EVL PhD candidate Victor Mateevitsi discusses his proposed thesis research on Human Augmentics at his preliminary presentation. 
Date: Wednesday December 17, 2014 
Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM 
Room: 2068 ERF (CyberCommons, EVL) 
Abstract: 
Umwelt, the German word for environment, is a psychology term referring to the individual&rsquo;s mental image of the surrounding world. This subjective universe is shaped by an organism&rsquo;s unique perception of the environment around them and, therefore, differs from individual to individual. In other words, organisms experience the world through their senses, construct the mental model of their vicinity, and react upon it. Hence, this image never remains static - instead it is constantly refined, as a result of the dynamic nature of the world. Umwelt is closely related to the concept of situation awareness, that is the perception of environmental elements, comprehension of their nature, and projection of their near future status with respect to time and/or space. 
 
Sensory perception (exteroception) of the surrounding environment is, as a matter of fact, restricted to the limitations of biological senses. For example, although we consider humans with five fully developed senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste) as able-bodied individuals, they are actually impaired to a multitude of information that constantly surrounds them. To put things into perspective, both human sight and hearing, can only perceive a fraction of information - part of the electromagnetic spectrum (light waves), and of the sound frequencies accordingly. However, as sensory systems differ among species, other creatures have an entirely different perceptual experience, as they are able to perceive a distinct spectrum of information. 

Despite the fact that our limited human senses restrict our Umwelt and, therefore, our situation awareness, Human Augmentics, referring to technologies that expand the capabilities and characteristics of humans, allows us to peek into an invisible &ldquo;other&rdquo; world, which is pretty big and unexplored. Thus, some important research questions arise: What would be the consequences of an expanded perception of the surrounding environment, and how would that affect an individual’s situation awareness? Since our Umwelt is limited by genetics, how would individuals attune with characteristics and capacities that lie beyond the human range? Given these points, it is my thesis that Human Augmentics (in contrast to non-augmented methods) expands an individual&rsquo;s Umwelt, leading to improved situation awareness.

SpiderSense prototype in action.

Human Augmentics Situation Awareness Enhancement

Victor Mateevitsi is one of the speakers participating in this evening’s Innovation U, which is part of Chicago Inno&rsquo;s Winter Event Series, Polar Vor-Tech, organized in partnership with the Chicago Innovation Exchange. The Thursday, February 26, 2015 meet-up event spotlights Illinois university-based entrepreneurial-focused centers and initiatives. This event is SOLD OUT, indicating both the popularity of this series and the interest in the subject matter. 
Mateevitsi, a UIC Computer Science PhD student and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) research assistant, will talk about his &ldquo;SpiderSense&rdquo; research project - a wearable suit that detects when the user is nearing another person, tree, door, or any other obstacle. He is one of a dozen speakers from startups and/or innovations being launched by local universities or run by students and post-grads. Other universities represented include University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Notre Dame. 
<a href="http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2015/02/17/innovation-u-introducing-chicago-innos-next-meetup/">More information on Innovation U.</a> 
Chicago Inno is the premier news source for urban innovators who are the future of their cities, and is owned and operated by Streetwise Media, a digital media and events company.

V. Mateevitsi, EVL PhD Candidate

UIC/EVL Victor Mateevitsi participates in Innovation U

Victor Mateevitsi, a PhD student in the Computer Science Department and a Research Assistant in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is a recipient of the Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award, presented by the Dean of the UIC Graduate College in recognition of a student&rsquo;s scholarly achievement. 
This award, given to UIC&rsquo;s most distinguished doctoral students, provides a one-year fellowship stipend and tuition and fee waivers, to enable these students to dedicate their time to complete their dissertation work. 
Mateevits&rsquo;s chosen research is in Human Augmentics and Sensory Augmentation; that is, he is studying how wearable technologies and body sensors affect people&rsquo;s perception of the world around them and, more specifically, how these devices can improve one’s awareness in complex environments. Immediate applications that have broad impact vary from protecting soldiers, firemen and policemen in hostile environments, to providing better quality of life to the visually and hearing impaired. 
Though wearable technologies are his focus, Mateevitsi has also been involved with a variety of EVL research projects, from high-performance visualization system development to translational research with the UIC Pathology department and the City of Chicago. He has had summer internships at two Hollywood animation studios and this summer, will have an internship at Microsoft Research. He also volunteers his time to mentor underserved youth in an after-school programs, assists with EVL tours and demos, and gives numerous presentations and interviews to educate the general public on technology. 
In 2013, Mateevitsi was named one of the &ldquo;Fifty for the Future&rdquo; by the Illinois Technology Foundation and in 2014, he was selected as one of the &ldquo;20 in their 20sr&rdquo; by Crain&rsquo;s Business magazine. 
<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/fellowships-awards/deans-scholar-award-winners">Winners of this year’s Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award</a>

