Au cours de nos travaux, nous nous sommes intéressés à l’apprentissage de gestes techniques en environnement virtuel. Ces environnements permettent en effet de se former à un geste réalisable dans un environnement réel, en ayant des aides qui ne seraient quant à elle pas disponibles, comme la trace en trois dimensions du geste par exemple, ou la possibilité de voir son geste d’un point de vue différent. Toutefois dans le cadre du guidage de geste, il s’avère que la plupart des métaphores visuelles usuelles ne tiennent pas ou peu compte du problème de dépendance qu’elles génèrent. L’hypothèse de guidage issue des théories sur l’apprentissage moteur, stipule en effet que l’utilisation continue d’aides pendant l’apprentissage génère une dépendance de l’apprenant vis-à-vis de ces aides. Ce dernier n’est alors plus capable de reproduire correctement le geste ou la tâche demandée sans l’aide de ces aides. Néanmoins, en réalité virtuelle l’utilisation d’aides d’apprentissage reste nécessaire pour la formation. Pour répondre à cette problématique nous proposons une nouvelle métaphore dynamique d’interaction 3D en environnement virtuel, basée sur la modalité visuelle. Notre approche consiste à axer l’apprentissage sur le ressenti de l’utilisateur, en nous basant sur une pédagogie essai-erreur dans le cadre théorique du paradigme de l’énaction. Notre métaphore indique à l’apprenant ses erreurs de trajectoire en temps réel, l’incitant implicitement à se corriger. Notre hypothèse est que lorsque l’aide n’est plus affichée, l’apprenant est capable de reproduire le geste convenablement en se basant sur ses sensations passées. Nous avons conduit une première expérimentation afin de vérifier que notre métaphore permet bien de reproduire un geste présenté au préalable tout en corrigeant les erreurs de trajectoire. Puis, dans un second temps une deuxième expérimentation a démontré que la métaphore permettait d’obtenir de meilleures performances et qu’elle réduisait davantage la dépendance que des métaphores usuelles de guidage. / In the light of our work, we were interested in precise gesture learning in virtual environment. In these environments, learners can train in safer and longer training sessions than in real environments, using augmented feedback that wouldn’t be available otherwise—such as a 3D trace of canonical movements or the opportunity to see your gesture from a different point of view. However, in the context of gesture guidance, most of the usual visual metaphors do not tackle the dependency they generate. The guidance hypothesis, from motor learning theories, states that the continuous use of feedback during early phases of learning leads to a dependency on the feedback. Learners are no longer able to properly reproduce the requested gesture or task without the help of this feedback. However, in virtual environments the use of augmented feedback remains necessary for training. To deal with this issue, we propose a new dynamic metaphor for 3D interaction in virtual environments, based on the visual modality. Our approach is focus users’ training on their intrinsic feedback, by using a trial-and-error strategy. Our metaphor shows users’ trajectory errors in real time, implicitly spurring them to correct these errors. We assume that when the metaphor is no longer visible, learners are able to properly reproduce the gesture using their past experiences. We conducted a first experiment to evaluate the capacity of our metaphor to properly guide learners during gesture training. Then, a second experiment showed that the metaphor allowed learners to improve their performance and that it further reduced the dependency than usual guiding metaphors.

Cette thèse d’histoire du corps porte sur les pratiques corporelles des carmélites déchaussées espagnoles et s’appuie principalement sur une relecture de leur hagiographie imprimée et manuscrite. En utilisant les outils de l’anthropologie et de la sociologique historique, nous y montrons que les regards que les religieuses posent sur leur corps et sur celui des autres sont le moteur d’un travail de la chair qui construit de manière déterminante la réputation de sainteté dont certaines peuvent jouir dans leur communauté. Leurs pratiques corporelles de prières et de mortification y sont décrites non plus seulement dans la dimension verticale de leur rapport à Dieu, mais comme le produit des relations au sein d’une communauté et la conséquence des tensions politiques et des évolutions de la société dans laquelle elle s’inscrit. Ce travail reprend le travail religieux du corps en approfondissant ses enjeux et en creusant ses contradictions et ses difficultés, en décalage avec les représentations du corps et de la sainteté en vigueur. Sont également abordées les logiques extra-religieuses qui expliquent les pratiques. Si, entre les années 1560 et le début du XVIIe siècle, l’exigence de purification personnelle recule, soumise à des contraintes contradictoires et croissantes, elle reste auréolée d’un grand prestige à la mesure des figures héroïques et pénitentes des premiers temps de la réforme de l’ordre. / This thesis mainly deals with corporal mortification as it is carried out in counter-reformation Spain convents. It is based on discalced Carmelites’ manuscript and printed lives, read with the tools of historical anthropology. The punishment of their flesh helps the nuns to comply with a common model of sanctity, both for the edification of their counterparts and for their own desire to become saints. But the vertical relationship they claim to have with God is not the only way to understand their violence. Corporal practices reflect both the interactions inside the community, the political and eschatological tensions outside of it and the evolution of Spanish society in the early modern period. The work underlines the tensions and contradictions the religious body, far more explicit when it comes to practice than when one remains focused on wide models of sanctity. It also enlightens the influence of the secular and mundane world on religious practices. Between the 1560’s and the 1640’s, mortification rises and slow down after the 1590’s, but the bloody model of the penitential body remains crucial to understand the nuns‘spirituality

