Toward New Ecologies of Cyberphysical Representational Forms, Scales, and Modalities

Research on tangible user interfaces commonly focuses on tangible interfaces acting alone or in comparison with screen-based multi-touch or graphical interfaces. In contrast, hybrid approaches can be seen as the norm for established mainstream interaction paradigms. This dissertation describes interfaces that support complementary information mediations, representational forms, and scales toward an ecology of systems embodying hybrid interaction modalities. I investigate systems combining tangible and multi-touch, as well as systems combining tangible and virtual reality interaction. For each of them, I describe work focusing on design and fabrication aspects, as well as work focusing on reproducibility, engagement, legibility, and perception aspects

Encoding data into physical objects with digitally fabricated textures

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-128).This thesis presents and outlines a system for encoding physical passive objects with deterministic surface features that contain identifying information about that object. The goal of such work is to take steps towards a self-descriptive universe in which all objects contain within their physical structure hooks to information about how they can be used, how they can be fixed, what they're used for, who uses them, etc. By exploring modern manufacturing processes, several techniques for creating these deterministic textures are presented. Of high importance is the advancement of 3D printing technologies. By leveraging the rapid prototyping capabilities such machines offer, this thesis looks at how personalized objects and draft models may be encoded with data that allows annotations, ideas, and notes to be associated with physical points across that object. Whereas barcodes, QR codes, and RFID tags are often used to associate a single object with a single piece of data, this technique of encoding surfaces will allow for many points of identification to be placed on a single object, enabling applications in learning, group interaction, and gaming.by Travis Rich.S.M

A Mixed Reality Approach to 3D Interactive Prototyping for Participatory Design of Ambient Intelligence

Ambient Intelligence (AmI in short) is a multi-disciplinary approach aimed at enriching physical environments with a network of distributed devices in order to support humans in achieving their everyday goals. However, in current research and development, AmI is still largely considered within the engineering domain bearing undeveloped relationship with architecture. The fact that architecture design substantially aims to address the requirements of supporting people in carrying out their everyday life activities, tasks and practices with spatial strategies. These are common to the AmI’s objectives and purposes, and we aim at considering the possibilities or even necessities of investigating the potential design approach accessible to an architectural context. For end users, AmI is a new type of service. Designing and evaluating the AmI experience before resources are spent on designing the processes and technology needed to eventually run the service can save large amounts of time and money. Therefore, it is essential to create an environment in which designers can involve real people in trying out the service design proposals as early as possible in the design process. Existing cases related to stakeholder engaged design of AmI have primarily focused on engineering implementation and generally only present final outcome to stakeholders for user evaluation. Researchers have been able to build AmI prototypes for design communication. However, most of these prototypes are typically built without the involvement of stakeholders and architects in their conceptual design stage. Using concepts solely designed by engineers may not be user centric and even contain safety risks. The key research question of this thesis is: “How can Ambient Intelligence be designed through a participatory process that involves stakeholders and prospective users?" The thesis consists of the following five components: 1) Identification of a novel participatory design process for modelling AmI scenarios; 2) Identification of the requirements to support prototyping of AmI design, resulting in a conceptual framework that both "lowers the floor" (i.e. making it easier for designers to build the AmI prototypes) and "raises the ceiling" (i.e. increasing the ability of stakeholders and end users to participate in the design process deeply); i 3) Prototyping an experimental Mixed Reality Modelling (MRM in short) platform to facilitate the participatory design of AmI that supports the requirements, design process, and scenarios prototyping; 4) Case study of applying MRM platform to participatory design of a Smart Laser Cutting Workshop(LCW in short) which used to evaluate the proposed MRM based AmI design approach. The result of the research shows that the MRM based participatory design approach is able to support the design of AmI effectively

Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Production Systems and Logistics (CPSL 2021)

Proceedings of the CPSL 202

Global Shipping Container Monitoring Using Machine Learning with Multi-Sensor Hubs and Catadioptric Imaging

We describe a framework for global shipping container monitoring using machine learning with multi-sensor hubs and infrared catadioptric imaging. A wireless mesh radio satellite tag architecture provides connectivity anywhere in the world which is a significant improvement to legacy methods. We discuss the design and testing of a low-cost long-wave infrared catadioptric imaging device and multi-sensor hub combination as an intelligent edge computing system that, when equipped with physics-based machine learning algorithms, can interpret the scene inside a shipping container to make efficient use of expensive communications bandwidth. The histogram of oriented gradients and T-channel (HOG+) feature as introduced for human detection on low-resolution infrared catadioptric images is shown to be effective for various mirror shapes designed to give wide volume coverage with controlled distortion. Initial results for through-metal communication with ultrasonic guided waves show promise using the Dynamic Wavelet Fingerprint Technique (DWFT) to identify Lamb waves in a complicated ultrasonic signal