Victor Mateevitsi, EVL PhD Candidate

UIC/EVL Victor Mateevitsi Receives 2015 UIC Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award

Techweek is a national organization that hosts week-long events - including a 2-day technology conference and expo in several major cities, to engage and excite the general public, and to provide opportunities to network, learn and explore with the local tech community. Techweek selects top minds in technology to speak on numerous topics. 
<a href="http://techweek.com/speakers/chicago/">Techweek Chicago&rsquo;s conference</a> is being held June 25-26. 
Techweek Chicago includes, as one of its speakers, Victor Mateevisti, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and a Research Assistant at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Mateevitsi will give the presentation &dlquo;A Real Life Spider Sense&drquo; on Friday 26th during the Lifestyle &amp; Technology session from 3:00pm - 5:45pm. His goal is to motivate people to think how ubiquitous technology&rsquo;s potential can enhance the human experience, enabling faster non-biological evolution as a species. 
Session: <a href="http://techweek.com/event/lifestyle-technology/">http://techweek.com/event/lifestyle-technology/</a> 
Speaker: <a href="http://techweek.com/speakers/chicago/#speaker/Victor%20Mateevitsi">http://techweek.com/speakers/chicago/#speaker/Victor%20Mateevitsi</a>

Victor Mateevitsi to speak at Techweek Chicago

Victor Mateevitsi, a University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) PhD student in the Computer Science (CS) Department and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), applied to Microsoft Research for a 2015 summer internship to work on virtual and augmented reality systems. Selected, he worked in Jaron Lanier&rsquo;s lab; Lanier is a highly regarded computer scientist, writer and composer, who pioneered virtual and augmented reality in the 1980s. Lanier is researching multi-person mixed reality - i.e., enabling more than one person to interact with the same virtual object or phenomenon at the same time. 
Mateevitsi, whose PhD advisor is CS Associate Professor and EVL Director of Research Andy Johnson, is interested in Human Augmentics and Sensory Augmentation; i.e., how wearable technologies and body sensors affect people&rsquo;s perception of the world around them and, more specifically, how these devices can improve one&rsquo;s awareness in complex environments. 
Given his interest in wearable technologies, the opportunity to work on augmented reality at Microsoft Research for the summer, particularly under the tutelage of a luminary in the field, was a wonderful opportunity. Mateevitsi worked on applications with interns from Stanford University, MIT Media Lab, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, and other notable institutions. 
Lanier&rsquo;s project is called Comradre (pronounced &ldquo;comradery&rdquo;). Headsets were made using smartphones and laptop computers, and the tracking of a person&rsquo;s head movements were performed using external sensors. Mateevitsi worked with a small group to create a system that allowed sound waves to be detected and then shown visually. In one scene from the group&rsquo;s video, the sound produced by Lanier&rsquo;s flute playing was shown in mixed reality. 
To learn more about how researchers in Lanier&rsquo;s lab at Microsoft Research are exploring ways for people to share experiences in mixed reality, see the October 12, 2015 article <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542341/microsoft-researchers-are-working-on-multi-person-virtual-reality/">&ldquo;Microsoft Researchers Are Working on Multi-Person Virtual Reality&rdquo;</a> by Will Night, published in the MIT Technology Review.

This example of shared mixed reality shows two students both seeing a visual effect as they shake hands.

Summer Internship Enables UIC/EVL Student to Work on Multi-Person Virtual Reality

