Generic framework for the personal omni-remote controller using M2MI

A Generic Framework for the Personal Omni-Remote Controller Using M2MI is a master’s thesis outlining a generic framework for the wireless omni-remote controller that controls neighboring appliances by using Many-to-Many Invocation (M2MI). M2MI is an object-oriented abstraction of broadcast communication. First, this paper introduces the history of remote controllers and analyzes omni-remote controller projects made by other researchers in this area, such as the Pebbles PDA project at Carnegie Mellon University and HP’s COOLTOWN project. Second, this paper depicts a generic framework of the personal omni-remote controller system including architecture, type hierarchy, and service discovery. In this framework, a module approach and a decentralized dual-mode service discovery scheme are introduced. When users request a certain type of service, their omni-remote controller application will first discover the available appliances in the vicinity and then bring up the corresponding control module for the target appliance. Thus, users can control the appliance through the User Interface of the control module. To join the omni-remote controller system, servers and clients need to follow the type hierarchy convention of the system. Finally, several implementations are given to show the control of different appliances with different capabilities. These appliances include thermostats, TVs with parental control, and washing machines

Evaluation of a fuzzy ontology based medical information system

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) requires appropriate information to be available to clinicians at the point of care. Electronic sources of information may fulfill this need but require a high level of skill to use successfully. This paper describes the rationale and initial testing of a system to allow collaborative search and ontology construction for professional groups in the health sector. The approach is based around the use of a browser using a fuzzy ontology based on the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). This approach may provide high quality information for professionals in the future

Medienkombinatorik für selektive Interface-Kulturen: Alternativen zu Paradigmen-geleiteten HCI-Entwicklungen

"Die langjährige Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte und Gegenwart von Interfaces und Interaktionsstilen von Informations- und Kommunikationstechniken in der Forschung und vor allem in der Lehre in der Elektrotechnik und Informatik vermittelte mir Einsichten, die die meist nur mit kurzen Zeithorizonten arbeitenden technisch-wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen nicht bieten. Die Langzeitperspektive ermöglicht konkretere Einblicke in die spezifische Entwicklungsdynamik von Bedienphilosophien und Bauweisen der Interfaces als die in der Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stark verbreiteten schematischen Entwicklungsphasenmodelle. Denn die HCI ist eine von vielen Faktoren abhängige Gestaltungsdisziplin, die weder einem szientistischen Stufenkonzept folgt noch einer klar definierbaren technischen, ökonomischen, sozialen oder kulturellen Eigenlogik unterliegt. Betrachtet man dagegen Positionspapiere der HCICommunity auf Fachtagungen und theoretische Grundsatzartikel in den Fachzeitschriften über einen längeren Zeitraum, so zeigt sich sehr deutlich, dass Erweiterungen des Designraums der HCI regelmäßig zu Neuformulierungen von Entwicklungsgesetzen führen, die die neue modale Qualität als logischen nächsten Schritt oder gar Zielpunkt der Entwicklung deklarieren (vgl hierzu Hellige 2008b, Kap. 1). Ich werde dies in einem ersten Abschnitt anhand von früheren und aktuellen Beispielen demonstrieren und dabei zugleich in einem Zeitraffer den Wandel der Entwicklungsschwerpunkte der HCI skizzieren. Im zweiten Abschnitt möchte ich dann zeigen, dass Entwicklungsrichtungen in der HCI durchaus widersprüchlich sind, so dass von einer verbindlichen Entwicklungslogik nicht die Rede sein kann. Vielmehr mischen neue Interfaces und Medien den jeweiligen technischen Mix neu auf, sie setzen die bestehenden Interface- und Medienkulturen aber nicht außer Kraft. Im dritten Abschnitt wird anstelle des Denkens in Phasenmodellen und vorgegebenen Entwicklungsrichtungen eine medienkombinatorische Betrachtungsweise empfohlen und in Ansätzen vorgeführt. Der letzte Abschnitt stellt aufschlussreiche Beispiele von auf universellen HCI-Paradigmen basierenden und medienkombinatorisch angelegten Design-Konzepten gegenüber." (Autorenreferat

