Thomas Pederson

Explore! possibilities and challenges of mobile learning

This paper reports the experimental studies we have performed to evaluate Explore!, an m-learning system that supports middle school students during a visit to an archaeological park. It exploits a learning technique called excursion-game, whose aim is to help students to acquire historical notions while playing and to make archaeological visits more effective and exciting. In order to understand the potentials and limitations of Explore!, our studies compare the experience of playing the excursion-game with and without technological support. The design and evaluation of Explore! have provided knowledge on the advantages and pitfalls of m-learning that may be instrumental in informing the current debate on e-learning.

Wireless sensor networking of everyday objects in a smart home environment

Within a smart home environment the information processing is supposed to be thoroughly integrated into everyday objects. This introduces the need to keep track of the everyday objects and their state changes produced based on the userpsilas interaction with them. Such information is useful in recognizing the userpsilas activities, situations, etc. In this paper we present a ZigBee communication protocol based wireless sensor networking of 42 everyday objects (embedded with 81 simple state change sensors of 8 sensor types) in a living laboratory smart home environment. The system was evaluated in a realistic setup with background noise. The sensing module has shown promising results with an overall system precision of 91.2% and a recall of 98.8% in keeping track of the state changes to everyday objects. The signal strength measure above the acceptable limit of >10 dB to obtain reliable data communication was found to be 97.5% checked at 8 different locations in a home environment. Finally the transmission-reception range was evaluated to be 33 m with a single wall obstruction and 19 m with multiple wall obstruction in an indoor environment.

Mobile games to foster the learning of history at archaeological sites

This paper presents a system designed to support young students learning history at an archaeological site, by exploiting mobile technology. The approach uses game-play, since it stimulates in young students an understanding of history that would otherwise be difficult to engender, helping players to acquire historical notions and making archaeological visits more effective and exciting. A strength of the system is that, by running on the visitors own cellular phones, it requires minimal investments and small changes to the existing site exhibition.

Eye-based head gestures

A novel method for video-based head gesture recognition using eye information by an eye tracker has been proposed. The method uses a combination of gaze and eye movement to infer head gestures. Compared to other gesture-based methods a major advantage of the method is that the user keeps the gaze on the interaction object while interacting. This method has been implemented on a head-mounted eye tracker for detecting a set of predefined head gestures. The accuracy of the gesture classifier is evaluated and verified for gaze-based interaction in applications intended for both large public displays and small mobile phone screens. The user study shows that the method detects a set of defined gestures reliably.

Magic Touch: A Simple Object Location Tracking System Enabling the Development of Physical-Virtual Artefacts in Office Environments

Abstract: A novel method for tracking physical activities is presented. The method is based on the assumption that all changes to the physical environment are done by users themselves, and that these actions can be tracked using wearable computer technology placed on human hands. Various limitations of the proposed method are discussed. Acknowledging these limitations, a range of possible applications are presented, e.g. a set of Physical-Virtual Artefacts intended to decrease the gap between the physical and virtual environments within offices. Also, some aspects of the modelling of user actions in office environments are discussed.

Demo: touch-less interaction with medical images using hand & foot gestures

Sterility restrictions in surgical settings make touch-less interaction an interesting solution for surgeons to interact directly with digital images. The HCI community has already explored several methods for touch-less interaction including those based on camera-based gesture tracking and voice control. In this paper, we present a system for gesture-based interaction with medical images based on a single wristband sensor and capacitive floor sensors, allowing for hand and foot gesture input. The first limited evaluation of the system showed an acceptable level of accuracy for 12 different hand & foot gestures; also users found that our combined hand and foot based gestures are intuitive for providing input.

Pools and satellites: intimacy in the city

This paper addresses the issue of mediating intimacy in order to support city communities. What is intimacy and how can it be mediated through the introduction of new technology in a community? It illustrates the discussion by describing two explorative information and communication technology concepts and scenarios.

A Situative Space Model for Mobile Mixed-Reality Computing

This article proposes a situative space model that links the physical and virtual realms and sets the stage for complex human-computer interaction defined by what a human agent can see, hear, and touch, at any given point in time.

Towards an activity-aware wearable computing platform based on an egocentric interaction model

In this paper, we present our egocentric interaction model for recognizing and supporting everyday human activities. We explain how it allows designers of ubiquitous computing systems to view physical (real) and virtual (digital) objects as residing in one single space and how sets of objects in the vicinity of a specific human actor can be classified based on human perceptual characteristics such as what can be observed and what can be manipulated. We also propose a wearable computer architecture that is based on the egocentric interaction model which potentially could facilitate the development of Ubiquitous Computing applications by letting an operating system take care of maintaining communication with worn and instrumented sensors as well as computing devices. Finally, we present our first steps in implementing an activity-aware wearable support system for people suffering mild dementia based on the proposed model and architecture.

The easy ADL home: A physical-virtual approach to domestic living

Smart environments worthy of the name need to capture, interpret, and support human activities that take place within their realms. Most existing efforts tend to focus on either real world activities or activities taking place in the virtual world accessed through digital devices. However, as digital computation continues to permeate our everyday real world environments, and as the border between physical and digital continues to blur for the human agents acting in these environments, we need system design approaches that can cope with human activities that span the physical-virtual gap. In this paper, we present such an approach and use it for designing a smart home intended to support Activities of Daily Living (ADL). The easy ADL home is designed based on a wearable personal server that runs a personal ADL support middleware and a set of computationally augmented everyday objects within the easy ADL home. An initial qualitative study of the system involving 20 subjects revealed a highly positive attitude (score 4.37 out of 5) towards the systems capability of co-locating and synchronizing physical and virtual events throughout the everyday activity scenarios, while classical usability aspects in particular related to the gesture-based input (score 2.89 out of 5) leaves room for improvement.