by Maxine D. Brown 
February 3, 2016 - Victor Mateevitsi, a PhD student in the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and a recipient of the 2015 Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award, was a featured future entrepreneur on the TV show &ldquo;All-American Makers&rdquo; on the Discovery Science channel (Season 2, Episode 9, titled &ldquo;Superpowers for Sale&rdquo;). On February 3, 2016, he held a viewing party for friends and colleagues at MATTER, a health-tech incubator for entrepreneurs located at Chicago&rsquo;s Merchandise Mart. 
The TV show &ldquo;All-American Makers&rdquo; regularly features four entrepreneurs whose products are reviewed by three judges - a successful entrepreneur and a very technical guy who rigorously test and deconstruct the products, and a venture capitalist who wants to invest in sure things. For each product, the show takes the viewers through the testing and analysis phase, followed by trials and opinions from members of a focus group, and ultimately the venture capitalist&rsquo;s decision on whether or not he will invest. 
Mateevitsi introduced SpiderSense 2.0, a more portable version (a jacket) of his original SpiderSense wearable technology that can sense one&rsquo;s environment and inform the visually impaired about obstacles in their path. Mateevitsi initially created SpiderSense as a class project for the UIC course &ldquo;Human Augmentics,&rdquo; and has continued developing it while a research assistant at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) under his advisor, Andy Johnson, associate professor of Computer Science and EVL director of research. SpiderSense is at the core of his PhD work on human augmentics, which explores the value of wearable technologies to expand the capabilities and characteristics of humans. 
The first part of the show had two of the judges examine and test the product. While SpiderSense can detect objects between 0 to 60 inches away from the user (the distance is programmable), the show had a person wearing SpiderSense try to navigate a cluttered path while blindfolded, and the path appeared to be 36 inches wide (at least to this viewer, who was watching the TV program). So, the sensors tingled all the time, the user got disoriented, and he knocked over some of the obstacles in his path. One suggestion, later in the show, was to have a switch so that the device could either tingle when there were obstacles or when there were no obstacles in a user&rsquo;s way. 
Then came the focus group. This group fortunately included a visually impaired man and a firefighter, who both praised SpiderSense's&rsquo; possibilities for detecting obstacles in their paths. 
Viewers were excited to learn that the judges gave Mateevitsi a score 7 out of 10 — the second best score on the show! 
Viewers hopes were then crushed, as the venture capitalist decided not to fund Mateevitsi...at least, not yet. He thought SpiderSense a great invention, and encouraged Mateevitsi to continue development and to form a team to help market and manufacture it. 
Mateevitsi was gracious to the judges throughout the show, and thanked them for their advice. His &ldquo;to do&rdquo; list for SpiderSense is growing longer, but first order of business is to complete his PhD. 
This <a href="http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/all-american-makers/">TV show is available online</a> but currently restricted to those who subscribe to the Discovery Science channel. 
<a href="http://spider-sense.com/">Information on SpiderSense.</a> 
<a href="http://news.uic.edu/students-spidersense-featured-on-discovery-science">UIC News press release.</a>

Victor Mateevitsi welcomes friends and colleagues to his viewing party for the All-American Makers TV show featuring SpiderSense at MATTER headquarters.

UIC/EVL Victor Mateevitsi Pitches SpiderSense on Discovery Science&rsquo;s &ldquo;All-American Makers&rdquo; TV Show

The Chicago Tribune&rsquo;s Blue Sky Innovation section today featured Victor Mateevitsi, a University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Computer Science PhD candidate, and his work on SpiderSense. Here are excerpts from the article &ldquo;Can a Spider-Man-inspired jacket help the blind get around Chicago?&rdquo; by reporter Ally Marotti. 
SpiderSense &ldquo;allows you to feel the environment around you. It scans for people or objects, and it vibrates,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The vibrations increase as you get closer to the object. … If someone is following me, I can feel them.&rdquo; 
He says the SpiderSense jacket could help prevent injury among people with visual impairments, or help firefighters find openings in a smoke-filled building with low visibility. Mateevitsi is working with the Chicago Lighthouse, a nonprofit providing rehabilitation services for people with visual impairments, on improving SpiderSense. 
His doctoral adviser, Andrew Johnson, pointed to eyeglasses as an example of an early augmented device. &ldquo;It’s something that&rsquo;s so ingrained in our lives it doesn&rsquo;t look odd to see someone walking down the street with eyeglasses,&rdquo; said Johnson, the director of research at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory and a Computer Science Associate Professor. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the angle we&rsquo;re trying to take with this. … What we&rsquo;re trying to focus on is not so much trying to regain an ability, but how can we add something.&rdquo; 
Mateevitsi is scheduled to pitch at Technori&rsquo;s maker-themed showcase on Tuesday, March 29. 
<a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/technori-maker-movement-march-2016-sponsored-by-jpmorgan-chase-tickets-22334257365?aff=website">Read about the event and purchase tickets.</a> 
<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/series/makers/ct-spidersense-jacket-makers-bsi-20160323-story.html">Read the complete Chicago Tribune article and watch a video of SpiderSense.</a> 
Mateevitsi&rsquo;s SpiderSense jacket, filled with sensors and inspired by Spider-Man, was recently featured on the <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=2160">Science Channel&rsquo;s &ldquo;All-American Makers.&rdquo;</a>

Victor Mateevitsi created the SpiderSense jacket to vibrate when something, or someone, is close.

Can a Spider-Man-inspired jacket help the blind get around Chicago?

