European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Number 47 October 2001 www.ercim.org
Special Theme: Ambient Intelligence
Next Issue: January 2002 Special Theme: e-government CONTENTS
KEYNOTE 30 Contextualisation in Nomadic Computing by Markus Eisenhauer and Roland Klemke 3 by Commissioner Erkki Liikanen 31 Scene Interpretation for Video Communication by Monique Thonnat
JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS 32 Mining Multimedia Documents by Visual Content
4 DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries by Nozha Boujemaa and Marin Ferecatu
34 How can I be sure that my DVD player understands 7 ERCIM Fellowship Programme 2002/2003 launched my TV? by Wan Fokkink, Izak van Langevelde, Bas Luttik and Yaroslav Usenko SPECIAL THEME 36 Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor Networks
8 Ambient Intelligence by Stefano Chessa and Paolo Santi by Jari Ahola TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 9 Ambient Intelligence: a UK Perspective by Ronan Sleep 37 Domain Specific Languages 10 Ambient Intelligence in the Context of Universal by Arie van Deursen and Jan Heering Access 38 QuantifiCare: A new INRIA spin-off in Medical Image by Constantine Stephanidis Processing 12 Ambient Intelligence within a Home Environment by Jean-Philippe Thirion by Mária Bieliková and Tibor Krajcovic 39 MIA — Querying Multimedia Databases 14 A Flood of Intelligence - the Living Room Project by Arjen de Vries by Jukka Vanhala
16 Ambient Intelligence and Home Networking for EVENTS Wellness Management and Home Automation by Ilkka Korhonen 40 IEA/AIE-2001 Conference Report by László Monostori and József Váncza 17 Wired and Smart: from the Fridge to the Bathtub by Franz Miller 40 Sixth ERCIM FMICS International Workshop by Hubert Garavel 18 Enabling Ambient Intelligence Research with SoapBox Platform 41 Workshop on User Interfaces by Esa Tuulari to Data Intensive Systems by Epaminondas Kapetanios 20 Designing for Ludic Aspects of Everyday Life by Bill Gaver 42 1st International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction 21 Ubiquitous Service Environments by Constantine Stephanidis by Carl Gustaf Jansson and Peter Lönnqvist 42 ECOOP 2001 - 15th European Conference 23 Offering a Consumer-Oriented Ambient Intelligence on Object-Oriented Programming Environment by László Kozma by Valerie Issarny 43 First DELOS Summer School on Digital Library 24 Global Ambient Intelligence: The Hostess Concept Technologies by András Lörincz by Maristella Agosti and Vittore Casarosa
25 Ubiquitous Computing Infrastructures 44 Joint DELOS-NSF Workshop on Personalisation by Friedemann Mattern and Recommender Systems in Digital Libraries
26 Ubiquitous Computing and Embedded Operating by Alan Smeaton and Jamie Callan Systems Design 45 CLEF2001: Workshop of the Cross-Language by Michel Banâtre Evaluation Forum
28 Ambient Interfaces for Distributed Work Groups by Carol Peters by Tom Gross 46 Announcements
29 GeoNotes: Social Enhancement of Physical Space by Per Persson and Fredrik Espinoza 47 IN BRIEF
Cover image: The Innovation Center for the Intelligent House, a testbed for future forms of living and working. See article on page 17. KEYNOTE
Ambient Intelligence in future EU Research Efforts
he European of the development of future IST, ie, ‘design technologies for Commission’s people and not make people adapt to technologies’. It aims at T proposal for making technology invisible, embedded in our natural sur- Erkki Liikanen Member of the European Commission, the next Framework rounding and present whenever we need it (eg, electricity) and responsible for Enterprise Programme (2003- at making interaction with the technology simple, effortless and Information Society 2006) for Research and using all our senses. This vision sustains and extends the and Development objectives of the European Commission’s eEurope 2002 (FP6) was submitted Action Plan of bringing IST applications and services to to the Council of ministers and European Parliament in everyone, every home, school and to all businesses. February 2001 and the related Specific programmes in May 2001. Information Society Technologies (IST) are one of the The trend towards an Ambient Intelligence landscape provides main priorities in the Commission proposal given their funda- a clear opportunity for European industry to build on, and mental role in realising Europe’s objectives for the knowledge strengthen its leading position in areas such as mobile commu- society as agreed at the Lisbon European Council of 2000, the nications, consumer electronics and home appliances, Stockholm Council of 2001, and reflected in the e-Europe embedded software and microelectronics. It will help reinforce Action Plan. This renewed effort in RTD in IST is essential to the competitiveness of all industrial sectors. ensure European leadership in the generic and applied tech- nologies at the heart of the knowledge society, to improve Europe can build on pioneering work in the field such as the European competitiveness and to enable all European citizens EU funded initiative on the ‘disappearing computer’ and on to benefit from the knowledge society. industrial and technological