Display computers

A Display Computer (DC) is an everyday object: Display Computer = Display + Computer. The “Display” part is the standard viewing surface found on everyday objects that conveys information or art. The “Computer” is found on the same everyday object; but by its ubiquitous nature, it will be relatively unnoticeable by the DC user, as it is manufactured “in the margins”. A DC may be mobile, moving with us as part of the everyday object we are using. DCs will be ubiquitous: “effectively invisible”, available at a glance, and seamlessly integrated into the environment. A DC should be an example of Weiser’s calm technology: encalming to the user, providing peripheral awareness without information overload. A DC should provide unremarkable computing in support of our daily routines in life. The nbaCub (nightly bedtime ambient Cues utility buddy) prototype illustrates a sample application of how DCs can be useful in the everyday environment of the home of the future. Embedding a computer into a toy, such that the display is the only visible portion, can present many opportunities for seamless and nontraditional uses of computing technology for our youngest user community. A field study was conducted in the home environment of a five-year old child over ten consecutive weeks as an informal, proof of concept of what Display Computers for children can look like and be used for in the near future. The personalized nbaCub provided lightweight, ambient information during the necessary daily routines of preparing for bed (evening routine) and preparing to go to school (morning routine). To further understand the child’s progress towards learning abstract concepts of time passage and routines, a novel “test by design” activity was included. Here, the role of the subject changed to primary designer/director. Final post-testing showed the subject knew both morning and bedtime routines very well and correctly answered seven of eight questions based on abstract images of time passage. Thus, the subject was in the process of learning the more abstract concept of time passage, but was not totally comfortable with the idea at the end of the study

A adopção de códigos visuais como modelo de interacção

Dissertação de Mestrado em Sistemas MóveisUma das características inerentes à computação ubíqua é o desvanecer da fronteira entre elementos físicos e elementos virtuais, para que a transição entre ambos possa ser efectuada de forma simples e natural. Nesse contexto de fusão físico-virtual, de interacção com o “computador” passa para uma interacção com o ambiente que rodeia a pessoa. A manipulação de objectos físicos tem consequências no mundo virtual e, de forma idêntica, os eventos no mundo virtual têm repercussões, ou efeitos, em objectos do mundo físico. Os códigos visuais visam afirmar-se como uma das tecnologias que poderá suportar esse tipo de interacções, servindo de fronteira entre ambos os mundos. Um código visual é uma pequena marca embebida num ambiente físico que, quando fotografada e interpretada utilizando, por exemplo, um telemóvel, permite abrir uma porta para um determinado serviço do mundo virtual. Apesar de ser frequentemente apresentada como uma tecnologia promissora nesses contextos, existem ainda poucos estudos sobre a adequação ou a aplicabilidade desta tecnologia como meio de interacção e suporte à fusão físico-virtual. Assim, este estudo possui como objectivo geral descobrir factores potenciadores ou condicionantes da adopção, por parte dos utilizadores, desta tecnologia como meio de interacção com um sistema. No sentido de atingir o objectivo proposto, efectuou-se um trabalho de campo que culminou no desenvolvimento de um protótipo para fornecer aos utilizadores uma aplicação real onde pudessem experimentar esta tecnologia, por um período razoável de tempo. A aplicação esteve disponível para testes durante três meses. Dos dados obtidos pode concluir-se que os códigos visuais, embora sejam suportados por um modelo de interacção simples, necessitam mesmo assim de uma breve introdução inicial. Este estudo permitiu também detectar algumas condicionantes funcionais, tendo no entanto sido notório que as condicionantes técnicas se revelaram muito mais preponderantes e exigentes. Aliado à imagem e primeira impressão da tecnologia, será determinante não existirem falhas, ou faltas de serviço, nas tentativas iniciais para assim se salvaguardar um futuro promissor. Finalmente, constatou-se também que os serviços disponibilizados são de extrema relevância para o êxito da adopção. Embora o factor curiosidade seja muito favorável aos códigos visuais, sem funcionalidades verdadeiramente desejadas pelos potenciais utilizadores, conseguir a sua adopção será muito difícil ou, pelo menos, tal não ocorrerá de forma espontânea ou sem a influência de terceiros.A particular characteristic of ubiquitous computing is to vanish the border between physical and virtual elements, so that transition between both is done as simple and natural as possible. In this physical-virtual merging context, instead of interaction with a “computer” is rather an interaction with a person’s environment. Interaction with physical objects has consequences in the virtual world and, on the same basis, events from the virtual world has repercussion, or effects, in the physical world. Visual codes aim to stand for as a valid technology to support this kind of interactions, handling in the edge of both worlds. A visual code is small mark embedded in a physical environment that, when photographed and interpreted by using, for instance, a mobile phone, allows one to open a door into a specific service in the virtual world. Although frequently named as a promising technology in theses contexts, few studies still available about it’s true applicability or adequacy as an interaction model and support technology for the physical-virtual merging concept. Thus, this study main goal is to discover enabling or disabling factors regarding the technology adoption, from the user’s point of view, as a valid interaction model with a system. In order to achieve proposed goal, work-field was done that led into a development of a prototype so that users could have the possibility to evaluate a real application where they could try the technology for a reasonable period of time. The application was available for testing during three months. From the data collected it could be concluded that visual codes, although supported by a simple interaction model, require an initial introduction, even though this can be achieved by a brief overview. This study also allowed to discover some functional constraints, however technical ones were broadly more relevant and far more demanding. Faults, or lack of service, during first user attempts will be critical, or causing great image recover effort, for the future success of the technology/application. Finally, it became obvious that deployed services are of extreme relevance for a success adoption technology story. Although people curiosity on the technology played favourable for the visual codes application, without functionalities truly desired by the potential users, obtain its adoption proved to be very difficult or, at least, will not occur in such a spontaneous and freely way

