FINE-GRAINED DYNAMIC VOLTAGE SCALING ON OLED DISPLAY

Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) has emerged as a new generation of display techniques for mobile devices. Emitting light with organic fluorescent materials OLED display panels are thinner, brighter, lighter, cheaper and more power efficient, compared to other display technologies such as Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD). In present mobile devices, due to the battery capacity limitation and increasing daily usage, the power efficiency significantly affect the general performance and user experience. However, display panel even built with OLEDs is still the biggest contributor to a mobile device’s total power consumption. In this thesis, a fine-grained dynamic voltage scaling (FDVS) technique is proposed to reduce the OLED display power consumption. In bottom level, based on dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) power optimization, a DVS-friendly AMOLED driver design is proposed to enhance the color accuracy of the OLED pixels under scaled down supply voltage. Correspondingly, the OLED panel is partitioned into multiple display sections and each section’s supply voltage is adaptively adjusted to implement fine-grained DVS with display content. When applied to display image, some optimization algorithm and methods are developed to select suitable scaled voltage and maintain display quality with Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), which is an image distortion evaluation criteria based on human vision system (HVS). Experimental results show that, the FDVS technique can achieve 28.44%~39.24% more power saving on images. Further analysis shows FDVS technology can also effectively reduce the color remapping cost when color compensation is required to improve the image quality of an OLED panel working at a scaled supplied voltage

The mobile information access experience - A user perspective

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Mobile technologies, such as mobile phones, smartphones and Palmtop computers, are in an upwards trend and earliest models of such devices are already available to end-users to communicate and access multimedia content on-the-move. As a logical outcome of this development in mobile technologies and devices, content provider companies have already started investing and piloting mobile multimedia content distribution and broadcasting technologies. Nevertheless, no matter how cutting-edge technology is and no matter how stylish the mobile devices are, the ultimate success of wireless communication technologies and devices are directly associated with the user adoption and embrace of these new equipment and technologies. In this perspective, since multimedia content, for mobile or not, is ultimately produced for the education and/or enjoyment of viewers, the user's perspective concerning the presentation quality is surely of equal importance as objective Quality of Service (QoS) technical parameters, to defining distributed multimedia quality. In order to comprehensively understand user experiences whilst accessing information using mobile devices and technologies, we investigate user-mobile device interaction and look into the surrounding issues in a uniform manner by combining multiple aspects: user initial device experience (Out-of-Box Experience), mobile information access in a real-world context, device impact on user information access and perceptually tailored multimedia content impact on user information assimilation and satisfaction. Accordingly, an extensive experimental investigation has been undertaken to see how user experiences varied based on device familiarity, device type, real-world context and variable locations. The findings has shown that the overall perception, and effectively the user information access experience, is affected and improved when multimedia content is tailored according to user device type and context. Thus highlights that the future of mobile computing necessitates two-faceted research, which should combine both a user as well as a technical perspective

Human Factors Guidance for the Use of Handheld, Portable, and Wearable Computing Devices

This report provides human factors guidance for the selection and use of handheld, portable, and wearable computing devices, including personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet computers, and, to a more limited extent, head-mounted display systems. These devices are becoming more common in the workplace. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wanted to know if these devices would be beneficial to maintenance specialists. Human factors researchers from the William J. Hughes Technical Center were asked to identify the advantages and disadvantages of these devices. These systems require different usage guidelines than standard desktop computing systems because of their size, portability, human-computer interface (HCI) designs, and intended work environments. In this report, we discuss differences between different maintenance tasks and how these differences may affect the selection of an appropriate device. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of common handheld, portable, and wearable systems, specifically focusing on areas such as device size, screen size and resolution, input method, one- or two-handed operation, and headsdown time

Ubiquitous computing and natural interfaces for environmental information

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe next computing revolution‘s objective is to embed every street, building, room and object with computational power. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) will allow every object to receive and transmit information, sense its surroundings and act accordingly, be located from anywhere in the world, connect every person. Everyone will have the possibility to access information, despite their age, computer knowledge, literacy or physical impairment. It will impact the world in a profound way, empowering mankind, improving the environment, but will also create new challenges that our society, economy, health and global environment will have to overcome. Negative impacts have to be identified and dealt with in advance. Despite these concerns, environmental studies have been mostly absent from discussions on the new paradigm. This thesis seeks to examine ubiquitous computing, its technological emergence, raise awareness towards future impacts and explore the design of new interfaces and rich interaction modes. Environmental information is approached as an area which may greatly benefit from ubicomp as a way to gather, treat and disseminate it, simultaneously complying with the Aarhus convention. In an educational context, new media are poised to revolutionize the way we perceive, learn and interact with environmental information. cUbiq is presented as a natural interface to access that information

UTILIZING AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION TRACKING SYSTEMS TO COMPILE OPERATIONAL FIELD AND STRUCTURE DATA

The Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) and its Office of Materials Technology (OMT) is responsible for ensuring the materials used on its roadway system are properly designed, produced, and built to the approved standards. Each technology subdivision is responsible for the quality assurance of the materials used in transportation facility construction. The management of these materials relies on a series of intensive human processes involving sample collection and delivery. As the materials travel throughout the OMT, associated material information is manually recorded into a localized network database and the Material Management System (MMS) separately. The current large amount of human involvement necessary in the material clearance process can be streamlined with the integration of automatic identification technology (AIT). This study utilizes past implementations of AIT into civil engineering and construction applications to provide the SHA with AIT system hardware recommendations, software development considerations, estimated investment costs, and return on investment

Autostereoscopy vs. non-autostereoscopy on the LG Optimus 3D

[ES] El rápido aumento de los dispositivos con características 3D ha permitido una serie de sistemas de entretenimiento nuevos y avanzados para casa, hecho que ha aumentado la demanda de contenidos en 3D: películas en 3D, series en 3D y videojuegos en 3D. Esta tecnología ya se ha aplicado en las pantallas de los teléfonos inteligentes y videoconsolas portátiles. En esta tesina, se realizó un estudio sobre una aplicación para dispositivos Android con dos modos de visualización e interacción con el usuario: con autoestereoscopía y sin autoestereoscopía. Esta aplicación contiene varios objetos, tanto estáticos como dinámicos, en un entorno 3D. Tras realizar la evaluación, los resultados indican el alto grado de interés que tienen los contenidos en 3D para juegos en teléfonos inteligentes. Sin embargo, los problemas de percepción de objetos virtuales en 3D demuestran que esta tecnología todavía necesita mejoras para proporcionar una percepción de profundidad sin pérdida de nitidez en la imagen para que sea adecuada a un amplio grupo de la población.[EN] The rapid increase of 3D capable devices has provided a series of new and advanced home entertainment systems; that indicates a higher number of demands for 3D contents, such as 3D movies, 3D TV series and 3D games. As a result, this technology has been applied already on the displays of Smartphones and handheld video gaming consoles. In this thesis, a study between autostereoscopy and non-autostereoscopy on a Smartphone was carried out by testing a new Android application that provides both visualization modes with user interactions. The new app contains a number of static and dynamic objects in a 3D environment. Evaluation findings indicate that people are interested in 3D game content on Smartphones. However, perception issues of 3D virtual objects and loss of picture quality demonstrate that this technology still needs further improvements before it can become suitable for all groups of people.Kaczmarczyk, KM. (2013). Autostereoscopy vs. non-autostereoscopy on the LG Optimus 3D. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/37109Archivo delegad

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities