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Takegawa Lab. - xFuture Lab.
Takegawa Lab. - xFuture Lab.
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  2. School of the Future

School of the Future

Greetings

Our lives have been drastically changed, and will certainly continue to be changed, by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, VR (Virtual Reality), cryptocurrency, IoT, automatic driving, and so on. While the introduction of these technologies has given rise to new social problems, such as privacy and security issues, there are also many examples of improvements brought about by technology, for example increased self-expression by new SNSs, an unprecedented connection between people by new communication tools, and increased assurance and safety by driving assistance.

For we who are living in an age in which lifestyle, common knowledge and customs are being transformed more and more by technology, it is necessary to learn and apply new things each day.

School of the Future is not only for a specified age group, such as elementary school children. People out in the working world, leading busy lives, retired people spending their old age restfully, even new-born babies, all surely want to learn new skills. It is simply that the skills a person wants to learn have become varied, encompassing many fields from human relations, to fashion, to games.

For all people who feel they want to extend their own abilities, our hope is that School of the Future will tangibly contribute to enabling even just one more experience of the joy of ‘I did it!’.

Prof. Yoshinari Takegawa

Project

(Click thumbnails for details)
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Creation

Design to increase performers’ power of expression

Painted Musical Instrument
Create any electronic musical instrument by drawing
PerformMask
A versatile expression-changing mask for use in performance
Dance Instrument and Projection Dance
Dance Instrument and Projection Dance
Baatarina
Support for finding your position in stage performance
Projection Mapping LED
The possibility to produce light displays on even bumpy surfaces
Danmaranai
Turns even the quietest person into a chatterbox

Learning Tool Design

Design of tools to enable learners to learn efficiently

Projection Piano
The shortcut to piano mastery
Score Gazing
The eyes don’t lie
Rendan
Joining the dots to connect piano lessons and practice
Erasure-oriented Illustration Method
Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to skill acquirement
AnoPers
Imagining and drawing a motif seen from a different perspective
Table Cutting Board
With this, you too can handle a knife like a top chef
Tablet Handwriting
Transcription in which a learner practices using a brush on a tablet
Stone Recorder
Turning curling stones into science
Smart Bowling ball
Perceptive bowling ball

Teaching Method Design

Design of teaching methods for applications, systems and games that support learning

Teacher who is good at prediction
How much do I need to practise to improve?
Teacher with a knack for analogy
Teaching through comparison to daily movements
Teacher who deliberately overlooks, or even covers up, your mistakes
To keep learners motivated
Teacher who doesn’t overlook the little things
Advice from a viewpoint you cannot see with your own eyes
Multimodal teacher
Teaching through a variety of methods
Teacher who lies, out of love
For graduation from the support system (teacher)
Teacher reminding you
when you couldn’t do it
Enabling a teacher to provide singing instruction appropriate to their student’s lung capacity

© Future University Hakodate, Takegawa Laboratory, All Rights Reserved.

Tablet Handwriting



Transcription in which a learner practices using a brush on a tablet

Instances of writing by hand are decreasing, but people still enjoy receiving handwritten letters and greetings cards. To write characters neatly, it is essential to consider the correct order of penstrokes and the balance of each character. Practising writing with a brush is worthwhile, even if just to learn the history of the characters. However, in addition to the difficulty of using a brush, which is probably unfamiliar, one must consider balance and brush control while comparing with a sample image. This makes it very difficult to tell, just by looking, whether or not the character is drawn correctly. In tablet calligraphy, the user can learn character balance by placing a piece of Japanese calligraphy paper over a tablet displaying an example character, and tracing with a brush dipped in water. Characters written are automatically assigned a score, enabling users to understand their progress in terms of a numerical value.

Accomplishment
Tanaka, S., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Proposal of a Support System for Learning Brushstrokes in Transcription for Beginners,” Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI2020), pp. 352–356 (Mar. 2020).
Nonami, J., and Takegawa, Y., “Construction of a Support System for Learning Character Balance in Transcription for Beginners,” Proceeding of IEEE Global Conference on Consumer Electronics (GCCE2014), pp. 26–30 (Oct. 2014).