A Survey of the European Security Market

This document synthesizes the results of the research made on the European security market. It deals with questions of interest regarding the provision of security goods and services for protecting society from terrorism and organised crime. It explores issues such as market revenues, demand and supply, industrial capabilities, technology, research and development, innovation, business strategies, competition as well as market structure, agents' conduct and economic performance. The research has been based upon desk analysis of open source information related to the security market. Economic theory and critical analysis has been applied to understand the gathered information, derive knowledge, point out key issues and assess trends and drivers that will likely shape the sector's future. The study is the outcome of the working package number 5 included in the research project A new Agenda for European Security Economics (EUSECON). This project with code number 218195 has been financed by the European Commission within the 7th European Research Framework Programme. The task has been performed by the company ISDEFE according to the scope and work plan described in the EUSECON proposal. The author wishes to express his appreciation to all the individuals that have provided input and valuable comments to this study, including anonymous referees. Any flaws or omissions contained in this document are solely the responsibility of the author.

Capacitive Sensing and Communication for Ubiquitous Interaction and Environmental Perception

During the last decade, the functionalities of electronic devices within a living environment constantly increased. Besides the personal computer, now tablet PCs, smart household appliances, and smartwatches enriched the technology landscape. The trend towards an ever-growing number of computing systems has resulted in many highly heterogeneous human-machine interfaces. Users are forced to adapt to technology instead of having the technology adapt to them. Gathering context information about the user is a key factor for improving the interaction experience. Emerging wearable devices show the benefits of sophisticated sensors which make interaction more efficient, natural, and enjoyable. However, many technologies still lack of these desirable properties, motivating me to work towards new ways of sensing a user's actions and thus enriching the context. In my dissertation I follow a human-centric approach which ranges from sensing hand movements to recognizing whole-body interactions with objects. This goal can be approached with a vast variety of novel and existing sensing approaches. I focused on perceiving the environment with quasi-electrostatic fields by making use of capacitive coupling between devices and objects. Following this approach, it is possible to implement interfaces that are able to recognize gestures, body movements and manipulations of the environment at typical distances up to 50cm. These sensors usually have a limited resolution and can be sensitive to other conductive objects or electrical devices that affect electric fields. The technique allows for designing very energy-efficient and high-speed sensors that can be deployed unobtrusively underneath any kind of non-conductive surface. Compared to other sensing techniques, exploiting capacitive coupling also has a low impact on a user's perceived privacy. In this work, I also aim at enhancing the interaction experience with new perceptional capabilities based on capacitive coupling. I follow a bottom-up methodology and begin by presenting two low-level approaches for environmental perception. In order to perceive a user in detail, I present a rapid prototyping toolkit for capacitive proximity sensing. The prototyping toolkit shows significant advancements in terms of temporal and spatial resolution. Due to some limitations, namely the inability to determine the identity and fine-grained manipulations of objects, I contribute a generic method for communications based on capacitive coupling. The method allows for designing highly interactive systems that can exchange information through air and the human body. I furthermore show how human body parts can be recognized from capacitive proximity sensors. The method is able to extract multiple object parameters and track body parts in real-time. I conclude my thesis with contributions in the domain of context-aware devices and explicit gesture-recognition systems

Privacy-invading technologies : safeguarding privacy, liberty & security in the 21st century

With a focus on the growing development and deployment of the latest technologies that threaten privacy, the PhD dissertation argues that the US and UK legal frameworks, in their present form, are inadequate to defend privacy and other civil liberties against the intrusive capabilities of body scanners, CCTV microphones and loudspeakers, human-implantable microchips, and other privacy-intrusive technologies. While there are benefits derived from the use of these technologies in terms of public security, for instance, these benefits do not necessarily need to come at the expense of privacy and liberty overall. The interests of privacy, liberty and security can be balanced and safeguarded concurrently. In order to accomplish this worthy objective, new laws must further regulate directly and proactively the design and manufacture of these privacy-intrusive technologies in the first place, rather than only regulate their use or operation. Manufacturer-level rules/regulations should, therefore, require the incorporation of the fundamental privacy principles through what is known as __Privacy by Design__.LEI Universiteit LeidenEffective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

Hybrid modeling to support the smart manufacturing: concepts, theoretic contributions and real-case applications about Hybrid and Wisdom-based Systems

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Sensor-based management systems based on RFID technology

Παρατηρήσεις έκδοσης: λείπουν οι σελίδες 78, 102 από το φυσικό τεκμήριο.In this diploma thesis, the RFID technology is analyzed (operating principles, readers' and tags hardware, coding, modulation, anticollision procedures, frequencies, standards, applications). Moreover, a protocol to synchronize readers working in a multi-reader multi-tag environment is proposed. The protocol is applied to the store shelf scanning application and further refined to meet the requirements of this specific application