Thies Pfeiffer

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Applied Sciences Emden Leer

Due to advances in extended reality technology, an increasing number of head-mounted displays are equipped with eye trackers. These sensors allow to predict customers' preferences on-the-fly. Such information can serve as features for recommender systems. We propose to treat eye tracking data as time series and utilize a deep time series classifier...

In Virtual Reality (VR)-Umgebungen können Auszubildende, Umzuschulende und Weiterzubildende vergleichsweise kostengünstig, risikoarm und methodisch vielfältig - wie zum Beispiel in Form von virtuellen Rollenspielen - wichtige Handlungs- und Sozialkompetenzen für ihre aktuelle oder zukünftige berufliche Tätigkeit trainieren. Mit dem vorliegenden Bei...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Ärztliche Interaktions- und Explorationstechniken sind die wichtigsten Werkzeuge, die Medizinstudierende im Fach Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie zu erwerben haben. Die aktuell verfügbaren modernen digitalen Technologien wie Virtual Reality (VR) können als wichtige Ergänzungen zu einer Verbesserung der Vermittlung psychia...

Sensing in the physical world differs from sensing in virtual worlds. As visualized in Penfield’s homunculus, touch and taste play a big role in physical surroundings. In contrast, the “Homunculus Metaversensis” for virtual reality would look different, reflecting the dominance of visual and auditory perception in virtual experiences facilitated by...

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) is a promising technology for educational purposes. It allows for interactive, engaging, and spatially independent learning. While the didactic benefits of AR have been well studied in recent years and commodity smartphones already come with AR capabilities, concepts and tools for a scalable deployment of AR are still...

Da Gruppenarbeit die Kompetenz- und Qualifikationsentwicklung bei Lernenden fördern kann, wird sie zur Stärkung beruflicher Handlungs-, Personal- und Methodenkompetenz eingesetzt. Die zunehmende Digitalisierung bringt jedoch Herausforderungen für Gruppenarbeit im Online-Format mit sich. Zurzeit werden für deren Umsetzung häufig Videokonferenztools...

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt TrainAR, ein kostenloses Open-Source-Autorensystem mit dem prozedurale Smartphone-basierte Augmented-Reality-Trainings (AR-Trainings) mittels 3D-Scanning und visueller Programmierung erstellt werden können. Es soll Fachexperten befähigen, eigenständig interaktive AR-Trainings zu entwickeln und einzusetzen. TrainAR wurde be...

Die Akademisierung der Hebammenausbildung bringt neue Herausforderungen mit sich. Die Heb@AR App ist eine innovative Augmented Reality (AR) Trainingsanwendung, um diesen Prozess nachhaltig zu unterstützen und die Umsetzung von erworbenem theoretischem Wissen in die Praxis zu fördern. Heb@AR wird derzeit für selbstgesteuertes und curriculares Lernen...

The academization of midwifery education entails novel challenges. To second the transition process, the Heb@AR App is an innovative Augmented Reality (AR) training application. It is currently being deployed for self-directed and curricular on-site learning in several midwifery degree programs in Germany. The aim is to strengthen students' practic...

Although modern consumer level head-mounted-displays of today provide high-quality room scale tracking, and thus support a high level of immersion and presence, there are application contexts in which constraining oneself to seated set-ups is necessary. Classroom sized training groups are one highly relevant example. However, what is lost when cons...

Der Einsatz von vollimmersiven VR-Lernumgebungen fördert bei Lernenden die individuellen Fähigkeiten und ihr Vorwissen. Konkrete Lerneffekte und Integrationskonzepte sind jedoch noch nicht ausreichend untersucht. Im Rahmen eines vom BMBF geförderten Forschungsprojektes soll mit diesem Beitrag deshalb der Frage nachgegangen werden: Welche didaktisch...

Seit einigen Jahren finden VR-Technologien Einzug in die Gesundheitsberufe. Häufig wird der Einsatz durch Forschungsprojekte begleitet, eine mediendidaktische Einbettung oder lerntheoretische Begründung steht hier jedoch zumeist aus. Hinzu kommt, dass Schulungsmassnahmen zur Nutzung von VR-Technologien bisweilen den Fokus auf die Vermittlung von in...

Traditionally, laboratory practice aims to establish schemas learned by students in theoretical courses through concrete experiences. However, access to laboratories might not always be available to students. Therefore, it is advantageous to diversify the tools that students could use to train practical skills. This technology report describes the...