TEDxUofIChicago 2016: Rethinking the System 
Victor Mateevitsi, a PhD candidate in the UIC Computer Science Department and Electronic Visualization Laboratoary (EVL), will talk about his SpiderSense human augmentics research at TEDxUofIChicago on April 8, 8 2016, 5:00-9:30pm, at the James Stukel Towers (JST) Event Center (near Halsted and Roosevelt). The event is currently sold out, but you can watch via a live web stream. 
For details, see the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TEDxatUIC/">Facebook page</a>. 
<a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtU-6cxi1OA">Watch a video of Mateevitsi's presentation</a>. 
See additional information on <a href="http://tedxatuic.com/">TEDxUofIChicago 2016: Rethinking the System.</a>
<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tedxuofichicago-2016-rethink-the-system-tickets-22801827881">https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tedxuofichicago-2016-rethink-the-system-tickets-22801827881</a>

Victor Mateevitsi

Victor Mateevitsi participating in TEDxUofIChicago, April 8, 2016

This year, UIC Computer Science (CS) PhD student and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) research assistant Victor Mateevitsi received 1st Place for his &ldquo;SpiderSense&rdquo; image in the campus&rsquo;s 2016 Image of Research competition. In addition, an Honorable Mention was earned by CS PhD student and EVL research assistant Jillian Aurisano and CS undergraduate and EVL Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) student James Hwang for their &ldquo;Into the (Virtual) Jungle&rdquo; image. 
&ldquo;SpiderSense&rdquo; explores how technologies can augment and enhance humans and human interactions, an area of research termed Human Augmentics. The winning image shows Victor assembling SpiderSense, a wearable haptic jacket that allows wearers to feel the environment on their own body. The jacket consists of 12 sensors that scan the environment using echolocation; as the wearer approaches an obstacle, the intensity of the haptic vibration increases and/or decreases as he gets closer or further away. Victor, who is completing his PhD with CS associate professor Andrew Johnson, had to learn to sew, combining textiles with electronics, and to study how to communicate messages through the skin. This technology can be life changing for the blind, as they could now &ldquo;see&rdquo; through their own skin. Future applications include firefighters, policemen and soldiers. 
&ldquo;Into the (Virtual) Jungle&rdquo; transforms maps, aerial photography, LIDAR data and elevation data of Barro Colorado Island, a research habitat in Panama, into a virtual world, on which it superimposes tracked animal movements, enabling anthropologist Meg Crofoot (UCDavis) and computer scientist Tanya Berger-Wolf (UIC CS) to explore how virtual reality might help animal behavior researchers view, explore and step inside their data. This technology will enable collaborators to stand on the ground, leap through the trees or fly above the canopy to observe how tracked animals forage for food. This winning image shows the GPS locations of one capuchin monkey, visualized as spheres colored on a blue-orange gradient by time of day, to show how often he visits pink-hued fruit trees in the canopy. REU support for Hwang is provided by the NSF Award SENSEI (Sensor Environment Imaging Instrument), EVL director Maxine Brown, principal investigator. 
Winning entries will be displayed in the lobby of the Daley Library from October 11 through January 31. The winning entries will also be on exhibit at the Library of Health Sciences and on banners around campus. For information on the 2016 awards as well as a list of all exhibition winners and finalists from the competition&rsquo;s inception, see: 
<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/image-research-exhibit">http://grad.uic.edu/image-research-exhibit</a> 
<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/ior-results/2016">http://grad.uic.edu/ior-results/2016 (2016 Winners and Finalists)</a> 
It should be noted that Image of Research judges used EVL&rsquo;s largest tiled display system, the CAVE2 hybrid reality environment, to display all the submissions at once in high resolution for easy comparison and grouping. 
# # # 
EVL students have participated in and received recognition in previous Image of Research competitions. Here is a summary of all EVL accomplishments to date: 
2014: Honorable Mention - &ldquo;Getting in Touch with the Data,&rdquo; Arthur Nishimoto 
2013: 1st Place - &ldquo;Threshold,&rdquo; Joshua Albers; 2nd place - &ldquo;A Nanoscale Forest Seen Through a Big Lens,&rdquo; Khairi Reda; Finalist - &ldquo;SpiderSense,&rdquo; Victor Mateevitsi, Brad Haggadone, Brian Kunzer 
2012: 1st Place - &ldquo;Artificially created cortical functional blood unit,&rdquo; Thomas Marrinan, Ian Gould 
2011: Honorable Mention - &ldquo;20 Foot Canvas,&rdquo; JD Pirtle, Arthur Nishimoto, Karan Chakrapani, Todd Silvia, and Philip Pilosi; Finalist - &ldquo;Cli-Mate,&rdquo; Ed Kahler 
2010: 1st Place - &ldquo;Avatar - A Virtual Human,&rdquo; Sangyoon Lee 
2009: Honorable Mention - &ldquo;The Viewer,&rdquo; Julio Obelleiro; Finalist - &ldquo;The Tight Room,&rdquo; Heejoo Kim 
2008: 1st Place - &ldquo;Infinity Gliders,&rdquo; AnnMarie Cernoch; 3rd Place - &ldquo;Rain on Mars,&rdquo; Dmitri Svistula 
# # #

