Projects on Human-Computer Interaction | TU Wien

APH-Alarm - Gesture based alarming

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Comprehensive safety solution for people with Aphasia.

Project Homepage: https://aph-alarm-project.com/index.php/en/

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer, Katharina Werner

Our group is responsible for ethics, user interface design and testing. A set of pictograms has been developed in close cooperation with the users. An agile evaluation of iterative prototypes is being done and a field testing of the final prototype is under preparation.

The project APH started in May 2020 and will be completed in April 2023.

Breaking The Wall

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

With Breaking The Wall we explore how to use technology to involve the audience in music performances. We design and develop different interactive systems together with artists. These systems will be deployed in public concerts of the artists in spring 2017 in the Kuppelsaal of the Vienna University of Technology. During all concerts the spectators can participate in various ways in the live performances.

Project Homepage: http://www.piglab.org/breakingthewall

Team: Fares Kayali, Oliver Hödl, Peter Purgathofer, Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Caring Robots // Robotic Care

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Caring Robots // Robotic Care is a 5-years project, started in 2022, funded by the FWF #Connecting Minds program.

It involves 4 key researchers from TU Wien and one from University of Salzburg. Our goal is to develop and implement novel and desirable roles of robotic technology that proof useful, safe, meaningful, and wanted.

We aim for a participatory, open and reflective design process that involves a broad range of stakeholders from the care sector, with the ultimate goal to create desirable technological futures of care rather than merely acceptable ones. The gained insights shall contribute to a novel ethically aligned design approach for robotic care technology.

CoSi4U - Human Factors in Using Collaboration Systems in Companies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The CoSi4U (Human Factors in Using Collaboration Systems in Companies) project is a cooperation project with FRINK Advanced Services GmbH. FRINK Advanced Services GmbH developed a tool for analysing collaboration data in companies. The goal of the project is to support the company in finding a user-friendly design in order to help analysts to handle this data and to make relationships between them visible.

Team: Simone Kriglstein (contact person) and Nikolaus Suchy

CVAST - Centre of Visual Analytics Science and Technology

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Centre of Visual Analytics Science and Technology (CVAST) is one of the Laura Bassi Centres of Excellence. The goals of CVAST are twofold. The first goal is the integration of the outstanding capabilities of humans in terms of visual information exploration with the enormous processing power of computers to form a powerful knowledge discovery environment. The second goal is to scientifically assess the usability and utility of such discovery environments while bridging the gap between theory and practice for selected application scenarios. To achieve these goals we cooperate with several partners from industry.

Designing for resilience with unaccompanied migrant youth

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Unaccompanied migrant youth (UMY) must cope with adversities before, during, and after their flight to Austria without adult relatives. Mental health support could contribute to promoting resilience in UMY and help them to cope with their adverse situation; however, despite increasing evidence that technology could make mental health support more accessible, there is a lack of knowledge regarding how to design technology-enabled resilience support for this vulnerable and marginalized population. This project explores how to potentially support resilience promotion in UMY with the help of technology. I use qualitative and design methods to (1) gain a deep understanding of the context of UMY in Vienna, Austria; (2) identify pathways to integrate technology-enabled resilience support; and (3) explore possibilities to design technology-enabled support for this space. The findings highlight a complex interplay among social-ecological factors in supporting and hindering resilience promotion that cannot be ignored when designing technology-enabled resilience support for this context. Otherwise, the technological solutions could not be as supportive as possible and even fail to provide support. Thus, the outcome of this project proposes and exemplifies a shift from an individual to a social-ecological approach to researching and designing technology-enabled resilience support. The first outcome of this project is a descriptive account mapping the social-ecological factors such as macro-systemic factors (e.g., legal policies) and micro-systemic factors (e.g., social and physical factors in the everyday living situation) that support and hinder resilience. The second outcome of this project is a map of potential pathways and possibilities for technology-enabled resilience support in this context, which is presented as part of a design framework. This design framework focuses on two main pathways to integrate technology-enabled support for UMY in this context: through direct technology-enabled support for UMY and by supporting resilience in UMY through their mentors. The thrid contribution of this project is an understanding of how to apply the design framework to the research and design of technology-enabled support for this and other contexts, such as low- and middle-income countries. The framework could help researchers to develop technological solutions that are capable of integration into the social-ecological interplay and relations. The design examples resulting from this project instantiate some possibilities of technology-enabled resilience support for UMY and could be further developed and evaluated in future studies.