The remote configuration of devices within home entertainment networks

This thesis examines home entertainment network remote configuration solutions. It does so by inspecting four home entertainment networking solution specifications - HAVi, Jini, AV/C and UPnP. Two of these (AV/C and UPnP) are implemented partially for a system allowing a TV to configure an AudioNideo Receiver (AV/R) remotely on the network (a process known as remote configuration). The two implementations are then more closely investigated and several implementation differences in the approach between the remote configuration method of device configuration and other methods of device configuration are discerned. These different approaches are then categorised into one of two theoretical models of communication for configuring devices on home entertainment networks - the Rendering model and the Programmed model. By classifying a particular method of device configuration into one of the two models, manufacturers can quickly determine the inherent strengths and weaknesses of that methodKMBT_363Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-i

An activity-centered ubiquitous computing framework for supporting occasional human activities in public places

Tese de doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de Informação (ramo de conhecimento em Sistemas de Computação e Comunicações)A major challenge to ubiquitous computing system designers is the provision of walk-up-and-use solutions for supporting activities performed by occasional visitors to a particular place. When arriving for the first time to a particular place, occasional visitors have little or no idea about what the local environment is providing to support their activity. Furthermore, this support has to be self-explainable and quickly learnable, as occasional visitors are not prepared to interact with an unknown system and do not have time to spend understanding and learning how to use new tools. Ubiquitous computing environments promise to transparently support people in their daily activities by leveraging computing resources existent in the physical environment. Ubiquitous computing can greatly enhance the experience of occasional visitors to public spaces, by offering effective and transparent means for achieving their activities. Moreover, ubiquitous computing interaction artefacts are becoming increasingly cheap, thus allowing for widespread availability throughout public spaces. However, there is still much to do to achieve the vision of a computing system that requires little or no attention at all, so that humans can use the computer unconsciously. Ideally, people should perform an activity requiring computing tools as they perform any other activity, by focusing on the activity itself, and using the computing tool as naturally as other tools. There is thus the need to center the design and development of ubiquitous systems in the human activity, in order to bring computing closer to people and to transparently support activities that take place in the physical world. This work thus follows an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing and contributes with ActivitySpot, an activity-centered conceptual and software framework targeted at providing ubiquitous computing support for occasional visitors to public spaces. The conceptual framework aims at modelling human activity and user interaction with the ubiquitous computing system. Undertaking an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing system design requires an understanding of how humans think about and carry out their activities. Therefore, this research is grounded on previous work on human activity analysis, namely Activity Theory, a conceptual framework for analyzing human activity developed during the twentieth century. The software framework includes a ubiquitous computing infrastructure for providing the actual support to occasional visitors, tools for deploying ubiquitous computing solutions by non-computer-expert public space administrators, and a software library for developing the support to new activities. Both the conceptual and software framework have been evaluated by a series of end-user studies which showed that ActivitySpot is effective for walk-up-and-use systems, making user interaction with a ubiquitous computing system almost as natural as interacting with other everyday tools. The majority of users clearly reported that ActivitySpot fostered learnability and usability. The choice of using elementary, everyday