[talks] Colloquium Speaker-Pedro Lopes, Monday, Feb 12

[Emily Lawrence]

CS Department Colloquium Speaker
Pedro Lopes, Hasso Plattner Institute
Monday, February 12, 2018 - 12:30pm 
Computer Science - Room 105
Host: Prof. Adam Finkelstein

"Interactive Systems based on Electrical Muscle Stimulation"

How can interactive devices connect with users in the most immediate and
intimate way? This question has driven interactive computing for decades. If
we think back to the early days of computing, user and device were quite
distant, often located in separate rooms. Then, in the '70s, personal
computers "moved in" with users. In the '90s, mobile devices moved computing
into users' pockets. More recently, wearables brought computing into
constant physical contact with the user's skin. These transitions proved to
be useful: moving closer to users and spending more time with them allowed
devices to perceive more of the user, allowing devices to act more personal.
The main question that drives my research is: what is the next logical step?
How can computing devices become even more personal? 
Some researchers argue that the next generation of interactive devices will
move past the user's skin, and be directly implanted inside the user's body.
This has already happened in that we have pacemakers, insulin pumps, etc.
However, I argue that what we see is not devices moving towards the inside
of the user's body but towards the "interface" of the user's body they need
to address in order to perform their function. 
This idea holds the key to more immediate and personal communication between
device and user. The question is how to increase this immediacy? My approach
is to create devices that intentionally borrow parts of the user's body for
input and output, rather than adding more technology to the body. I call
this concept "devices that overlap with the user's body". I'll demonstrate
my work in which I explored one specific flavor of such devices, i.e.,
devices that borrow the user's muscles. 
In my research I create computing devices that interact with the user by
reading and controlling muscle activity. My devices are based on
medical-grade signal generators and electrodes attached to the user's skin
that send electrical impulses to the user's muscles; these impulses then
cause the user's muscles to contract. While electrical muscle stimulation
(EMS) devices have been used to regenerate lost motor functions in
rehabilitation medicine since the '60s, during my PhD I explored EMS as a
means for creating interactive systems. My devices form two main categories:
(1) Devices that allow users eyes-free access to information by means of
their proprioceptive sense, such as a variable, a tool, or a plot. (2)
Devices that increase immersion in virtual reality by simulating large
forces, such as wind, physical impact, or walls and heavy objects. 
 
Bio:
Pedro Lopes is a PhD Candidate at Prof. Baudisch's Human Computer
Interaction Lab at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany. 
Pedro's work asks the question: what if interfaces would share part of our
body? Pedro has materialized these ideas by creating interactive systems
based on electrical muscle stimulation. These devices use part of the
wearer's body for output, i.e., the computer can output by actuating the
user's muscles with electrical impulses, causing it to move involuntarily.
The wearer can sense the computer's activity on their own body by means of
their sense of proprioception. Pedro's wearable systems have shown to (1)
increase realism in VR, (2) provide a novel way to access information
through proprioception, and (3) serve as a platform to experience and
question the boundaries of our sense of agency. 
Pedro's work is published at top-tier conferences (ACM CHI &UIST) and
demonstrated at venues such as ACM SIGGRAPH and IEEE Haptics. Pedro has
received the ACM CHI Best Paper award for his work on Affordance++, Best
Talk Awards and several nominations. As part of his research, Pedro has
exhibited at Ars Electronica 2017, Science Gallery Dublin and World Economic
Forum in San Francisco. His work also captured the interest of media, such
as MIT Technology Review, NBC, Discovery Channel, NewScientist and Wired.
(Learn more about Pedro's work here: plopes.org).