Interoperable Semantic and Syntactic Service Discovery for Ambient Computing Environments

The inherent heterogeneity of ambient computing environments and their constant evolution requires middleware platforms to manage networked components designed, developed, and deployed independently. Such management must also be efficient to cater for resource-constrained devices and highly dynamic situations due to the spontaneous appearance and disappearance of networked resources. For service discovery protocols (SDP), one of the main functions of service-oriented architectures (SOA), the efficiency of the matching of syntactic service descriptions is most often opposed to the fullness of the semantic approach. As part of the PLASTIC middleware, the authors present an interoperable discovery platform that features an efficient matching and ranking algorithm able to process service descriptions and discovery requests from both semantic and syntactic SDPs. To that end, the paper defines a generic, modular description language able to record service functional properties, potentially extended with semantic annotations. The proposed discovery platform leverages the advanced communication capabilities provided by the PLASTIC middleware to discover services in multi-network environments. An evaluation of the prototype implementation demonstrates that multi-protocols service matching supporting various levels of expressiveness can be achieved in ambient computing environments.

Simplicity, Consistency, Universality, Flexibility and Familiarity

This paper describes the user interface design, and subsequent usability evaluation of the EU FP6 funded Easyline+ project, which involved the development of ambient assistive technology to support elderly and disabled people in their interaction with kitchen appliances. During this process, established usability design guidelines and principles were considered. The authors’ analysis of the applicability of these has led to the development of a new set of principles, specifically for the design of ambient computer systems. This set of principles is referred to as SCUFF, an acronym for simplicity, consistency, universality, flexibility and familiarity. These evaluations suggest that adoption of the SCUFF principles was successful for the Easyline+ project, and that they can be used for other ambient technology projects, either as complementary to, or as an alternative to more generic and partially relevant principles.

Interaction Per Se

Interaction is a core concept in the fields of Ubiquitous computing, Ambient systems design, and generally in the fields of HCI and Interaction Design. Despite this, a lack of knowledge about the fundamental character of interaction still exists. Researchers have explored interaction from the viewpoints of user-centered design and design of graphical user interfaces, where interaction stands for the link between technology and humans or denotes the use aspect. A framework is proposed for exploring interaction as a design space in itself between a human and the technology. It is proposed that this framework for interaction as a design space for Interaction Design, in which the very form of the in-between, the interaction, be explicitly targeted. It is an opportunity to go beyond user and usability studies to seek answers to fundamental questions concerning the form and character of interaction as implemented in today’s interactive systems. Moreover, this framework is an opportunity to expand and explain a new design space for Interaction Design. The proposed framework, anchored in two exemplifying cases, illustrates the character and the form of interaction as it situates itself in online, ubiquitous and everyday IT use.

Ambient Interface Design (AID) for the Ergonomically Challenged

Mobile devices offer convenient communication capabilities and have the potential to create intermediary support for ergonomically challenged users. With the global proliferation of increasing longevity, assisting the elderly and those living with impediments through human engineering and computing technology is pivotal to biotechnological attainment. To remain independently empowered, seamless integrations through efficient affable interfaces are required to provide sedulous location-independent and appliance-sensitive media viewing for the user. The Ambient Interface Design (AID) system assists with finding personal preferences and provides a synchronisation framework, coordinating connectivity across various environmentally distributed devices via sensor data mapping. Cooperative interface communication coupled with context awareness will be abstracted to a representation that facilitates optimisation and customisation to these displays. To overcome personal challenges in the efficient selection and acquisition of online information, AID mediates between the needs of the user and the constraints of the technology to provide a singular customised encapsulation of ‘ability preference and device’ for each authenticated member. A particular emphasis is the application of a human-centered design ethos.

Reducing Blocking Risks of Atomic Transactions in MANETs Using a Backup Coordinator

In this paper, the authors present a probabilistic model to evaluate the reliability of the atomic commit for distributed transactions in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). This model covers arbitrary MANET scenarios as well as strict and semantic transaction models. The authors evaluate the approach to integrate a backup coordinator to reduce blocking risks. For the purpose of showing an example of a MANET scenario, the authors illustrate how the considered blocking probability is very low.

Collecting Datasets from Ambient Intelligence Environments

This paper describes a methodology and lessons learned from collecting datasets in Ambient Intelligence Environments. The authors present considerations on how to setup an experiment and discuss decisions taken at different planning steps, ranging from the selection of human activities over sensor choices to issues of the recording software. The experiment design and execution is illustrated through a dataset involving 150 recording sessions with 28 sensors worn on the subject body and embedded into tools and the environment. The paper also describes a number of unforeseen problems that affected the experiment and useful considerations that help other researchers recording their own ambient intelligence datasets.

Auditory Augmentation

With auditory augmentation, the authors describe building blocks supporting the design of data representation tools, which unobtrusively alter the auditory characteristics of structure-borne sounds. The system enriches the structure-borne sound of objects with a sonification of (near) real time data streams. The object’s auditory gestalt is shaped by data-driven parameters, creating a subtle display for ambient data streams. Auditory augmentation can be easily overlaid to existing sounds, and does not change prominent auditory features of the augmented objects like the sound’s timing or its level. In a peripheral monitoring situation, the data stay out of the users’ attention, which thereby remains free to focus on a primary task. However, any characteristic sound change will catch the users’ attention. This article describes the principles of auditory augmentation, gives an introduction to the Reim Software Toolbox, and presents the first observations made in a preliminary long-term user study.

iCampus

iCampus is a prototype multi-agent system whose goal is to provide the ambient intelligence required to connect people in a university campus and make that campus inclusive and accessible. Software agents called guides run on mobile phones to help students with information about people, places, and events, thus providing people real-time, location-based advice that makes them more aware of what is going on in the campus. The work outlines how to specify iCampus in the Ambient Event Calculus and implement it using the agent environment GOLEM to deploy guide agents over a campus network. The work is illustrated by showing how iCampus improves the mobility of blind or partially sighted students within a campus, which has been the main motivation behind the work.

Spatio-Temporal Footprints

The recognition of human behaviour from sensor observations is an important area of research in smart homes and ambient intelligence. In this paper, we introduce the idea of spatio-temporal footprints, which are local patterns in space and time that should be similar across repeated occurrences of the same behaviour. We discuss the spatial and temporal mapping requirements of these footprints, together with how they may be used.

A Dynamic Spoken Dialogue Interface for Ambient Intelligence Interaction

In this paper, we present the interpretation and generation processes of a spoken dialogue interface for ambient intelligence. The interface is automatically created for each specific environment and the interpretation and generation vary depending on the environment and its context. These processes rely on a dialogue tree structure. Several modules process the tree structure and the context information to produce specific dialogues for the current environment state. The interface has been implemented and evaluated in an ambient intelligence environment. Satisfactory objective and subjective evaluation results are shown at the end of the paper.