(top) &ldquo;SpiderSense&rdquo; with Victor Mateevitsi - (photo L. Renambot); (bottom) &ldquo;Into the (Virtual) Jungle&rdquo; with Jillian Aurisano and James Hwang

UIC/EVL Students Recognized in 2016 UIC Image of Research Competition

This essay reformulates the question of human augmentation as a problem of advanced human-machine communication, theorizing that such communication implies robust artificial intelligence and necessitates understanding the relational role new technologies play in human-machine communication. We focus on the questions, &ldquo;When do electronic tools cease to be &rsquo;simply&rsquo; tools, and become meaningfully part of ourselves,&rdquo; and, &ldquo;When might we think of these tools as augmenting our selves, rather than simply amplifying our capabilities?&rdquo; These questions, already important to the medical and rehabilitative fields, loom larger with increasing commodification of pervasive augmentation technologies, and indicate the verge on which human-machine
communication now finds itself. Through analyses of human and machine agency, mediated through a theory of close human-machine communication, we argue that the critical element in discussions of human-machine communication is an increase in sense of agency, extending the traditional human-computer interface dictum to provide an internal locus of control. 
Keywords 
Human Augmentics, Human-Machine Communication, Human-Computer Interaction, Agency, Sense of Agency

Communication, Machines & Human Augmentics

Newcity magazine is Chicago&rsquo;s only locally owned and operated cultural weekly, and has been covering Chicago&rsquo;s local scene for more than 25 years. It&rsquo;s current &ldquo;Best of Chicago&rdquo; issue just came out (Volume 31, No. 1359). The section on City Life lists many best things about Chicago, including &ldquo;Best place to get your geek on.&rdquo; Um, that would be the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago! The article is reproduced below. 
* * * * * * * * * * 
Best place to get your geek on 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at UIC 
Cutting-edge research meets a massive wall made out of small screens that would make any hardcore videogame fan scream and a literal cave that opens up a highly immersive, surround-screen, surround-sound, virtual reality environment at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The lab brings together academics, designers, engineers, artists and mad scientists using technologies that bend reality off into unimaginable directions. EVL is the place where visualization, virtual reality and real-time interactive computer graphics are born. As if that were not enough, it was here that the computer graphics for the first &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; film were created in 1976. How cool is that? 
UIC College of Engineering, Department of Computer Science, 842 W. Taylor 
Best of Chicago 2016

Best of Chicago 2016

Newcity magazine rates UIC/EVL as &ldquo;Best place to get your geek on&rdquo;

This article presents the main features and components of iCardia - an innovative mHealth platform designed to support remote monitoring and health coaching of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) patients, through Fitbit wearable sensor devices, smartphones, and personalized SMS text messages. The design and development of iCardia were based on an iterative, user-centered design process and an open-service architecture to ensure rapid scalability and adherence to evidence-based guidelines for easier transition into clinical practice. iCardia has the potential to enable a paradigm shift towards a collaborative CR environment that utilizes mHealth technologies to engage patients to more effectively self-manage their cardiovascular disease.

iCardia platform components and architecture

Development of an innovative mHealth platform for remote physical activity monitoring and health coaching of cardiac rehabilitation patients

Committee: Andrew Johnson (Chair and Advisor), Steve Jones, Robert Kenyon, Jason Leigh (University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa), Luc Renambot 
December 18, 2017, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm 
Room 1000 SEO 
Abstract: 
An estimated 253 million people in the world are blind and visually impaired. Visual impairments can significantly lower one&rsquo;s quality of life as they hamper the ability to perform otherwise simple tasks, like cooking a meal, walking to the bedroom or enjoying the outdoors. Similarly, people working in high-risk low-visibility environments, like firefighters and soldiers, might temporarily lose their vision when they need it the most. And while Tactile Visual Substitution Systems have been designed to aid in situations with vision loss, their use in navigation scenarios is very limited. 
In this dissertation, I investigate and propose different environment-to-vibration mappings while assessing one&rsquo;s Situation Awareness. The proposed approaches seek to understand whether one&rsquo;s experience with a tactile display would affect their Situation Awareness and how different vibration configurations, patterns, and environment-to-vibration mappings would affect one&rsquo;s navigation. The results of this dissertation provide insight and design implications for creating more complex navigational tactile displays.