Doctor Educationis / Research has shown that five parameters are required to recognize any sign language gesture: hand shape, location, orientation and motion, as well as facial expressions. The South African Sign Language (SASL) research group at the University of the Western Cape has created systems to recognize Sign Language gestures using single parameters. Using a single parameter can cause ambiguities in the recognition of signs that are similarly signed resulting in a restriction of the possible vocabulary size. This research pioneers work at the group towards combining multiple parameters to achieve a larger recognition vocabulary set. The proposed methodology combines hand location and hand shape recognition into one combined recognition system. The system is shown to be able to recognize a very large vocabulary of 50 signs at a high average accuracy of 74.1%. This vocabulary size is much larger than existing SASL recognition systems, and achieves a higher accuracy than these systems in spite of the large vocabulary. It is also shown that the system is highly robust to variations in test subjects such as skin colour, gender and body dimension. Furthermore, the group pioneers research towards continuously recognizing signs from a video stream, whereas existing systems recognized a single sign at a time. To this end, a highly accurate continuous gesture segmentation strategy is proposed and shown to be able to accurately recognize sentences consisting of five isolated SASL gestures.

Industrial robots have been identified as one of the most effective solutions for optimising output and quality within many industries. However, there are a number of manufacturing applications involving complex tasks and inconstant components which prohibit the use of fully automated solutions in the foreseeable future. A breakthrough in robotic technologies and changes in safety legislations have supported the creation of robots that coexist and assist humans in industrial applications. It has been broadly recognised that human-robot collaborative systems would be a realistic solution as an advanced production system with wide range of applications and high economic impact. This type of system can utilise the best of both worlds, where the robot can perform simple tasks that require high repeatability while the human performs tasks that require judgement and dexterity of the human hands. Robots in such system will operate as “intelligent assistants”. In a collaborative working environment, robot and human share the same working area, and interact with each other. This level of interface will require effective ways of communication and collaboration to avoid unwanted conflicts. This project aims to create a user interface for industrial collaborative robot system through integration of current robotic technologies. The robotic system is designed for seamless collaboration with a human in close proximity. The system is capable to communicate with the human via the exchange of gestures, as well as visual signal which operators can observe and comprehend at a glance. The main objective of this PhD is to develop a Human-Robot Interface (HRI) for communication with an industrial collaborative robot during collaboration in proximity. The system is developed in conjunction with a small scale collaborative robot system which has been integrated using off-the-shelf components. The system should be capable of receiving input from the human user via an intuitive method as well as indicating its status to the user ii effectively. The HRI will be developed using a combination of hardware integrations and software developments. The software and the control framework were developed in a way that is applicable to other industrial robots in the future. The developed gesture command system is demonstrated on a heavy duty industrial robot.

