
Florian HellerFH Aachen · Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Florian Heller
Dr. rer. nat. Dipl.-Inform.
About
49
Publications
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614
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
June 2016 - December 2020
December 2008 - May 2016
Publications
Publications (49)
We present Pinstripe, a textile user interface element for eyes-free, continuous value input on smart garments that uses pinching and rolling a piece of cloth between your fingers. The input granularity can be controlled in a natural way by varying the amount of cloth pinched. Pinstripe input elements physically consist of fields of parallel conduc...
Although digital media playback and storage have several advantages, many DJs still prefer using vinyl records on turntables due to their direct manipulation and haptic qualities. The physical structure of a traditional vinyl record provides important cues for in-track navigation, such as track length or location of loud and soft passages. Digital...
Audio augmented reality systems overlay the physical world with a virtual audio space. Today's smartphones provide enough processing power to create the impression of virtual sound sources being located in the real world. To achieve this, information about the user's location and orientation is necessary which requires additional hardware. In a rea...
Mobile audio augmented reality systems (MAARS) provide a new and engaging modality to present information or to create playful experiences. Using special filters, spatial audio rendering creates the impression that the sound of a virtual source emanates from a certain position in the physical space. So far, most of the implementations of such syste...
Textile interfaces can be ubiquitously integrated into the fabrics that already surround us. So far, existing interfaces transfer concepts, such as buttons and sliders, to the textile domain without leveraging the affordances and qualities of fabric. This paper presents Grabrics, a two-dimensional textile sensor that is manipulated by grabbing a fo...
Laser cutters take vector data for the shapes they cut or engrave as input, however, re-using a given design with different material or on a different machine requires adaptation of the template. Unfortunately, vector drawings lack the semantic information required for an automated adjustment to new parameters, making the manual adjustment a tediou...
Assistive systems in industrial assembly, such as cranes, hoists, and robotic arms are installed to reduce the ergonomic stress operators are exposed to. Whether such a system is suitable for a certain assembly step is currently evaluated based on ergonomic criteria. This does not seem sufficient as operators often choose not to use the assistive s...
Manual assembly in high variety - low volume production is challenging for the operators as there might be small changes from one product to the next. The operators receive adapted instruction sets to be aware of these small differences, currently either printed or presented on a computer terminal. Augmented Reality (AR) is considered the future of...
Traditional urban-scale crowdsourcing approaches suffer from three caveats - lack of complete spatiotemporal coverage, lack of accurate information and lack of sustained engagement of crowd workers. In this paper, we argue that these caveats can be addressed by embedding crowdsourcing tasks into the daily routine of mobile workforces that roam arou...
Notifications have become a core component of the smart-phone as our ubiquitous companion. Many of these only require minimal interaction, for which the smartwatch is a helpful companion device. However, its design and placement is influenced by its traditional ancestors. For applications where the user is constrained because of a specific usage si...
Wearable toolkits simplify the integration of micro-electronics into fabric. They require basic knowledge about electronics for part interconnections. This technical aspect might be perceived as a barrier. We propose YAWN, a bus-based, modular wearable toolkit that simplifies the interconnection by relying on a pre-fabricated three-wire fabric band...
Laser cutters are 2D tools, but their speed and compatibility with a variety of affordable materials also makes them a frequent choice to create 3D objects. We propose CutCAD, a tool to easily construct simple 3D objects from 2D faces, inspired by the process of paper modeling and magnetic construction kits. The user creates her 3D model by drawing...
As humans, we have the natural capability of localizing the origin of sounds. Spatial audio rendering leverages this skill by applying special filters to recorded audio to create the impression that a sound emanates from a certain position in the physical space. A main application for spatial audio on mobile devices is to provide non-visual navigat...
Choosing a seat for traveling can be a complex evaluation of constraints depending on personal preferences. There are websites that help to choose the best seat in a bus, in a train, or on an airplane. However, these recommendations only consider seat-related factors and not the view from the window. While a scenic view rarely influences the decisi...
Haptic input is a common input method for navigation aids for visual impaired people, leveraging an otherwise unused sensory channel depending on the body region, but building systems with large numbers of vibration motors is rather complex.
For this purpose we developed a system to easily and quickly build systems with largen numbers of vibration...
Smart Interactive Textiles combine the warmth and omnipresence of textiles in our everyday lives with the benefits of modern information and communication technologies. The potential of innovation is not only based on technical ingenuity, but also on the consideration and embedding of peoples’ fears, requirements, desires, and wishes regarding thes...
Learning to play the transverse flute is not an easy task, at least not for everyone. Since the flute does not have a reed to resonate, the player must provide a steady, focused stream of air that will cause the flute to resonate and thereby produce sound. In order to achieve this, the player has to be aware of the embouchure position to generate a...
Most outdoor activities and outdoor sports include a navigation component. For example, hiking, biking, mountaineering and climbing activities require orientation and wayfinding at certain points to certain degrees. With the rise of personal GPS devices, numerous navigation apps now exist that are tailored to the specific needs of outdoor enthusias...
This paper investigates the pinch angle as a menu selection technique for two-dimensional foldable textile controllers. Based on the principles of marking menus, the selection of a menu item is performed by grabbing a fold at a specific angle, while changing value is performed by rolling the fold between the fingers. In a first experiment we determ...
