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1.

Context Aware User Interface System for Smart Home Control

Authors: Markus Ritala, Tomi Tieranta and Jukka Vanhala

Abstract: When there are several controllable devices in a certain space, controlling them all in an efficient way requires much thought on the user interface and usability issues. Today's solutions differ from a local mechanical switch to a complex distributed controlling system. One part of these is different remote controllers, which the people are using, in their everyday life.

An example of a possible scenario is the future home. The house itself is equipped with many sensors and can measure several different quantities such as temperature, humidity, air quality and lighting levels. People's basic needs for more cost-efficient and higher standard of living will lead to this. Although the principal goal should be to activate the user and not to let the home automation take over the control of everything.

In any case, the number of electronic devices in the future homes is huge and it is still increasing rapidly because both the size and the prize of the components are getting smaller. More and more components will be embedded into a single chip and the need of the incidental electronics will be decrease. Also the type of automation varies. The building automation is more about the whole building i.e. heating and sewerage. The home automation consists the automation for certain smaller space like one room or certain appliance like television.

In an intelligent home automation system there are many possible solutions for how and from where to control the automation system and single devices; a user interface can be a computer-based system, a mechanical switch, a single light, a loudspeaker with a microphone or a some kind of personal remote controller for all the home appliances.

2.

Home Radio- Extending the Home Experience Beyond the Physical Boundaries of the House

Authors: Berry Eggen, Marco Rozendaal and Othmar Schimmel

Abstract: Over the last couple of years we have been studying user-system interaction solutions for the home environment (e.g., [1]). This research has been driven by visions on the home of the future both from a technological and a user perspective. In this paper, we briefly discuss both view points and formulate a number of general design principles that will guide the development of electronic systems for future home environments. Some of these design principles have been actively studied within Philips Research by building experience demonstrators. The focus of this paper is on the research carried out for one of these demonstrators: Home Radio.

Home Radio addresses the need expressed by people to stay in touch with their home, extending the home experience beyond the boundaries of the physical house: people can tune in to Home Radio, from anywhere, to see, hear, and interact with home events, activities and information.

The current presentation and interaction concept for Home Radio is based on the idea that home activities can be coded by the corresponding utility streams they generate (gas, electricity, water, communication and information). This coded information is broadcast on the web and family members can tune in to this stream. At the receiver end (e.g. your office) the coded information is rendered and presented by audio-visual means. User-system interaction is modelled with three different states. In the first state, sound and light are unobtrusively present in the environment and create a pleasant ambience, as people will become familiar with certain audio-video patterns over time. Deviations from these familiar patterns will attract people's attention and cause a transition to the second state in which the user is consciously aware of the audio-visual presentation and focuses on one element, or a combination of elements representing a certain activity. In the third state of interaction the user explicitly communicates with the system, by means of direct interaction using speech and gestures, to show the maximum level of information that is available.

A typical 'day-in-the-life-of' scenario was developed to evaluate the concept. This real-life scenario was used to drive the Home Radio system. In this way, the Home Radio concept was subjected to an informal appraisal involving a small number of user interface experts. The two design iteration cycles that led to the current Home Radio demonstrator as well as qualitative results from the appraisal will be presented at the conference.

3.

Strangers and Friends in Networked Immersive Environments: Virtual Spaces for Future Living

Authors: Maria Spante, Ilona Heldal, Anthony Steed*, Ann-Sofie Axelsson, Ralph Schroeder

Abstract: With the development of new digital technologies, it has been envisaged that in the future, we can 'be together' at a distance inside virtual environments. A number of technologies have emerged in recent decades which have brought this vision closer: The use of videophones and large interactive projection screens in the home create some possibilities which go in this direction, even though they are not yet widely used (though video-conferencing systems at work have become routine in certain situations). The increasingly popular graphical online multiplayer games where the user moves through 3-D spaces and interacts with others as avatars create other such possibilities. We still know little about how network technologies which allow people to 'be there together' might one day link homes, despite the fact that we have a wealth of research about how the telephone, television and internet allow people to communicate and bridge distance by sharing messages and images even when they do not share the same space.

4.

A Network for Customizable + Reconfigurable Housing

Authors: Kent Larson, Tyson Lawrence, Thomas McLeish, Deva Seethram, H. Shrikumar

Abstract: The housing industry of today produces homes that are poorly prepared for the future. Rapidly changing demographics and related societal pressures will inevitably transform the home into a center for preventative health care, distributed energy production, work, learning, and communication - requiring us to rethink how we design and integrate technology into our places of living. In addition, people have a powerful desire for their places of living to reflect individual needs and values. The current housing development process, however, discourages innovation and produces mostly low-grade, generic commodities. It cannot efficiency respond to the unique requirements of individual occupants. We propose a strategy that may enable customized, cost-effective, high performance housing solutions. In this paper, we present essential concepts for a building network that is necessary to fully realize these goals. We present the initial implementations of building network called GSG 1.0 and c@t, a language for programming distributed embedded systems such as large-scale building networks.