17677434
A framework for designing intelligent task-oriented augmented reality user interfaces
A task-oriented space can benefit from an augmented reality interface that layers the existing tools and surfaces with useful information to make cooking more easy, safe and efficient. To serve experienced users as well as novices, augmented reality interfaces need to adapt modalities to the user's expertise and allow for multiple ways to perform tasks. We present a framework for designing an intelligent user interface that informs and choreographs multiple tasks in a single space according to a model of tasks and users. A residential kitchen has been outfitted with systems to gather data from tools and surfaces and project multi-modal interfaces back onto the tools and surfaces themselves. Based on user evaluations of this augmented reality kitchen, we propose a system to tailor information modalities based on the spatial and temporal qualities of the task, and the expertise, location and progress of the user. The intelligent augmented reality user interface choreographs multiple tasks in the same space at the same time.
7053531
Attention meter: a vision-based input toolkit for interaction designers
This paper shows how a software toolkit can allow graphic designers to make camera-based interactive environments in a short period of time without experience in user interface design or machine vision. The Attention Meter, a vision-based input toolkit, gives users an analysis of faces found in a given image stream, including facial expression, body motion, and attentive activities. This data is fed to a text file that can be easily understood by humans and programs alike. A four day workshop demonstrated that some Flash-savvy architecture students could construct interactive spaces (e.g. TaiKer-KTV and ScreamMarket) based on body and head motions.
16256064
Emotionally reactive television
When is an interface simple? Is it when it is invisible or very obvious, even intrusive? From the time TV was created, watching TV is considered as a static activity. TV audiences have very limited choices to interact with TV, such as turning on/off, increasing/decreasing volume, and traversing among different channels. This paper suggests that TV program should have social responses to people, such as affording and accepting audience's emotional feeling with the growth of technologies. This paper presents HiTV, an Emotionally-Reactive TV system using a digitally augmented soft ball as affect-input interfaces that can amplify TV program's video/audio signals. HiTV transforms the original video and audio into effects that intrigue and fulfill people's emotional expectation.
38028125
Lover's cups: drinking interfaces as new communication channels
This paper shows how computer interfaces can enhance common activities and use them as communication method between people. In this paper, the act of drinking is used as an input of remote communication with the support of computer interfaces. We present Lover's Cups which enable people to share the time of drinking with someone they care about in different places. Using a wireless connection, an otherwise ordinary pair of cups becomes a communication device, amplifying the social aspect of drinking behavior.
19284732
Smart sinks: real-world opportunities for context-aware interaction
Can implicit interaction with a computer easily drive useful interface improvements in physical world settings? This paper presents a case study presenting multiple such context-aware interaction improvements in a sink. We have identified opportunities where automated interfaces at the sink have positive consequences for safety, hygiene and ecology. The danger of scalding oneself with hot water is confronted by transforming the water into a graphical user interface and using image understanding to dispense the proper temperature of water. Audio-visual feedback at the sink can motivate users to conserve water. Used in combination with an RFID reader, the sink can serve as an effective means of verifying hand-washing compliance for clean environments. Finally, automatic actuation of the sink's height based on the user and task can prevent burns and ergonomic injuries. This project demonstrates that the integration of digital interaction in a hostile environment can facilitate and improve our daily rituals.
3095915
On mining general temporal association rules in a publication database
In this paper, we explore a new problem of mining general temporal association rules in publication databases. In essence, a publication database is a set of transactions where each transaction T is a set of items, each containing an individual exhibition period. The current model of association rule mining is not able to handle a publication database due to the following fundamental problems: (1) lack of consideration of the exhibition period of each individual item; and (2) lack of an equitable support counting basis for each item. To remedy this, we propose an innovative algorithm, progressive-partition-miner (PPM), to discover general temporal association rules in a publication database. The basic idea of PPM is to first partition the publication database into exhibition periods of items and then progressively accumulate the occurrence count of each candidate 2-itemset based on the intrinsic partitioning characteristics. PPM is also designed to employ a filtering threshold in each partition to prune out those cumulatively infrequent 2-itemsets at an early stage. Explicitly, the execution time of PPM is, in orders of magnitude, smaller than those required by schemes which are directly extended from existing methods.