Teacher reminding you when you couldn’t do it


Enabling a teacher to provide singing instruction appropriate to their student’s lung capacity
To improve singing technique and performance, it is essential to manipulate your body appropriately, such as by controlling your breathing. However, in actual singing lessons, teachers often use abstract phrases to instruct. Breathing with the physical ability of a teacher (adult) and breathing with the physical ability of a student (child) are different, thus, a student requires instruction that is appropriate to their physical ability. Therefore, we developed a band-type device for singing teachers. By singing with the band fitted around the lower part of their chest, a teacher can experience the difference between their own physical ability and that of their student. The band senses chest movements and recognizes whether the wearer is breathing in or out. Then, the system displays a graph depicting residual respiratory volume (how much breath is left). The line on the graph goes up when the user breathes in, and down when the user breathes out. For example, if the residual respiratory volume gauge is set altered from 100% to 75%, in accordance with the student’s respiratory volume, by singing while keeping their breathing within the range of the residual respiratory volume gauge, the teacher can understand how it feels for the student. In this way, the teacher becomes able to instruct in a way that is suited to their student.

Teacher who Lies, out of Love



For graduation from the support system (teacher)

There are many systems to aid with the acquisition of skills in sport, music and so on, but at some point you have to become independent of the system and able to perform skills by yourself. ‘Teacher who lies, out of love’ helps you to graduate from this kind of support system (the teacher). The majority of support systems (teachers) teach the correct way of doing something, but this system begins to tell lies once the user has learned to perform a skill as taught. Being lied to causes the user gradually to come to mistrust the system (teacher). Finally the user is no longer misled by the system’s (teacher’s) lies, and can become independent.

Accomplishment
Kumaki, M., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Design and Implementation of a Positioning Learning Support System for Violin Beginners, Using True, Vague and False Information,” Journal of Information Processing, Vol. 26, pp. 285–293 (Mar. 2018).
Kumaki, M., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K. “A Positioning Learning Support System using False Information and Vague Information for Violin Beginner,” Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Media and Technology (EdMedia2016), pp. 1560–1571 (June 2016).

Teacher who is Good at Prediction



How much do I need to practice to improve?

How much do I need to practice to improve?
Practise or study with no end in sight is hard and frustrating. Doubtless everyone has experienced a period during which their skills do not improve even though they practice, or of feeling uncertain during a slump in progress. Simply by being shown current practise outcomes, test results etc., `Teacher who is good at prediction’ estimates how a person will progress in future, from a vast amount of past records. The future prospect of improving if you practice this much, study this much, becomes an incentive to overcome the difficult periods.

Accomplishment
Yoshino, K., Takegawa, Y., Hirata, K., and Tominaga, A., “Construction of a Model for Predicting Student’s Performance in Programming Exercise Lecture,” Compute Software (JSSST), Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 67-78 (May 2020).

Teacher who Doesn’t Overlook the Little Things



Advice from a viewpoint you cannot see with your own eyes

When you go to have piano lessons, the teacher has to consider not only score reading and practice methods, but also fingering, posture and even your musical way of thinking. However, there is a limit to the area that a single teacher can look at. In particular, paying attention to every minute movement and placement of the fingers is very difficult. `Teacher who doesn’t overlook the little things’ scrutinizes your piano practice from viewpoints from which the teacher cannot, and gives advice. Of course, this concept is not limited to learning the piano. The system could watch over practice of other instruments and sports from every angle, to support progression.

Accomplishment
Hasegawa, A., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Design and Implementation of a Support Tool to Find Bad Fingering Habits for Piano Teachers,” International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC15), pp. 1–6 (July 2018).

Teacher who Deliberately Overlooks, or even Covers up, Your Mistakes



To keep learners motivated

Acquirement of skills that use the body takes a long time. Noticing mistakes is the first step to achieving correct movement. A ‘computer teacher’ can unfailingly notice even slight mistakes made by learners. However, if all these mistakes are pointed out to learners, they will feel they are always being criticized and come to loathe practice. ‘Teacher who deliberately overlooks mistakes’ selects the mistakes that will be pointed out to learners, based on their proficiency levels. Furthermore, the system covers up certain mistakes, for example, by outputting the correct sound from a piano even when an incorrect key has been pressed. But you worry about whether you can actually improve by practicing in this way, don’t you? Don’t worry. You will improve.

Accomplishment
Fukuya, Y., Takegawa, Y., and Yanagi, H., “A Piano Learning Support System Considering Motivation,” Proceeding of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC2013), pp. 62–68 (Aug. 2013).

Table Cutting Board


 


With this, you too can handle a knife like a top chef

Tablet cutting-board is a system to improve the user’s technique of cutting ingredients with a knife. Before cutting ingredients, the thinness of slices is set in advance. When ingredients are cut on top of the tablet, the system displays whether or not they have been cut to the appropriate width, in real time on the tablet screen. Tablet cutting-board can judge the width of cut ingredients with an accuracy degree of within 0.5mm. It would not be exaggerating to say that this makes its judgement accuracy higher than that of a professional chef. Beginners often make the mistake of cutting to an appropriate width, but in a diagonal direction. Usually, it is difficult to notice when the knife is at a diagonal, but Tablet cutting-board uses sound to notify the user of whether or not the knife is horizontal. In this way, this system supports the first step towards mastering knife-handling technique. Incidentally, you may wonder whether it’s really okay to use a tablet as a cutting board, but relax; a tablet’s glass screen is a lot stronger than you’d think!

