Jin Nakazawa

A Bridging Framework for Universal Interoperability in Pervasive Systems

We explore the design patterns and architectural tradeoffs for achieving interoperability across communication middleware platforms, and describe uMiddle, a bridging framework for universal interoperability that enables seamless device interaction over diverse platforms. The proliferation of middleware platforms that cater to specific devices has created isolated islands of devices with no uniform protocol for interoperability across these islands. This void makes it difficult to rapidly prototype pervasive computing applications spanning a wide variety of devices. We discuss the design space of architectural solutions that can address this void, and detail the trade-offs that must be faced when trying to achieve cross-platform interoperability. uMiddle is a framework for achieving such interoperability, and serves as a powerful platform for creating applications that are independent of specific underlying communication platforms.

Smart furniture: improvising ubiquitous hot-spot environment

We developed Smart Furniture, which extemporaneously converts the legacy non-smart space into a Smart Hot-spot which consists of computational services. Since the Smart Furniture is equipped with networked computers, sensors and various I/O devices, it can provide various services by alone or by coordinating with other devices. In this paper, the physical structure and middlewares for the Smart Furniture are described. The prototype systems to realize Smart Hot-spot such as a Crossing Window System, an Active Authentication System for Library, a Mobile TV-phone System, and an Environmental Information Monitor System are also introduced.

Attelia: Reducing user's cognitive load due to interruptive notifications on smart phones

In todays ubiquitous computing environment where the number of devices, applications and web services are ever increasing, human attention is the new bottleneck in computing. To minimize user cognitive load, we propose Attelia, a novel middleware that identifies breakpoints in user interaction and delivers notifications at these moments. Attelia works in realtime and uses only the mobile devices that users naturally use and wear, without any modifications to applications, and without any dedicated psycho-physiological sensors. Our evaluation proved the effectiveness of Attelia. A controlled user study showed that notifications at detected breakpoint timing resulted in 46% lower cognitive load compared to randomly-timed notifications. Furthermore, our “in-the-wild” user study with 30 participants for 16 days further validated Attelias value, with a 33% decrease in cognitive load compared to randomly-timed notifications.

SF2: smart furniture for creating ubiquitous applications

Many researchers introduced special rooms equipped with sensors, devices, networks, and computers to demonstrate ubiquitous computing environment. However, the cost and time for building such a room is a barrier to the deployment of various ubiquitous applications. We have developed smart furniture which instantaneously converts the legacy non-smart space into a smart hot-spot which can provide the accessibility to the Internet, location-based context-aware services, service roaming, and personalization services. Since the smart furniture is equipped with networked computers, sensors and various I/O devices, it can provide various services in public space as well as in private space. In this paper, the physical structure and middleware for the smart furniture are described. Applications of smart hot-spot such as a personalized message board system, a zero-stop check-out system, and a mobile TV-phone system is proposed.

VNA: an object model for virtual network appliances

This paper presents a new architecture for integrating networked appliances, called virtual network appliance (VNA). Instead of merely connecting appliances seen in existing approaches, the VNA architecture enables users to create a networked appliance by assembling functional components of existing appliances. Users can achieve dynamic adaptation and personal customization, exploiting VNA.

pARnorama: 360 degree interactive video for augmented reality prototyping

Designing novel and meaningful interactions in the domain of Augmented Reality (AR) requires an efficient and appropriate methodology. A user centered design process requires the construction and evaluation of several prototypes with increasing technical fidelity. Although the main content of the application can already be conveyed with prerendered video, one of the main interactions in AR - the user-selected viewpoint - is only available in a very late stage. We propose the use of panoramic 360° video for scenario based user evaluation, where the user can select his point of view during playback. Initial users report a high degree of immersion in the constructed scenario, even for handheld AR.

Galaxy DS: directory service for service composition based on smart space structure

This paper proposes a service model based on the service hierarchical structure called Galaxy service model, and a service discovery framework called Galaxy service directory system. In a ubiquitous computing environment, software services are embedded into various devices. The application construction requires service discovery mechanism and a recursive definition of services. The service discovery mechanism should, therefore, provide applications with common interface to look up the hierarchically represented composite services. In existing service framework, applications cannot be combined into other applications, since they do not provide the recursive service representation facility. In contrast, a service in Galaxy has a hierarchical description by deploying nested services. This model makes other services and applications to deal with an application that is composed by services. Galaxy service directory system facilitates structure-bounded service registration and service discovery. The system enables applications to find different composition-levels of service through a common interface.

Improving security for ubiquitous campus applications

This paper identifies security issues posed by ubiquitous computing applications used in university campuses, and propose software architectures to address the issues. Applications in ubiquitous computing environment exploit interactions between personal and public devices, and adapt to user s context. Security issues posed by these applications are privacy, usability, and hybrid scheme. Privacy profile negotiation protocol (PPNP) allows users to change the granularity of their personal profile presented to profile-aware services, in order to preserve privacy, and zero-stop authentication system (ZSAS) provides real-time automatic authentication of users to leverage usability of user authentication in the physical space. We also present several applications to outline the usage of these systems.

Galaxy: a service shaping approach for addressing the hidden service problem

We propose a new service modeling and lookup method based on service shaping. In existing service frameworks, assembling ubiquitous services requires application programmers to translate their requirements to the type space defined by service programmers. This translation, however, disables some of user requirements due to abstraction gap and time gap between the user tasks and service types. This raises a problem which we call the hidden service problem, where an application cannot find a service which satisfies a users request, even if the service exists. To cope with this problem, we propose a shape-based service framework, called Galaxy. In Galaxy service framework, service programmers are required to describe capability of service, called, shape, for each service in an XML document. Applications can query services by specifying partial shape without depending on programmer-defined types.

Vinteraction: Vibration-based information transfer for smart devices

According to the spread of smart devices such as smartphones and smart tablets, opportunities to communicate between them will be more increased. Though we usually use WiFi and Bluetooth, it is still burden task for end-users. Many previous techniques to collaborate devices easily has been also proposed, they are not always best solution in some situations. This paper proposes a new interaction method called Vinteracion, which leverages combination of vibrator and accelerometer to send information from smart device to the other smart device. Vinteraction enables users to use touch interaction like Near Field Communication, which provides easy and intuitive way. We present an algorithm and implementation of vibration-based communication that can be adapted to any combination of smart devices. We also present several applications which leverages Vinteraction effectively. Through an evaluation by using popular six products, we confirmed that Vinteraction is easy to use transfer method with current products with reasonable performance.