Aristotelis Hadjakos

EarPut: augmenting behind-the-ear devices for ear-based interaction

In this work-in-progress paper, we make a case for leveraging the unique affordances of the human ear for eyes-free, mobile interaction. We present EarPut, a novel interface concept, which instruments the ear as an interactive surface for touch-based interactions and its prototypical hardware implementation. The central idea behind EarPut is to go beyond prior work by unobtrusively augmenting a variety of accessories that are worn behind the ear, such as headsets or glasses. Results from a controlled experiment with 27 participants provide empirical evidence that people are able to target salient regions on their ear effectively and precisely. Moreover, we contribute a first, systematically derived interaction design space for ear-based interaction and a set of exemplary applications.

EarPut: augmenting ear-worn devices for ear-based interaction

One of the pervasive challenges in mobile interaction is decreasing the visual demand of interfaces towards eyes-free interaction. In this paper, we focus on the unique affordances of the human ear to support one-handed and eyes-free mobile interaction. We present EarPut, a novel interface concept and hardware prototype, which unobtrusively augments a variety of accessories that are worn behind the ear (e.g. headsets or glasses) to instrument the human ear as an interactive surface. The contribution of this paper is three-fold. We contribute (i) results from a controlled experiment with 27 participants, providing empirical evidence that people are able to target salient regions on their ear effectively and precisely, (ii) a first, systematically derived design space for ear-based interaction and (iii) a set of proof of concept EarPut applications that leverage on the design space and embrace mobile media navigation, mobile gaming and smart home interaction.

Automatic Camera Control for Tracking a Presenter during a Talk

Today, talks, presentations, and lectures are often captured on video to give a broad audience the possibility to (re-)access the content. As presenters are often moving around during a talk it is necessary to guide recording cameras. We present an automatic solution for user tracking and camera control. It uses a depth camera for user tracking, and a scalable networking architecture based on publish/subscribe messaging for controlling multiple video cameras. Furthermore, we present our experiences with the system during actual lectures at an university.

A Smart Kitchen Infrastructure

In the future our homes will be more and more equipped with sensing and interaction devices that will make new multimedia experiences possible. These experiences will not necessarily be bound to the TV, tabletop, smart phone, tablet or desktop computer but will be embedded in our everyday surroundings. In order to enable new forms of interaction, we equipped an ordinary kitchen with a large variety of sensors according to best practices. An innovation in comparison to related work is our Information Acquisition System that allows monitoring and controlling kitchen appliances remotely. This paper presents our sensing infrastructure and novel interactions in the kitchen that are enabled by the Information Acquisition System.

Configurable Middleware for Multimedia Collaboration Applications

Modern collaboration applications have a multitude of QoS requirements. Depending on the application module, such as messaging, collaborative modeling, or multimedia conferencing, the networking requirements are different. Such applications can greatly benefit from middleware which allows for configuring and using multiple communication stacks from within the same application. This enables applications to employ the best middleware configuration for each communication task. In this paper we demonstrate how to optimize for reliability, low latency, and throughput using configurable protocol stacks. We have implemented a prototype and evaluated the positive effects of customizing the protocol stack in three different use case scenarios.

Fine-Grained Evaluation of Local Positioning Systems for Specific Target Applications

Location-aware software has become widespread outdoors. Indoor applications are now on the rise. However, careful selection of the appropriate local positioning system (LPS) and application fine-tuning are required in order to guarantee acceptable user experience. We present a simulation-based approach that includes application characteristics, LPS characteristics, and building characteristics to this complex task and illustrate how the appropriate LPS can be chosen and how applications can be fine-tuned. A sophisticated indoor navigation system is used as sample application. The paper also provides insights into subtle details and caveats of different LPS technologies from an application and building viewpoint.

Adaptive workflows in smart environments: combining imperative and declarative models

Specifying interaction between users and smart environments is an important topic in pervasive computing. Both imperative and declarative languages have been investigated in this context. Declarative approaches require more abstract thinking and higher modeling effort but enable greater flexibility. A survey of related work suggests, however, that the high modeling effort of declarative approaches is prohibitive to their practical application. In contrast, imperative approaches lead to static control-flow and over-specification. Still, they are used, mainly due to their simplicity. Our approach supports a systematic transformation process from imperative models to declarative ones. Our method comprises an imperative, workflow-based language that we extended with novel declarative constructs and an algorithm for converting imperative models into declarative ones. Our approach requires only a modest level of declarative specification literacy for reaching a degree of flexibility that formerly only expert designers could achieve with hand-crafted declarative models.