Accomplishment
Masuda, H., Kato, K., Ikematsu, K., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Tablet Cutting Board: Tablet-based Knife-control Support System for Cookery Beginners.” In Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 2023 (AHs ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, pp. 287–293 (March, 2023).

Stone Recoder



Turning curling stones into science

Often called `chess on ice’, curling is known to be a competitive sport that is extremely tactical. However, how the stones used in the sport will move on the ice, and the physical mechanism involved, have yet to be made clear. StoneRecorder uses infrared LEDs and an infrared camera to record the movement of stones and displays their trajectories on the rink, using projection mapping. Making it possible to visualize or predict the trajectory of the stones could change both tactics and practise, and even the nature of spectation.

Accomplishment
Takegawa, Y., Sasaki, N., Aihara, S., and Masui, F., “Development of a Curling Stone Tracking System Using Infrared LEDs, and an Accompanying Application,” In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Sport Sciences Research and Technology Support (icSports2023), pp. 136–143 (Nov. 2023).

Smart Bowling Ball



Perceptive bowling ball

To become good at bowling, it is necessary to consider various factors, such as approach, form and the speed and number of rotations of the ball. However, it is impossible to grasp exactly what state the ball is in once it has been bowled. Smart Bowling Ball has several sensors embedded in it, endowing it with sensory information. By reading the information recorded by the ball, such as speed and rotation, it is possible to confirm the status of the ball after bowling, in more detail and in numerical values. Perhaps we will see a future in which the ball itself gives you advice on your bowling.

Accomplishment
Uraya, S., Takegawa, Y., Hirata, K., “Nagereru-Kun: Design and Implementation of a Bowling Form Reflection Support Application for Beginners,” Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII2022), pp. 348-358 (June2022).

Score Gazing



The eyes don’t lie

You may not find it difficult, when sat next to someone who is playing the piano, to follow his place on the score with your eyes. However, when a computer system tries to do the same thing it is not so straightforward. Playing tempo changes constantly according to expression, and there are times when a note may not be played or a mistake made. In practise the player may also miss out difficult parts and repeatedly practice the same places. By using not only sound and input to the musical instrument, but also combining these with gaze information, the score gazing system follows the score as though it is right beside the player, to support performance.

Accomplishment
Terasaki, S., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Proposal of Score-Following Reflecting Gaze Information on Cost of DP matching,” Proceeding of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC2017), pp. 144–149 (Oct. 2017).
Noto, K., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Adaptive Score-Following System by Integrating Gaze Information,” Proceedings of 16th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC2019), pp. 401–406 (May 2019).

Rendan




Joining the dots to connect piano lessons and practice

When taking piano lessons, it is essential to practice individually at home. However, there is a problem, in that it is difficult for the teacher accurately to grasp how the student has practiced at home. This is where Rendan comes in. Rendan is an application that visualizes the state of a student’s piano practice so that it can be understood at a glance. On the home screen, a calendar is displayed, and on each date there is a donut graph expressing amount of practice and number of keying errors. Detailed figures can be checked by selecting a date. In addition, it is possible to confirm not only the amount of practice on a single day, but also to compare that day with the amount of practice conducted to date, which makes it easy to understand how much a student has progressed. Furthermore, amount of practice can even be confirmed at the level of bars or notations, with places that have been practiced a lot displayed in a darker color, enabling the teacher to confirm amount of practice at a glance. While Rendan is aimed at piano teachers, it can also be used for a parent to check their child’s practice, or to help students themselves to get an accurate understanding of the state of their own practice.

Accomplishment
Sasaki, M., Noto, K., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Practice Progress Visualization System to Support Piano Teachers,” In Proceedings of International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC ’23), pp. 267 (Aug. 2023).

Projection Piano



The shortcut to piano mastery

To become able to play the piano, there are many hurdles to overcome, such as learning to read music, practicing fingering and maintaining rhythm, and learning how to apply strength when pressing the keys. Furthermore, it is very hard to learn these skills alone, causing some players to become disheartened partway through. Projection Piano is the answer to such a problem. Projection Piano is designed to reduce the hurdles that tend to trip up people starting to learn the piano and make piano practice fun. By practicing with Projection Piano, a player should be able to enjoy mastering the piano without becoming disheartened along the way.