Developing an inclusive technological toolkit to support prevention approaches

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Within this project, a technological toolkit is being developed, which will allow young people, mediated by caregivers, to create customizable applications to support their own mental health and wellbeing, based on evidence-based interventions.

The necessity for this project emerges out of two intertwined problems. First, the homogenous nature of existing approaches to promote youth mental health (YMH), as they are often text-based, even as they are progressively being translated into the digital sphere. Yet the group “adolescents”, which is, within this project, defined as youth roughly between the age of 14 and 25, can’t be considered homogenous by any sensible metric. An intervention which is highly engaging for one might be of no interest, or not even accessible, for another (Castro, Barrera, & Martinez, 2004). For example, the existing emphasis on text-based measures to promote mental health does exclude migrant youth who do not yet have access to the language in which those measures are presented. While an increasingly broad landscape of more heterogeneous YMH interventions is currently opening up, those interventions are usually not customizable, which results in the same exclusion effects, and in resting the burden of identifying a suitable intervention on the ability and willingness of adolescents to comb through all available options, until they find one that works for them. On top of that, for YMH interventions to be used in the first place, they have to be engaging, which Hagen, Collin, Metcalf, Rahilly, & Swainston (2012) point out as one of the key challenges when developing technological YMH interventions. Second, the aforementioned lack of available customization presents a lost opportunity to address hedonic adaptation (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999). Engagement decreases over time, as applications lose their novelty. This loss of engagement does not, however, coincide necessarily with decrease in usefulness or effectiveness. People may lose interest over time, even if continued use of an application would still be beneficial. Allowing for customization, for changing features of an application, allowing adding and removing of features, should decrease the effects of hedonic adaption, or at least delay them, and thus extend the period of active use of an application, which in turn likely increases the overall effect an YMH application can have on its user.

Development of sensor-based systems for older people

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In this project, we are trying to uncover the problems developers are facing in the development of sensor-based monitoring systems to support older people living alone. For this we use qualitative methods to investigate what happens during the development. We are particularly interested in the development processes, how different stakeholder-needs are determined, and other factors that might contribute to outcomes that are less successful than expected.

Team: Jean Hallewell Haslwanter, Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Digital Intelligent Assistant for Nursing Applications in Dementia Care

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Less routine monitoring tasks for nurses and gaining more time for compassion and personal care taking for people with dementia.

Project Homepage: http://www.diana-project.eu/

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer

The objective of DIANA is to improve the life and safety of mild to severely cognitive impaired persons 65+ while assisting nurses and care givers by providing novel technological solutions. The enabling technology will analyse action and behaviour changes while ensuring data privacy. Furthermore, the project will study innovative ways how our data can be seamlessly integrated into the nurses working routine with the goal to free valuable time for personalized care. For mild to medium impaired persons the project is going to research means how to assist and guide people in activities of daily living. One activity where this will be tested focuses on toileting. DIANA has the unique goal of increasing people’s autonomy and digitizing nursing assistance in this highly challenging area.

Exceptional Norms

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

By thinking through Exceptional Norms, we investigate how technologies, particularly those related to embodied computing, literally encode normative assumptions and expectations in their artefacts. We conduct critical analysis of existing work which we augment with the development of artifacts in a manner of research through design to account for the vast varieties of human bodies.

