Attentive Office Cubicles: Mediating Visual and Auditory Interactions Between Office Co-Workers
Aadil Mamuji¹, Roel Vertegaal¹, Maria Danninger², Connor Dickie¹, Changuk Sohn^1
1Queen's University, ²Technische Universität München

We designed an office cubicle that automatically mediates communications between co-workers by sensing whether users are candidate members of the same social group. The cubicle regulates visual interactions through the use of privacy glass, which can be rendered opaque or transparent upon detection of joint orientation. It regulates auditory interactions through noise-canceling headphones that automatically turn off upon co-orientation.

The Context-Aware Pill Bottle and Medication Monitor
Anand Agarawala¹, Saul Greenberg¹ and Geoffrey Ho^2
1Department of Computer Science, ²University of Calgary

The video illustrates and critiques a context-aware pill bottle/stand that reminds the elderly when it is time to take their medication. A medication monitor situated in a caregiver’s home displays awareness information about the elderly user’s medication compliance.

Talking Assistant - Car Repair Shop Demo
Dirk Schnelle, Erwin Aitenbichler, Jussi Kangasharju, Max Mühlhäuser
Telecooperation Department of Computer Science Darmstadt University of Technology

In this video paper we present the Talking Assistant and the STAIRS project, and how the two interact. The Talking Assistant is a device for interacting in ubiquitous computing environments. It features sensors, wireless communications and simple local speech recognition. The STAIRS project concerns browsing of structured hypertext documents in audio. One key feature of STAIRS is, that beside speech commands, navigation can be controlled by changes in context. In this paper we show one example of how context changes can be detected with infrared tags.

Cubic Display Device "Z-agon"
Junya Ueda, Takashi Matsumoto, Naohito Okude
Keio University

Z-agon is a device with six-face displays which is constructed in the shape of a cube. We assume that Z-agon will be used as a portable movie player. Designing practical product, we propose a new ubiquitous interface in the media design. We made a movie to show up its form and exam its future needs and uses for the design. In this paper, we show a design process to build up the concept of Z-agon using scenario-based modeling empowered by the video. This movie consists of three sections. The first section shows a Projector Prototype to exam its appearance. The second section shows the design approach. The third section shows a movie scenario to reveal its interaction.

Building Flexible Displays for Awareness and Interaction
Kathryn Elliot, Saul Greenberg
Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary

This video illustrates a set of flexible ambient devices that can be connected to any suitable information source and that provide a simple means for people to move from awareness into interaction.

Mobile Music Making with Sonic City
Lalya Gaye, Lars Erik
Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute

Sonic City is a wearable system in which the urban environment acts as an interface for real-time electronic music making; the user creates music dynamically by walking through a city. The system senses the user’s activities and the surrounding context, and maps this information in real time to the processing of urban sounds that are collected with a microphone. This video shows participants of a short-term study using our prototype in everyday settings. The actual music created with the system is heard together with users’ comments. The Sonic City project illustrates how ubiquitous and wearable computing can enable new types of applications that encourage everyday creativity.

TACT: Mobile Wireless Terminal for Digitally-Enabled Environments
Michimune Kohno, Yuji Ayatsuka, Jun Rekimoto
Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.

In this paper, we introduce TACT, which is a general interaction tool for ubiquitous computing environments. This device is dedi-cated to the operation of various kinds of connections, including audio, video, and data transmission between remote/surrounding computers. With TACT, whenever a user wants to utilize a nearby computing resource, the user can open a session and manipulate its endpoints without caring about network addresses. We demon-strate a few typical scenarios to show how TACT is used in vari-ous situations.

User Assist Application with Location Sensors, Integration
Udana Bandara^{1 2}, Mikio Hasegawa¹, Masugi Inoue¹, Masateru Minami^{1 3}, Hiroyuki Morikawa^{1 2} , Tomonori Aoyama^2
1National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, ²University of Tokyo, ³Shibaura Institute of Technology

In this video paper, we introduce two context-aware applications: a navigator, and a communicator which are implemented in our laboratory premises. The applications are developed on a software platform which supports the integration of several different kinds of sensors. Currently we use data from three location sensing methods and user activity data as sensor input. The navigator is used for guiding guests in our laboratory premises with varying accuracy according to the user’s position. The communicator combines voice over IP (VoIP) , instant messaging (IM) and email functionalities in a single application, and switches between methods of communication according to the user’s preference and context.