interaction means with a simple stimulus-response interaction model was also fundamental in the success with end-users. Moreover, the ActivitySpot software framework enables rapid development of the support for new activities and actions, by means of a software library for developers, as well as it eases the deployment and configuration of that support, by means of a graphical user interface authoring tool for public space managers.Um dos maiores desafios para quem desenha sistemas de computação ubíqua é o fornecimento de soluções que favoreçam a interacção espontânea, sem treino prévio, sobretudo as destinadas a suportar actividades realizadas por visitantes ocasionais de um determinado lugar. Quando chegam pela primeira vez a um determinado lugar, os visitantes sabem pouco ou nada sobre o que é disponibilizado para facilitar a sua visita. Além disso, o suporte fornecido tem de ter características que permitam uma aprendizagem rápida da sua utilização, visto que os visitantes ocasionais não estão preparados para interagir com um sistema desconhecido e não têm tempo para aprender a usar novas ferramentas. A computação ubíqua promete ajudar, de modo transparente, as pessoas nas suas actividades diárias, tirando partido dos recursos de computação existentes no ambiente físico. A computação ubíqua pode deveras melhorar a experiência dos visitantes ocasionais de espaços públicos, oferecendo-lhes meios transparentes e eficazes para levarem a cabo as suas actividades. Além disso, os artefactos de computação ubíqua estão a tornar-se cada vez mais acessíveis, havendo pois condições para uma disponibilidade alargada na generalidade dos espaços públicos. No entanto, há ainda muito a fazer para concretizar a visão de um sistema de computação que requeira pouca ou nenhuma atenção por parte dos utilizadores. Idealmente, as pessoas deveriam executar uma actividade que requeira ferramentas de computação com a mesma facilidade com que executam outras actividades, focando-se na própria actividade e utilizando as ferramentas de computação tão naturalmente como utilizam outras ferramentas. Há pois a necessidade de centrar o desenho e o desenvolvimento de sistemas ubíquos na actividade humana, de modo a aproximar a computação das pessoas e a suportar de maneira transparente as actividades que têm lugar no mundo físico. Este trabalho segue, portanto, uma abordagem centrada na actividade e contribui com o ActivitySpot, uma plataforma conceptual e de software, centrada na actividade, destinada a fornecer suporte de computação ubíqua para visitantes ocasionais de espaços públicos. A plataforma conceptual pretende modelar a actividade humana e a interacção com o sistema de computação ubíqua. A opção pela abordagem centrada na actividade requer o entendimento sobre como os humanos pensam e executam as suas actividades. É, pois, por isso que esta investigação é baseada em trabalho prévio na área de análise de actividades humanas, nomeadamente na Teoria da Actividade, um modelo conceptual de análise da actividade humana, desenvolvido durante o século XX. A plataforma de software inclui uma infra-estrutura de computação ubíqua destinada a suportar as actividades de visitantes ocasionais, ferramentas para a instalação de soluções de computação ubíqua por parte de administradores de espaços públicos que não dominem necessariamente ferramentas computacionais, e uma biblioteca de software para o desenvolvimento do suporte a novas actividades. Ambas as plataformas foram avaliadas por uma série de estudos com utilizadores. Estes estudos demonstraram que o ActivitySpot é eficaz em situações de utilização espontânea de sistemas que não tenham sido objecto de treino prévio, tornando a interacção com um sistema de computação ubíqua tão natural como a interacção com outras ferramentas do dia-a-dia. A maioria dos utilizadores relatou claramente que o ActivitySpot fomentou a fácil aprendizagem e utilização. A opção pela utilização de meios de interacção elementares e de uso diário e de um modelo de interacção simples, baseado no conceito de estímulo-resposta, foi igualmente fundamental no sucesso obtido com a utilização do sistema. Além disso, verificou-se que a plataforma ActivitySpot permite o rápido desenvolvimento de suporte a novas actividades e acções, através da biblioteca de software, assim como facilita a instalação e configuração do suporte às actividades, por meio de uma ferramenta gráfica de edição destinada a gestores de espaços públicos.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