Project Homepage: https://exceptional-norms.at

Team: Katta Spiel

Computing technologies in our environment moved from being large mainframe setups increasingly towards, on and even inside human bodies. Innovative technologies like wearables, on-body tattoos or somaesthetic mats engage bodies in interaction. However, a thorough and critical investigation into the conceptualisation of human bodies in interaction with these technologies albeit highly relevant for the research community, is missing so far. With this FWF supported Hertha-Firnberg project hosted by the Human-Computer Interaction Group at TU Wien, we critically analyse how bodies are constructed within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Interaction Design, conduct participatory design with people whose bodies are marginalised by technologies and create two robust research products materialising alternatives to the status quo. Our work details the epistemological and designerly consequences as well as potential counter strategies to dominant normative assumptions.

Give&Take - Designing a reciprocal exchange service for a good and engaged senior life

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Give&Take co-designs an innovative digital platform that enables senior citizens to reciprocally exchange services and resources, creating new opportunities for senior citizens to contribute to society as volunteers and caregivers in their local communities. The GiveTake project is funded under the EU’s AAL programme.

Project Homepage: givetake.eu

Through social and digital media innovation the Give&Take project:

Strengthens the quality of life of senior citizens through occupation and social engagement as a key to mental, social and physical fitness.*
Explores the societal potential of informal community support and civic engagement for tasks currently supported by the public sector.*
Improves the ability of senior citizens to live as independently as possible.*

A shift from public care services to informal community support and civil engagement not only empowers seniors but also prevents dependencies and increased public consumption – several national and European projects have demonstrated how volunteering networks are defining new learning opportunities and ways to contribute to society. The senior citizens have untapped knowledge and experience, time and energy, as well as their own financial resources to contribute as citizens, volunteers, and particularly as workers and consumers.

ILUM - Augmenting urban mobility through digital information systems

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

ILUM combines urban mobility with ICT. Pillars for local orientation are augmented as an interactive guide-system for pedestrians in Vienna. Our goal is the elaboration of interaction application scenarios and actual digital prototypes.

Project Homepage: http://www.ilum.wien

Team: Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Oliver Hödl, Katta Spiel, Katharina Werner

Partners: is-design, High Performance Vienna, Subzero Software, iDrDesign

iToilet - ICT-enhanced Toilet Supporting Active Life

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The iToilet project addresses older persons who are living independently at home and the needs they have when using a toilet.

Project Homepage: http://itoilet-project.eu

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer, Georg Ehrenfels

The iToilet project targeted the needs of older persons who are living independently at home when using a toilet. The project aimed at developing an ICT enhanced toilet system, which is able to empower older persons to live more independently and with increased dignity. iToilet also aimed at reducing the workload of the care persons when providing personal assistance on the toilet.

LARAH - Location-aware Assistant Robots At Home

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

LARAH (Location-aware Assistant Robots At Home) aimed at providing older persons with an assistive robot, to provide support and safety in their own homes. This project developed a visual indoor localization solution for mobile assistive robots. The advanced localization technology proposed in LARAH will improve the assessment of the own position of the robot, and support tasks such as, finding and bringing objects, opening doors, and in finding persons in case of an emergency (e.g. fall).

Lav4All - Lavatory for All

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The utilization of a plane toilet represents difficulties for many mobility reduced persons. Often they aren’t able at all to use the on board toilet, especially within short distance or medium-haul flights. Depending on mobility restrictions various requirements for accessible on-board toilets exist which cannot be implemented because of technical limitations of the plane or because of economical conditions of the airlines.

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer

Homepage: https://www.aat.tuwien.ac.at/lav4all/

Project Partners: netwiss OG, FH JOANNEUM Graz, TU - Institut für Verkehrswissenschaften, Rodlauer Consulting GmbH, FACC AG, Verein Raltec

MAXimizeMe

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

XXLMontage für alle (Diversitätfördernde Individualisierung von Arbeitssystemen in der industriellen Baustellenmontage):

MAXimizeMe is a 2-years project, started in 2021 funded by Digifonds. Within MAXimizeMe we aim to achieve a better understanding of how aspects, such as age, gender, education or socioeconomic background impact the interaction with (autonomous) work systems in manufacturing or assembly.

The result of MAXimizeMe will be a collection of diversity-sensitive design guidelines that take into account relevant aspects for workforce allocation, work execution and resource provision in industrial site assembly in such a way that all employees can perform their work activities as long as possible, in a targeted manner and with optimized quality and efficiency.

