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

Towards Simulating Humans in Augmented Multi-party Interaction

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 the European AMI research project

Privacy, security, and trust issues in smart environments

Recent advances in networking, handheld computing and sensor technologies have driven forward research towards the realisation of Mark Weiser's dream of calm and ubiquitous computing (variously called pervasive computing, ambient computing, active spaces, the disappearing computer or context-aware computing). In turn, this has led to the emergence of smart environments as one significant facet of research in this domain. A smart environment, or space, is a region of the real world that is extensively equipped with sensors, actuators and computing components [1]. In effect the smart space becomes a part of a larger information system: with all actions within the space potentially affecting the underlying computer applications, which may themselves affect the space through the actuators. Such smart environments have tremendous potential within many application areas to improve the utility of a space. Consider the potential offered by a smart environment that prolongs the time an elderly or infirm person can live an independent life or the potential offered by a smart environment that supports vicarious learning

A smart environment for biometric capture

The development of large scale biometric systems require experiments to be performed on large amounts of data. Existing capture systems are designed for fixed experiments and are not easily scalable. In this scenario even the addition of extra data is difficult. We developed a prototype biometric tunnel for the capture of non-contact biometrics. It is self contained and autonomous. Such a configuration is ideal for building access or deployment in secure environments. The tunnel captures cropped images of the subject's face and performs a 3D reconstruction of the person's motion which is used to extract gait information. Interaction between the various parts of the system is performed via the use of an agent framework. The design of this system is a trade-off between parallel and serial processing due to various hardware bottlenecks. When tested on a small population the extracted features have been shown to be potent for recognition. We currently achieve a moderate throughput of approximate 15 subjects an hour and hope to improve this in the future as the prototype becomes more complete

Situation determination with distributed context histories

Determining the situation within an environment is a key goal of smart environment research. A significant challenge in situation determination is reasoning about openended groups of people and devices that a smart environment may contain. Contemporary solutions are often tailored to the specific environment. In this position paper, we present a novel general situation determination framework, that by viewing people and tools as playing roles in a situation, can easily adapt recognition to incorporate the dynamic structure of a situation over time

Smart Antennas and Intelligent Sensors Based Systems: Enabling Technologies and Applications

open access articleThe growing communication and computing capabilities in the devices enlarge the connected world and improve the human life comfort level. The evolution of intelligent sensor networks and smart antennas has led to the development of smart devices and systems for real-time monitoring of various environments. The demand of smart antennas and intelligent sensors significantly increases when dealing with multiuser communication system that needs to be adaptive, especially in unknown adverse environment [1–3]. The smart antennas based arrays are capable of steering the main beam in any desired direction while placing nulls in the unwanted directions. Intelligent sensor networks integration with smart antennas will provide algorithms and interesting application to collect various data of environment to make intelligent decisions [4, 5]. The aim of this special issue is to provide an inclusive vision on the current research in the area of intelligent sensors and smart antenna based systems for enabling various applications and technologies. We cordially invite some researchers to contribute papers that discuss the issues arising in intelligent sensors and smart antenna based system. Hence, this special issue offers the state-of-the-art research in this field