8218476
A resource allocation model for QoS management
Quality of service (QoS) has been receiving wide attention in many research communities including networking, multimedia systems, real-time systems and distributed systems. In large distributed systems such as those used in defense systems, on-demand service and inter-networked systems, applications contending for system resources must satisfy timing, reliability and security constraints as well as application-specific quality requirements. Allocating sufficient resources to different applications in order to satisfy various requirements is a fundamental problem in these situations. A basic yet flexible model for performance-driven resource allocations can therefore be useful in making appropriate tradeoffs. We present an analytical model for QoS management in systems which must satisfy application needs along multiple dimensions such as timeliness, reliable delivery schemes, cryptographic security and data quality. We refer to this model as Q-RAM (QoS-based Resource Allocation Model). The model assumes a system with multiple concurrent applications, each of which can operate at different levels of quality based on the system resources available to it. The goal of the model is to be able to allocate resources to the various applications such that the overall system utility is maximized under the constraint that each application can meet its minimum needs. We identify resource profiles of applications which allow such decisions to be made efficiently and in real-time. We also identify application utility functions along different dimensions which are composable to form unique application requirement profiles. We use a video-conferencing system to illustrate the model.
31179959
Improving location management for mobile users with frequently visited locations
Abstract In wireless computing environment, users’ mobility brings new challenges to traditional computing systems. The explosive growth of demand in communication bandwidth requires new schemes to effectively and efficiently locate users. The Basic HLR/VLR locating scheme does not exploit the fact that many mobile users’ (such as commuters’) moving patterns are likely to be known. In this paper, we propose one locating scheme, the frequently visited locations first (FVLF) scheme, to efficiently locate a mobile user. The FVLF scheme is proposed to prestore the RAs that a mobile user frequently visits according to the probabilities of the RAs that the mobile user may appear. When the system receives a call, these prestored RAs are examined first to locate the callee. This scheme can avoid the high cost of querying the callee’s HLR. The cost model of the proposed scheme is derived and the optimal number of prestored RAs is also found. Our evaluation shows that benefit does exist in various conditions by using this scheme.
30064492
Genetic reinforcement learning approach to the machine scheduling problem
This paper focuses on the development of a learning-based heuristic for the machine scheduling problem, which automatically captures the search control knowledge or the common features of good schedules while generating a number of schedules. Defining states and actions of the machine shop, the machine scheduling problem is transformed into a problem of reinforcement learning (RL) in which a learner or a scheduler will learn to select the right action at each state of the machine shop, using the reward from a schedule evaluator for executing the action. Implementing the proposed reinforcement learning with a genetic algorithm results in the genetic reinforcement learning (GRL) approach to the machine scheduling problem. Although the learning-based heuristic has the overhead of acquiring knowledge on the problem, it can be easily adapted for a wide variety of machine scheduling problems due to the weak dependence on the problem structures and objectives. A GRL-based scheduler, called EVIS (Evolutionary Intracell Scheduler), has been developed and applied to various classes of machine scheduling problems, such as the job-shop scheduling, the flow-shop scheduling and the open-shop scheduling problems, and even the processor scheduling problem, the performance evaluation of EVIS with a number of different problem instances has shown that the learning-based heuristic is robust and its performance is comparable with that of other problem-specific heuristics or search-oriented heuristics in the quality of solutions.
11513651
A scalable solution to the multi-resource QoS problem
The problem of maximizing system utility by allocating a single finite resource to satisfy discrete Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of multiple applications along multiple QoS dimensions was studied previously. In this paper we consider the more complex problem of apportioning multiple finite resources to satisfy the QoS needs of multiple applications along multiple QoS dimensions. In other words, each application, such as video-conferencing, needs multiple resources to satisfy its QoS requirements. We evaluate and compare three strategies to solve this provably NP-hard problem. We show that dynamic programming and mixed integer programming compute optimal solutions to this problem but exhibit very long running times. We then adapt the mixed integer programming problem to yield near-optimal results with smaller running times. Finally, we present an approximation algorithm based on a local search technique that is less than 5% away from the optimal solution but which is more than two orders of magnitude faster. Perhaps more significantly, the local search technique turns out to be very scalable and robust as the number of resources required by each application increases.