Health Care Innovation Centre
(PIZ – Pflegeinnovationszentrum)

The PIZ project started in 2018 as part of a nation wide cluster that explores the use of technologyto improve the quality of life of all caregivers and patients.
We are investigating novel interaction methods and visualization techniques for Augmented and Virtual Reality in the nursing context. To this end, we have developed virtual representations of our in-lab laboratories, each representing a caregiving environment (i.e., ICU, nursing home, nursing administration, ambulant care).

Of special interest to is the simulation of stressors in this context, such as audible alarms, time pressure, or emotional distress. Using physiological values (e.g. heart rate, breathing frequency) and questionnaires we investigate the effect of VR based clones of these stressors and evaluate the results in empirical lab studies and explore possible use cases in nursing education.

Main Research Topics

• AR Visualisation of electronic patient data and vital signs
• Immersive training for stressful environments in nursing
• Reducing alarms on Intensive Care Units
• Novel techniques for medical care

Contact: Sebastian Weiß

Acceptance and Social Interaction of Humans with Automated Vehicles

This project explores the acceptance and cooperation of ACPS in the safety critical domain of mobility. Soon, there will be mixed traffic scenarios in which autonomous vehicles will coexist and cooperate with human traffic participants, including pedestrians and cyclists. Many interactions in urban traffic are not or only weakly legally regulated and observed. Instead, interactions of traffic participants are embedded in established social norms and practices. In this research project, we aim to understand the role of social norms for the recursive relationship between autonomous vehicles and the behavior of human traffic participants. How will automated and autonomous vehicles change social practices of cooperating in urban traffic scenario? Which social cues in addition to the technical signals of an automated vehicle are necessary for the acceptance of autonomous vehicles in daily road traffic? To answer these questionsthe project draws on theoretical insights from behavioral social science and computer science. In methodological terms, we implement a rigorous set of experimental designs, ranging from large-scale online experiments to VR- and field-scenarios.

Main Research Topics

• Prosocial interaction between vulnerable road users and automated vehicles
• External Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMIs)
• Behavior towards automated vehicles
• Virtual reality experiments, field experiments, online surveys and online experiments
• Effects of social factors on prosocial behavior in traffic

Contact: Hatice Sahin Ippoliti

ZEIT – Zusammen Erleben, Immersiv Teilhaben

The aim of the joint project “ZEIT – zusammen erleben, immersiv teilhaben” (English: experience together, participate immersively) is to research and develop a multimodal, target group-centered immersion technology as a system solution for bridging the gap between elderly people living alone and their relatives.

In this project, social connectedness across separated or distant people will be strengthened through mixed reality and social cues. The focus is on the emotional aspects of interpersonal communication, such as the transmission of joy and happiness, contentment, discomfort, stress and worry, but also the typical physical interactions otherwise missing in communication via video and audio, such as the touch, hug, handshake to greet or pat on the shoulder to praise and confirm.

Therefore, the visually conveyed experience in the VR application is supplemented by tactile stimuli over large areas of the body. For that, programmable active textile actuators are used that do not require complex mechanical actuation, can be adjusted to suit the effect, can be integrated into digital systems, and can be seamlessly embedded in textile household objects. Processing responses to immersive stimulation using affective computing also enable the creation of a feedback system to other participants in multi-user scenarios. Furthermore, the integration into a familiar household object, the chair, allows the use of the overall system to be implicit and thus suitable for the target group of elderly people.