MySafeWC - Dehydration trends on the toilet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The basis of assistive products such as “iToilet” with integrated nursing documentation could be expanded sensibly and innovatively by further methods of data analysis in the daily use of toilets.

Project Homepage: https://www.aat.tuwien.ac.at/mysafewc

Team: Peter Mayer, Paul Panek

By intelligently assessing body water levels across the toilet seat, but also through usage statistics and other parameters, the safety of autonomously living elderly users alone could be improved by early detection of the trend towards dehydration and deviant behavior, or by remembering the toilet visit. Together with users and supervisors, the project aimed to identify practical requirements and assess the risk and market prospects of a product or a necessary implementing R & D project through laboratory simulation of appropriate technologies.

OutsideTheBox

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

With OutsideTheBox we will think laterally and outside of typical boxes and categorisations. We will design new technologies with autistic children which are not exclusively driven by functional limitations, but engage children in all their diversity and with all their differences.

Project Homepage: http://outsidethebox.at

Team: Christopher Frauenberger, Julia Makhaeva, Katta Spiel

Technology has changed our lives. We find the cinema on Google Maps, use public transport with tickets on our mobile and let our watch tell us how many calories we have burnt and what is left in the fridge. And although people with autism are often drawn to technology, we know little about their ideas for future roles of technologies.

PAIR – Pairwise Visual Comparison of Directed Acyclic Graphs: A HCI Perspective

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of this project is to improve visualizations for pairwise network comparisons via new cognition-driven design guidelines. This project will specifically concentrate on the visual comparison of directed acyclic graphs in node-link diagrams. Such comparison is needed, for example, in the analysis of phylogenetic trees in biology or in the assessment of contagion in financial networks. In these cases, the domain experts concentrate on finding commonalities and differences between the two networks being compared. This analysis is often undertaken in a visualized form. Visual exploration enables to identify where the differences are located and thereby to extract insights from these differences. Effective visual network comparison requires a well-designed visualization. Effective visualization uses guidelines, which are inter alia derived from research in cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction (HCI). Until now, HCI research has mainly focused on deriving guidelines for the visualization of single networks. There are still many open research questions concerning the comparison of two or more networks in node-link diagrams

RisIoT

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

RISIoT (Risks of the Internet of Things) is a market analysis and risk assessment to accelerate the adoption of the Internet of Things in Austrian enterprises.

Team: Peter Mayer, Geraldine Fitzpatrick Project Partners: IDC Central Europe GmbH, Austrian Institute of Technology - Digital Safety & Security Department, Oesterreichische Computer Gesellschaft

2016 is the year of the Internet of Things (IoT) and analysts predict that IoT offers a chance to redefine many sectors and accelerate growth. Reports suggest there will be 25 billion internet-connected things by 2020 and with more and more companies investing and making an impact in smart technology, IoT applications in the enterprise can be manifold. Fast-moving companies are establishing entirely new product and service hybrids that disrupt their own markets and generate fresh revenue streams. Smart production processes in the factory of the future, more efficient traffic regulations in smart cities, smart home applications, and intelligent power regulations, etc. are only some prominent application fields for IoT. Still we are facing major challenges that hamper broad IoT adoption in enterprises. Understanding of IoT is still far from widespread. More than 60% of Western European organizations are not familiar or do not plan to invest in IoT. Also in Austria we observe a lack of belief in this emerging technology. The hesitation in IoT adoption can be explained to a certain extend by security and data privacy concerns. IoT is becoming an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals, and data security, the protection of privacy and digital identity are serious issues to tackle. Anyway, the adoption of IoT on long-term is undoubtable, and we have to find ways to support enterprises on their journey towards IoT adoption and digital transformation to increase efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. This is where RISIoT gets involved. The exploratory project aims to support organizations in regard to IoT adoption by providing them with insights into the IoT market, its opportunities and risks. In detail RISIoT delivers a comprehensive analysis of the Austrian IoT market in comparison with the European and global situation. It covers market potentials, use cases, and successful lighthouse projects. To tackle major security concerns in IoT adoption the study specifically explores IoT risk assessment. It identifies and describes high-level IoT risks and recommends further actions to deal with industry and use case specific risks, e.g. in the field of smart homes, and active and assisted living (AAL). Outcomes will be an Internet of Things Market Report and high-level Risk Matrix for enterprises and an Internet of Things R&D Guide highlighting focus areas for future research and development. RISIoT suggests courses for action for economy and research to push investments in the Austrian IoT ecosystem, to support a positive future of IoT on the Austrian market, and to ensure knowledge transfer between the scientific world and the goto- market environment. RISIoT will provide an impulse and initial trust for planned IoT use case specific risk modelling and assessment as well as other similar future initiatives.

