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

Moving forward on u-healthcare: A framework for patient-centric

Delivering remote healthcare services without deteriorating the ‘patient experience’ requires building highly usable and adaptive applications. Efficient context data collection and management make possible to infer extra knowledge on the user’s situation, making easier the design of these advanced ubiquitous applications. This contribution, part of a work in progress which aims at building an operative AmI middleware, presents a generic architecture to provide u-healthcare services, to be delivered both in mobile and home environments. In particular, we address the design of the Context Management Component (CMC), the module that takes context data from the sensing layer and performs data fusion and reasoning to build an aggregated ‘context image’. We especially explain the requirements on data modelling and the functional features that are imposed to the CMC. The resulting logical multilayered architecture -composed by acquisition and fusion, inference and reasoning levels- is detailed, and the technologies needed to develop the Context Management Component are finally specifie

Interoperable services based on activity monitoring in ambient assisted living environments

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is considered as the main technological solution that will enable the aged and people in recovery to maintain their independence and a consequent high quality of life for a longer period of time than would otherwise be the case. This goal is achieved by monitoring human’s activities and deploying the appropriate collection of services to set environmental features and satisfy user preferences in a given context. However, both human monitoring and services deployment are particularly hard to accomplish due to the uncertainty and ambiguity characterising human actions, and heterogeneity of hardware devices composed in an AAL system. This research addresses both the aforementioned challenges by introducing 1) an innovative system, based on Self Organising Feature Map (SOFM), for automatically classifying the resting location of a moving object in an indoor environment and 2) a strategy able to generate context-aware based Fuzzy Markup Language (FML) services in order to maximize the users’ comfort and hardware interoperability level. The overall system runs on a distributed embedded platform with a specialised ceiling- mounted video sensor for intelligent activity monitoring. The system has the ability to learn resting locations, to measure overall activity levels, to detect specific events such as potential falls and to deploy the right sequence of fuzzy services modelled through FML for supporting people in that particular context. Experimental results show less than 20% classification error in monitoring human activities and providing the right set of services, showing the robustness of our approach over others in literature with minimal power consumption

Trust and Privacy Permissions for an Ambient World

Ambient intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions and augments the need to understand how people will trust such systems and at the same time achieve and maintain privacy. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios with a view to eliciting their privacy concerns. This chapter describes recent research related to privacy and trust with regard to ambient technology. The method used in the study is described and findings discussed

Hybrid system to analyze user's behaviour

The evolution of ambient intelligence systems has allowed for the development of adaptable systems. These systems trace user's habits in an automatic way and act accordingly, resulting in a context aware system. The goal is to make these systems adaptable to the user's environment, without the need for their direct interaction. This paper proposes a system that can learn from users' behavior. In order for the system to perform effectively, an adaptable multi agent system is proposed and the results are compared with the use of several classifiers

Hybrid Architecture to Support Context‐Aware Systems

Any system that is said to be context‐aware is capable of monitoring continuously the surrounding environment, that is, capable of prompt reaction to events and changing conditions of the environment. The main objective of a context‐aware system is to be continuously recognizing the state of the environment and the users present, in order to adjust the environment to an ideal state and to provide personalized information and services to users considering the user profile. In this chapter, we describe an architecture that relies on the incorporation of intelligent multi‐agent systems (MAS), sensor networks, mobile sensors, actuators, Web services and ontologies. We describe the interaction of these technologies into the architecture aiming at facilitating the construction of context‐aware systems

A survey on the evolution of the notion of context-awareness

The notion of Context has been considered for a long time in different areas of Computer Science. This article considers the use of context-based reasoning from the earlier perspective of AI as well as the newer developments in Ubiquitous Computing. Both communities have been somehow interested in the potential of context-reasoning to support real-time meaningful reactions from systems. We explain how the concept evolved in each of these different approaches. We found initially each of them considered this topic quite independently and separated from each other, however latest developments have started to show signs of cross-fertilization amongst these areas. The aim of our survey is to provide an understanding on the way context and context-reasoning were approached, to show that work in each area is complementary, and to highlight there are positive synergies arising amongst them. The overarching goal of this article is to encourage further and longer-term synergies between those interested in further understanding and using context-based reasoning

Human behaviour modelling in complex socio-technical systems : an agent based approach

For many years we have been striving to understand human behaviour and our interactions with our socio-technological environment. By advancing our knowledge in this area, we have helped the design of new or improved work processes and technologies. Historically, much of the work in analysing social interactions has been conducted within the social sciences. However, computer simulation has brought an extra tool in trying to understand and model human behaviours. Using an agent based approach this presentation describes my work in constructing computational models of human behaviour for informing design through simulation. With examples from projects in two main application areas of crisis and emergency management, and energy management I describe how my work addresses some main issues in agent based social simulation. The first concerns the process by which we develop these models. The second lies in the nature of socio-technical systems. Human societies are a perfect example of a complex system exhibiting characteristics of self-organisation, adaptability and showing emergent phenomena such as cooperation and robustness. I describe how complex systems theory may be applied to improve our understanding of socio-technical systems, and how our micro level interactions lead to emergent mutual awareness for problem-solving. From agent based simulation systems I show how context awareness may be modelled. Looking forward to the future, I discuss how the increasing prevalence of artificial agents in our society will cause us to re-examine the new types of interactions and cooperative behaviours that will emerge.Depuis de nombreuses années, nous nous sommes efforcés de comprendre le comportement humain et nos interactions avec l'environnement sociotechnique. Grâce à l'avancée de nos connaissances dans ce domaine, nous avons contribué à la conception de technologies et de processus de travail nouveaux ou améliorés. Historiquement, une part importante du travail d'analyse des interactions sociales fut entreprise au sein des sciences sociales. Cependant, la simulation informatique a apporté un nouvel outil pour tenter de comprendre et de modéliser les comportements humains. En utilisant une approche à base d'agents, cette présentation décrit mon travail sur la construction de modèles informatiques du comportement humain pour guider la conception par la simulation. A l'aide d'exemples issus de projets des deux domaines d'application que sont la gestion des crises et de l'urgence et la gestion de l'énergie, je décris comment mon travail aborde certains problèmes centraux à la simulation sociale à base d'agents. Le premier concerne le processus par lequel nous développons ces modèles. Le second problème provient de la nature des systèmes sociotechniques. Les sociétés humaines constituent un exemple parfait de système complexe possédant des caractéristiques d'auto-organisation et d'adaptabilité, et affichant des phénomènes émergents tels que la coopération et la robustesse. Je décris comment la théorie des systèmes complexes peut être appliquée pour améliorer notre compréhension des systèmes sociotechniques, et comment nos interactions au niveau microscopique mènent à l'émergence d'une conscience mutuelle pour la résolution de problèmes. A partir de systèmes de simulation à base d'agents, je montre comment la conscience du contexte peut être modélisée. En terme de perspectives, j'expliquerai comment la hausse de la prévalence des agents artificiels dans notre société nous forcera à considérer de nouveaux types d'interactions et de comportements coopératifs