Doctoral Defense Announcement: &ldquo;Supporting Navigation with a Torso Wearable Tactile Display&rdquo;

Research Experience Undergraduate

Kenan Arica

Undergraduate Researcher (REU), BS 2018

Kayla Condrella

Umwelt, the German word for environment, is a psychology term referring to the individual&rsquo;s mental image of the surrounding world. This subjective universe is shaped by an organism&rsquo;s unique perception of the environment around them and, therefore, differs from individual to individual. In other words, organisms experience the world through their senses, construct the mental model of their vicinity, and react upon it. Hence, this image never remains static - instead it is constantly refined, as a result of the dynamic nature of the world. Umwelt is closely related to the concept of Situation Awareness, that is the perception of environmental elements, comprehension of their nature, and projection of their near future status with respect to time and/or space. 
Sensory perception (exteroception) of the surrounding environment is, as a matter of fact, restricted to the limitations of biological senses. For example, although we consider humans with five fully developed senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste) as able-bodied individuals, they are essentially blind to a multitude of information that constantly surrounds them. To put things into perspective, both human sight and hearing, can only perceive a fraction of information- part of the electromagnetic spectrum (light waves), and of the sound frequencies accordingly. However, as sensory systems differ among species, other creatures have an entirely different perceptual experience, as they are able to perceive a distinct spectrum of information. 
Despite the fact that our limited human senses restrict our Umwelt and, therefore, our Situation Awareness, Human Augmentics, referring to technologies that expand the capabilities and characteristics of humans, allows us to peek into an invisible &dlquo;other&drquo; world. Thus, some important questions arise: What would the consequences of an expanded perception of the
surrounding environment be, and how would that affect an individual&rsquo;s Situation Awareness? Since our Umwelt is limited by genetics, how would individuals attune with characteristics and capacities that lie beyond human range? Could Human Augmentics possibly expand an individual&rsquo;s Umwelt, leading to improved Situation Awareness? 
Jakob von Uexkull (1864 - 1944), a German biologist who worked on animal behavior studies, cybernetics of life, and muscular physiology, is attributed for coining the term Umwelt. Uexkull&rsquo;s Umwelt is the phenomenal world of a living animal, in which it exists and acts, and as a result is shaped according to the stimuli received from its senses. Due to the fact that individuals, even across the same species, sense the world differently, each animal creates its own unique Umwelt. 
Perception and, as a result, interaction with the world begins with the raw input of data from the environment through the sensory system. Anatomically, the sensory system is part of the nervous system and includes the sensory receptors that act as probes of the environment, parts of the brain that are used for sensory perception, and the neural pathways that connect the brain with the receptors. Notably, humans&rsquo; sensory system consists of five traditional senses: Sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. The stimulation type and bandwidth of each sensory channel are limited to its characteristics, which in turn constrain the size of the Umwelt.
However not all living organisms possess the same qualitative or quantitative senses. Depending on the environment in which they have evolved, their sensory system may be entirely different than ours; some have more while others have less sensitive senses. Others have quite different ones. Bats and dolphins, for instance, have the ability to calculate orientation and position of other animals and objects through reflected beams of sound, an ability known as echolocation. Sharks and rays, on the other hand, can detect changes in the electric field of their vicinity, an ability known as electroreception. 
Situation Awareness 
It is a well-known fact that humans are capable of sensing only a small fraction of the data that constantly surrounds us. Magnetic fields, infrared light, ultrasound, cosmic rays, radiation are just a few of the things that are completely invisible to us. However, recent technological advances in specialized sensors, enable the detection of some of this information. For instance, geiger counters are used by hazmat personnel to assess radiation levels in nuclear accidents. These technologies provide feedback using one of our existing senses, usually visual or audio, in order to help workers safely perform daily tasks. 
Situation Awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements, comprehension of their nature, and projection of their near future status with respect to time and/or space. In other words, it is the awareness of the immediate vicinity, comprehension of the current state of the environment and ability to predict what may happen. Inputs from the sensory system are used by the individual in order to create and update their Situation Awareness state, and as a result, decisions depend on the accuracy of the perceived model. Situation Awareness is tightly associated with experience; somebody less experienced may miss information that a more experienced user will not. To put things into perspective, the hazmat personnel&rsquo;s (that we discussed above) Situation Awareness includes the geiger counter readings, comprehension of their meaning and ability to predict what will happen if they raise above a certain level. 
Despite the fact that sensory systems have been honed by millions of years of evolution, they are very limited to a multitude of data. We are blind to a plethora of information that exists around us, and fortunately most of it is harmless. We depend on our sensory system to interpret the world, and we use our Situation Awareness to comprehend the environment around us and act upon it. As a result, lack of information for a certain situation may lead to misjudgements and accidents. In fact 76% of aviation errors, happen because the pilot did not perceive one piece of the airplane&rsquo;s crucial information. To that end, another important question arises: Given that today&rsquo;s technology can sense some of this invisible information, can we expand the Umwelt and improve Situation Awareness? 
Research Questions 
Genetic defects, diseases or accidents can lead to sense disabilities or complete sense lose, which has been observed to both animals and humans. To that end, individuals learn over time to use the remaining of their senses in order to overcome a disability. Recent scientific discoveries have shown that while this new ability results in anatomical changes of the brain, the responsible regions remain the same. In other words, even though the sensory input channel has changed, the brain will still process the information in the same region|a phenomenon known as Sensory Substitution. 
As a result, Sensory Substitution devices use one or more of the remaining senses to increase an individual&rsquo;s Situation Awareness through a different sensory pathway. More specifically, tactile displays are able to translate external environmental information onto one&rsquo;s skin, through the use of haptics. While these systems are primarily designed for people with disabilities, their concepts can be extended to other sensory deprived individuals, who find themselves in no or limited visibility environments due to external, environmental reasons. For example, firefighters operating within smoky, low visibility hazardous environments or soldiers fighting in pitch black darkness, are more likely to have no Situation Awareness of their surrounding environment. 
The ever-dynamic nature of the world around us, however, makes navigating with a wearable tactile display, a quite challenging task. From feeling the vibrations onto one&rsquo;s skin, comprehending their meaning and correctly acting upon them, to getting inundated with tactile sensory overload, tactile displays have great potential, when communicating information in an eloquent
way. 
In this dissertation we will explore different environment-to-vibration mappings while assessing one&rsquo;s Situation Awareness. Furthermore, we seek to understand whether one's experience with a tactile display would have an effect on their Situation Awareness. Finally, we hypothesize that a one-size-fits-all wearable tactile display would not perform equally well in all environmental scenarios and therefore we are going to explore how different vibration configurations, patterns and environment-to-vibration mappings would affect one&rsquo;s navigation. All of the above are distilled into the following research questions: 
- Could tactile displays be used to increase Situation Awareness of visually deprived individuals? 
- To what extent would Situation Awareness be associated with experience when using a tactile display?

