GVU Technical Report Series

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GVU Technical Report Series

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/71001

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 24

Building a Better Intercom: Context-Mediated Communication within the Home

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000) Kidd, Cory D. ; O'Connell, Thomas ; Nagel, Kristine Susanne ; Patil, Sameer ; Abowd, Gregory D.

As we enable everyday environments with ubiquitous technology, there are many opportunities to support simple activities in useful ways. We are investigating how an environment made aware of the location and activities of its occupants can better support direct human-human communication. Specifically, we have instrumented a home to explore lightweight, spontaneous hands-free communication between residents in different parts of the home. Our working prototype demonstrates how existing technologies of voice recognition, indoor positioning and audio routing lay the foundation for the exploration of a variety of more intelligent alternatives to the traditional home intercom system. We show how context can be used to mediate the initiation and management of one- and two-way audio connections between residents, supporting a range of within-home conversational patterns. In this paper, we describe a variety of home communication scenarios and the general infrastructure we have built to explore them.
Interaction Techniques for Ambiguity Resolution in Recognition-Based Interfaces

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000) Mankoff, Jennifer C. ; Hudson, Scott E. ; Abowd, Gregory D.

Because of its promise of natural interaction, recognition is coming into its own as a mainstream technology for use with computers. Both commercial and research applications are beginning to use it extensively. However the errors made by recognizers can be quite costly, and this is increasingly becoming a focus for researchers. We present a survey of existing error correction techniques in the user interface. These mediation techniques most commonly fall into one of two strategies, repetition and choice. Based on the needs uncovered by this survey, we have developed OOPS, a toolkit that supports resolution of input ambiguity through mediation. This paper describes four new interaction techniques built using OOPS, and the toolkit mechanisms required to build them. These interaction techniques each address problems not directly handled by standard approaches to mediation, and can all be re-used in a variety of settings.
The Smart Floor: A Mechanism for Natural User Identification and Tracking

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000) Orr, Robert J. ; Abowd, Gregory D.

We have created a system for identifying people based on their footstep force profiles and have tested its accuracy against a large pool of footstep data. This floor system may be used to transparently identify users in their everyday living and working environments. We have created user footstep models based on footstep profile features and have been able to achieve a recognition rate of 93% using this feature-based approach. We have also shown that the effect of footwear is negligible on recognition accuracy.
Distributed Mediation of Imperfectly Sensed Context in Aware Environments

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000) Dey, Anind K. ; Mankoff, Jennifer C. ; Abowd, Gregory D.

Current context-aware services make the assumption that the context they are dealing with is correct. However, in reality, both sensed and interpreted context is often imperfect. In this paper, we describe an architecture that supports the building of context-aware services that assume context is imperfect and allows for the refinement of this imperfect context by mobile users in aware-environments. We discuss the architectural mechanisms and design heuristics that arise from supporting this refinement over space and time. We illustrate the use of our architecture and heuristics through two example context-aware services, an In-Out Board for the home and a situation-aware reminder tool.
The Conference Assistant: Combining Context-Awareness with Wearable Computing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Dey, Anind K. ; Futakawa, Masayasu ; Salber, Daniel ; Abowd, Gregory D.

We describe the Conference Assistant, a prototype mobile, context-aware application that assists conference attendees. We discuss the strong relationship between context-awareness and wearable computing and apply this relationship in the Conference Assistant. The application uses a wide variety of context and enhances user interactions with both the environment and other users. We describe how the application is used and the context-aware architecture on which it was based.
An Architecture to Support Context-Aware Applications

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Dey, Anind K. ; Salber, Daniel ; Futakawa, Masayasu ; Abowd, Gregory D.

Context is an important, yet poorly utilized source of information in interactive computing. It is difficult to use because, unlike other forms of user input, there is not common, reusable way to handle context. Most context-aware applications have been built in an ad hoc manner. We discuss the requirements for dealing with context and present an architectural solution we have designed and implemented to help application designers build context-aware applications more easily. We illustrate the use of the architecture through a context-aware application that assists conference attendees.
Interacting with Multiple Alternatives Generated by Recognition Technologies

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Mankoff, Jennifer C. ; Abowd, Gregory D. ; Hudson, Scott E.

Despite significant advances in recognition technologies in areas such as speech and gesture recognition, our experience tells us that recognition errors and uncertainty are unlikely to disappear. For the foreseeable future, use of recognition based systems will introduce uncertainty into the input process. If interactive systems are going to work robustly with recognition-based input, it will be necessary to consider uncertainty as a normal part of input handling rather than considering it to be an anomaly or an exceptional condition. This paper considers techniques for explicit treatment of input uncertainty in user interfaces. In particular, it considers a general class of techniques for the display of, and interaction with, multiple alternatives generated by recognition technologies. Augmentation of the typical event-handling infrastructure is discussed, as well as an application interface infrastructure which attempts to minimize the impact of uncertainty on the application. A prototype system that embodies this infrastructure is also considered.
Designing for Ubiquitous Computing: A Case Study in Context Sensing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Salber, Daniel ; Dey, Anind K. ; Orr, Robert J. ; Abowd, Gregory D.

This paper reports ongoing experience with the design and everyday use of an electronic context-enabled in/out board. We designed this application as part of the development of a context toolkit and it proved a fruitful test-bed for investigating issues of context sensor fusion. We describe the first version of the application that used a single context sensor and explain some usability problems it raised. We analyze the limitations of available context sensors and conclude that the usability problems cannot be overcome using a single sensor. We suggest solutions relying on the use of multiple context sensors and sensor fusion.
A Context-based Infrastructure for Smart Environments

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Dey, Anind K. ; Salber, Daniel ; Abowd, Gregory D.

In order for a smart environment to provide services to its occupants, it must be able to detect its current state and determine what actions to take based on the context. We discuss the requirements for dealing with context in a smart environment and present a software infrastructure solution we have designed and implemented to help application designers build intelligent services and applications more easily. We describe the benefits of our infrastructure through applications we have built.
Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999) Dey, Anind K. ; Abowd, Gregory D.

The use of context is important in interactive applications. It is particularly important for applications where the users context is changing rapidly, such as in both handheld and ubiquitous computing. In order to better understand how we can use context and facilitate the building of context-aware applications, we need to more fully understand what constitutes a context-aware application and what context is. Towards this goal, we have surveyed existing work in context-aware computing. In this paper, we provide an overview of the results of this survey and, in particular, definitions and categories of context and context-aware. We conclude with recommendations for how this better understanding of context inform a framework for the development of context-aware applications.