The term real-time refers to the ability of computer systems to deliver results reliably within a predictable – usually as short as possible – time span. Real-time capability is one of the most difficult requirements for VR systems: users expect a VR system to let them experience the effects of interactions without noticeable delays. This chapter d...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Ausbildung und Lehre müssen sich den Gegebenheiten insbesondere in Corona-Zeiten anpassen, zumal neue digitale Technologien zur Verfügung stehen. Ärztliche Interaktions- und Explorationstechniken sind die wichtigsten Werkzeuge, die Medizinstudierende im Fach Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie zu erwerben haben. Ziel der Ar...

Digital government opens up opportunities to critically reflect on administrative and government processes and to rethink them accordingly. In the past, citizen participation processes were subject to numerous challenges, but e‑participation offers opportunities to combine them with modern technologies that enable low-threshold participation. In th...

Im Rahmen des vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung geförderten Projektes „Augmented Reality gestütztes Lernen in der hochschulischen Hebammenausbildung – Heb@AR“ wird für den primärqualifizierenden Studiengang Hebammenkunde ein vollständiges Augmented Reality (AR) Lehr-/Lernkonzept entwickelt, evaluiert und in die Lehre implementiert [1]...

During a smooth pursuit eye movement of a target stimulus, a briefly flashed stationary background appears to move in the opposite direction as the eye's motion ― an effect known as the Filehne illusion. Similar illusions occur in audition, in the vestibular system, and in touch. Recently, we found that the movement of a surface perceived from tact...

Observing behavior can provide insights into mental states and cognitive processes. In the context of expertise measurement, research is taking advantage of analyzing gaze-based data to understand those underlying processes. The movements of the eyes represent search strategies in problem-solving scenarios, which can be used to distinguish a novice...

The potential of Augmented Reality (AR) for educational and training purposes is well known. While large-scale deployments of head-mounted AR headsets remain challenging due to technical limitations and cost factors, advances in mobile devices and tracking solutions introduce handheld AR devices as a powerful, broadly available alternative, yet wit...

Operator training in the chemical industry is important because of the potentially hazardous nature of procedures and the way operators' mistakes can have serious consequences on process operation and safety. Currently, operator training is facing some challenges, such as high costs, safety limitations and time constraints. Also, there have been so...

The benefits of contextualising information through Augmented Reality (AR) instructions to assist cognitively impaired workers are well known, but most findings are based on AR instructions carefully designed for predefined standard tasks. Previous findings indicate that the modality and quality of provided AR instructions have a significant impact...

Embedding virtual humans in educational settings enables the transfer of the approved concepts of learning by observation and imitation of experts to extended reality scenarios. Whilst various presentation concepts of virtual humans for learning have been investigated in sports and rehabilitation, little is known regarding industrial use cases. In...

Augmented Reality (AR) promises great potential for training applications as it allows to provide the trainee with instructions and feedback that is contextualized. In recent years, AR reached a state of technical feasibility that not only allows for larger, long term evaluations, but also for explorations of its application to specific training us...

With high-immersive virtual reality (VR) systems approaching mass markets, companies are seeking to better understand how consumers behave when shopping in VR. A key feature of high-immersive VR environments is that they can create a strong illusion of reality to the senses, which could substantially change consumer choice behavior compared to onli...

The automotive industry is currently facing massive challenges. Shorter product life cycles together with mass customization lead to a high complexity for manual assembly tasks. This induces the need for effective manual assembly assistances which guide the worker faultlessly through different assembly steps while simultaneously decrease their comp...

How can we tailor assistance systems, such as recommender systems or decision support systems, to consumers’ individual shopping motives? How can companies unobtrusively identify shopping motives without explicit user input? We demonstrate that eye movement data allow building reliable prediction models for identifying goal-directed and exploratory...

The use of virtual reality technology in education rises in popularity, especially in professions that include the training of practical skills. By offering the possibility to repeatedly practice and apply skills in controllable environments, VR training can help to improve the education process. The training simulations that are going to be develo...

Famous examples like the Amazon headquarter in New York City or the Stuttgart 21 train station demonstrate that construction projects are often subjects of common interest and can therefore produce protests if citizens feel unheard in urban planning. In this manuscript, we would therefore like to investigate whether e-participation can be used as a...

Augmented Reality (AR) is a promising technology for assistance and training in work environments, as it can provide instructions and feedback contextualised. Not only, but especially impaired workers can benefit from this technology. While previous work mostly focused on using AR to assist or train specific predefined tasks, "general purpose" AR a...