RoboGen

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

RoboGen is a 3-years project, started in 2018 funded by the FGG (FemTech project).

The goal in RoboGen is to develop a prototype with a learning agent that, through feedback from users, makes gender-sensitive options accessible to all users and thus enables gender-sensitive human-robot interaction. The beneficiaries are senior citizens of 50+ and people with chronic diseases (mainly diabetes and hypertension).

Technologically, the focus of the project is on the upcoming, low-priced social robots in a price range around € 1,000, which are also affordable for “ordinary citizens”.

SCHAUKASTEN - Sehförderung für Kleinkinder

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SCHAUKASTEN - Sehförderung für Kleinkinder (1.12.2016 - 31.1.2018), financed by: Hauptverband der österreichischen Sozialversicherungsträger

SCHAUKASTEN seeks to conceptualize, co-design and implement novel interactive toys that motivate young children with visual impairments to keep up with their often dull but crucially important optical exerices.

Children with distinct visual impairment shall exercise their vision as soon as possible in order not to go blind. This exercise in vision constitutes an important building block for later leading an autonomous life.

SEL4Home - Supporting children’s social-emotional learning at home

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A principal challenge for existing social-emotional learning (SEL) programs is to provide reinforcement of the learnt competencies in everyday contexts and beyond the in-school lessons. SEL4Home project starts to bridge this gap by exploring how novel technologies can extend the programming into the homes of learners.

We collaborate with SEL developers and researchers at Committee for Children—the developers of Second Step, used by more than 8 millions of children in USA; as well as the VIBE group at Microsoft Research.

Shared Space

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction: What makes people accept or reject companion robots?

SharedSpace is a 3-years project, started in 2018 funded by the FWF (Elise Richter programme). The working hypothesis of this project is that the interaction of lay people with a social companion robot (in this project the commercially available robot Anki Vector) changes over time and that its adoption and acceptance differ in terms of the socio-demographic qualities of the involved households.

SocialPlayTechnologies

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Social play is key for successful inclusion of children with disabilities and has significant impact on their wellbeing and development. Typical traits in autism, such as impaired social and communication skills and repetitive behaviours, make social play particularly challenging for children diagnosed on the spectrum, exposing them to a wide range of mental health risks. This project investigates how technology can help support social play activities in mixed, co-located groups of autistic and neuro-typical children, aged 6 to 8 years. We aim to develop smart play objects, which can intelligently react to social situations to scaffold interactive play experiences of autistic children and their typically developing peers. For such objects to be meaningful to different children, it is key to involve them actively in their design.

Sparkling Games

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Together with secondary school students we investigate how concepts from the field of game-based learning can be used to develop learning methods and materials covering the topic informatics and society.

Project Homepage: http://www.piglab.org/sparklinggames

Team: Fares Kayali, Peter Purgathofer

Project Partners (Scientific): Gerit Götzenbrucker und Vera Schwarz (Universität Wien)

Starting with a detailed analysis of existing learning and mainstream commercial games, students step by step conceptualise and develop games and game-like materials to support teaching areas including copyright and intellectual property, privacy, surveillance, social media, and big data. The project leads to a transfer of academic skills to students, who gain expertise in the areas of game design and serious games as well as in social science research methods intended to assess and reflect on their creations.

