About Me
I am an embedded software engineer at AAVAA, where I develop applications and features for wearable devices aimed at improving accessibility for mobility-impaired individuals. I graduated with an MSc from McGill University, where I worked at the Shared Reality Lab under Jeremy Cooperstock's supervision. My research focused on improving accessibility of graphical content, through multimodal audio and haptic feedback.
I completed my Bachelors in Mechatronics Engineering. I have experience in haptic rendering, robotics, human-computer interaction, electronics, data analysis, and software design. Check out some of my projects below!
I enjoy hiking (especially on cold days!), volleyball, badminton, and
speedrunning.
Email: rayanisran@gmail.com
CV: PDF
Projects
Interactive Audio-Tactile Prototyping
Interactive Audio-Tactile Prototyping
The increasing use of haptic systems necessitates user-friendly software for creating interactive audio-haptic experiences. If you are an educator teaching the Cold War to blind students, it may be difficult to convey a graph such as the one on the left. To provide a potentially immersive user experience, we present a prototyping tool to easily and rapidly create multimodal audio-haptic designs on a Dot Pad Braille display.
The tool was created to support three goals:
1. Allow designers to control which tactile pins to render, to create a desired tactile image.
2. Provide an easy way to deliver targeted audio events upon touch inputs.
3. Automatically generate a predefined audio-haptic experience for selected types of graphics.
A rendering of the multi-line graph is shown on the left. Users can tap on points for audio readouts of values, or pan across the plots to listen to a reinforced spatial representation. We also focused on mappings to allow for simultaneous discrimination of multiple graphs.
More about the tool coming soon!
Collaborators:
Comparing Audio-Haptic Systems for Rendering Charts
Comparing Audio-Haptic Systems for Rendering Charts
A sonified chart. (best played using headphones with spatial audio capability)
In the past decade, there has been considerable research into the use of audio-tactile graphics to present information in charts to blind and low-vision (BLV) users, yet comparatively little into sonifications and force-feedback rendering techniques. As tactile displays are generally more expensive or require bespoke hardware, recent commercially available force-feedback devices such as the Haply 2diy could act as substitutes for BLV users if they are able to interpret graphical content to a similar level of accuracy.
We conducted a study to compare sonifications alone against sonifications combined with three distinct haptic conditions: two force-feedback methods, and a refreshable tactile approach. We analyze semi-structured interviews to understand user preferences among the modalities, and then discuss the implications of our results on future multimodal audio-haptic designs.
Publications:
Coming Soon!
Collaborators:
Sri Gannavarapu, Florian Grond, and Yongjae Yoo.
HandsUp: Integrating Real-World Gestures into Digital Meetings
HandsUp: Integrating Real-World Gestures into Digital Meetings (Human-Computer Interaction, Fall 2020)
A quick testing demo: gestures are used to respond to questions intentionally asked specifically to use them.
Popular videoconferencing apps like Zoom make it difficult for listeners to unobtrusively respond to a presenter. Zoom has attempted to allow users to signify indicators such as Raise Hand, Thumbs Up, and Thumbs Down, but the interface for doing so is hard to find and it is easy to miss the responses. Also, the responses do not decay, so unless the host clears all responses or all users undo their response after some time, the responses display even after becoming irrelevant!
HandsUp is a tool aimed at improving interactiveness in online classrooms. It contains both a hardware and software component. The hardware component consists of a wearable glove with embedded motions sensors that can identify basic predefined gestures and relay them to the computer interface. The software system is a desktop application that overlays a user interface on top of a videoconferencing window. The hardware and software systems are integrated to provide a seamless product that can efficiently translate hand gestures into highly visible indicators during a remote learning session.
Slides can be found here.
Collaborators:
Linnea Kirby, Sri Gannavarapu.
Evaluating Tactile Acuity on the Forearm
Evaluating Tactile Acuity on the Forearm
Perceptual acuity to vibrotactile stimuli is of fundamental importance to effective use of the haptic channel for communication. An understanding of the variation in this acuity across different regions of the body could be important to designers of wearable devices. We characterized the influence of both spatiotopic and proximodistal distance on vibrotactile frequency discrimination performance through two experiments involving stimuli delivered to the volar forearm. Although we did not find statistically significant results for either study, the trends are suggestive of frequency discrimination being best at greater spatiotopic distance and smaller interstimulus distance on the sites tested.
Paper:
Coming Soon!
Towards More Effective Data Visualizations with Haptics
Towards More Effective Data Visualizations with Haptics
In one mode, the user can search a data point to quickly navigate to it in a dense bubble plot.
Cognitive overload in complex multi-dimensional data visualization can cause challenges for users to comprehend, navigate, and determine statistical measures. To address this problem, we tested the feasibility of integrating vibrotactile and force-feedback haptics with bubble charts to test several haptic rendering techniques for visualizing data. The preliminary results suggest that force-feedback was effective in quickly navigating to points of interest in the data, and vibrotactile feedback was effective in representing higher dimensions and locating statistical measures of data.
Publications:
Towards More Effective Data Visualizations with Haptics. WHC ’21 | Video.
Collaborators:
Kattie Sepehri, Ahmed Anwar, and Karthik Theivendran.
Haptic Guidance to Navigate Photographs
Haptic Guidance to Navigate Photographs
Categorizing segments into seperate navigable layers on the Dot Pad.
The 2diy (top-right) can navigate to the outlined segments and objects (highlighted by the red and green dots) sequentially in the graphic, conveying their spatial location.
Widespread adoption of haptics for accessibility has been stymied by the high cost and limited availability of the necessary hardware. We intend to address this shortcoming through our work on IMAGE, an open-source web-based project that aims to provide intuitive audio-haptic translations of graphical web content. Current designs leverage force-feedback and tactile haptics.