Der Begriff Echtzeit beschreibt die Fähigkeit eines Computersystems (oder hier VR-Systems) Ergebnisse zuverlässig innerhalb einer vorhersagbaren – in der Regel möglichst kurzen – Zeitspanne zu liefern. Echtzeitfähigkeit ist eine der härtesten Anforderungen an VR-Systeme: Nutzer erwarten, dass ein VR-System Auswirkungen von Interaktionen ohne wahrne...

Companies have the opportunity to better engage potential customers by presenting products to them in a highly immersive virtual reality (VR) shopping environment. However, a minimal amount is known about why and whether customers will adopt such fully immersive shopping environments. We therefore develop and experimentally validate a theoretical m...

Ouija board sessions are illustrious examples of how subjective feelings of control – the Sense of Agency (SoA) - can be manipulated in real life settings. We present findings from a field experiment at a paranormal conference, where Ouija enthusiasts were equipped with eye trackers while using the Ouija board. Our results show that participants ha...

For head mounted displays, like they are used in mixed reality applications, eye gaze seems to be a natural interaction modality. EyeMRTK provides building blocks for eye gaze interaction in virtual and augmented reality. Based on a hardware abstraction layer, it allows interaction researchers and developers to focus on their interaction concepts,...

For head mounted displays, like they are used in mixed reality applications, eye gaze seems to be a natural interaction modality. EyeMRTK provides building blocks for eye gaze interaction in virtual and augmented reality. Based on a hardware abstraction layer, it allows interaction researchers and developers to focus on their interaction concepts,...

Augmented reality (AR) is a promising tool for many situations in which assistance is needed, as it allows for instructions and feedback to be contextualized. While research and development in this area have been primarily driven by industry, AR could also have a huge impact on those who need assistance the most: cognitively impaired people of all...

Due to mass customization product variety increased steeply in the automotive industry, entailing the increment of worker’s cognitive load during manual assembly tasks. Although worker assistance methods for cognitive automation already exist, they proof insufficient in terms of usability and achieved time saving. Given the rising importance of sim...

Referential success is crucial for collaborative task-solving in shared environments. In face-to-face interactions, humans, therefore, exploit speech, gesture, and gaze to identify a specific object. We investigate if and how the gaze behavior of a human interaction partner can be used by a gaze-aware assistance system to improve referential succes...

Recently, the significant technological developments of head-mounted displays and tracking systems have boosted a widespread use of immersive virtual reality in the manufacturing industry. Regardless of the respective use-case, however, methods to ensure the validity of the human motion being performed in such virtual environments remain largely un...

This volume presents a state-of-the-art of current research on the role of eye gaze in different types of interaction, including human-human and human-computer interaction. Approaching the phenomenon from different disciplinary and methodological angles, the chapters in the volume are united through a shared technological approach, viz. the use of...

One key aspect of the Internet of Things (IoT) is, that human machine interfaces are disentangled from the physicality of the devices. This provides designers with more freedom, but also may lead to more abstract interfaces, as they lack the natural context created by the presence of the machine. Mixed Reality (MR) on the other hand, is a key techn...

Zusammenfassung Seit Jahrzehnten versucht die Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld neue, innovative Services, meist als digitale Dienste, zu implementieren. Es werden drei beispielhafte Entwicklungen vorgestellt, die basierend auf vorhandener digitaler Expertise und etablierten Netzwerkstrukturen innerhalb der Hochschule kooperative Projekte in Zusamme...

With the rise of immersive visualization techniques, many domains within the manufacturing industry are increasingly validating production processes in virtual reality (VR). The validity of the results gathered in such simulations, however, is widely unknown—in particular, with regard to human locomotion behavior. To bridge this gap, this article p...

Driven by endeavors towards Industry 4.0, there is increasing interest in augmented reality (AR) as an approach for assistance in areas like picking, assembly and maintenance. In this work our focus is on AR-based assistance in manual assembly. The design space for AR instructions in this context includes, e.g., side-by-side, 3D or projected 2D pre...

The current best practice for hands-free selection using Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) head-mounted displays is to use head-gaze for aiming and dwell-time or clicking for triggering the selection. There is an observable trend for new VR and AR devices to come with integrated eye-tracking units to improve rendering, to provide means for atte...