Accomplishment
Takegawa, Y., Terada, T., and Tsukamoto, M., “Design and Implementation of a Piano Practice Support System using a Real-Time Fingering Recognition Technique,” Proceeding of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC2011), pp. 1–8 (Aug. 2011).

Projection Mapping LED



The possibility to produce light displays on even bumpy surfaces

It is very difficult to project onto, for example, a Christmas tree, which is has an uneven surface and is not white. There are LED cables that can be wrapped around a Christmas tree, aren’t there? With these, it is easy to make all the lights shine or flash, but, when it comes to creating a pattern, things get a lot more complicated. Projection Mapping LEDs are hi-tech LEDs with sensors that detect the color of light from a projector. By lighting up only the LEDs that the light from a certain specialized projector has shone on, you can make a pattern appear.

Accomplishment
Nakata, M., Kodama, K., Fujita, N., Takegawa, Y., Terada T., Tsukamoto, M., Hosomi, S., and Nishio, S., “Design and lmplementation of a Ubiquitous Optical Device Controlled with a Projector,” Proceeding of the 6th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia (MoMM2008), pp. 130–135 (Nov. 2008).

PerformMask


A versatile expression-changing mask for use in performance

Masks are often used in performances such as children’s plays. As a mask has a fixed appearance, the expressions it can convey are limited. Perform Mask can flexibly change its appearance, expressing for example changes of expression, age, gender, meaning that one mask can be used for multiple scenes or roles. First of all, ink that changes color by heat transmisison is applied to the part of the mask that one wants to change. Then, copper tape is simply adhered to the underside of the area to which ink was applied. Thus, anybody can create an original ‘mask of a hundred faces’.

Accomplishment
Masui, M., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Dynamic Appearance Augmentation Method that Enables Easy Prototyping of Masks for Performance,” Proceedings of the Augmented Humans 2022 (AHs2022), pp. 267–275 (March 2022).

Painted Musical Instrument



Create any electronic musical instrument by drawing 

Painted Musical Instrument is a device that enables you to create any kind of electronic instrument you like, simply by drawing on paper. Usually, we use instruments that already ordinarily exist in the world, but if we were able simply to create original instruments that do not yet exist anywhere in the world, our dreams would expand. For example, you could easily make an instrument suited to your own body size, which might allow you to play difficult parts of music with ease, or play with a greater range of expression. Besides this, when you apply the Painted Musical Instrument device, being able to turn a staircase, chair, doorknob, handrail, or any household item, into an instrument need not be a mere dream. 50 or 100 years in the future, the instruments most widely used may not be those designed by well-informed instrument experts, but those casually designed by children or people with no musical experience.

Accomplishment
Takegawa, Y., Fukushi, K., Machover, T., Terada, T., and Tsukamoto, M., “A Prototyping Support System for the Creation of Painted Musical Instruments,” International Journal of Arts and Technology, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 382–402 (Dec. 2015).
Takegawa, Y., Fukushi, K., Machover, T., Terada, T., and Tsukamoto, M., “Construction of a Prototyping Support System for Painted Musical Instruments,” Proceeding of ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE2012), pp. 384–397 (Nov. 2012).

Multimodal Teacher



Teaching through a variety of methods

When learning skills that use the body, such as sport, playing a musical instrument, or cookery, in books there is no choice but to learn from visual expression such as text and diagrams. If you attend lectures or classes you can learn from a teacher, but with `Multimodal Teacher’ you can learn skills through experiences, more richly, thanks to a teaching presentation style produced by the combination of several components, such as sight, sound and touch.

Accomplishment
Tanaka, S., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Proposal of a Support System for Learning Brushstrokes in Transcription for Beginners,” Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI2020), pp. 352–356 (Mar. 2020).

Erasure-Oriented Illustration Method



Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to skill acquirement

There is a saying (slow and steady wins the race) which means that, if you want to hurry, you can sometimes get there more quickly in the end by taking the long way round. What happens if we apply the essence of this to skill acquisition (Illustration)? As an example, we considered an erasure-oriented illustration method, which incorporates the idea of ‘erasing’ as you draw. In actual practice this means, when drawing a shape like a UFO, for example, simply drawing two overlapping circles then erasing the unneeded parts. How does that sound? Don’t you think you could draw better that way than by trying to draw the shape of a UFO as it is? When you master this illustration method, you become able to draw more complex illustrations, skillfully. By taking the long way round, you are able to draw more easily and simply. Sounds like a pretty good method, don’t you think?

