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somewhere in between) that are networked with all other local devices, exploiting the
expected tremendous increases in connectivity performance at extremely low costs.
Eventually, virtual avatars or avatar robots could serve as common interaction devices
for accessing services in the home and in public spaces.
Multi-modal interfaces
Multi-modal interfaces are an important research topic nowadays in the field of human-
machine interfaces (HMI). A multi-modal interface employs multiple sensory
channels/modalities for information transmission as well as for system control and
provides the possibility to merge information that can be created by the human actor in
many ways. The final objective is to enable the user to communicate with the machine
by different actions such as touching a screen, speaking or writing.
Overall, multimodal interfaces have a great potential in helping people who are not
used to standard interfaces (such as keyboards, mouse, graphical feedback) to interact
with a system. As every kind of interaction needs usually a specific interface, in the
following we try to identify the most relevant and recent singular technologies that can
be combined into multi-modal (possibly federated) devices. We categorise these
technologies into sensorial, spatial and natural language interfaces.
Sensorial interfaces are digital augmentations of physical objects through sensory
perception. Important components of sensorial interfaces are:
Augmented reality - an emerging interaction paradigm that allows visualising
an environment that combines elements of virtual reality with real elements.
Stereoscopic Vision - also called 3D vision - a system that allows perceiving
the deepness levels of some objects in an image.
Binaural sound - a sound-reproducing technique that allows finding the source
of a sound in a 3-dimensional space, which especially useful for people with
visual impairments.
Tactile feedback - implements haptic (active touch-sense) displays, related
with the skin perception of temperature, pressure. They complement or stand
in for the visual and auditive channels of the user, and can add information
without diverting their attention out from the task that he is performing.
Force feedback - allows implementing haptic interfaces related with the
strength, weight, outlines, etc. It is the key technology for touching and
handling 3-dimensional virtual objects. The current investigation trends focus
on handling more complex virtual models, with more contact points and/or
more freedom of movement for the user.
Positional feedback - returns forces and torsions to the user depending on the
position and the tactile properties of the virtual objects he is touching.
Scent-based interfaces - an emerging technology able to generate scent from a
bank of available substances. It can enhance multimodal systems by
increasing the sensorial perception and by adding information channels that
reduce the cognitive load of the user.
Spatial interfaces present 3D or 2D (or 1D) models of entities, so that the user can
understand and manipulate the states of the entities via the presented spatial models.
Important categories of spatial interfaces are:
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