The exciting thing about augmented reality (AR) as an emerging technology is that there is not yet a common design language, nor a set of standard functionalities or patterns. Users and designers do not have much experience with AR interfaces. When designing AR projects for customers, this is a huge challenge. It is our conviction that prototypes p...

In einer praxisnahen Ausbildung steht der Transfer des Erlernten, seien es technische, motorische oder kommunikative Fähigkeiten, an vorderster Stelle. Eine besondere Lehrform stellt hier das SkillsLab dar, welches psychomotorische Fähigkeiten und implizites Kontextwissen durch praktisches Handeln, emotionales Lernen, sowie wiederholtes Üben schult...

Mobile robots start to appear in our everyday life, e.g., in shopping malls, airports, nursing homes or warehouses. Often, these robots are operated by non-technical staff with no prior experience/education in robotics. Additionally, as with all new technology, there is certain reservedness when it comes to accepting robots in our personal space. I...

Mobile robots start to appear in everyday life, e.g., in shopping malls or nursing homes. Often, they are operated by staff with no prior experience in robotics. False expectations regarding the capabilities of robots, however, may lead to disappointments and reservations when it comes to accepting robots in ones personal space. We make use of stat...

Ein aufmerksamer Assistent liefert proaktiv relevante Informationen immer genau zum richtigen Zeitpunkt. Er muss dafür über den aktuellen Handlungskontext und das erforderliche Domänenwissen verfügen und in der Lage sein, die aktuelle kognitive Situation des Nutzers gut einschätzen zu können. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht unter Einsatz eines He...

Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit der Frage, ob durch den Einsatz von kontaktfreiem Tracking natürlicher Handbewegungen in einem VR-Trainingsprogramm ein signifikant positiver Einfluss auf Lerneffekt und Nutzererfahrung erzielt werden kann im Vergleich zur Nutzung von Controllern. Als Evaluationsumgebung dient ein virtuelles Labor, in welchem eine me...

Since its inception, explaining the cognitive foundations governing sensory experiences of supernatural agents has been a central topic in the cognitive science of religion. Following recent developments in perceptual psychology, this pre-registered study examines the effects of expectations and sensory reliability on agency detection. Participants...

Technological advances in eye tracking methodology have made it possible to unobtrusively measure consumer visual attention during the shopping process. Mobile eye tracking in field settings however has several limitations, including a highly cumbersome data coding process. In addition, field settings allow only limited control of important interfe...

Here we demonstrate our Intelligent Coaching Space, an immersive virtual environment in which users learn a motor action (e.g. a squat) under the supervision of a virtual coach. We detail how we assess the ability of the coachee in executing the motor action, how the intelligent coaching space and its features are realized and how the virtual coach...

Augmented Reality (AR) gains increased attention as a means to provide assistance for different human activities. Hereby the suitability of AR does not only depend on the respective task, but also to a high degree on the respective device. In a standardized assembly task, we tested AR-based in-situ assistance against conventional pictorial instruct...

The eyes play an important role both in perception and communication. Technical interfaces that make use of their versatility can bring significant improvements to those who are unable to speak or to handle selection tasks elsewise such as with their hands, feet, noses or tools handled with the mouth. Using the eyes to enter texts into a computer s...

In many everyday purchase decisions, consumers have to trade-off their decisions between alternatives. For example, consumers often have to decide whether to buy the more expensive high quality product or the less expensive product of lower quality. Marketing researchers are especially interested in finding out how consumers make decisions when fac...

Intelligent personal assistance systems for manual tasks may support users on multiple levels. A general function is guiding the visual attention of the user towards the item relevant for the next action. This is a challenging task, as the user may be in arbitrary positions and orientations relative to the target. Optical see-through head-mounted-d...

A limiting factor of current smart glasses-based augmented reality (AR) systems is their small field of view. AR assistance systems designed for tasks such as order picking or manual assembly are supposed to guide the visual attention of the user towards the item that is relevant next. This is a challenging task, as the user may initially be in an...

In einem kooperativen Lehrprojekt zwischen Fachhochschule und Universität wurde ein immersives Trainingsprogramm für das Head-Mounted-Display (HMD) Samsung Gear VR entwickelt. Anwendungsbeispiel ist die Vorbereitung einer Infusion, wie sie im Rahmen der Lehre für die Pflege geschult wird. Motivatoren sind Einsparungen von Kosten, sowie das Bereitst...