A paradigm of an interaction context-aware pervasive multimodal multimedia computing system

Communication is a very important aspect of human life; it is communication that helps human beings to connect with each other as individuals and as independent groups. Communication is the fulcrum that drives all human developments in all fields. In informatics, one of the main purposes of the existence of computer is information dissemination – to be able to send and receive information. Humans are quite successful in conveying ideas to one another, and reacting appropriately. This is due to the fact that we share the richness of the language, have a common understanding of how things work and an implicit understanding of everyday situations. When humans communicate with humans, they comprehend the information that is apparent to the current situation, or context, hence increasing the conversational bandwidth. This ability to convey ideas, however, does not transfer when humans interact with computers. On its own, computers do not understand our language, do not understand how the world works and cannot sense information about the current situation. In a typical computing set-up where we have an impoverished typical mechanism for providing computer with information using mouse, keyboard and screen, the end result is we explicitly provide information to computers, producing an effect that is contrary to the promise of transparency and calm technology in Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous computing (Weiser 1991; Weiser and Brown 1996). To reverse this trend, it is imperative that we researchers find ways that will enable computers to have access to context. It is through context-awareness that we can increase the richness of communication in human-computer interaction, through which we can reap the most likely benefit of more useful computational services. Context is a subjective idea as demonstrated by the state-of-the art in which each researcher has his own understanding of the term, which continues to evolve nonetheless. The acquisition of contextual information is essential but it is the end user, however, that will have the final say as to whether the envisioned context is correctly captured/acquired or not. Current literature informs us that some contextual information is already predefined by some researchers from the very beginning – this is correct if the application domain is fixed but is incorrect if we infer that a typical user does different computing tasks on different occasions. With the aim of coming up with more conclusive and inclusive design, we conjecture that what contextual information should be left to the judgment of the end user who is the one that has the knowledge determine which information is important to him and which is not. This leads us to the concept of incremental acquisition of context where context parameters are added, modified or deleted one context parameter at a time. In conjunction with our idea of inclusive context, we broaden the notion of context that it has become context of interaction. Interaction context is the term that is used to refer to the collective context of the user (i.e. user context), of his working environment (i.e. environmental context) and of his computing system (i.e. system context). Logically and mathematically, each of these interaction context elements – user context, environment context and system context – is composed of various parameters that describe the state of the user, of his workplace and his computing resources as he undertakes an activity in accomplishing his computing task, and each of these parameters may evolve over time. For example, user location is a user context parameter and its value will evolve as the user moves from one place to another. The same can be said about noise level as an environment context parameter; its value evolves over time. The same can be said with available bandwidth that continuously evolves which we consider as a system context parameter. To realize the incremental definition of incremental context, we have developed a tool called the virtual machine for incremental interaction context. This tool can be used to add, modify and delete a context parameter on one hand and determine the sensor-based context (i.e. context that is based on parameters whose values are obtained from raw data supplied by sensors) on the other. In order to obtain the full benefit of the richness of interaction context with regards to communication in human-machine interaction, the modality of interaction should not be limited to the traditional use of mouse-keyboard-screen alone. Multimodality allows for a much wider range of modes and forms of communication, selected and adapted to suit the given user’s context of interaction, by which the end user can transmit data to the computer and computer can respond or yield results to the user’s queries. In multimodal communication, the weaknesses of one