Student-Produced Video

Video Tour of Equipment at the Lab

Kelsey and Wesley are high school students who participated in a summer research experience at the lab during June-August 2009. They recorded a video blog entry in which they describe the equipment at the lab. An English transcript of the video is included below.


English Transcript

Kelsey: Hello, my name is Kelsey Gallagher. Today, I will show you around the LATLab with all the equipment that we use. Now, I will show you my collaborator.

Wesley: Hello, my name is Wesley Clarke. I work with Kelsey here. Kelsey is a sweet girl, but sometimes I like to pick on her. She’s right about us giving you a tour of the LATLab’s equipment today. Remember the other day when you saw us on video; well, now we have all the equipment. (Taking a look at equipment.) This is all of the equipment that we use in LATLab.

Kelsey: The first thing that we will show you is the spandex shirt.

Wesley: This is the spandex shirt. Wow, it is very tight but it is all right. Do I have to zip the shirt up?

Kelsey: No, you don’t need to zip the shirt up.

Wesley: The purpose of this shirt is to allow us to stick a lot different sensors on to a person wearing it. There are a lot of sensors. (Pointing at sensors.) What you see now is just a few of them, but when we have experiment, we use a lot of sensors. We’ll place these sensors all over the spandex shirt. That’s a lot of work. These sensors allow the computer to recognize your body’s movements. Suppose that none of sensors were placed on the spandex shirt, then how would the computer recognize your body movement?

Wesley: Now the second step (for setting up the equipment) is to put on the gloves. This kind of looks like Michael Jackson’s glove. (Pointing at white glove.)

Wesley: Now the third step is to put on the sensor gloves. This is what I am talking about. This glove will recognize your hand movements during the experiment. Let me show you. You have to be very careful. You can’t touch the brown surface of these gloves. But you can touch the black surface. You cannot pull this glove on quickly like a normal glove. No way. This is much different than normal gloves. Let me show you. (Pointing at glove.) Let me show you how to put this on.

Wesley: That’s it. It is cool and very tight. It also has to be connected to the computer that I just mentioned. During the experiment, when we’re setting up the gloves, you have to follow the hand shapes that are displayed on the computer screen. For example, if the computer displays shows a “B” handshape, then you have to follow that hand shape with your hand. This helps us set up the gloves. Before we adjust the glove settings, your hand might be in a nice and perfect hand shape; however, the computer at first isn’t able to follow the exact shape of your hand.

Wesley: Two other researchers here, Matt and Pengfei, have to fix each joint on the glove in the computer so that it matches your hand shape precisely. It takes them about an hour to complete both gloves. I’m only going to show you one hand for now. Let me take this off. (Tries to take off glove.) I need your help. (Takes off glove.) Wow, did you see that? How hard it is to take the glove off? You had to be very careful when removing these gloves. Let me take this off.

Wesley: Now, what we will do next? Put on the neck strap around my neck. This purpose of this is so that we can stick sensors on the neck. This is just like how we stick sensors on the spandex shirt. Except now, the neck sensor allows the computer to recognize your neck movement.

Wesley: The next thing is eye-tracker helmet. Let me show you. This is eye tracker helmet. The eye tracker helmet has a little mirror near your left eye. The purpose of this is to follow your eye movements during experiment. It also has video camera on the middle of your forehead.

Wesley: That is all equipment that we use during experiment. I guess that is it. At the end of the experiment, the person would take the spandex shirt off. That is it.

Wesley: Wait a minute, let me introduce my professor... We might scare him and the other researchers when we enter the room because they have all been working very hard. I will introduce Pengfei first... No, I will introduce Matt first.

Kelsey: Yes

Wesley: Ok, come on. Be very quiet. (Sneaking into the room.) (Didn’t actually surprise them.)

Matt: Hi, my name is Matt Huenerfauth. I am professor here at Queen College.

Wesley: Now I will introduce Pengfei. She is a student, right?

Matt: Yes, she is a PhD student. You’re right.

Wesley: She is a PhD student.

Pengfei: Hi

Matt: This is Pengfei Lu. She is student at CUNY.

Wesley: That’s it.

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