achievements. A main step forward is already brought in mobile/wireless technologies An important challenge for the academic and industrial with the 2.5 and 3G mobile systems. These provide anywhere research community in IST is to maintain the focus on medium access to applications and services from a non-PC platform and to long-term objectives amid changing socio-economic con- for the normal ‘man and woman on the street’. Wearable texts. We know that today only a small part of the world popu- mobile devices that incorporate interfaces making use of our lation, between 5 and 10 %, have access to IST applications and senses such as speech and gesture are currently under develop- services. Costs, complexity, unavailability and unreliability are ment. Cars already encompass an expanse of IST devices that often preventing the further development and broader deploy- we use and to which we have access without knowing. ment of the knowledge and information society and the digital divide is widening. Even in developed countries, only a minor A sustained research effort is needed to accelerate the progress fraction of the possibilities that IST can offer, is actually used in key areas such as advanced interfaces, broadband mobile, despite recent progress in the uptake of internet and mobile wireless and optical communications, distributed and technology. embedded computing technologies and knowledge handling techniques. It is also required in order to push the limits of As we start to understand the advantages and limitations of miniaturisation and minimise the costs and power consumption current technologies, research in IST should aim at new of microelectronic components and to explore new materials, avenues that will not only extend the scope, functionality and such as organic flexible material for displays and sensors so efficiency of IST applications and services, but that will also that they can be placed anywhere and take any shape. make them available, in the most natural and trustful way, to citizens whoever they are, whatever their age is, anywhere and Europe can not afford to miss the unique opportunities offered anytime. It must lead to a world where every child has access to by this next generation of IST, either in social or economic personalised learning resources, where every patient can be terms. The stake is even higher given the role of IST in all other treated within the comfort of his own home, where every engi- research and engineering fields and their impact on the realisa- neer has the power of global computing resources at their fin- tion of the European Research Area. We hope that the support gertips, where every business is plugged into world-wide to IST in FP6 will provide further impetus to the members of trading communities; and where every citizen is able to access ERCIM and the whole research community, from industry and public services anywhere, anytime. academia, to pull together their effort and build coherent approaches to realise the vision. This is the world of ‘Ambient Intelligence’ that will, gradually but surely, emerge from research in IST. This is the vision that the IST priority in FP6 is following. It puts people at the centre
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 3 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS
This is the second of a series of articles reporting on past and upcoming activities of the DELOS Network of Excellence for Digital Libraries. Further information on the objectives, activities and membership of DELOS can be accessed from the DELOS home page: http://www.ercim.org/delos/
Digital Libraries: Future teur was assigned for each group. On At that time, the UNESCO Institute for Research Directions the third half-day a final plenary session Information Technologies in Education was held, where the rapporteur of each (IITE) proposed to host the workshop in for a European Research group presented the proposals and rec- Moscow, including in the agenda a Programme ommendations of his/her group. A dis- UNESCO Expert Meeting on DL in cussion was then held to try to consoli- Education. A brainstorming meeting took place date all the proposals in order to draft a on 13-15 June 2001 in San Cassiano report on the outcome of the meeting. The following European projects were (Dolomites), Italy. represented at the Workshop: The agenda (including slide presenta- ARTISTE, SCHOLNET, TEL, MIND, The objective of the meeting was to tions), position statements and list of ARION, RENARDUS, ECHO, GLOBAL outline the main research directions of a participants are available on the delos INFO (now DL-Forum). The following future European research programme in web site. A report on the outcome of the Russian projects from Moscow, St. the field of digital libraries. To this end, meeting providing recommendations on Petersburg and Novosibirsk were repre- prominent members of the European the main research directions of a future sented at the Workshop: RSL project, research community were invited to par- European research programme in the Integration of Infosources of RAS, ticipate in and contribute to the defini- field of digital libraries will be available Subject Domain Mediation, GENEEX- tion of this new vision of digital at the site in October 2001. PRESS, Cultural heritage network, libraries, and to translate it into concrete Cultivate - Russia, Russian Archives research actions which will become an Online, AEROSPACE MEDIAT- integral part of the next 6th FP. Some DELOS / IPI-RAS / IITE ECHA, Open Education: Models. The prominent members from the US Workshop on European- topics discussed helped to identify sig- research community were also invited, nificant overlap in the interests of in collaboration with the National Russian Cooperation European and Russian DL profes- Science Foundation. 