragging a table-display-screen. The differences in sound effects can be created by the movements of the balls. Users can give the freedom of movements to the balls by determining the size of the balls and by controlling the size and location of the panels. Also, in our system, users can make different sounds just by handling the balls. We used the intuitive interface type, which was easy to use for the purpose of enhancing satisfaction of users.
3. Conclusion
• The two-way touch-based interaction was tried to approach to entertainment.
• Users can experience the novel thing by creating various music based on intuitive interaction.
• Users can make user-oriented music just by handling the imaginary balls.
• This system is expected to have a positive influence on the treatment of retarded children.
• The proposed system is expected to be a framework for the interesting entertainment in which multiple users can use the system simultaneously.
5.Photo:
2009 5th LabVIEW Application Conference (Korea)
6.Videos:
1. Developing game program for infant’s emotional education using web camera
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5oeHWOR4ZQ
2. Sound effect player by touch interface
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye0kcwj1534
