Adriana Wilde

Smart textiles for smart home control and enriching future wireless sensor network data

The increasing number of objects within homes connected to the Cloud is not going to recede. Our growing acceptance of automated appliances and items connected in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is gradually making our homes smart. This occurrence is a reflection of the technological advancement of societies around the world. We predict that the future applications of WSN will incorporate smart textiles. These will appear in smart homes, as well as in commercial spaces, in automobile vehicles, in personal or business-owned clothing, and even toys. As the electronics become available to industry, smart textiles could be embedded with electronics capable of receiving and transmitting data packets. The implications are that soft furnishings or any surfaces with a textile have the potential capability of connecting to the Cloud. Considering future applications of smart textiles, whether for personal or commercial usage, we can predict data contents that would be stored in a WSN and discuss how to ensure safety and network stability.

An overview of Human-Computer Interaction patterns in pervasive systems

Despite a growing interest in design patterns by the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community, an interaction pattern collection that is universally accepted is yet to be found. Such a collection would aid the design of pervasive computing systems, in which interactions occur in both the material and logical worlds. This paper first seeks to define interaction patterns by adopting a model that captures such duality and then considers the challenges and opportunities that non-traditional interaction brings. Some patterns are then reviewed, with examples relating to motion-aware systems. We conclude that the creation of a widely accepted interaction pattern collection is unlikely in the near future.

Autonomy is the key: from smart towards intelligent textiles

Electronic textiles become smart by embedding circuits and sensors which offer some passive or active capabilities. Smart textiles become intelligent due to their computational abilities allowing awareness of their environment, extract input data from it, and consequently demonstrate untaught behaviours. Intelligent systems require machine intelligence through artificial intelligence algorithms to complete these input data manipulations. However, producing intelligent electronic textiles is a current research challenge. Hypothesising their eventuality and ubiquity, challenges such as remote communication, power generation, data processing, security, and ethics arise. In what remains we focus on the ethical implications and approaches to risk mitigation.

ROBIN: Activity based robot management system

This paper examines the design and implementation of a system to support firefighting exercises based on tools and ideas of pervasive computing. Through this development a range of technologies and conceptual tools were used, such as sensors, wireless communication, and the programming framework uMove; as well as context-awareness, situation management, and activity detection. In this development, the notion of implicit human-computer interaction was of particular relevance. The use of a programming framework for interaction through motion was central, and this implementation is one of its proofs of concept, as it presented opportunities to improve it and recommendations to adapt it for future applications.