15 EU and 5 US in Digital Libraries sionals. high-level researchers attended. The meeting was also attended by a repre- A DELOS-Russia Collaboration After the presentations and discussions, sentative from the Commission. Workshop took place on 7-8 June 2001 the Workshop formulated and approved in Moscow, Russia. several recommendations for concrete The meeting was divided into three ses- actions, including: sions. On the first day a plenary session The Workshop was organized in the • Forming a DELOS-Russia network was held where the main objective of framework of the DELOS ‘Inter- which, on the one hand, will be a the meeting was presented. All partici- national Cooperation’ Forum according node in the DELOS Network of pants briefly presented short position to the DELOS-Russian DL Programme. Excellence and, on the other hand, statements reflecting their views about The objective of the 2001 Workshop in will be a network of Russian the main advances expected over the Russia was to organize a meeting (sub)nodes with activities similar to next few years in their field of activity between European and Russian repre- those of DELOS proper. DELOS- and expertise, and how these develop- sentatives of active DL projects to iden- Russia may be analogous to the ments can contribute to the generation tify areas of common interest and poten- CULTIVATE-Russia network. of new systems and services. The aim of tial cooperation. In May 2001 the list of • Improving and intensifying the this session was to provide a common participating projects from both sides exchange of research results and background to facilitate the drafting of was fixed. The list was based on the development efforts in the area of the final results of the meeting. On the European projects that in Luxembourg, DL between existing European and second day three parallel sessions were at the EU-DL All Projects Coordination Russian projects, building on held to discuss and draft a set of recom- meeting in February 2001, had existing DELOS and UNESCO IITE mendations for a future research agenda expressed interest in possible frameworks to establish cooperation relevant to Digital Libraries. A rappor- cooperation with Russian DL projects. between existing projects or to form
4 ERCIM News 47, October 2001 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS
new joint projects within the current Workshop on Audio-Visual Setting up of DELOS-NSF and future funding programs. • Identifying joint activity areas that Metadata Modelling Joint Working Groups deserve to be generalized and extended to the level of DELOS A DELOS workshop on Audio-Visual DELOS and the NSF have agreed to set working groups. DL frameworks for Metadata Modelling will be held on 23 up seven joint working groups whose scientific collection support can be September 2001 in London, UK in con- aim is to work together on research suggested as one such potential junction with the FIAT/IFTA Annual areas of important relevance to the direction. Conference (London, 22-25 digital library community. Each September). The workshop will be working group will be co-chaired by a divided into two sessions. In the first prominent member of the European and Tutorial on Multilingual session, research results and on-going the US digital library research commu- Access for Information standardization activities will be nity, and will consist of approximately reported. In the second session, a panel 10 members. The joint working groups Systems of leading representatives from applica- presently being set up are: tion domains (eg broadcasting, • Spoken-Word Digital Audio A DELOS tutorial on Multilingual Access archives, movie industry) will present Collections for Information Systems was held at and discuss real-life experiences with • Information Seeking, Searching IFLA2001 (International Federation of metadata models and editors in order to and Querying in Digital Libraries Library Associations and Institutions) stimulate a discussion and an exchange • Personalization and Recommender on 23 August 2001 in Boston, of opinions with the audience. Systems in Digital Libraries Massachusetts. • Emerging Language Technologies and Cultural Heritage 40 participants attended the tutorial Workshop on Collaboration • Digital Imagery for Significant which provided an overview of the between DELOS and Cultural and Historical Materials main issues of interest in the following • Preservation and Archiving two sectors: Non-EU Mediterranean • Evaluation and Test Suites. • multiple language recognition, Countries manipulation and display • multilingual or