Search

Parkinson’s disease (PD) has an average onset age of 55 years old. Its incidence increases with age. Due to an aging demographic, PD poses an increasing burden on patients and health care resources. PD causes tremors, rigidity, abnormal gait, postural instability, and freezing of gait. These symptoms diminish patients’ quality of life. Continuous rehabilitation of PD patients is more effective in the long term than either pharmacotherapy or surgical treatment. Nevertheless, a patient's motivation for rehabilitation suffers from the difficulties associated with the need for frequent visits to a rehabilitation center. The purpose of this study is to develop a serious game based on augmented reality for the rehabilitation of patients with PD. The game was designed to allow patients with PD to ambulate while following virtual visual cues in a real environment as well as incorporated levels with increasing difficulty. We assess improvements in gait and a sense of balance after 3 weeks of training. The results show that all patients have had improvements in these two outcomes. The results of this study provide references for future study and develop more or methods of playing rehabilitation games.

Hemiplegia is the most common form of stroke, after which one side of the body typically does not respond, or its strength becomes notably weakened or worse. At present, most devices used to help stroke patients on the market have only fixed ankles and lower leg positions. In this study, we designed an accessory aimed at increasing the propulsion of the patient’s forefoot. We used 3D printing technology to shape and perform a stress analysis on the materials, and applied finite elements as an analytical method. The analysis results showed that the device effectively improves the propulsive force of the forefoot and cooperates with traditional fixed ankle aids to achieve a stabilized walking capability. It also significantly reduces the manufacturing cost and meets the requirements for modifying the patient’s gait. The results indicate that the developed device can be produced and applied using 3D printing technology, particularly for people with mobility problems.

Recently, technological innovation is a critical element for a country's economic growth. Also, the role of university transfers from educational provider to “entrepreneurial university”. Thus, the university starts to play the role as one to make technology commercialization in terms of technology transfer. Most of the previous research focuses on the economic and social perspective to analyze the contribution of technology commercialization. Due to many key stakeholders and influential factors involving in the whole process, which were seldom taken into account in the research, this research tries to analyze the process from the service design perspective. The aim of the research is to figure out the main factors to change the technology transfer process from passive to active. During observation and interview, the authors discovered that in addition to improving the process by changing the original one, other influential factors such as the employees' interests, regulations of technology transfer, and executors' mindsets of achieving the goals are essential to promote transferring technology to an ideal status and level.

Second Life as one of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) allowed users to create things. One of the areas is religion. USATODAY and the Christian Post reported that Leaders of Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites estimate about 1,000 avatars teleport into churches, synagogues or mosques on a regular basis while hundreds more list themselves with Buddhist, Pagan, Wiccan and other groups [1, 2]. This study explored users' experiences inside the religious site in Second Life.

Multi-touch is a kind of emerging technology in human computer interaction area. It does not only provide a more natural and intuitive interaction, but also allows multi users simultaneously to manipulate on the same display. Therefore, it usually would be suitable to be represented in the form of the large display in the public space. Furthermore, most of the research issues in the large and public display usually focused on the social network and the human behavior. However, few researches of the multi-touch area were mentioned about the issue, hence, in this study we built up a 100-inch multi-touch display to observe the human behavior through 6 cameras in the public space with a developed “Photo Dig” interface for the use's manipulation. Finally, the five stages and three levels of the user interactive behavior model are proposed.

This study establishes a new painting experience that entails an AR-based approach that augments regular freehand 2D sketches into a Chinese painting artwork. Within the study, the realistic diffusion of ink can be interactively generated for users to create works inspired by the Chinese painting style as well as to unveil the opportunity for users to model up their own augmented information without any pre-building processes, potentially spanning the applications of AR in alternate directions.

In this paper, we report a novel cell irradiation system at the HVEE Van de Graaff accelerator at National Tsing Hua University. The significant change of system design is use the backscattering technique to replace the 90° magnet which was widely used to derive beam direction from horizontal to vertical. A silicon barrier detector was used to measure the scattered particle energy. Meanwhile, nuclear track detector CR-39 was also applying in this study to assess the particle distribution at beam nozzle. The preliminary experiment performed by using 2 MeV alpha particle to irradiate the HeLa cell. The result showed, this system can provide an efficiently vertical particle beam irradiation and a standard growth condition during the period of irradiation. Furthermore, it's more economical and easier to set up than others.

Tangible User Interface (TUI) allows individuals to interact with digital information via physical objects. This work presents a novel system called Emotion Caster, which enables users to manipulate intuitively digital media contents using physical objects. As a platform, Emotion Caster allows many individuals to share their emotions and measure their heart rate when interacting. Furthermore, users can transfer their felling via Instant Messenger software like MSN. This system has many promising applications, such as in entertainment and children's education, and remote interaction.

This study is to discuss location-base searching usability and functionality based on our developed project MAPMARK. Focus group technique was adopted for this research. We've conducted the mental model for people who use location-base searching in current internet environment and their expectations and demands for the searching from user experience aspect. The results also provided us consultation for the project development on next phase.

The learning of Chinese is an abstract learning mode for kindergarten children; the pronunciation and writing of Chinese are different learning modes. This study tries to create a more efficient and interesting learning environment through AR. The paper describes the exertion of augmented reality (AR) to construct a learning system, where rich and effective interactions in learning were considered. The prototype of this AR learning system enables school children to have a better understanding in the pronunciation and memorization of Chinese. This clearly enhances the learning motives and interest of school children. In conclusion, the study shows a interesting way to promote Chinese phonetic alphabet learning via AR environment. The projector reveals AR does make the interaction and interface friendlier where children become more immersive in the scenario of learning.

With rapid development of the Internet, diversified e-business models encourage changes in consumers' shopping behaviors. In existing e-business models, most of the Web sites only provide images and limited information of the products for the consumers. Provided only with virtual images, it is difficult for them to judge how the products will afterwards fit in the real environments. In this research, the authors have attempted to provide precise visual images and correct information of the products for the consumers. To achieve this goal, the authors have adopted augmented reality technology as a tool to develop a system which allows the virtual products adopted from Web sites to merge in consumers' actual home environment. In the developmental stage of the system, a desktop computer, a Web camera, location cards, and an interface in Web page form are incorporated to develop an interactive human/computer interface. This interface lets consumers augment the three-dimensional virtual artworks to a specified location of the actual environment. It also creates new shopping experiences for consumers