A plug and play spoken dialogue interface for smart environments

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24630-5_44Proceedings of 5th International Conference, CICLing 2004 Seoul, Korea, February 15-21, 2004In this paper we present a plug and play dialogue system for smart environments. The environment description and its state are stored on a domain ontology. This ontology is formed by entities that represent real world contextual information and abstract concepts. This information is complemented with linguistic parts that allow to automatically create a spoken interface for the environment. The spoken interface is based on multiple dialogues, related to every ontology entity with linguistic information. Firstly, the dialogue system creates appropriate grammars for the dialogues. Secondly, it creates the dialogue parts, employing a tree structure. Grammars support the recognition process and the dialogue tree supports the interpretation and generation processes. The system is being tested with a prototype formed by a living room. Users may interact with and modify the physical state of this living room environment by means of the spoken dialogue interface.This paper has been sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, project number TIC2000-046

Taxonomic Classification of IoT Smart Home Voice Control

Voice control in the smart home is commonplace, enabling the convenient control of smart home Internet of Things hubs, gateways and devices, along with information seeking dialogues. Cloud-based voice assistants are used to facilitate the interaction, yet privacy concerns surround the cloud analysis of data. To what extent can voice control be performed using purely local computation, to ensure user data remains private? In this paper we present a taxonomy of the voice control technologies present in commercial smart home systems. We first review literature on the topic, and summarise relevant work categorising IoT devices and voice control in the home. The taxonomic classification of these entities is then presented, and we analyse our findings. Following on, we turn to academic efforts in implementing and evaluating voice-controlled smart home set-ups, and we then discuss open-source libraries and devices that are applicable to the design of a privacy-preserving voice assistant for smart homes and the IoT. Towards the end, we consider additional technologies and methods that could support a cloud-free voice assistant, and conclude the work

An approach to develop intelligent learning environments by means of immersive virtual worlds

Merging Immersive Virtual Environments, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques provides a number of advantages to develop Intelligent Environments for multiple applications. This paper is focused on the application of these technologies to develop intelligent learning environments. Education is one of the most interesting applications of immersive virtual environments, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. We highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. Our proposal has been applied in several subjects of the Computer Science degree in the Carlos III University of Madrid. The results of the evaluation show that developed learning environment fosters engagement and collaboration and helps students to better understand complex concepts.This work was supported in part by Projects MINECO TEC2012-37832-C02-01, CICYT TEC2011-28626-C02-02, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485).Publicad

User Interface Abstraction for enabling TV set based Inclusive Access to the Information Society

199 p.The television (TV) set is present in most homes worldwide, and is the most used Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Despite its large implantation in the market, the interactive services consumption on TV set is limited. This thesis focuses on overcoming the following limiting factors: (i) limited Human Computer Interaction and (ii) lack of considering user’s real life context in the digital television (dTV) service integration strategy. Making interactive services accessible to TV set’s large user base, and especially to the most vulnerable ones, is understood as the path to integrate the mankind with the information society. This thesis explores the use of user interface abstraction technologies to reach the introduced goals. The main contributions of this thesis are: (i) an approach to enable the universally accessible remote control of the TV set, (ii) an approach for the provision of universally accessible interactive services through TV sets, and (iii) an approach for the provision of universally accessible services in the TV user’s real life context. We have implemented the contributing approaches for different use cases, and we have evaluated them with real users, achieving good results

An approach to develop intelligent learning environments by means of immersive virtual worlds

Merging Immersive Virtual Environments, Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence techniques provides a number of advantages to develop Intelligent Environments for multiple applications. This paper is focused on the application of these technologies to develop intelligent learning environments. Education is one of the most interesting applications of immersive virtual environments, as their flexibility can be exploited in order to create heterogeneous groups from all over the world who can collaborate synchronously in different virtual spaces. We highlight the potential of virtual worlds as an educative tool and propose a model to create learning environments within Second Life or OpenSimulator combining the Moodle learning management system, embodied conversational metabots, and programmable 3D objects. Our proposal has been applied in several subjects of the Computer Science degree in the Carlos III University of Madrid. The results of the evaluation show that developed learning environment fosters engagement and collaboration and helps students to better understand complex concepts.Spanish Government TEC2012-37832-C02-01Consejo Interinstitucional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CICYT) TEC2011-28626-C02-02Project CAM CONTEXTS S2009/TIC-148

Distributed schema-based middleware for ambient intelligence environments

In this work we present a middleware developed for Ambient Intelligence environments. The proposed model is based on the blackboard metaphor, which is logically centralized but physically distributed. Although it is based on a data-oriented model, some extra services have been added to this middle layer to improve the functionality of the modules that employ it. The system has been developed and tested in a real Ambient Intelligence environment.This work was partially funded by ASIES (Adapting Social & Intelligent Environments to Support people with special needs), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación – TIN2010-17344, e-Madrid (Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid) S2009/ TIC-1650 and Vesta (Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, TSI-020100-2009-828) projects

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Ifaces: Adaptative user interfaces for ambient intelligence

Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction. Amsterdam, The Netherlands 25-27 July 2008In this paper we present an ontology language to model an environment and its graphical user interface in the field of ambient intelligence. This language allows a simple definition of the environment and automatically produces its associated interaction interface. The interface dynamically readjusts to the characteristics of the environment and the available devices. Therefore it adapts to the necessities of the people who have to use it and their resources. The system has been developed and tested employing a real ambient intelligence environment.This work has been partly funded by HADA project number TIN2007 – 64718 and the UAM – Indra Chair in Ambient Intelligence

Speech Recognition of Aged Voices in the AAL Context: Detection of Distress Sentences

International audienceBy 2050, about a third of the French population will be over 65. In the context of technologies development aiming at helping aged people to live independently at home, the CIRDO project aims at implementing an ASR system into a social inclusion product designed for elderly people in order to detect distress situations. Speech recognition systems present higher word error rate when speech is uttered by elderly speakers compared to when non-aged voice is considered. Two specialized corpora in French, AD80 and ERES38, were recorded in this framework by aged people, they were used first to study the possibility of adaptation of standard ASR to aged voice. Then we looked at whether the variability of the WER between speakers could be correlated with the level of dependence. Then, we assessed the performance of distress sentence detection by a filter and we demonstrated a significant drop in performance for those with the lowest degree of autonomy