Mobile audio augmented reality systems (MAARS) simulate virtual audio sources in a physical space via headphones. While 20 years ago, these required expensive sensing and rendering equipment, the necessary technology has become widely available. Smartphones have become capable to run high-fidelity spatial audio rendering algorithms, and modern sens...
Textile controls so far, have mostly been envisioned to be integrated to clothing. In our environment, however, much more textile interaction surfaces are available. In this paper, we present a capacitive textile sensor, seamlessly integrated into a motorized curtain. While the basic functionality is simply to open and close the curtain, its design...
Eco-Maps, diagrammatic assessments of family relationships, are used by social workers in individual and family contact to understand the subjective experiences of both supportive and disruptive family, friendship, and community relationships. In this paper we present the first phase of the development of the People in my Life app. We have develope...
Most outdoor activities and outdoor sports include a navigation component. For example, hiking, biking, mountaineering and climbing activities require orientation and wayfinding at certain points to certain degrees. With the rise of personal GPS devices, numerous navigation apps now exist that are tailored to the specific needs of outdoor enthusias...
As humans, we possess inherent perceptual and motor skills: Our stereoscopic vision provides us with depth information and our spatial hearing can localize sounds around us with high accuracy. Our hands are capable of controlling motion with high precision and speed which allows us to write, draw, or play an instrument. Throughout our history we ha...
Traditional audio guides in museums and similar spaces typically require the visitor to locate a track number at each exhibit and enter it on a keypad. These guides, however, provide no information on the amount of content available. Current mobile devices provide rich output capabilities, and indoor location tracking technology can simplify the se...
When thinking of textile interfaces, these are often imagined as being integrated into clothing. While this is the most prominent use of fabric, we present a standalone interface that builds on the natural set of interactions a piece of fabric affords, and that is feasible for industrial production. By integrating stitched patterns made of conducti...
Sound and its creation are an inherently physical process, yet in the age of digital audio the physical part disappeared. Instead of working with the medium itself as, e.g., with vinyl records, the media player introduced a new level of abstraction. This new abstraction layer, however, rarely made use of our manual skills and instead forced us to w...
Tangible widgets are one possible answer to the lack of haptic feedback on touch screens and tabletops. In this publication, we focus on tangibles that provide input and output channels by spatially relocating a part of the touch input and visual output area from the touch screen onto their own arbitrarily shaped surface. Optical fibers that transm...
Mobile audio augmented reality systems can be used in a series of applications, e.g., as a navigational aid for visually impaired or as audio guide in museums. The implementation of such systems usually relies on head orientation data, requiring additional hardware in form of a digital compass in the headphones. As an alternative we propose AudioTo...
Touch-sensitive fabrics let users operate wearable devices unobtrusively and with rich input gestures similar to those on modern smartphones and tablets. While hardware prototypes exist in the DIY crafting community, HCI designers and researchers have little data about how well these devices actually work in realistic situations. FabriTouch is the...
Location-based multiplayer games happen in real space so movement is not the location change of an avatar in a virtual world, but real change of a player's physical location. Additionally, movement is a core interaction of these games. This makes the distances between players a key element of the game dynamics. Annotating recorded movements require...
This case study presents the design and evaluation of an end-user energy consumption display for an energy+ house. The goal of our application is to give an easy overview over the power balance and to provide the user with the necessary information to understand specific consumption patterns. We defined the unit of Counter Entropy points and used i...
Sustainability in (Inter)Action provides a forum for innovative thought, design, and research in the area of interaction design and environmental sustainability. The column explores how HCI can contribute to the complex and interdisciplinary efforts to address sustainability challenges. Elaine M. Huang, Editor
Augmented reality is very well suited to convey information in the context of historic sites, as it is possible to integrate such systems in an unobtrusive manner. In this paper we present Corona, an audio augmented reality experience deployed in the historic town hall of Aachen/Germany. We describe the auralization process and the technology used...
Power consumption is measured in W and Wh, but what do these units mean? Water consumption can easily be understood, as we all know what a liter of water looks like. Common power meters, however, rely on the physical units or their translation to costs as display. We classified existing displays and ambient visualizations in a taxonomy that focuses...
User feedback for deployed software systems ranges from simple one-bit-feedback to full-blown bug reports. While detailed bug reports are very helpful for the developers to track down problems, the expertise and commitment required from the user is high. We analyzed existing user report systems and propose a flexible and independent hard- and softw...
We present Pinstripe, a textile user interface element for eyes-free, continuous value input on smart garments that uses pinching and rolling a piece of cloth between your fingers. Input granularity can be controlled by the amount of cloth pinched. Pinstripe input elements are invisible, and can be included across large areas of a garment. Pinstrip...
Audio guides are a common way to provide museum visitors with an opportunity for personalized, self-paced information retrieval. However, this personalization conflicts with some of the reasons many people go to museums, i.e., to socialize, to be with friends, and to discuss the exhibit as they experience it [1]. We developed an interactive museum...
Questions
Question (1)
Basically, I'm looking for methods that, instead of running detailed Interviews with few people, aggregate similar answers by asking many people few very basic questions.
Is there something established in Sociology, Psychology?
Thanks,
Florian