Positioning of Sensor Modules and Controller Box

Supporting Navigation with a Torso Wearable Tactile Display

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: The following article about UIC CS/EVL PhD graduate Victor Mateevitsi appears on the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yy5zl6p5">UIC Computer Science NEWS website.</a> 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
by Andrea Poet 
March 14, 2019 
A jet suit that can travel more than 30 miles per hour and ascend to 12,000 feet. Self-lacing sneakers. And a jacket that allows its wearer to navigate by using vibrations to alert them to obstacles in close proximity. 
These objects are just a few of the more than 100 wearable technology pieces that will be included at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) Wired to Wear exhibition, the first ever dedicated to wearable technology. 
The inclusion of UIC alumnus Victor Mateevitsi&rsquo;s SpiderSense tactile jacket in the exhibition thrills its designer. 
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never had my technology in a museum,&rdquo; Mateevitsi said. &ldquo;As scientists, we do bleeding-edge work but we typically are presenting to peers, in journals. We rarely get the chance to share work directly with the public, and see them interact with it.&rdquo; 
Mateevitsi earned his PhD in Computer Science, with a specialization in human augmentics from UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). Human augmentics can enable humans to see and hear better, absorb and interpret more information and increase physical endurance. Not all of human augmentics is what we would consider the stuff of science fiction: it can include eyeglasses, or hearing aids. More recent technologies include robotic limbs, Bluetooth earpieces and biometric sensors. 
The EVL at UIC, where the human augmentics research is being pioneered, is an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research laboratory that enables scientific and engineering discoveries by designing and developing high-performance visualization, virtual reality, and collaboration systems using advanced networking infrastructure. Established in 1973 as a joint effort of the UIC College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, EVL is the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the United States. 
The original SpiderSense prototype had 13 sensors, located on the shoulders, wrists, chest, upper back, lower back, and abs. SpiderSense technology works by vibrating to let the user know if they are approaching an object, or if an object is approaching them. It can be used by the visually impaired or people in the line of duty, such as soldiers or firefighters, who are in areas of low visibility. 
Mateevitsi worked on other tools during his time at UIC&rsquo;s EVL, including developing 3D Visualization Software for the U.S. Air Force medical researchers; inventing the HealthBar, an ambient persuasive technology reflecting the health status of an office worker; and developing a client-server application enabling medical researches to upload image datasets to a remote database. 
He currently works as a human-computer interaction research scientist and sensory engineer at GN Advanced Science, a company that makes medical, professional and consumer audio products, including hearing aids. 
There are still some hurdles before the SpiderSense can be commercialized. The first prototype, which Mateevitsi co-invented with fellow UIC students Brad Haggadone and Brian Kunzer while at UIC, was a bit clunky, with 13 modules strapped to the wearer&rsquo;s body. The second iteration, developed by Mateevitsi, is more streamlined and easier to wear, but the electronics are housed in plastic cases, and the SpiderSense jacket cannot be washed without damaging the wires. 
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m waiting for technology to catch up,&rdquo; Mateevitsi said. 
While we wait, visitors to the Wired to Wear exhibit will have the opportunity to test out SpiderSense. Using Mateevitsi&rsquo;s concept, technological futurist firm Quantum XPR built out a vest for the exhibition, and guests will navigate a space relying on the haptic feedback the vest provides to alert them to obstacles in close proximity. Mateevitsi&rsquo;s first two prototypes will also be on display. 
&ldquo;Wearable technology sits at the intersection of design, technology and innovation, and we are proud to bring together compelling examples of how it is changing the world,&rdquo; said David Mosena, MSI&rsquo;s president and chief executive officer. &ldquo;We designed Wired to Wear to showcase the possibilities that wearable technology presents for society now and help guests understand how it can create opportunities for them they could have never imagined.&rdquo; 
The Wired to Wear exhibition opens on March 21. Wired to Wear is sponsored by BMO Harris Bank and will be at MSI through May 2020. It is not included in Museum Entry and requires an additional timed-entry ticket, $12 for adults and seniors, and $9 for children. <a href="http://msichicago.org">More information on the exhibition</a> or call 773-684-1414.

