Pattie Maes

Trust management through reputation mechanisms

The members of electronic communities are often unrelated to each other; they may have never met and have no information on each others reputation. This kind of information is vital in electronic commerce interactions, where the potential counterparts reputation can be a significant factor in the negotiation strategy. Two complementary reputation mechanisms are investigated which rely on collaborative rating and personalized evaluation of the various ratings assigned to each user. While these reputation mechanisms are developed in the context of electronic commerce, it is believed that they may have applicability in other types of electronic communities such as chatrooms, newsgroups, mailing lists, etc.

Collaborative reputation mechanisms in electronic marketplaces

The members of electronic communities are often unrelated to each other, they may have never met and have no information on each others reputation. This kind of information is vital in electronic commerce interactions, where the potential counterparts reputation can be a significant factor in the negotiation strategy. This paper proposes two complementary reputation mechanisms that rely on collaborative ratings and personalized evaluation of the various ratings assigned to each user. While these reputation mechanisms are developed in the context of electronic commerce, we believe that they may have applicability in other types of electronic communities such as chatrooms, newsgroups, mailing lists, etc.

Footprints: history-rich tools for information foraging

Inspired by Hill and Hollans original work [7], we have beendeveloping a theory of interaction history and building tools toapply this theory to navigation in a complex information space. Wehave built a series of tools - map, paths, annota- tions andsignposts - based on a physical-world navigation metaphor. Thesetools have been in use for over a year. Our user study involved acontrolled browse task and showed that users were able to get thesame amount of work done with significantly less effort.

Artificial life meets entertainment: lifelike autonomous agents

The relatively new field of artificial life attempts to study and understand biological life by synthesizing artificial life forms. To paraphrase Chris Langton, the founder of the field, the goal of artificial life is to “model life as it could be so as to understand life as we know it.” Artificial life is a very broad discipline which spans such diverse topics as artificial evolution, artificial ecosystems, artificial morphogenesis, molecular evolution, and many more. Langton offers a nice overview of the different research questions studied by the discipline [6]. Artificial life shares with artificial intelligence (AI) its interest in synthesizing adaptive autonomous agents. Autonomous agents are computational systems that inhabit some complex, dynamic environment, sense and act autonomously in this environment, and by doing so realize a set of goals or tasks for which they are designed.

WUW - wear Ur world: a wearable gestural interface

Information is traditionally confined to paper or digitally to a screen. In this paper, we introduce WUW, a wearable gestural interface, which attempts to bring information out into the tangible world. By using a tiny projector and a camera mounted on a hat or coupled in a pendant like wearable device, WUW sees what the user sees and visually augments surfaces or physical objects the user is interacting with. WUW projects information onto surfaces, walls, and physical objects around us, and lets the user interact with the projected information through natural hand gestures, arm movements or interaction with the object itself.

SixthSense: a wearable gestural interface

This prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror, and a camera. The hardware components are contained in a pendant-like wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the users pocket. The projector projects visual information on walls and other physical objects, which become interfaces, while the camera recognizes and tracks the users hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision techniques.

Siftables: towards sensor network user interfaces

This paper outlines Siftables, a novel platform that applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces in order to yield new possibilities for human-computer interaction. Siftables are compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. We discuss the unique affordances that a sensor network user interface (SNUI) such as Siftables provides, as well as the resulting directness between the physical interface and the data being manipulated. We conclude with a description of some gestural language primitives that we are currently prototyping with Siftables.

The ALIVE system: wireless, full-body interaction with autonomous agents

Abstract.The cumbersome nature of wired interfaces often limits the range of application of virtual environments. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of a novel system, called ALIVE, which allows unencumbered full-body interaction between a human participant and a rich graphical world inhabited by autonomous agents. Based on results obtained with thousands of users, the paper argues that this kind of system can provide more complex and very different experiences than traditional virtual reality systems. The ALIVE system significantly broadens the range of potential applications of virtual reality systems; in particular, the paper discusses novel applications in the area of training and teaching, entertainment, and digital assistants or interface agents. We give an overview of the methods used in the implementation of the existing ALIVE systems.

The ALIVE system: full-body interaction with autonomous agents

The cumbersome nature of wired interfaces and the limited nature of the interaction with graphical objects has so far limited the range of application of virtual environments. We discuss the design and implementation of a novel system, called ALIVE, which allows wireless full-body interaction between a human participant and a rich graphical world inhabited by autonomous agents. Based on results obtained with real users, the paper argues that this kind of system can provide more complex and very different experiences than traditional virtual reality systems. The ALIVE system significantly broadens the range of potential applications of virtual reality systems; in particular the paper discusses novel applications in the area of training and teaching, entertainment and last but not least, digital assistants or interface agents.<<ETX>>

Cooperating Mobile Agents for Dynamic Network Routing

Contemporary computer networks are heterogeneous; even a single network consists of many kinds of processors and communications channels. Networks are also inherently decentralized; capability is scattered across the system. But few system design methodologies embrace or even acknowledge these complexities. New methods and approaches are required if next-generation networks are to be configured, administered and utilized to their full potentials. In our research at the MIT Media Laboratory we are building systems that use mobile software agents to manage complex real-world networks. In this chapter we describe a strategy for using a collection of cooperating mobile agents to solve routing problems for dynamic, peer-to-peer networks.