Dans la partie introductive de cette thèse sont illustrés le cadre théorique dans lequel se situent les études sur la reconnaissance du soi corporel. En outre, ce chapitre traite de la façon dont la reconnaissance visuelle des visages et des corps, et de la spécificité de la reconnaissance de son propre visage et de son propre corps, s’effectuent. Le deuxième chapitre décrit une étude menée chez des sujets sains, qui examine l'excitabilité du cortex moteur primaire dans le processus de reconnaissance de soi et de l’autre. Le troisième chapitre illustre l'expérience réalisé pour étudier la contribution du mouvement dans la reconnaissance du soi corporel chez des sujets neurologiquement sains et chez les patients avec lésion cérébrale de l’hémisphère droit. Le quatrième chapitre porte sur le développement du soi corporel chez les enfants avec un développement atypique, souffrant de troubles du spectre autistique à haut fonctionnement, avec une attention particulière au rôle des émotions dans la reconnaissance de postures émotionnels, propres et autrui. Enfin, le cinquième chapitre est consacré au rôle du geste dans la reconnaissance du propre corps et celui des autres / The first chapter describes the theoretical framework of self-body recognition and the processing that allow us to distinguish one’s own body and face from body and face of someone else. The second chapter will investigate motor cortex excitability during self/other recognition processing in healthy subjects. The results show an increment of motor corticospinal excitability in the right hemisphere following the presentation of self stimuli (hand and phone), at 600 and 900 ms after stimulus presentation, providing evidences about neural substrates and temporal processes underlying self-body recognition. The third chapter will describe the role of the movement in self bodily recognition in healthy subjects and in patients with right brain damage. The evidence show that patients, who did not show the advantage in the implicit recognition of self static body parts, present this advantage in the implicit recognition of self dynamic body parts. The fourth chapter focuses on the development of the bodily self in children with typical development and in children with autism, with respect to the recognition of self/other emotional body postures. First, this study shows that the advantage in bodily self processing is preserved in children with autism. Second, emotional body postures modulated self and others body processing in typically developing children, as well as in children with autism. The fifth chapter deals with the role of hand gestures in self/other bodily recognition processing, showing that the meaning of a gesture modulates the self/other processing. The processing of others’ hand is facilitated with meaningful compared to meaningless gestures

Nos últimos anos o interesse por plataformas de compartilhamento de conteúdo multimídia na Web, como vídeos, tem crescido consideravelmente e atraindo usuários com diferentes perfis, incluindo pessoas com deficiência visual. Para tais usuários, diretrizes de acessibilidade e usabilidade devem ser aplicadas para que o acesso a estes conteúdos multimídias seja garantido. Apesar de iniciativas como a WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Acessibility Guidelines) definirem diretrizes sobre a acessibilidade para reprodutores de vídeos na Web, usuários com deficiência visual ainda encontram barreiras e dificuldades para acessar este tipo de conteúdo. Em muitos casos reprodutores de vídeo na Web não oferecem total suporte a acessibilidade, dificultando assim o acesso ao conteúdo por tal público, seja por meio de mouse ou de navegação por teclado via leitores de tela. Nesse sentindo, este trabalho teve como objetivo investigar se interações por meios de gestos fornecem melhoria nos níveis de acessibilidade durante o acesso a vídeos na Web realizado por usuários com deficiência visual, a fim de que as barreiras de interação fossem reduzidas ou eliminadas. Inicialmente estudou-se os diferentes tipos de sensores gestuais, bem como se estes sensores poderiam ser utilizados para atingir o objetivo proposto. A partir desses estudos, foi desenvolvido um framework para captura, representação e interpretação de gestos. Em seguida, foi desenvolvido uma aplicação Web, utilizando o framework desenvolvido para viabilizar possíveis testes com usuários. Finalmente, um estudo de caso com 38 usuários com deficiência visual foi conduzido, a fim de levantar indícios que ajudem a entender se a utilização de gestos como modo de interação entre pessoas com deficiência visual e reprodutores de vídeo oferece melhoria de acessibilidade. / Recently the interest in multimedia Web content sharing platforms, such as videos, has increased considerably attracting users with different profiles, including people with visual impairment. For such users, accessibility and usability guidelines should be applied for access guaranteed of these multimedia content. Although initiatives such as WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Acessibility Guidelines) set guidelines for video players, users with visual impairment still find barriers and difficulties to access this type of content. In many cases Web video players do not provide full accessibility support, making it difficult to access content by such a public, either through mouse or keyboard navigation by screen readers. This paper aims at investigating if gesture interactions provide improve improvement in accessibility levels during access to Web videos by visually impaired users, in order to reduce or eliminate the interactions barriers. We initially analyzed the different types of gesture sensors, as well as if these sensors could be used to achieve the proposed objective. Based on this analysis, we developed a framework for capture, representation and interpretation of gestures. Then, we developed a Web application, using the framework guidelines developed to enable users tests. Finally, we then run a study case with 38 users with visual impairment, in order to get evidence to help understand if the use of gestures as a mode of interaction between people with visual impairments and video players offers improved accessibility.

Buscando combinar diversos estilos de escrita incluindo narrativas ficcionais, relatos pessoais e artigos, a presente dissertação reflete sobre a minha prática artística no âmbito da pintura, da instalação e do têxtil. O texto levanta reflexões poéticas acerca de conceitos como: materialidade, obsessão, ócio, método e deriva. Através de uma série de textos curtos a dissertação pretende discutir a minha produção poética, tornando-se outra dimensão do trabalho prático. / Seeking to combine diverse styles of writing including fictional narratives, personal reports and articles, the present dissertation reflects on my artistic practice in the scope of painting, installation and the textile. The text raises poetic reflections about concepts such as: materiality, obsession, idleness, method and drift. Through a series of short texts the dissertation intends to discuss my poetic production, becoming another dimension of practical work.