T4ME2 Toilet4me too - Personalised toilets for active living

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The T4ME2 project addresses older people and the needs they have when using a toilet outside home in semi-public environments (e.g. toilets located in community centres, shopping malls, museums, theatres, hotels).

Project Homepage: http://toiletforme.com/ and http://www.toilet4me-project.eu/t4me2.html

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer

The short previous Toilet4me project studied the development and provision of an ICT-enhanced toilet system which is able to adapt itself to the individual needs and preferences of the older person currently using the toilet similar to the iToilet project for home use.

Teaching conflict resolution through Minecraft

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Minecraft multiplayer servers allow millions of children from around the world to build, play and problem solve together in a shared virtual space. As conflicts between players are common, these online spaces offer unique opportunity to help children develop effective conflict resolution skills that would then transfer to real-world settings.

This project draws on 40 years of conflict resolution curricula in Prevention Science to develop in-game tools that embedded learning into the Minecraft gameplay. To explore this space, we collaborate with leading game researchers (Katie Salen, Mimi Ito) as well as SEL developers at Committee for Children (the developers of Second Step, used by more than 8 millions of children in USA).

TEAM - Technology Enabled Mental Health for Young People

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

TEAM (Technology Enabled Mental Health for Young People), is a 4-year Innovation Training Network (ITN), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions initiative. There has been considerable research and many commercial products for improving physical health. However, the use of technology to support mental health lags far behind. The aim of the training network is to deliver new applications and technologies that support rapid, large-scale early assessment, prevention and treatment of mental health issues in young people.

The Got-IT Project

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Got-IT will deliver an online toolkit to assist the design of inclusive eHealth solutions targeting the promotion of healthy lifestyles among older adults with low eHealth literacy, promoting citizen empowerment and contributing to the fight against health disparities in Europe.

The creation of the toolkit will be performed in continuous collaboration with the end-users of the eHealth solutions (underprivileged older adults) and the end-users of the toolkit (eHealth developers). A strategy targeting sustainable engagement of end-users of the toolkit will aim at community building beyond the end of the project.

Toilet4me - Personalised toilets for active living

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Toilet4me project addressed older people and the needs they have when using a toilet outside home in semi-public environments (e.g. toilets located in community centres, shopping malls, museums, theatres, hotels).

Project Homepage: http://toilet4me-project.eu/

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer

The vision of Toilet4me was to develop and provide an ICT-enhanced toilet system which is able to adapt itself to the individual needs and preferences of the older person currently using the toilet.

TrustRobots Doctoral College

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

From September 2018 TU Wien has established an interdisciplinary Doctoral College (DC) on “Trust in Robots – Trusting Robots” to foster cutting-edge research in robotics and AI at the TU Wien. The main objective of the DC is to comprehensively analyse “trust” in the context of robot technology from various perspectives including but not limited to social sciences and economics, computer science and mathematics, electrical and mechanical engineering, and architecture.

UNIKATE

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The UNIKATE Prize rewards ideas for new technological developments that enable people with disabilities to have more self-determination and more equal participation in society. The prize is aimed at students with creative ideas and a technical background who want to develop an inclusive technology - a UNIKAT - together with a person with disabilities.

Project Homepage: https://www.behindertenrat.at/projekte/unikate-ideenwettbewerb

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer, Georg Edelmayer, Christopher Frauenberger

The call is open each year until beginning of November. The call text (in German) can be found here: https://www.behindertenrat.at/2022/01/unikate-start-der-ausschreibung/

Urban Food Spots

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Urban Food Spots – Development of the basics for gender and diversity sensitive cooling stations for foodsharing in urban areas (2015 – 2017), financed by: Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft (FFG)

70.000 tons of originally packed or opened food of households, industry or trade, are disposed of into Viennese residual waste, while at the same time 22,7 % of the inhabitants are at risk of poverty. To take counteractive measures, this project develops the base for an area-wide, low-threshold offer to share food on a local level, including all relevant gender and diversity aspects in the development of cooling stations. The so called UrbanFoodSp ots consist of a cooling station and an information system. The UrbanFoodSpots assemble the needs of the various groups of users and will be developed to be realised in different places and organisational forms.

