Meetings and Meeting Modeling in Smart Environments

In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear

Towards FollowMe User Profiles for Macro Intelligent Environments

We envision an Ambient Intelligent Environment as an environment with technology embedded within the framework of that environment to help enhance an users experience in that environment. Existing implementations , while working effectively, are themselves an expensive and time consuming investment. Applying the same expertise to an environment on a monolithic scale is very inefficient, and thus, will require a different approach. In this paper, we present this problem, propose theoretical solutions that would solve this problem, with the guise of experimentally verifying and comparing these approaches, as well as a formal method to model the entire scenario

What Would You Ask to Your Home if It Were Intelligent? Exploring User Expectations about Next-Generation Homes

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) research is giving birth to a multitude of futuristic home scenarios and applications; however a clear discrepancy between current installations and research-level designs can be easily noticed. Whether this gap is due to the natural distance between research and engineered applications or to mismatching of needs and solutions remains to be understood. This paper discusses the results of a survey about user expectations with respect to intelligent homes. Starting from a very simple and open question about what users would ask to their intelligent homes, we derived user perceptions about what intelligent homes can do, and we analyzed to what extent current research solutions, as well as commercially available systems, address these emerging needs. Interestingly, most user concerns about smart homes involve comfort and household tasks and most of them can be currently addressed by existing commercial systems, or by suitable combinations of them. A clear trend emerges from the poll findings: the technical gap between user expectations and current solutions is actually narrower and easier to bridge than it may appear, but users perceive this gap as wide and limiting, thus requiring the AmI community to establish a more effective communication with final users, with an increased attention to real-world deploymen

Mixed reality participants in smart meeting rooms and smart home enviroments

Human–computer interaction requires modeling of the user. A user profile typically contains preferences, interests, characteristics, and interaction behavior. However, in its multimodal interaction with a smart environment the user displays characteristics that show how the user, not necessarily consciously, verbally and nonverbally provides the smart environment with useful input and feedback. Especially in ambient intelligence environments we encounter situations where the environment supports interaction between the environment, smart objects (e.g., mobile robots, smart furniture) and human participants in the environment. Therefore it is useful for the profile to contain a physical representation of the user obtained by multi-modal capturing techniques. We discuss the modeling and simulation of interacting participants in a virtual meeting room, we discuss how remote meeting participants can take part in meeting activities and they have some observations on translating research results to smart home environments

'Girlfriends and Strawberry Jam’: Tagging Memories, Experiences, and Events for Future Retrieval

In this short paper we have some preliminary thoughts about tagging everyday life events in order to allow future retrieval of events or experiences related to events. Elaboration of these thoughts will be done in the context of the recently started Network of Excellence PetaMedia (Peer-to-Peer Tagged Media) and the Network of Excellence SSPNet (Social Signal Processing), to start in 2009, both funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme. Descriptions of these networks will be given later in this paper

Is Ambient Intelligence a truly Human-Centric Paradigm in Industry? Current Research and Application Scenario

The use of pervasive networked devices is nowadays a reality in the service sector. It impacts almost all aspects of our daily lives, although most times we are not aware of its influence. This is a fundamental characteristic of the concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). Ambient Intelligence aims to change the form of human-computer interaction, focusing on the user needs so they can interact in a more seamless way, with emphasis on greater user-friendliness. The idea of recognizing people and their context situation is not new and has been successfully applied with limitations, for instance, in the health and military sectors. However its appearance in the manufacturing industry has been elusive. Could the concept of AmI turn the current shop floor into a truly human centric environment enabling comprehensive reaction to human presence and action? In this article an AmI scenario is presented and detailed with applications in human’s integrity and safety.Ambient Intelligence, networks, human-computer interaction