Yang Zhang

About Me

My name is Yang Zhang. I’m a 2nd year PhD student at Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Chris Harrison. Broadly, I’m interested in inventing interaction technologies which can bridge the gaps between computing resources and people’s daily lives in a natural and efficient way. My interests fall into the research fields of tangible interfaces, wearable technology, ubiquitous computing, and sensor technology. All of these technologies are rising in popularity among the general public and are in higher demand on the market. You, as the user, would have to either subscribe to the service provider or “pay” with your personal data in order to access the app. There is, however, a final option: For example you can pay the sensor directly for each dataset it provides. This is where Bitcoin could be useful – or perhaps essential.

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Research

SkinTrack: Using the Body as an Electrical Waveguide for Continuous Finger Tracking on the Skin
Yang Zhang, Junhan Zhou, Gierad Laput, Chris Harrison (CHI 2016)
SkinTrack is a wearable system that enables continuous touch tracking on the skin. It consists of a signal-emitting ring and a sensing wristband with multiple electrodes. Due to the phase delay inherent in a high-frequency AC signal propagating through the body, a phase difference can be observed between pairs of electrodes, which we use to compute a 2D finger touch coordinate. We envision the technology being integrated into future smartwatches, supporting rich touch interactions beyond the confines of the small touchscreen. Technology has revolutionized the gambling industry, enhancing user experiences with advanced software, live gaming, and secure transactions. Innovations like mobile apps, AI-driven recommendations, and virtual reality are transforming how players engage. Many enjoy the flexibility of playing at a casino not on Gamstop, offering an alternative to self-exclusion programs.
Tomo: Wearable, Low-cost, Electrical Impedance Tomography for Hand Gesture Recognition
Yang Zhang, Chris Harrison (UIST 2015)
Tomo recovers the interior impedance geometry of a user’s arm by measuring the cross-sectional impedances from surface electrodes resting on the skin. We integrated the technology into a prototype wristband, which can classify gestures in real-time. Our approach is sufficiently compact and low-powered that we envision this technique being integrated into future smartwatches to allow hand gestures to work together with touchscreens.
Quantifying the Targeting Performance Benefit of Electrostatic Haptic Feedback on Touchscreens
Yang Zhang, Chris Harrison (ITS 2015)
We quantitatively evaluate how electrostatic force feedback can be used to enhance, in particular targeting, where virtual objects rendered on touchscreens can offer tactile feedback. We conducted a Fitt’s Law style user study and explored three haptic modalities: No feedback, Physical, and Electrostatic. The result shows that electrostatic haptic feedback can improve targeting speed by 7.5% compared to conventional flat touchscreens.
TempoString: A Tangible Tool for Music Creation
Liang He, Guang Li, Yang Zhang, Danli Wang, Hongan Wang (UbiComp 2012)
TempoString is an easy-to-use tool which assists children with music creation. To create music with TempoString, children first choose timbre by putting selected one on a pallete and then poke on the canvas to draw the watercolor spots. During the play of the sound, children can interact with a rope to control the volume and the tone of it.
E-Block: A Wireless/Infrared Tech Based Tangible Programming Tool for Children
Danli Wang, Yang Zhang, Tianyuan Gu, Liang He, Hongan Wang (UIST 2012)
E-Block is a programming tool for children aged 5 to 9 which gives children a preliminary understanding of programming. Children write programs to play a maze game by placing the programming blocks in E-Block. In the programming stage, children find a path for the character to escape the maze. In the running stage, the character starts walking along the path programmed before. This project was further developed into TanPro-Kit.