Versteckte Technologien? Exploring the Hidden Technologigcal Labour of Service Workers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digitalisation has transformed work, jobs, and working environments. Research has paid a lot of attention to topics such as “industry 4.0”, gig economy and digital employment. However, it is often overlooked how digitalisation has also affected the (often female-dominated) occupations of the service sector. Which (hidden) technological labour do retail employees or mobile care workers perform on a daily basis?

This research question is addressed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that brings together feminist perspectives from social, spatial and technological sciences. The aim is to place explicit focus on the rarely visible technologies and digital competencies that service workers already employ in their service provision. By bringing their often hidden efforts to the frontstage, we seek to contribute to political debates on revaluating these often underrated and underpaid occupations.

Visual Analytics for Sense-Making in Criminal Intelligence Analysis

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The VALCRI project is funded by the EC to undertake R&D with a view to developing an integrated software support system for police forces across partner countries. This software system, known as VALCRI, will be used by police analysts to investigate crimes and crime-related behaviour, complementing and enhancing current police capabilities. The consortium includes partners and activities aimed at designing the technology from cognitive, legal, ethical and privacy perspectives so that the rights of the individual to security and liberty will be respected while ensuring the good of society.

Viz4PAIS - Visualization Techniques for Process-Aware Information Systems

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Viz4PAIS (Visualization Techniques for Process-Aware Information Systems) project is an initiative from the Workflow Systems and Technology Research Group, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna and we are one of their partners. The goals of the project are (a) to develop and design user centered visualization approaches and (b) to create a community to unify and nurture the development of process visualization topics as a continuing research area.

WAALTeR

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The AAL project - short for Active & Assisted Living - aims to develop age-approriate assistance systems for an active, independent and self-determined life.

WAALTeR is the research project of the “Wiener AAL Testing Region”, that is: the Vienna AAL Testing Region.

In this Vienna AAL testing region, we examine how technological assistance in the everyday lives of senior citizens support their activity and mobility, social interactions, safety and health - and how they can contribute to raising the quality of life for older adults in Vienna.

Way·Key - mobility assistant for people with dementia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In Austria about 1.2% of the population or a total of ca. 130.000 persons are affected by dementia. The increase of life expectancy will lead to a growing number of people affected in the future. Maintaining mobility can at least help delay the advance of dementia symptoms. Lack of movement is considered to be one of the prevalent risk factors for dementia in the USA and Europe. Encouraging mobility of people with dementia poses risks like getting lost or falling. For this reason technological solutions mostly focus on monitoring and restricting or even inhibiting the mobility of persons with dementia. Often considered stakeholder groups in the design and implementation of technological solutions are care personnel and relatives, making persons with dementia only passive users in the functional chain. Whenever attempts were made to increase independent mobility of people, smartphones or smart watches were used, which are known to be difficult to handle for this user group.

WCBuddy - Supporting Use of Toilet by Guidance

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Based on project partners’ products “iToilet” and “fearless”, the feasibility of supporting cognitively impaired people while using the toilet will be explored.

Project Homepage: https://www.aat.tuwien.ac.at/wcbuddy

Team: Paul Panek, Peter Mayer

By means of intelligent recognition of relevant usage actions (fearless, iToilet sensors) customized usage instructions are to be given via the dialog system of iToilet. This should promote the autonomy of the users in a taboo area and relieve the caregiver. The project aims to identify user / supervisor requirements from practice and risk assessment regarding an implementing R & D project and the market outlook through laboratory simulation of appropriate technologies. The project was successfully completed. On June 29, 2020, the successful demonstration of a WCBuddy laboratory prototype took place at the day care center Lichtblick in Steyr. The prototype reacts to user behavior with configurable instructions as an image or video in combination with text and audio. A functional demonstrator has been set up in the laboratory of TUW. The technical, economic and ethical findings developed together with experts are documented in the final report.