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between arithmetic word problem solving skill in first graders and 1) their oral language skill, 2) their nonverbal understanding of mathematical sets, and 3) rewording and gesture scaffolds designed to help the children access both the linguistic and the nonverbal content of Compare 6 word problems. Method: Two groups of first graders (15 with good oral language skill and 15 with low oral language skill) solved a matched set of verbal and nonverbal arithmetic problems, followed by three types of Compare word problems. Twenty first graders with low oral language skill (9 with low normal language (LN) and 11 with a diagnosis of language impairment (LI)) then solved orally-presented Compare 6 word problems under 4 scaffold conditions: 1) traditional wording, 2) traditional wording + gesture, 3) rewording, and 4) rewording + gesture. Results: Children with low oral language skill had greater difficulty solving orally-presented arithmetic word problems than their peers with good language skill, but performed comparably on a nonverbal arithmetic task. Using proportion of problems solved correctly, rewording Compare 6 word problems was facilitative for the LN group but not for the LI group. Changing the problem wording from a Compare 6 to a Compare 3, by using `more than' instead of `fewer than' and by eliminating pronoun anaphora, resulted in comparable performance to rewording that also included a rationale, optional verbs and placing the question first. The gesture scaffold was marginally significant for both groups. Conclusions: The LI group did not benefit from implicitly-presented rewording or gesture scaffolds; the LN group did benefit from the rewording scaffold. The gesture scaffold was marginally facilitative despite the finding that children with low oral language skill were able to access nonverbal information in a nonverbal arithmetic task. Empirical and anecdotal evidence suggested that, for a number of these children, rewording and gesture scaffolds altered their mental model of the word problem structure. This altered representation resulted in the use of different solution strategies. The new strategies, however, were not always correct. Implications for classroom intervention and suggestions for future research are discussed.

