abstract nizar qabbani is known among arab poets as a poet of love and women. in fact these two words in the dictionary of nizar go out of the framework of definitions and restrictions that make it into the department of the collector and the inhibitor. he tried hard to find these adorable in this picturesque valley; but he did not know her way, however, may open doors to women. in the poems of...

This paper presents an enhanced version of a portable outof-the-box platform for semi-immersive interactive applications. The enhanced version combines stereoscopic visualization, marker-less user tracking, and multi-touch with self-reflection of users and tangible object interaction. A virtual fish tank simulation demonstrates how real and virtual worlds are seamlessly blended by providing a m...

We present a method for tracking and distinguishing multiple C. elegans in a video sequence, including when they are in physical contact with one another. The worms are modeled with an articulated model composed of rectangular blocks, arranged in a deformable configuration represented by a spring-like connection between adjacent parts. Dynamic programming is applied to reduce the computational ...

In this paper, several hopping robots for space applications are introduced and the importance of their landing mechanisms are highlighted. Such mechanisms are required for smooth touch down of the robots on an unknown surface of a celestial body, e.g., Mars, moon, asteroids and comets, which may be rocky like in Mars. It is essential that the kinetic energy of the robot module be absorbed whil...

Skin-based touch input opens up new opportunities for direct, subtle, and expressive interaction. However, existing skinworn sensors are restricted to single-touch input and limited by a low resolution. We present the first skin overlay that can capture high-resolution multi-touch input. Our main contributions are: 1) Based on an exploration of functional materials, we present a fabrication app...

The sense of touch provides fundamental information about the surrounding world, and feedback about our own actions. Although touch is very important during the earliest stages of life, to date no study has investigated infants' abilities to process visual stimuli implying touch. This study explores the developmental origins of the ability to visually recognize touching gestures involving other...

Active, self-touch and the passive touch from an external source engage comparable afferent mechanoreceptors on the touched skin site. However, touch directed to glabrous skin compared to hairy skin will activate different types of afferent mechanoreceptors. Despite perceptual similarities between touch to different body sites, it is likely that the touch information is processed differently. I...

In the paper, we present a novel approach for touch modality identification via tactile sensing on a humanoid. In this respect, we equipped a NAO humanoid with whole upper body coverage of multimodal artificial skin. We propose a set of biologically inspired feature descriptors to provide robust and abstract tactile information for use in touch classification. These features are demonstrated to...

Starting from human “sense of touch,” this paper 3 reviews the state of tactile sensing in humanoid robotics. The phys4 iology, coding, and transferring tactile data and perceptual impor5 tance of the “sense of touch” in humans are discussed. Following 6 this, a number of design hints derived for robotic tactile sensing are 7 presented. Various technologies and transduction methods used to 8 im...