Zeljko Obrenovic

Universal accessibility as a multimodal design issue

Creating adaptable solutions to address diverse users and situations.

A model-driven approach to content repurposing

The multimedia metamodel defines platform-independent multimedia concepts, opening the way for novel approaches to designing content repurposing solutions. Designers can use the metamodel to create content and add metadata to existing content, simplifying content analysis and repurposing. This model-driven approach and proposed design solutions are useful not only for many multimedia designers and researchers, where the model-driven tools can help them create better multimedia interfaces, but also for lecturers and students of multimedia courses. In the latter case, the unified multimedia metamodel offers context for sometimes subtle relationships between multimedia concepts. The metamodel can also facilitate the collaborative creation of broader knowledge about multimedia phenomena. In our future work, we plan to extend the proposed metamodel and include domains from related fields, such as user modeling and intelligent tutoring systems that deal with high-level user models. We are also designing multimodal test environments, reusable multimedia components, and data mining tools for evaluating various aspects of multimedia and multimodal communication.

An architecture for non-intrusive user interfaces for interactive digital television

This paper presents an architecture for non-intrusive user interfaces in the interactive digital TV domain. The architecture is based on two concepts. First, the deployment of non-monolithic rendering for content consumption, which allows micro-level personalization of content delivery by utilizing different rendering components (e.g., sending video to the TV screen and extra information to a handheld device). Second, the definition of actions descriptions for user interaction, so that high-level user interaction intentions can be partitioned across a personalized collection of control components (e.g., handheld device). This paper introduces an over-all architecture to support micro-personalization and describes an implementation scenario developed to validate the architecture.

An ontology for description of emotional cues

There is a great variety of theoretical models of emotions and implementation technologies which can be used in the design of affective computers. Consequently, designers and researchers usually made practical choices of models and develop ad-hoc solutions that sometimes lack flexibility. In this paper we introduce a generic approach to modeling emotional cues. The main component of our approach is the ontology of emotional cues. The concepts in the ontology are grouped into three global modules representing three layers of emotions’ detection or production: the emotion module, the emotional cue module, and the media module. The emotion module defines emotions as represented with emotional cues. The emotional cue module describes external emotional representations in terms of media properties. The media module describes basic media properties important for emotional cues. Proposed ontology enables flexible description of emotional cues at different levels of abstraction. This approach could serve as a guide for the flexible design of affective devices independently of the starting model and the final way of implementation.

Pillows as adaptive interfaces in ambient environments

We have developed a set of small interactive throw pillows containing intelligent touch-sensing surfaces, in order to explore new ways to model the environment, participants, artefacts, and their interactions, in the context of expressive non-verbal interaction. We present the overall architecture of the environment, describing a model of the user, the interface (the interactive pillows and the devices it can interact with) and the context engine. We describe the representation and process modules of the context engine and demonstrate how they support real-time adaptation. We present an evaluation of the current prototype and conclude with plans for future work.

Experimental evaluation of multimodal human computer interface for tactical audio applications

Mission critical and information overwhelming applications require careful design of the human computer interface. Typical applications include night vision or low visibility mission navigation, guidance through a hostile territory, and flight navigation and orientation. Additional channels of situation critical information can be better perceived using simultaneous audio and visual presentation. In this paper we present a multimodal simulation system as an open development environment for evaluation of sonification and visualization paradigms in augmented reality systems. The environment is implemented as a virtual audio-visual scene using the Java3D package, and used for performance measurements in tactical guidance applications. We present the results of a target tracking experiment with 10 participants using visual, acoustic and combined guidance. The experiment has shown that acoustic presentation significantly improve the quality of human-machine interaction and reduces errors during the guidance tasks.

A PC Cryptographic Coprocessor based on TI Signal Processor and Smart Card System

Data encryption and other cryptographic functions are of the vital interest for computer networks to ensure the security of private and sensitive information. Most modern network security protocols are software-only based systems [1].

An agent based framework for virtual medical devices

In this paper we present the telemedical environment based on VMDs implemented with Java mobile agent technology, called aglets. The agent based VMD implementation provides ad-hoc agent interaction, support for mobile agents and different user interface components in the telemedical system. We have developed a VMD agent framework with four types of agents: data agents, processing agents, presentation agents, and monitoring agents. Data agents abstract data source, creating uniform view on different types of data, independent of data acquisition device. Processing agents produce derived data, such us FFT power spectrum, from raw data provided by the data agents. Presentation agents supply user interface components using a variety of user data views. User interface components are based on HTTP, SMS and WAP protocols. Monitoring agents collaborate with data and processing agents providing support for data mining operations, and search for relevant patterns. Typical example is monitoring for possible epileptic attacks. We have applied VMDs to facilitate distributed EEG analysis. We have found that the flexibility of distributed agent architecture is well suited for the telemedical application domain. This flexibility is particularly important in the case of an emergency, enabling swift system reconfiguration on the fly.

Implementation of Virtual Medical Devices in Internet and Wireless Cellular Networks

Telemedical systems work in heterogeneous processing environment and require a flexible system reconfiguration. Physician may switch from a personal digital assistant to a high performance — high resolution workstation very often, expecting the telemedical system to reconfigure and provide the support within seconds. In this paper we present a telemedical virtual collaborative environment based on Internet and wireless cellular network technologies. We apply a novel concept of interactive Virtual Medical Devices (VMD) and merge remote data acquisition, distributed processing, and data presentation. Using VMD we have integrated spatially distributed functions: I/O at patient side, data processing, and presentation at physician side. Data acquisition is performed by remote medical device or medical sensor. Data processing is distributed and involves sophisticated real-time signal processing algorithms. We developed three VMD interfaces for data presentation and data distribution: WWW HTML interface, WAP WML interface, and GSM SMS interface. We have applied VMDs to facilitate distributed analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) data in Internet environment.

UAV-based Simulation Environment: Experience Report

Simulation has long been applied to enhance training and preparation. Nowadays, however, simulation is being used as a technological enabler to support all phases of a project lifecycle, including research, analysis, and acquisition. With the ability to virtually simulate systems, processes, communications and the interoperability of each in a simulation environment, simulation helps reduce the cost and risk associated with all phases of a project. UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) performs various kinds of missions such as mobile tactical reconnaissance, surveillance, law enforcement, search and rescue, land management, environmental monitoring, disaster management. In order to realize all functionalities of the UAV, the software part becomes very complex real-time system expected to execute real-time tasks concurrently. This paper reports experiences of designing and developing simulator for lightweight UAV purpose-built for medium-scale reconnaissance and surveillance missions in civil area. The overall system architecture and implementation are described.