cross-language A DELOS workshop on the Design and NSF / EU DL search and retrieval. Implementation of Digital Libraries will All Projects Meeting be held at the Alakhawayn University in The topics covered included: the spe- Ifrane (AUI), Morocco on November DELOS is planning to hold a NSF/EU cific requirements of particular lan- 8-9, 2001. This practical workshop All Projects meeting in Rome, Italy 10- guages and scripts, processing of multi- aims at bringing together Digital 11 January 2002 (tentative date). The lingual document collections, multilin- Libraries’ researchers from both sides European Commission’s Information gual metadata, techniques for cross-lan- of the Mediterranean to present and Society Technologies Programme and guage retrieval, presentation issues, discuss their experiences in designing, the National Science Foundation are system evaluation. The focus of the implementing, and maintaining digital supporting substantial research con- tutorial was on the needs of the user - libraries with respect to today’s techno- cerned with digital libraries. Both whether information seeker, provider, logical and economic environment. The expect to develop the enabling tech- or administrator - and on how today's main objective of the workshop is to nologies as well as principles for DL multilingual retrieval systems can facilitate an exchange of experiences design and operation, to study the eco- impact on each of these user types. The among researchers involved in tech- nomic and legal issues surrounding tutorialists were Páraic Sheridan nologies of interest to digital libraries, electronic distribution of IR, and to (Director of MNIS-TextWise Labs, the to explore and discuss subjects of better understand the social context - for R&D division of Manning & Napier common interest for possible interna- example, human information needs - in Information Services based in Syracuse, tional cooperation, and to allow the AUI which DLs will operate. By and large, New York) and Carol Peters library to learn from other practical scientists involved in the EU and NSF (Researcher at the IEI-CNR). experiences and to have a good and projects have not had the opportunity to clear idea on how to monitor the design meet regularly. A coordination effort in and the implementation of its own the DL field can help avoid duplication digital library. of effort, prevent the development of fragmented digital systems, and encourage productive interchange of scientific knowledge and scholarly data around the world.
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 5 JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS
In this context, DELOS is planning to The first DELOS International hold the first of a series of annual meet- Summer School on Digital Library ings to bring together scientists Technologies was held on 9-13 July 2001 The DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries, funded by the 5th involved in European and NSF pro- in Pisa, Italy (see article on page 43). Framework Programme of the jects. The objectives are to exchange European Commission, provides a working experiences and research A CLEF 2001 Workshop of the framework to foster national and international research activities in the results in the field of digital libraries, Cross-Language Evaluation Forum Digital Libraries domain and to and to establish collaborative links was held on 3-4 September 2001 in disseminate the research results in the between on-going projects. From the Darmstadt, Germany (see article on relevant user communities. US side, participants will be represen- page 45). The activities of the DELOS Network of tatives from the Digital Library Excellence are organized into five Initiative (phase2) projects. From the The Fifth European Conference on Forums: the Research Forum, the Evaluation Forum, the Standardization European side, representatives will be Digital Libraries (ECDL2001) was Forum, the Technology Transfer Forum from EU funded Digital Library pro- held in Darmstadt, Germany on 5-7 and the International Cooperation jects and from DL projects funded by September 2001. An article on the con- Forum. European National Initiatives. ference will appear in the next issue of The activities of the DELOS Network of ERCIM News. Excellence are open to all those The second DELOS workshop on working or interested in DL-related research or applications. Personalization and Recommender The Third DELOS Workshop on Systems in Digital Libraries was held Interoperability and Mediation in Delos website: on 18-20 June 2001 in Dublin, Ireland Heterogeneous Digital Libraries was http://www.ercim.org/delos (see article on page 44). held on 8-9 September 2001 in Please contact: Darmstadt, Germany, in conjunction Costantino Thanos — IEI-CNR with ECDL2001. An article on the Network Director Tel: +39 050 315 2910/2912 workshop will appear in the next issue E-mail: [email protected] of ERCIM News.
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ERCIM Fellowship Programme 2002/2003 launched
ERCIM offers 18-month fellowships in leading European information technology research centres. This offer is available for PhD holders (or equivalent) from all over the world.