Augmented-Reality (AR)-fähige Endgeräte durchdringen mittlerweile den Markt. Es gibt jedoch noch viel zu wenig Erfahrungen mit dem Einsatz und der Gestaltung von AR Lösungen. Insbesondere stellen sich Fragen z.B. nach der Relevanz von Field-of-View oder Latenz beim Tracking für die jeweiligen Anwendungskontexte, die früh im Projekt entschieden werd...

Industrie 4.0 (English translation: Industry 4.0) stands for functional integration, dynamic reorganization, and resource efficiency. Technical advances in control and communication create infrastructures that handle more and more tasks automatically. As a result, the complexity of today's and future technical systems is hidden from the user. These...

With the launch of ultra-portable systems, mobile eye tracking finally has the potential to become mainstream. While eye movements on their own can already be used to identify human activities, such as reading or walking, linking eye movements to objects in the environment provides even deeper insights into human cognitive processing. We present a...

Heat maps, or more generally, attention maps or saliency maps are an often used technique to visualize eye-tracking data. With heat maps qualitative information about visual processing can be easily visualized and communicated between experts and laymen. They are thus a versatile tool for many disciplines, in particular for usability engineering, a...

Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to support motor learning in ways exceeding beyond the possibilities provided by real world environments. New feedback mechanisms can be implemented that support motor learning during the performance of the trainee and afterwards as a performance review. As a consequence, VR environments excel in controlled ev...

We present research-in-progress on an attentive in-store mobile recommender system that is integrated into the user’s glasses and worn during purchase decisions. The system makes use of the Attentive Mobile Interactive Cognitive Assistant (AMICA) platform prototype designed as a ubiquitous technology that supports people in their everyday-life. Thi...

The authors describe the creation of a tridimensional fly-through animation across the largest map of galaxies to date. This project represented a challenge: creating a scientifically accurate representation of the galaxy distribution that was aesthetically pleasing. The animation shows almost half a million galaxies as the viewer travels through t...

Current semantic theory on indexical expressions claims that demonstratively used indexicals such as this lack a referent-determining meaning but instead rely on an accompanying demonstration act like a pointing gesture. While this view allows to set up a sound logic of demonstratives, the direct-referential role assigned to pointing gestures has n...

Eye gaze plays an important role in human communication. One foundational skill in human social interaction is joint attention which is receiving increased interest in particular in the area of human-agent or human-robot interaction. We are focusing here on patterns of gaze interaction that emerge in the process of establishing joint attention. The...

Visual attention can be a viable source of information to assess human behaviors in many different contexts, from human-computer interaction, over sports or social interactions, to complex working environments, such as to be found in the context of Industry 4.0. In such scenarios in which the user is able to walk around freely, mobile eye-tracking...

Every now and then there are situations in which we are not sure how to proceed and thus are seeking for help. For example, choosing the best product out of dozens of different brands in a supermarket can be difficult, especially when following a specific diet. There are, however, also people who have problems with decision making or sequencing act...

For solving tasks cooperatively in close interaction with humans, robots need to have timely updated spatial representations. However, perceptual information about the current position of interaction partners is often late. If robots could anticipate the targets of upcoming manual actions, such as pointing gestures, they would have more time to phy...

Previous work on eye tracking and eye-based human-computer interfaces mainly concentrated on making use of the eyes in traditional desktop settings. With the recent growth of interest in smart glass devices and low-cost eye trackers, however, gaze-based techniques for mobile computing is becoming increasingly important. PETMEI 2014 focuses on the p...

In many applications it is necessary to guide humans' visual attention towards certain points in the environment. This can be to highlight certain attractions in a touristic application for smart glasses, to signal important events to the driver of a car or to draw the attention of a user of a desktop system to an important message of the user inte...

We present an approach coined EyeSee3D to identify the 3D point of regard and the fixated object in real-time based on 2D gaze videos without the need for manual annotation. The approach does not require additional hardware except for the mobile eye tracker. It is currently applicable for scenarios with static target objects and requires fiducial m...

For solving tasks cooperatively in close interaction with humans , robots need to have timely updated spatial representations. However , perceptual information about the current position of interaction partners is often late. If robots could anticipate the targets of upcoming manual actions, such as pointing gestures, they would have more time to p...

For validly analyzing human visual attention, it is often necessary to proceed from computer-based desktop set-ups to more natural real-world settings. However, the resulting loss of control has to be counterbalanced by increasing participant and/or item count. Together with the effort required to manually annotate the gaze-cursor videos recorded w...