Contact: Simon Kimmel

Health Informatics

An important key to aging healthily is physical activity. The aim of the project AEQUIPA is the development of interventions which promote physical activity in old age. Therefore, factors within a community which influence the mobility are being investigated and interventions developed. A particular focus lies on measures which are applicable to all socio-economic groups of people within the community.
Within the scope of AEQUIPA, OFFIS examines the application of technology-based interventions on the basis of sensor-detected vital parameters for the preservation of mobility of older people. Furthermore, OFFIS is working on detecting preventive measures for functional decline of muscle groups and is creating a system for monitoring and displaying physical activity.
Project websites: OFFIS AEQUIPA project page and aequipa.de

Contact: Kai von Holdt

R&D for Photo Analysis and Organization Through AI

In collaboration with a leading company in the photo industry, we are researching, designing and developing innovative digital photo products. This project is located within the Human-Centered AI group and therefore has a strong focus on a human-centered approach to AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. We are exploring different approaches to AI-powered software development for digital photo products, with a particular emphasis on human creativity and co-creativity with AI systems. An important question that we address is how these AI-based tools can be utilized to foster users’ creativity. We concentrate on human empowerment and pursue the idea that AI-based systems can augment and enhance human creativity, rather than replace it. These and other exploratory efforts foster exchanges between industry and research. Successful implementations often result in products of the collaboration partner.

Digitopias – Digital Technologies for Participation and Interaction in Society

Taking on the task of actively shaping digitalisation of society, in Digitopias, we do HCI-research in four sub-projects, containing exemplary technological solutions for selected social challenges: (1) social proximity over spatial distance, (2) sustainability in shopping behaviour, (3) human-AI-collaboration in production and (4) citizen participation in political decision-making. Common to all sub-projects is the participatory research approach, in which citizens and users are involved in the research process from the very beginning. A cross-sectional fifth sub-project continuously implements measures for dialogue and collaboration between society and researchers. In addition, the prerequisites and factors for successful science transfer are systematically researched.

Main Research Topics

• Mixed Reality for Social Presence over Distance
• Digital Interventions for Sustainable Online Shopping
• Explainable AI for Human-AI Collaboration
• Digital Technologies for Citizen Access to Public Participation
• Transfer Management for Science Transfer

ABILITY – AI for Accessible Digital Media

ABILITY is an EU project aims to design a comprehensive portable solution to tackle current accessibility issues of digital content by the Blind and Visually Impaired users (BVI), including the deafblind.

To achieve that, a multisensory device (tablet) will be developed. The intended tablet exploits AI, especially computer vision technologies, to analyze visual contents and translate them into combinations of tactile, visual and/or auditory feedback. Optimal interactive support scenarios will be investigated with BVIs and BVI assistants through consecutive user studies.  Eventually, BVI-AI interaction will be improved, and consequently, BVI-Computer interaction will be optimized by eliminating the existing barriers for BVIs in education, employment, leisure etc.

Main Research topics:

• BVI user modeling
• AI to improve BVI-Computer Interaction
• Interactive adaptive AI-based User Interface (Adaptive UI)

Understandable Privacy Policies

Debugging for End Users in Smart Environments (DEUS)

Over the last decade, smart home technology (SHT) has become an integral part of modern households. As a result, smart home ecosystems blend with daily social life, appropriated and integrated into personalised domestic environments. However, instead of infrastructurally complex and expensive in-built smart home packages people prefer building modular ecosystems, suitable for gradual adoption and expansion. Along this trend emerges the task for the end users to configure and establish desired automations in the systems — and to debug those setups until they work as intended. As new components are added, or the user’s needs change, old automations may no longer be adequate and require further debugging. Furthermore, faulty systems need to be diagnosed and reconfigured, or replaced. Unlike the initial setup, debugging becomes an on- going task for the end user. Yet once the excitement over new technology wears off, debugging these complex systems quickly becomes tedious, another housekeeping chore that is frequent enough to annoy, yet too rare to remember all the technical intricacies of particular systems.

In our research, we aim to determine new directions for smart home ecosystems to provide their inhabitants with agency to shape, appropriate and troubleshoot the technology they live with. The DEUS project tackles this challenge by unveiling users’ mental models of smart home automations, documenting existing debugging strategies, and proposing new interaction techniques and concepts for digital tools to better support these tasks. Our findings will be reflected by prototypes of new technologies and tools for smart home administration, which we evaluate in user studies.