Javier Jaen

PRISMA: towards quality, aspect oriented and dynamic software architectures

The development of software systems must be done using platforms that allow the description of quality, complex, distributed, dynamic and reusable architectural models. We present in this paper PRISMA, an architectural modelling approach based on aspects and components that uses a component definition language (components, connectors and systems) to define architectural types at a high abstraction level and a configuration language to design the architecture of software systems. The component definition language increases reuse allowing importation of COTS and reduces complexity by integrating two modern software development approaches: component-based software development and aspect-oriented software development. The configuration language designs the architecture of software systems by creating and interconnecting instances of the defined types including possible imported COTS. PRISMA has a metalevel with reflexive properties for these two languages. For this reason, the types of PRISMA may evolve and the topologies of PRISMA may be reconfigured dynamically.

Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children

Abstract The direct manipulation interaction style of multi-touch technology makes it the ideal mechanism for learning activities from pre-kindergarteners to adolescents. However, most commercial pre-kindergarten applications only support tap and drag operations. This paper investigates pre-kindergarteners׳ (2–3 years of age) ability to perform other gestures on multi-touch surfaces. We found that these infants could effectively perform additional gestures, such as one-finger rotation and two-finger scale up and down, just as well as basic gestures, despite gender and age differences. We also identified cognitive and precision issues that may have an impact on the performance and feasibility of several types of interaction (double tap, long press, scale down and two-finger rotation) and propose a set of design guidelines to mitigate the associated problems and help designers envision effective interaction mechanisms for this challenging age range.

Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals

Play stands as one of the most natural and inherent behavior among the majority of living species, specifically humans and animals. Human play has evolved significantly over the years, and so have done the artifacts which allow us to play: from children playing tag games without any tools other than their bodies, to modern video games using haptic and wearable devices to augment the playful experience. However, this ludic revolution has not been the same for the humans’ closest companions, our pets. Recently, a new discipline inside the human–computer interaction (HCI) community, called animal–computer interaction (ACI), has focused its attention on improving animals’ welfare using technology. Several works in the ACI field rely on playful interfaces to mediate this digital communication between animals and humans. Until now, the development of these interfaces only comprises a single goal or activity, and its adaptation to the animals’ needs requires the developers’ intervention. This work analyzes the existing approaches, proposing a more generic and autonomous system aimed at addressing several aspects of animal welfare at a time: Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals. The great potential of these systems is discussed, explaining how incorporating intelligent capabilities within playful environments could allow learning from the animals’ behavior and automatically adapt the game to the animals’ needs and preferences. The engaging playful activities created with these systems could serve different purposes and eventually improve animals’ quality of life.

Strategies for accelerating ant colony optimization algorithms on graphical processing units

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is being used to solve many combinatorial problems. However, existing implementations fail to solve large instances of problems effectively. In this paper we propose two ACO implementations that use graphical processing units to support the needed computation. We also provide experimental results by solving several instances of the well-known orienteering problem to show their features, emphasizing the good properties that make these implementations extremely competitive versus parallel approaches.

Exploring tabletops as an effective tool to foster creativity traits

Creativity is a relevant characteristic for peoples development as it facilitates the generation of new ideas and innovation processes. Although technology has played an important role on creativity stimulation, it still needs to be explored for a better understanding and support in the context of information and communication technologies. In this paper a basic creativity assessment model is presented and an empirical study has been conducted whose aim is to get insight into whether an interactive surface as base technology for collaborative creative tasks is promising in terms of both collaboration and creativity traits. In the study two tabletop-based platforms (a digitally-augmented, and a physical-only without computer mediation) were involved to solve a problem consisting of creating Rube-Goldberg machines. From these experiments, we have observed that in terms of creativity traits, interactive surfaces seem promising as groups working in the digital platform showed significantly more performance in fluency of thinking, were more motivated, and novelty was found near to significance. Also some issues related to collaboration and interaction were analyzed. In particular, the co-operation, the retrial fine adjustment, and the dominance showed that the properties of an interactive surface tabletop suits better for facilitating the sharing of objects and participation in conditions of co-operation by co-located participants.

