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Where-able Sensors
11/2/22

By Maria Herd M.A. ’19

 

Fitness trackers and smartwatches are widely used to monitor health, activity and exercise, but they’re pretty sedentary themselves. They stay strapped on your wrist or clipped to your clothing despite the fact it’s more effective to monitor different areas—your upper body for breathing, for example, or your wrist to track typing or writing.

Now, researchers at the University of Maryland are putting wearable sensors on track to do their best work—literally—with a miniature robotics system capable of traversing numerous locations on the human body.

Their device, called Calico, mimics a toy train by traveling on a cloth track that can run up and down users’ limbs and around their torso, operating independently of external guidance through the use of magnets, sensors and connectors. Their paper describing the project was recently published in the ACM Journal on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies and presented at UBICOMP, a conference on ubiquitous computing.

 

closeup of wearable sensor on wrist

“Our device is a fast, reliable and precise personal assistant that lays the groundwork for future systems,” said Anup Sathya M.S. ’21, who led Calico’s development for his master’s thesis in human-computer interaction. Sathya is now a first-year Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Chicago.

Most wearable workout devices are limited in the type of exercises they can monitor, but Calico is versatile. For example, it can track running on a user's arm, move to the elbow to count push-ups, to the back for planks, and then to the knee to count squats.

And unlike other devices, Calico moves quickly and accurately without getting stuck on clothing or at awkward angles. “For the first time, a wearable can traverse the user’s clothing with no restrictions to their movement,” said Huaishu Peng, an assistant professor of computer science who was Sathya’s adviser at UMD.

Peng, who also has an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), sees a future in which mini wearable devices like Calico will seamlessly integrate with humans for interaction, actuation and sensing.

He recently took Calico in a creative direction by establishing a new collaboration with Jonathan David Martin, a lecturer in Immersive Media Design; and Adriane Fang, an associate professor at the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

The interdisciplinary team is combining dance, music, immersive media, robotics and wearable technology into a novel and compelling series of interactive dance performances that are choreographed in real time through Calico.

First, Peng’s research group programmed Calico to instruct a dancer to execute specific movements using motion and light. Then, using their smartphones, the audience gets to collectively vote on how Calico should instruct the dancer.

The project is being funded with a $15,000 award from the Arts for All initiative, which leverages the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to make the University of Maryland a leader in addressing grand challenges.

“The idea is to explore the dynamics and connections between human plus robot and performer plus audience,” said Peng. “In this instance, Calico will and act as the ‘mediator’ to broadening art and tech participation and understanding.”

Calico’s original creators include Jiasheng Li, a second-year Ph.D. student in computer science; Ge Gao, an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies with an appointment in UMIACS; and Tauhidur Rahman, an assistant professor in data science at the University of California, San Diego.

VIDEO: Calico: Relocatable On-cloth Wearables with Fast, Reliable, and Precise Locomotion

Art Department Faculty Display Work at UMD Art Gallery
11/3/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in early 2020, Lecturer in the Department of Art Mollye Bendell felt a growing anxiety that the last time she would see her loved ones might be on a video call. 

Bendell, who works with electronic media to explore themes of vulnerability, visibility and longing, began to attempt to preserve her friends and family through her work using images of their faces from video chats. 

In her video project “Sketch for Sleepers,” Bendell projects those images in 3D onto stock digital silhouettes of human bodies that float across a screen. 

artwork by Lecturer in the Department of Art Mollye Bendell

The work is on display now until Dec. 3 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery as part of a triennial exhibition of professional work by Department of Art faculty and adjunct faculty. Part of the campuswide Arts for All initiative, which seeks to spark new ways of thinking through collaborations across the arts, sciences and other disciplines, Faculty Exhibition 2021 showcases works from 20 faculty members in a range of mediums. It is the first in-person art exhibition held at the Art Gallery since it closed in March 2020. 

“The exhibition honors faculty work while emphasizing that their scholarship and teaching is grounded first and foremost in an art-making practice,” said Art Gallery Associate Director Taras W. Matla. “Having been closed for 18 months due to the pandemic, this is a terrific way to reintroduce the Art Gallery and art department faculty to the campus community.” 

Professor of Art Foon Sham’s “Covid 19, 2020” wood and acrylic wall sculpture emerged from elements related to his state of mind during lockdown. It’s made of wooden sticks that represent the many people affected by the virus. 

artwork by Professor of Art Foon Sham

“There are various colors of wood sticks and some are stained with red and blue, implying all the damage this virus could do,” he said. 

Many of the works also address socio-political issues and social justice. For instance, Lecturer Julia Kwon’s “Dissent” is inspired by the fight for abortion rights, via the format of traditional Korean object-wrapping cloth with embedded patterns. And Assistant Professor Jessica Gatlin’s “Work Related” is a series of wearable canvas “paintings” that comment on themes of sustainability, labor, consumption and capitalism.   

Assistant Professor Cy Keener, whose work blends art, science and technology, is exhibiting “Terminal Front,” a virtual reality experience that allows people to visit a remote and uninhabitable landscape in Greenland. Using scientific data gathered from the site—via custom laser scanners built by the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory—paired with detailed drone photography, the VR user can immerse in a massive and detailed landscape of a glacier’s surface. 

art by Assistant Professor Cy Keener

Keener and Bendell are among faculty instructors in the new immersive media design major, co-taught by faculty from the Department of Art and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. The program prepares students to use digital tools and technologies including virtual and augmented reality, digital art, projected imagery, computer graphics, 3D modeling and user interfaces spanning audio, visual and tactile platforms.

Additional participating faculty artists include: Emily Conover, Patrick Craig, Pete Cullen, Brandon Donahue, Wendy Jacobs, Richard Klank, Matthew McLaughlin, Brandon Morse, Irene Pantelis, Narendra Ratnapala, John Ruppert, Justin Strom, Athena Tacha, Jowita Wyszomirska and Rex Weil. 

In addition, an In Memoriam section recognizes the vast contributions to the Department of Art made by longtime faculty members David C. Driskell (1931-2020) and James Thorpe (1951-2021). 

Visit the Faculty Exhibition 2021 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery in the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building until Dec. 3, 2021. Free and open to the public, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. 

Photos from top to bottom of page: Visitors at Faculty Exhibition 2021; Mollye Bendell's video project “Sketch for Sleepers;" Foon Sham’s “Covid 19, 2020; " A visitor experiences Cy Keener’s “Terminal Front.” Photos by Thai Q. Nguyen.

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