Tele-Reality in the Wild
Neil J. McCurdy, William G. Griswol
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego

We are rapidly moving toward a world where personal networked video cameras are ubiquitous. Already, camera-equipped cell phones are becoming commonplace. Imagine being able to tap into all of these real-time video feeds to remotely explore the world live.We introduce RealityFlythrough, a telereality/ telepresence system that makes this vision possible. By situating live 2d video feeds in a 3d model of the world, RealityFlythrough allows any space to be explored remotely. No special cameras, tripods, rigs, scaffolding, or lighting is required to create the model, and no lengthy preprocessing of images is necessary. Rather than try to achieve photorealism at every point in space, we instead focus on providing the user with a sense of how the video streams relate to one another spatially. By providing cues in the form of dynamic transitions, we can approximate photorealistic tele-reality while harnessing cameras “in the wild.” This video describes the RealityFlythrough system, and reports on a live tele-reality experience. We find that tele-reality can work in the wild using only commodity hardware and off-the-shelf software, and that imperfect transitions are sensible and provide a compelling user experience.

Adapting Information Through Tangible Augmented Reality Interfaces
Patrick Sinclair, Kirk Martinez
University of Southampton

Tangible augmented reality interfaces offer a hands on approach for examining objects and exploring the associated information. We describe two tangible augmented reality interfaces that can expose the adaptation of information presented to users about objects in augmented reality environments.

Can You See me Now
Matt Adams¹, Ju Row Farr¹, Nick Tandavanitj¹, Steve Benford², Martin Flintham², Adam Drozd², Rob Anastasi^2
1Blast Theory, ²The University of Nottingham

Can You See Me Now? is a ubiquitous artistic game that mixes street players who use mobile, location-tracked devices, with online players who use conventional PCs connected over the Internet. The game serves as both a professional touring artwork and a research project that has enabled emerging ubiquitous technologies to be studied ‘in the wild’, i.e., as used by the public on the streets of actual cities throughout the world.

Magic Touch
Thomas Pederson
Dept. of Computing Science, Umeå university

This video demonstration illustrates a method for tracking location changes of large sets of real-world objects unobtrusively and cost-effectively based on the assumption that all object movements are caused by users themselves, and can be tracked using wearable sensor technology placed on human hands.

Connecting Remote Teams: Cross-Media Integration to Support Remote Informal Encounters
Thorsten Prante¹, Richard Stenzel¹, Carsten Röcker¹, Daniel van Alphen², Norbert A. Streitz¹, Carsten Magerkurth¹, Daniela A. Plewe^2
1Fraunhofer IPSI, AMBIENTE - Smart Environments of the Future, ² Independant researchers

This video presents the Hello.Wall artefact in a mixed-media set-up to support spontaneous, informal encounters in two remote lounge spaces of a distributed team. The Hello.Walls are used as awareness tools to know more about the remote team’s state and at the same time as a tool to smoothen transitions to place-based video communication among the remote teams’ members. This connecting-remote-teams scenario was tested in a living-lab evaluation for several weeks and proved to foster remote informal encounters and thereby contributed to smooth and fluent project work in our Ambient-Agoras project.

SimPhony: a voice communication tool for distributed workgroups
Vidya Lakshmipathy, Chris Schmandt
MIT Media Lab

Communication is vital in any workplace. However, as workers become less tied to their desktops and computers, the need to provide them with a mobile communication tool that adapts to their work environment becomes more necessary. This paper describes SimPhony - a mobile, voice-controlled, voice communication system built on a PDA and designed specifically for distributed workgroups. SimPhony supports one-to-one or one-to-many communication with voice instant messages or synchronous audio transmitted over an 802.11b wireless network, and it transitions between different communication styles as messages becomes more frequent. The SimPhony interface looks much like an instant messaging client but is accessible through a voice or visual interface on the PDA or a voice interface accessible by any telephone.