A grid ant colony algorithm for the orienteering problem

In this paper we propose a distributed ant colony algorithm to solve large scale orienteering problem instances. Our approach is based on a multi-colony strategy where each colony works in an independent portion (cluster) in the original graph. This results in no need for communicating pheromones information among colonies and in increasing speedup. We have implemented our algorithm as a .NET Web services infrastructure following a grid computing philosophy and we provide some promising experimental results to show the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach

Developing a depth-based tracking system for interactive playful environments with animals

Digital games for animals within Animal Computer Interaction are usually single-device oriented, however richer interactions could be delivered by considering multimodal environments and expanding the number of technological elements involved. In these playful ecosystems, animals could be either alone or accompanied by human beings, but in both cases the system should react properly to the interactions of all the players, creating more engaging and natural games. Technologically-mediated playful scenarios for animals will therefore require contextual information about the game participants, such as their location or body posture, in order to suitably adapt the system reactions. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for cats capable of detecting their location, body posture and field of view. The proposed system could also be extended to locate and detect human gestures and track small robots, becoming a promising component in the creation of intelligent interspecies playful environments.

AGORAS: Exploring Creative Learning on Tangible User Interfaces

Departing from creative learning foundations, this paper discusses on the suitability of interactive tables as a grounding technology to support creative learning for several reasons: support for social learning, because the subjects share a physical space as in traditional non-digital technologies, communication during the creative, experimental and reflexive process is direct and not computer-mediated, and subjects can carry out the task in parallel on the same surface. Considering reflection, discussion and creation processes in a loop, an experiment with teenagers has been conducted comparing a digital-based against a pure tangible tabletop in a task of creating entities consisting of blocks and joint elements. This preliminary study, designed to obtain initial insights about whether the grounding technology may become a promising tool to support creative learning, explores some aspects such as productivity, complexity of designs and concurrent co-manipulation. The results showed that subjects were more productive in terms of the number of solutions obtained using the non computer-mediated approach. However using the digital tabletop approach subjects design, on average, more complex or elaborate solutions in terms of the number of involved bodies and joints. Finally, an important finding was that teams established more frequently concurrent cooperation schemes in the digital tabletop condition by sharing more effectively the creation space.

An emotionally biased ant colony algorithm for pathfinding in games

Pathfinding is one of the tasks, apart from graphics rendering, requiring most CPU resources. Although there are many approaches to effectively solve pathfinding problems, they are becoming less suitable as more and more games have larger game worlds that dynamically change during the game play. These new games have more visually realistic graphics that increase the game characters realism but all these efforts may be useless if game characters perform dumb movements or follow inappropriate paths such as repeatedly walking close to an enemy or a predator while moving from one location to another. To tackle this problem we present in this paper an ant colony algorithm for path finding that takes into account the emotions of the game characters and we show how our approach is used in an augmented-reality educational game. The proposed algorithm is implemented on a GPU processor to demonstrate its scalability with large problem sizes when compared to its corresponding CPU version.

Kiteracy: a kit of tangible objects to strengthen literacy skills in children with down syndrome

Kiteracy is an educational kit designed to improve the literacy process of children with Down syndrome by enabling higher levels of interaction. The kit is based on two Spanish literacy methods: global and phonics. In this work, we present a qualitative study based on video-recorded sessions with twelve children from a Down syndrome institution. The study analyzes three forms of interactions: cardboard, multi-touch and tangible. The task carried out by special education teachers and children in the experimental sessions involved working in pairs (Teacher-child) and autonomous self-learning (child only). Through the sessions, we identified situations in which the teacher took the control in the cardboard version. In the multi-touch version, both the teacher and the child shared the control. However in the tangible version the child took the control. In the self-learning sessions, we observed that multi-touch and tangible interaction seems to offer an enjoyable time for children. Surveys and interviews with teachers revealed that tangible objects offered greater adaptability to create playful reading strategies.