mode of interaction, with regards to its suitability to a given situation, is compensated by replacing it with another mode of communication that is more suitable to the situation. For example, when the environment becomes disturbingly noisy, using voice may not be the ideal mode to input data; instead, the user may opt for transmitting text or visual information. Multimodality also promotes inclusive informatics as those with a permanent or temporary disability are given the opportunity to use and benefit from information technology advancement. For example, the work on presentation of mathematical expressions to visually-impaired users (Awdé 2009) would not have been made possible without multimodality. With mobile computing within our midst coupled with wireless communication that allows access to information and services, pervasive and adaptive multimodality is more than ever apt to enrich communication in human-computer interaction and in providing the most suitable modes for data input and output in relation to the evolving interaction context. A look back at the state of the art informs us that a great amount of effort was expended in finding the definition of context, in the acquisition of context, in the dissemination of context and the exploitation of context within a system that has a fixed domain of application (e.g. healthcare, education, etc.). Also, another close look tells us that much research efforts on ubiquitous computing were devoted to various application domains (e.g. identifying the user whereabouts, identifying services and tools, etc.) but there is rarely, if ever, an effort made to make multimodality pervasive and accessible to various user situations. In this regard, we come up with a research work that will provide for the missing link. Our work – the paradigm of an interaction context-sensitive pervasive multimodal multimedia computing system is an architectural design that exhibits adaptability to a much larger context called interaction context. It is intelligent and pervasive, meaning it is functional even when the end user is stationary or on the go. It is conceived with two purposes in mind. First, given an instance of interaction context, one which evolves over time, our system determines the optimal modalities that suit such interaction context. By optimal, we mean a selection decision on appropriate multimodality based on the given interaction context, available media devices that support the modalities and user preferences. We designed a mechanism (i.e. a paradigm) that will do this task and simulated its functionality with success. This mechanism employs machine learning (Mitchell 1997; Alpaydin 2004; Hina, Tadj et al. 2006) and uses case-based reasoning with supervised learning (Kolodner 1993; Lajmi, Ghedira et al. 2007). An input to this decision-making component is an instance of interaction context and its output is the optimal modality and its associated media devices that are for activation. This mechanism is continuously monitoring the user’s context of interaction and on behalf of the user continuously adapts accordingly. This adaptation is through dynamic reconfiguration of the pervasive multimodal system’s architecture. Second, given an instance of interaction context and the user’s task and preferences, we designed a mechanism that allows the automatic selection of user’s applications, the preferred suppliers to these applications and the preferred quality of service (QoS) dimensions’ configurations of these suppliers. This mechanism does its task in consultation with computing resources, sensing the available suppliers and possible configuration restrictions within the given computing set-up. Apart from the above-mentioned mechanisms, we also formulated scenarios as to how a computing system must provide the user interface given that we have already identified the optimal modalities that suit the user’s context of interaction. We present possible configurations of unimodal and bimodal interfaces based on the given interaction context as well as user preferences. Our work is different from previous work in that while other systems capture, disseminate and consume context to suit the preferred domain of application, ours captures the interaction context and reconfigures its architecture dynamically in generic fashion in order that the user could continue working on his task anytime, anywhere he wishes regardless of the application domain the user wishes to undertake. In effect, the system that we have designed along with all of its mechanisms, being generic in design, can be adapted or integrated with ease or with very little modification into various computing systems of various domains of applications. Simulations and mathematical formulations were provided to support our ideas and concepts related to the design of the paradigm. An actual program in Java was developed to support our concept of a virtual machine for incremental interaction context