Victor Mateevitsi wearing his latest SpiderSense prototype jacket.

UIC alumnus Victor Mateevitsi&rsquo;s SpiderSense jacket included in MSI&rsquo;s Wired to Wear&trade; exhibition

October 1 - - EVL Director of Research Andrew Johnson has been named Interim Director of EVL following Maxine Brown&rsquo;s retirement from UIC. Johnson now assumes the responsibility of heading EVL - overseeing EVL&rsquo;s overall mission in education, research, development, and technology transfer. 
For over 23 years, Johnson has been a valued EVL faculty member (Professor of Computer Science) and researcher who has focused upon interaction and collaboration using advanced visualization displays and the application of those displays to enhance discovery and learning. 
His areas of expertise include visualization, virtual and augmented reality, natural language processing, visual analytics, and high-performance networking. 
Over the years, Johnson has been instrumental in the development of EVL instrumentation and systems, including the Continuum smart environment, CAVE2&trade;, LambdaVision high-resolution tiled displays, LambdaTable tabletop touch system, GeoWall portable geoscience display environment, PARIS augmented reality and ImmersaDesk virtual reality systems. He has overseen the development of numerous visualization and virtual reality applications across diverse domain disciplines from science and engineering to the humanities and art. Johnson is a highly regarded mentor and educator to EVL&rsquo;s graduate students and undergraduates alike. 
Johnson retains his position as Director of Research while leading EVL&rsquo;s future initiatives and innovations as Interim Director.

Andrew Johnson Named Interim Director, EVL

The data entry task is one of the common office tasks performed in the seated position that can be assisted by augmented reality technology. The paper introduces an ongoing project to develop an AR-based data presentation interface to assist office workers&rsquo; data entry tasks. The interface developed in this project was designed to facilitate the transition between the two steps including reading data and typing the data into a computer system using a keyboard. Usability evaluation is conducted in a controlled experiment with human subjects to examine whether the AR-based data presentation interface improves data entry performance and mitigates office workers&rsquo; physical and mental workload. 
Keywords: Office work, augmented reality, data entry, human factors. 
Index Terms: Human-centered concepts [Human computer interaction (HCI)]: Interaction paradigms-Virtual reality; Human-centered concepts [Human computer interaction (HCI)]: Visualization-Empirical studies in visualization

Interface development process.

Using Augmented Reality to Assist Seated Office Workers&rsquo; Data Entry Tasks

Construction activities for the new $117.8 million, 135,000-square-foot Computer Design Research and Learning Center to be located at 900 W. Taylor St. is underway. The CDRLC will support the Department of Computer Science&rsquo;s growing student enrollment with 16,000 square feet of classroom space for collaborative teaching and learning environments, as well as 35 labs for faculty research activities in the computer science and engineering disciplines. 
The CDRLC will be the new home for the Electronic Visualization Laboratory featuring the latest technological and computing innovations to support research in advanced visualization, networking and collaborative environments. 
Read more about the CDRLC groundbreaking in the <a href="https://today.uic.edu/uic-breaks-ground-on-new-computer-design-research-and-learning-center">July 15th issue of UIC Today.</a> 
See a live webcam of the building&rsquo;s progress via the <a href="https://webcampub.multivista.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=aPublicWebcam.embed&WebcamPublicEmbedUID=5D4DCF05-AB2B-4770-A090-D79BE467F958">Multivista Construction Documentation webcam.</a>

Human Augmentics

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