As part of this project, I participated in brainstorming designs for audio-haptic experiences, created prototypes such as the ones on the left, and integrated the Haply 2diy force-feedback device into the extension—using it to implement an end-to-end audio-haptic experience.
Collaborators:
Yongjae Yoo, John Sulivan, Sri Gannavarapu, and Cyan Kuo.
Coastal Ocean Data Buoy
Coastal Ocean Data Buoy (BE Capstone Project, Fall 2016)
We designed and constructed a data buoy for measuring coastal wave-action. The design is based on a simple robust structure and mass-market electronics.
A significant dual-use feature of this design is that the structure can also be used for wave-energy generation, due to the isolated central structure of the shell. The electronics can be mounted in an easily-modified, rack configuration that can be removed from the buoy. In a wave-energy generation setup, the electronics rack would be removed and the central cylinder would become part of a linear-motion type generator.
At the moment, the buoy is dedicated to wave data collection, with an onboard inertial measurement unit and a radio-link to send real-time data to an offshore receiving unit. Basic GPS data are also transmitted. The buoy endurance is limited by the onboard, rechargeable batteries and is currently set to a maximum of 1.5 hours. Basic shakedown testing and data-fidelity checks were performed.
Read the final report here.
Or check out the slides and the poster!
ASMPad: IDE for Assembly
ASMPad: IDE for 65c816 Assembly (2011)
Finding it difficult to program in 65c816 Assembly with Notepad (and if you're wondering why I was interested in this language, it's because I was in the Super Nintendo ROM hacking scene back in the day!), I created an IDE that featured syntax highlighting, autocomplete, a built-in assembler, macros, a hex-editor, templates for boilerplate code, and much more!
Find the code on GitHub.
5-Band Audio Equalizer
5-Band Audio Equalizer (Fall 2020)
For ECSE 512 (Digital Signal Processing), I designed a 5-band audio equalizer and presented the MATLAB code and GUI implementation.
The equalizer was designed with five cutoff frequencies: a low-pass filter, three band-pass filters, and a high-pass filter. Implementation of the algorithm was tested by applying gains of +5 dB and -5 dB to each frequency band while keeping others unchanged at zero gain. Graphs that compare the frequency spectrum of the signal before and after equalization were created. The implementation allows the user to choose either music presets or their own values for the gain of each band.
Check out my final report here.
ClassSnap: Reminder for Lectures & Labs
ClassSnap: Reminder for Lectures & Labs
I found it difficult to keep track of my classes and labs (location and time) during my undergraduate studies, so I created an Android application to keep track of my schedule. At the start of each day, the application would send an overview of the daily schedule, and deliver a vibration 5 minutes prior to a class. Unfortunately, the user experience wasn't the best, but creating the tool was at least a valuable learning experience!
4 DoF Software-Controlled Robotic Arm
4 DoF Software-Controlled Robotic Arm
As our final project in undergraduate for ME 4802 (Robotics), Hunain Qazi and I constructed a 4 DoF robotic arm. We used SolidWorks for the mechanical design, and C#.NET for the programming. An easy to use, custom-developed language was created to sequentially send instructions to the servo motors through an Arduino mounted on the robot, and a PID controller was implemented for precise control.
Publications
Rayan Isran. 2023. Designing Audio-Haptic Systems to Render Charts for Blind Individuals. McGill University (Coming Soon!)
R. Isran, K. Sepehri, K. Theivendran and A. Anwar. 2021. Towards More Effective Data Visualization Methods Using Haptics. WHC '21.
Teaching
ECSE 421 - Embedded Systems
ECSE 421 - Embedded Systems (Winter 2021)
I was a Teaching Assistant for ECSE 421 - Embedded Systems, a final-year undergraduate course that provides with an emphasis on understanding the interaction between hardware, software, and the physical world. My responsibilities included designing assignments that involved using the Arduino Starter Kit (covering I/O, Finite-State Machines, Interrupts, and Discrete Systems), moderating course discussions, managing course logistics, and preparing a test bank and conducting oral quizzes.
ECSE 211 - Design Principles and Methods
ESCE 211 - Design Principles and Methods (Winter 2022, Fall 2022)
I was a teaching assistant for two semesters of ESCE 211 - Design Principles and Methods. This course introduces students to the concept of design specifications, meeting requirements, teamwork, testing, and resource management, emphasizing practical skills in designing, and presenting solutions. It includes a hands-on project component, in which a robot is designed using a Raspberry Pi and the Lego Mindstorm EV3 kit to perform a specific task.
As a TA, I supervised students on this project, provided mentoring and technical support, conducted weekly check-ins, held office hours, graded weekly lab exercises, and assisted groups with creating effective final presentations and reports.
Miscellaneous
GoldenEye 007 & Perfect Dark Speedrunning
Super Mario World ROM Hacking (Game Designing)
Super Mario World ROM Hacking (Game Designing)
From 2008 to 2012, I participated in the Super Mario World ROM hacking community. I designed several custom levels, participated in and won a level design competition, wrote tutorials on 65c816 Assembly, developed tools to streamline development, and created sprites, many of which are still used in popular ROM hacks today.
A GUI tool for creating sprites, thus abstracting away most of the low-level assembly code.
Persona 4 Watchface
Persona 4 Themed Watchface
This is a Persona 4 inspired watchface designed for the Garmin Forerunner 645. The app features heart rate, steps, distance, battery, temperature (feels like as well as actual), humidity, a Persona 4 Heads-Up Display, as well as a background that changes depending on the time of day or weather, based on the user's location. The app also features a special Dark Hour animation effect from Persona 3 if you look at the watch a few seconds before midnight strikes!
Find the code on GitHub.