L'entrée multi-points offre un canal d'interaction très expressif pour les dispositifs équipés d'une technologie tactile multi-points. Cependant, alors que la taille du canal de communication est, en théorie, très grande, la plupart des systèmes n'en font, en pratique, qu'un usage très limité. Cet état de fait est probablement dû à la difficulté de gérer un grand nombre de gestes multi-points pour deux raisons principales: (1) les limites cognitives et motrices des humains et (2) les difficultés techniques pour l'élaboration de systèmes de reconnaissance robustes. Cette thèse étudie une nouvelle technique d'entrée, TouchTokens, pour enrichir le vocabulaire de gestes multi-points, en se basant sur la position relative des points de contact et des objets (tokens) passifs. Un TouchToken est un "token" passif avec des encoches qui indiquent à l'utilisateur comment l'attraper, et qui est donc associé à une configuration de doigts qui lui est propre. Ainsi, lorsque les utilisateurs tiennent un token tout en étant en contact avec la surface, le système reconnaît le schéma de points de contact correspondant avec une grande robustesse. Nous commençons par présenter le principe avec des tokens rigides de forme basique. L'algorithme de reconnaissance et la conception des tokens sont issus des conclusions d'une étude formative dans laquelle nous avons collecté et analysé des schémas de points de contact lorsque les utilisateurs tiennent des tokens de taille et de forme variable. Cette première étude montre que les utilisateurs ont des stratégies individuelles cohérentes, mais que ces stratégies dépendent de l'utilisateur. Ces conclusions nous ont menés à l'élaboration de tokens avec des encoches afin que les utilisateurs attrapent un même token toujours de la même façon. L'expérience que nous avons menée sur ce nouvel ensemble de tokens démontre que nous pouvons les reconnaître avec un niveau de robustesse supérieur à 95%. Nous discutons les rôles que peuvent jouer les TouchTokens dans les systèmes interactifs, et nous présentons un échantillon d'applications de démonstration. La conception initiale des TouchTokens ne supporte qu'un ensemble d'interactions se limitant au modèle à deux états de l'interaction directe. Dans un second projet, nous décrivons une technique de fabrication avec une découpeuse laser qui permet de faire des tokens flexibles que les utilisateurs peuvent, par exemple, courber ou compresser en plus de les faire glisser sur la surface. Nous augmentons notre reconnaisseur pour analyser les micro-mouvements des doigts pendant la manipulation du token afin de reconnaître ces manipulations. Cette approche basée sur l'analyse des micro-mouvements des doigts nous permet également de discriminer, lorsque l'utilisateur enlève ses doigts de la surface, le cas où il enlève le token de la surface, du cas où le token est resté sur la surface. Nous rapportons sur les expériences que nous avons menées pour déterminer la valeur des paramètres de nos différents reconnaisseurs, et tester leur robustesse. Nous obtenons des taux de reconnaissance supérieurs à 90% sur les données collectées. Nous finissons cette thèse par la présentation de deux outils qui permettent de construire et reconnaître des tokens de forme arbitraire, TouchTokenBuilder and TouchTokenTracker. TouchTokenBuilder est une application logicielle qui permet de placer des encoches sur des contours vectoriels de forme arbitraire, et qui alerte en cas de conflit de reconnaissance entre tokens. TouchTokenBuilder produit deux fichiers en sortie: une description vectorielle des tokens pour leur construction, et une description numérique servant à leur reconnaissance. TouchTokenTracker est une librairie logicielle qui prend cette description numérique en entrée, et qui permet aux développeurs de traquer la géométrie (position, orientation et forme) des tokens au cours de leur manipulation sur la surface. / This thesis investigates a novel input technique for enriching the gesture vocabulary on a multi-touch surface based on fingers' relative location and passive tokens. The first project, TouchTokens, presents a novel technique for interacting with multi-touch surfaces and tokens. The originality is that these tokens are totally passive (no need for any additional electronic components) and their design features notches that guide users' grasp. The purpose of the notches is to indicate a finger spatial configuration (touch pattern) that is specific to the token. When users hold a token and place it on the surface, touching them simultaneously, the system can recognize the resulting touch patterns with a very high level of accuracy (>95%). This approach works on any touch-sensitive surface and makes it possible to easily build low-cost interfaces that combine no-conductive tangibles and gestural input. This technique supports a new multi-touch input that the system can recognize. However, the interaction is limited to the two-state model of touch interaction as the system only knows the tokens' position and cannot detect tokens that are not touched. In the second project of the thesis, we introduce a laser-cut lattice hinge technique for making the tokens flexible. We then develop a new recognizer that analyzes the micro-movements of the fingers while user are holding and deforming those tokens on the surface. We run three experiments to design and calibrate algorithms for discriminating the three following types of manipulations: (1) when a token is left on the surface rather than taken off it (On/Off); (2) when a token has been bent, and (3) when it is squeezed. Our results show that our algorithms can recognize these three manipulations with an accuracy of: On/Off 90.1%, Bent 91.1% and Squeezed 96,9%.The thesis concludes with the presentation of two tools, TouchTokenBuilder and TouchTokenTracker, for facilitating the development of tailor-made tangibles using a simple direct-manipulation interface. TouchTokenBuilder is a software application that assists interface designers in placing notches on arbitrarily-shaped vector contours for creating conflict-free token sets and warning them about potential conflicts. It outputs two files: a vector-graphics description of all tokens in the set and a numerical description of the geometry of each token. TouchTokenTracker is a software library that takes as input the numerical description produced by TouchTokenBuilder, and enables developers to track the tokens' full geometry (location, orientation and shape) throughout their manipulation on the multi-touch surface.

Sequenza III was written in the mid -1960s and is widely available for study and performance, but how can this work be defined? Is it a series of sounds, or phonemes, or the anxious mutterings of a woman? Is it performance art or an operatic mad scene? Sequenza III could be all of these or something else entirely. Writing about my method of preparation will work to allay some of my own and other performer's fears about attempting this unusual repertory. Very little in this piece is actually performed on pitch, and even then the pitches are not definite. The intervals on the five-line staff are to be observed but the singer may choose to sing within her own vocal range. The notation that Berio has used is new and specific, but the emotional markings and dynamics drawn from these markings permit a variety of interpretive decisions by the performer. There is a very brief text and no actual melody, so where does one begin? As a composer, Berio was often responsive to external stimuli. Quotation of his earlier works and the works of others was a common tool of his technique. By comparing Sequenza III with other works by the same composer, I will delineate some borrowed features and techniques from his earlier music and from the areas of literature and visual art. Sequenza III, although available on several recordings, is still not performed very often outside the academic community. There is only a small body of scholarly literature about Luciano Berio. I hope to add to the knowledge about this recently deceased composer and his music, to create a comfort zone for singers in approaching this work, to understand the composer's intentions, and to provide a fair representation of his ideas in public performance.