Paper Reading #5: Implanted User Interfaces

Reference Information:

http://delivery.acm.org.lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/10.1145/2210000/2207745/p503-holz.pdf?ip=165.91.74.118&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=109397913&CFTOKEN=54345517&__acm__=1346865313_6756bbb1dd30840a7eb33cce56ca488e

Author Bios:

Christian Holz

Autodesk research

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Tovi Grossman and George Fitzmaurice

Hasso Plattner Institute

Potsdam, Germany

Anne Agur

Department of Anatomy

University of Toronto

Summary:

This research group focused on implanted user interfaces that can be implanted under the skin. Four main challenges that they encountered included how to sense the input, how the output would be produced, how it could communicate with the surrounding technology, and how it would receive its power. They first surgically implanted devices into a specimen arm in order to discover if their idea is even possible. They realized that most traditional interface components still work under the skin thus reducing the challenges they first mentioned.  Using this knowledge, they built the 3in3out device which has the inputs: button, tap sensor, and pressure sensor; and outputs: LED, vibration motor, and piezo buzzer. In the experiment, this device was implanted in artificial skin that the participants wore. Then, the participants would play a type of game where every 90 seconds a random output would be activated, and the user had to respond by activating the corresponding input.  While playing this game, the participants were given a set of tasks to accomplish in order to distract them from wearing the device. The results described that the LED was the hardest form of detection, and the pressure sensor was the most annoying input.

Related work not referenced in the paper:  

System of implantable devices for monitoring and/or affecting body parameters 

Augmented reality through wearable computing 

Human-powered wearable computing 

Disappearing mobile devices 

Implantable pressure sensor lead 

Lend me your arms: The use and implications of humancentric RFID 

Subcutaneous implantation of magnets in fingertips of professional gamblers-Case report 

Wireless smart implants dedicated to multichannel monitoring and microstimulation 

Security and privacy for implantable medical devices 

Pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators: Software radio attacks and zero-power defenses   

This paper accurately talked about all the related work. Implanted devices like pacemakers and hearing aids have a long history, but are not an active interface. This idea has been produced in the form of having something on the body or attached to clothing, but these will have to be put on every day. There have been cases where a microcomputer is swallowed, but that still isn’t implanted. RFID chips have been implanted but there is no user interface with them. The closest research that I found included implants that are connected to the participant’s biological system. However, this research group is looking for a standalone unit, thus making their idea novel and at the forefront of this type of research.

Evaluation:

In their work, they did not say what type of survey was conducted. So, it could have been either quantitative or qualitative. However, they did create an interview that asked the participants questions about if people looked at them funny or asked them questions. Both these cases are subjective. Some objective data that they collected from the device were the recorded response times, errors, and point totals. In this experiment, the research group seemed to evaluate it as a whole and did not divide it into parts. This outlook is very appropriate sense the topic is relatively new. A foundation has to be created before a more in-depth study is conducted. 

Discussion:

I was surprised to learn that they only recruited four participants. This makes me somewhat skeptical of the actual results and makes me wonder about how appropriate their evaluation was. However, I really enjoyed reading about this novel idea and how it may progress in the future. The paper seemed to be optimistic about this even though they covered the potential risks involved with such an invention. In my opinion, I don’t think that this will actually be implemented until the risk of infection can be removed.