Accomplishment
Kurotaki, R., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Proposal of an Erasure-Oriented Drawing Style to Develop the Ability to Copy Images,” Proceeding of International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC2017), pp. 209–216 (Sept. 2017).

Danmaranai



Turns even the quietest person into a chatterbox

In online video meetings, it has been observed that, when compared to face-to-face meetings, it is difficult to see the gaze, expressions, hand gestures and movements of the person or people to whom one is talking, which often prevents meetings from progressing smoothly. On top of this, for shy people who are passive when it comes to online communication, it is hard to speak in an online meeting environment, thus such people tend to turn off their cameras or mute themselves. Accordingly, we considered that by visualizing ‘gaze’, which is usually not conveyed online, we can enable discussions involving shy people to run more smoothly, and make it easier for shy people to speak. In this research, we had online participants conduct group work using Post-it notes, and measured the movement of their gaze when they looked at each of the Post-it notes, on which opinions had been written. As a result, we found that participants looked longer at notes on which opinions of agreement were written than at notes on which opposing opinions were written. Furthermore, by displaying the notes that were viewed for a long time with increased color saturation, we made non-speaking participants’ opinions of agreement easily noticeable, which reduced the length of silences between participants and enabled the meeting to proceed more smoothly and for a longer time. In online meetings, shy people worry too much about how others will react and hesitate to express their opinions, but we think that if we can turn shy people into chatterboxes by visualizing their gaze, we can surely have more enjoyable discussions in future!

Dance Instrument and Projection Dance



Dance Instrument and Projection Dance

Dance Instrument is a new expression tool for dancers. In breakdancing, dancers take part in dance battles in which opponents compete by demonstrating their dance skills. Dance Instrument plays impressive sound effects at appropriate moments during dance, in time with the BGM. Projection Dance produces slick visual effects. Producing sound effects and visual effects just at the right moment – there is actually an amazing technology behind that.

Accomplishment
Fujimoto, M., Fujita, N., Takegawa Y., Terada, T., and Tsukamoto, M., “Musical B-boying: a Wearable Musical Instrument by Dancing,” Proceeding of the 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC2008), pp. 155–160 (Sep. 2008).
Fujimoto, M., Fujita, N., Takegawa, Y., Terada, T., and Tsukamoto M., “A Motion Recognition Method for a Wearable Dancing Musical Instrument,” Proceeding of IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC2009), pp. 11–18 (Sep. 2009).

Baatarina



Support for finding your position in stage performance

A dancer or singer’s stage performance involves confirming his/her position on the stage in advance, during rehearsal. Performances will not necessarily always be given on the same stage. Stages come in all shapes and sizes and this greatly affects a performer’s position on the stage, especially in the case of dancers or singers. There are times when sufficient rehearsal time cannot be spent on confirming position. To enable a performer to check whether he/she is in the correct position, we attach an HMD (a glasses-type display). We support performance by displaying information on the HMD that allows the performer to confirm where he/she is on the stage and whether he/she is in the proper position.

Accomplishment
Ikeda, J., Takegawa, Y., Terada, T., and Tsukamoto, M., “Evaluation on Performer Support Methods for Interactive Performances Using Projector,” iiWAS/MoMM2009 Special issue in Journal of Mobile Multimedia (JMM), Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 207–226 (Sep. 2010).

AnoPers



Imagining and drawing a motif seen from a different perspective

When beginners learn digital illustration, they tend to practice by copying or sketching flat images, whereas in reality the quickest way to improve is to practice drawing three dimensional motifs as much as possible. In the proposed system, the learner repeatedly performs the training task of imagining how a three-dimensional motif, displayed on a computer, looks from a specified viewpoint and drawing it. The learner can use the computer interface to change the viewpoint. However, to prevent the learner from seeing the correct answer, there is a fixed area, centered on the specified viewpoint, that cannot be viewed. This idea was partly informed by a type of spatial awareness training called mental rotation. The results of an experiment showed that the system improved users’ ability to draw angle, size and position both accurately and three-dimensionally. Having a grasp on three-dimensional drawing enables an illustrator to draw the kind of difficult compositions, involving low angles and overhead views, that are used in action-packed manga.

Teacher with a Knack for Analogy



Teaching through comparison to daily movements

In sport or playing instruments, when using the body in a different way from in everyday life, it can be difficult to visualize what you need to do to master certain skills. `Teacher with a knack for analogy’, uses comparison to everyday actions to teach those ways of using the body that are difficult to visualize. By inputting all kinds of everyday action, this system can tell you the daily action in which the way you use your body is closest to the action of a professional. When you learn which of your everyday actions is similar to the action of a pro, you can more rapidly become competent at a sport or an instrument.