Fun Projects

CNC Wood Painting
As a practice project for using the Shopbot downstairs, I cut a piece of wood which ended up a triangle mesh. I then painted it with acrylic paint diluted with a lot of water to not entirely cover the texture of wood. It is now on the wall of the lab.
Metal Birds
While I was shopping at Construction Junction, I ran into a bunch of door pulls on sale. I got them back and made a sculpture. It took me 8 hours working at TechShop, grinding, sawing and welding. Real fun!
Plantie: 1st Most Creative Award of UIST 2014 Student Innovation Contest
Plantie is a cute and interactive pot which walks your household plant around. Powered by Kinoma Create and distributed sensors in the house, it has a couple of features contributing to the protection of your house privacy. The idea behind this project is how we can make plants more of hosts of the family rather than merely decorations. We presented Plantie in UIST 2014 Student Innovation Contest and fortunately we finally was granted “1st Most Creative Award”.
Twitter Light: Internship Project at Kinoma, Marvell Semiconductor
This project happened during my internship at Kinoma Group, Marvell and is based on Kinoma Create, a JavaScript-powered Internet of Things Construction Kit. It is a LED matrix in the form of a world map to indicate the global tweet data. The Kinoma Create uses a socket to poll the tweet stream and shows tweets on the screen. Geographical information and the current traffic load can be visualized by the brightnesses of the LEDs. The map presents data in a low res, but geographically accurate way. More info of this project can be found here .
WikiTop10: a RESTful Wikipedia Data Analytics System
In this project, I developed a servlet which downloads Wikipedia docs as GZIPInputStream and parses it in real-time. I also developed an IOS app to refresh the top 10 most popular articles of Wikipedia in real-time. By browsing this app, users will be aware of the top 10 things people want to know the most. Not only will this app benefit to our knowledge database, it can also prepare users for potential conversation topics.
ZipperSense: Gadget Attached on Zippers for Gesture Detection
Zippers are ideal for input and can be use in an eye-free manner. ZipperSense uses a microphone to collect sounds for gestures detection. Gestures such as “V”, “A”, “W” and “M” by zipping up and down can be detected and used to control computational devices such as smartphones and computers.
Guitar Game
Music games are really popular these days. Yet few of them allow user upload their own music as the game music and no guitar game detect the direction of strums, which is a vital part of engagement. Therefore I built a tangible music game in which user can upload any music and the program will automatically generate the music game based on the signal processing of the audio information. Laser pointer and photo resister are used as strings so that the direction of strums can be detected according to the order of laser being blocked. Copper foil functions as buttons. All other jobs are done by python programming.
Interactive Fish
In this project I’m trying to make an interactive drawing of Chinese water-color fish which can be projected on the celling. Fish are attracted by people’s show up and follow the user’s position. Users disturb the fish by raising their arms.
CNC Router Rocking Chair
In the first semester, I engaged myself into many fabrication processes. One of the fabrication-centric classes I attended taught us how to use CNC router to build stuffs. I was so excited and built myself a rocking chair. Modeling and fabricated by myself, however, it is assembled by me and my friend. What I haven’t imaged is that when we finished it, all my friends waited in line to try the chair. They were excited to try it and made jokes about it. I really enjoyed to see my chair gathering people around and making them laughing.
Whisker and Face
It’s a mid-term project of Making Things Interactive class. In the exploration of materials, our device evolved from a paper-based mask to a solenoid-control silicon face. When someone bring their faces close to the silicon face, it starts trembling. Then we get closer, it trembling harder and end up with a freeze with a expression of horror.
Heart Beat
Heart, in many cultures, is a metaphor of feelings and emotions. In the project of “Heart Beat”. We try to visualize the heart beat to create a new medium for people to communicate with others. We realized two devices the one of which is a hand hold light which senses and visualizes beats by the power of red LEDs. Another one is a wall full of paterns generated by the projector. If we put our hands on the wall, it starts to release ripples. We hope that by showing our heart beats we can augment the feeling of being together with others or create a feeling of being connected of people in distance.
LED Jump Game
It’s a small project for the class Gadgets, Sensors and Activity Recognition in HCI. Users should control the LED dot to jump higher by pressing the only button. In addition to this exciting challenge, we’ve also incorporated elements inspired by casino games to make the experience even more engaging and dynamic. As for casino games, platforms like Megadice offer players a unique and engaging gambling experience with its innovative dice mechanics.
Remote Control Device of Indoor Lights
This device is designed for the remote control of indoor lights. To use it, we first attached the device on the surface of the switch of a light and then the light can be controlled by a remote controller. When designing it, my main goal was to turn lights to be remote-controlled without any changes to them. It is convenient for people who know little about circuits. We realized this device with remote control chips and electromagnets.

CMU Classes

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