Paul Anthony Shrubsole

Learning environmental factors through playful interaction

In this paper we describe the design of an educational game for learning about energy and the environment using an interactive board called TagTiles. Learning activities, manipulation of tangible objects and the use of physical activity were combined as elementary components to develop a playful and engaging learning environment in which 8 to 10 year old children could learn independently, whilst also linking these learning activities to their daily behaviors. A contextual environment, RFID tagged cubes, kinetic energy generator, randomization function, and RFID tagged cards were used as basic building blocks for the game environment. The final game was evaluated in a classroom.

Service-Oriented Architecture for Smart Environments (Short Paper)

The advances of pervasive technology offer new standards for user comfort by adding intelligence to ubiquitous home and office appliances. With intelligence being the core of some newly constructed buildings, it is important to design a scalable, robust, context-aware architecture, which not only has enough longevity and evolving capabilities to sustain itself over the buildings lifetime, but also provides enough potential for additional features to be added to the core Building Management Systems (BMS). Such features may include energy preservation system, or activity-recognition techniques. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles provide great tools that can be applied to the smart buildings design, however certain specifics of pervasive systems should be taken into account, such as high heterogeneity of available devices and capabilities. In this paper we propose an architecture for smart pervasive applications, which is based on SOA principles and is specifically designed for long-term applicability, scalability, and evolution capabilities of a BMS. We validate our proposal by implementing a smart office on the premises of the Technical University of Eindhoven and showing that it complies with the requirements of scalability and robustness, at the same time being a viable BMS.

Flo: raising family awareness about electricity use

In this case study, we designed a family game to explore whether this could be an effective and fun approach for raising the awareness of family members towards their energy use and, in the long run, to provide an effective tool for affecting their habits regarding sustainable behavior. The design of the family game implemented the metaphor of electricity as flowing liquid, fostered fun experiences and supported competitive and social elements. Dutch families with children, aged 5-11 years, participated in the design and evaluation of the concept. We obtained valuable insights into the use and understanding of electricity by the families, how the families looked at responsible behaviors around their usage and how a game could integrate into the family context in a fun way.

Multi-appliance power disaggregation: An approach to energy monitoring

Consumers increasingly want to make informed and proactive decisions based on an understanding of their energy consumption. However, current energy monitoring solutions are either too limited in the information they provide or are too intrusive. We consider a solution for disaggregating the electrical power consumption of individual appliances connected in a residential electricity network, with a single point of measurement. We pose the power disaggregation problem in the framework of multi-user detection. Two linear detection algorithms are then provided to determine which appliances are active in the network and in turn to determine their individual power consumptions. An experimental setup is described that was used to evaluate the performance of the algorithms along with simulation results.

Refinement of the PAC model for the component-based design and specification of television based interfaces

Componentisation of software promises to deliver cost efficiency that has not been achieved through object orientation [19]. PAC [5] is a popular conceptual architecture for structuring user interface software in an object oriented fashion. This paper reports our experience of adapting and refining PAC as a component architecture in the context of consumer electronics, and On-screen Displays in particular. The paper describes a structured scheme for the specification of user interface software components, distinguishing ‘look’ and ‘feel’ specific components, and fostering their modular development and reuse.