Johan Plomp

A Physical Selection Paradigm for Ubiquitous Computing

More natural communication with ubiquitous digital devices requires new ways of interaction between humans and computers. Although the desktop metaphor and the windows, icons, menu, and pointing device (WIMP) paradigm work well in the office computer, different means of interaction might be more suitable for mobile terminals and their communication with ambient devices, objects and services. We present three cases where physical selection may prove advantageous over more traditional ways of interaction. Also, we suggest different ways of realising physical selection and compare their characteristics. Finally, we give an example of physical selection in the case of activating and reading a temperature sensor wirelessly. In the future, we shall investigate the possibility of implementing the physical selection paradigm with mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants.

Visualization of hand gestures for pervasive computing environments

Visualization method is proposed as an additional feature for accelerometer-based gesture control. The motivation for visualization of gesture control is justified and the challenges related to visualization are presented. The gesture control is based on Hidden Markov Models. This paper describes basic concepts of the gesture visualization and studies how well the developed visualization method can animate hand movement performed during the gesture control. The results indicate that visualization clearly provides information about the performed gesture, and it could be utilized in providing essential feedback and guidance to the user in future gesture control applications.

Deploying mobile multimedia services for everyday experience sharing

This paper presents a solution for creating light-weighted content and context-aware mobile multimedia services. The main application domain is in user created multimedia content and experience sharing. Our approach is to have a platform supporting state-of-the art content management functionalities in order to enable easy creation of specialized multimedia services for various target groups and purposes. We have developed a mobile multimedia content creation platform with integrated context metadata support. To verify the overall functionality of our platform we have defined a multimedia content service template and created a set of exemplary services using web-based technologies such as JavaScript, Media RSS feed and Java.

Ambient intelligent technologies for wellbeing at home

The quality of life of any person, young or old, heavily depends on the efficiency, comfort and cosiness of the place he or she calls <i>home</i>. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) has profiled itself as a methodology that aims to provide this kind of easy living while keeping the actual technology in the background. This workshop intends to bring together experts to study and discuss on visions, technologies and applications that have been developed particularly to facilitate living at home. It welcomes contributions related to four main themes: 1) Home environment control and automation, 2) Personalised entertainment applications for the home as a multi-user environment, 3) Applications to support elderly people in their homes and 4) Health care and personal security at home. The workshop will consist of participant presentations, discussions and demonstrations and aim to identify key research topics in the field of AmI that support wellbeing at home.

Sharing Content and Experiences in Smart Environments

Once upon a time… Stories used to be the only way to pass a message. The story teller would take his audience through the events by mere oration. Here and there he would hesitate, whisper, or gesticulate to emphasise his story or induce the right emotions in his audience. No doubt troubadourswere loved, they both brought news of the world as well as entertainment.

The DiY Smart Experiences Project

In this chapter we discuss the wide range of challenges in user-generated Internet of Things applications, as being worked on among the large consortium of the DiY Smart Experiences (DiYSE) project (DiYSE, ITEA2 08005). The chapter starts with a discussion on the context of ‘DiY’ as a phenomenon to be leveraged, and eco-awareness as an example application area. The main body of the chapter is devoted to the technical outline of the DiYSE architecture, starting at the lower Internet of Things layers of sensors, actuators and middleware, over the role of semantics in device and service interoperability, up to requirements for the service framework and the application creation process. Furthermore, the chapter adds considerations concerning tangible interaction in the smart space, assumed in Di- YSE both for the context of experiencing as well as shaping the user experience. With the chapter, we thus take a holistic view, sampling the range from lowerlayer technical implications of enabling DiY creation in the Internet of Things, up to the human-level aspects of creative communities as well as tangible interaction.

Short-term relaxation responses to a voice-guided mobile phone relaxation application and self-guided relaxation

Short-term relaxation responses to a mobile phone based voice guided relaxation (SelfRelax) and a self-guided relaxation are studied. The relaxation responses are measured with State-Trait Anxiety Inventorys Form Y-1 (state), blood pressure, heart rate, and heart rate variability features (HRV). Data from fourteen subjects and 73 relaxation sessions were included in the analysis. Relaxation sessions were made in two days during normal daily life. The relaxation decreased STAI Form Y-1 scores by 5.5 points on average when pre- and post-relaxation levels were compared. Small differences were observed between the two relaxation methods. Systolic blood pressure decreased significantly with both relaxation methods in subjects whose pre-relaxation pressures were ≫ 140 mmHg. Data collected with a beat-to-beat heart rate logger turned out to be poor quality and were analysed as separate cases. Overall, the subjects gave positive feedback on the mobile phone application.

A dictionary-adaptive speech driven user interface for a distributed multimedia platform

The goal of the PRINCESS project is the development of a distributed end-to-end multimedia platform prototype. The platform supports access to media servers in a computer network via various types of mobile terminals. New paradigms for user interfaces are applied in order to make the terminal devices more intelligent and to enable hands-free operation for a busy user. A speech recognition module capable of recognising Finnish words has been integrated into the user interface. The vocabulary of command words is continuously restricted and adapted to the part of the user interface under control. The experimental system has been demonstrated in a distributed digital image retrieval application. Several different more conventional user interfaces may be used in the application, but the user may also opt to use a speech driven interface. Experiments show that the use of a dynamic vocabulary greatly reduces the recognition errors as compared to a fill set of command words in our application.

Designing smart living for ageing Alice – and the persons next door

ABSTRACT This article presents the co-design and development process for a home control system in the context of a healthcare ecology for older people accessing care home services. The contribution of this article is threefold: (1) it presents a design-oriented, user-centred approach for studying intelligent environments (IE); (2) it describes an ontology-based architecture that provides the foundation for the system, and (3) it introduces a proof-of-concept tool for creating and customizing IE services. The article dedicates the system to ‘Alice’, a central persona created for the initial research scenarios, representing a new arrival at a residential care home. This article illustrates the multifaceted design process and considers the challenges of linking Alices ‘intelligent apartment’ to all the other apartments next to, and beyond, hers.

Intention Awareness: A Vision Declaration and Illustrating Scenarios

This is a position paper that introduces intention awareness (IA) as a counterfactual approach for designing IA technologies. The approach distinguishes human intention as a premise for developing intention-aware systems. Intention-aware technologies utilise information about the users intentions to improve the services that are provided by the environment. The paper will initially define intention awareness as a concept, and subsequently introduce four scenarios that illustrate the approach.