The objective of the Fellowship How to apply Programme is to enable bright young sci- Applications must be submitted elec- entists from all over the world to work tronically: collectively on a challenging problem as http://www.ercim.org/fellowship/ fellows of leading European research centers. In addition, an ERCIM fellow- Selection Procedure ship helps widen and intensify the Each application is reviewed by one or network of personal relations and under- more senior scientists in each ERCIM standing among scientists. The pro- institute. ERCIM representatives con- gramme offers the opportunity to sider the results and decide to which can- ERCIM fellows: didates fellowships should be offered, • to improve their knowledge about taking into account: European research structures and • the qualification of the applicant networks • the overlap of interest between • to familiarize them with working applicant and the hosting institution conditions in leading European • available funding. above topics. ERCIM is particularly research centres interested in candidates with skills in: • to promote cross-fertilization and Research Infrastructure • Mathematics and Foundations of cooperation between research groups At the ERCIM institutes, state-of-the-art Computer Science: combinatorics, working in similar areas in different computer hardware and software is graph theory, theoretical computer laboratories, through the fellowships. available to support the major areas of science, application of number theory research listed below. Library facilities to security, computer algebra, Conditions and access to scientific databases are seen stochastics, theory of computation Aside from researchers from academic as another key component in the research • Software: real time and high institutions, scientists working in environment. All ERCIM institutes performance programming, software industry are strongly encouraged to provide access to excellent library facili- specification, analysis and testing, apply. Applicants must: ties in IT and mathematics. All ERCIM operating systems, distributed and • have a PhD degree (or equivalent) or institutes have extensive seminar and parallel systems, interactive software be in the last year of the thesis work research training programmes. and systems • be fluent in English • Computing methodologies: speech, • be discharged or get deferment from Research Areas of Interest visualisation and virtual reality, military service Fellowships are available in the scien- image analysis • start the grant before October 2002 tific fields covered by the ERCIM • Communication technology: Working Groups the following areas: communication networks, network Fellowships are of 18 months duration, • Database Research architecture and management. generally spent in two institutes. For the • Constraints Technology and entire period of 18 months, the fellow Applications A detailed list of topics in which ERCIM will receive a monthly allowance which • Control and Systems Theory institutes are active is available at may vary depending on the country. • Formal Methods http://www.ercim.org/activity/ Costs for travelling to and from the insti- • Electronic Commerce expertise.html tutes will be paid. In order to encourage • User Interfaces for All Links: the mobility, a member institution will • Environmental Modelling Detailed description not be eligible to host a candidate of the • Health and Information Technology and online application form: same nationality. • Digital Libraries http://www.ercim.org/fellowhsip/ • E-Learning Please contact: Deadlines for Application • Matrix Computations and Statistics. ERCIM office The Call is divided into two stages with Tel: +33 4 92 38 50 10 E-mail: [email protected] the deadlines: ERCIM institutes covering a broad range • 31 October 2001 of research topics, fellowships are also • 30 April 2002. available in areas not covered by the
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 7 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE Articles in this section
9 Ambient Intelligence: a UK Perspective by Ronan Sleep
10 Ambient Intelligence in the Context Ambient Intelligence of Universal Access by Constantine Stephanidis
by Jari Ahola 12 Ambient Intelligence within a Home Environment Defined by the EC Information Scociety Technologies Advisory Group in a vision of the by Mária Bieliková and Tibor Krajcovic Information Society, Ambient Intelligence emphasises on greater user-friendliness, 14 A Flood of Intelligence - more efficient services support, user-empowerment, and support for human the Living Room Project by Jukka Vanhala interactions. In this vision, people will be surrounded by intelligent and intuitive 16 Ambient Intelligence and Home interfaces embedded in everyday objects around us and an environment recognising Networking for Wellness and responding to the presence of individuals in an invisible way by year 2010. Management and Home Automation by Ilkka Korhonen
Since the 1999 IST Programme Making AmI real is no easy task: as it 17 Wired and Smart: Advisory Group (ISTAG) vision state- commonly takes place with a new tech- from the Fridge to the Bathtub ment for Framework Programme 5 chal- nology, soon after high-flying visions we by Franz Miller lenging to create an Ambient are demonstrated with the first pieces of 18 Enabling Ambient Intelligence Research with SoapBox Platform Intelligence (AmI) landscape for seam- hardware for the intelligent environ- by Esa Tuulari less delivery of services and applications ment. However, making a door knob 20 Designing for Ludic Aspects in Europe, it rapidly became widely able to compute and communicate does of Everyday Life embedded in the work programme for not make it intelligent: the key (and chal- by Bill Gaver
years 2000-2001. AmI is also recognised lenge) to really adding wit to the envi- 21 Ubiquitous Service Environments as one of the key concepts related to ronment lies in the way how the system by Carl Gustaf Jansson Information Society in the Framework learns and keeps up to date with the and Peter Lönnqvist Programme 6 and as we can see from the needs of the user by itself. A thinking 23 Offering a Consumer-Oriented multitude of articles in this issue, machine, you might conclude – not quite Ambient Intelligence Environment by Valerie Issarny ERCIM members are already well on but close: if you rely on the intelligent this track. For a more detailed intro, our environment you expect it to operate cor- 24 Global Ambient Intelligence: The Hostess Concept first contact with AmI is envisioned in a rectly every time without tedious by András Lörincz report by ISTAG (ISTAG. Scenarios for training or updates and management. 25 Ubiquitous Computing Ambient Intelligence in 2010. Final You might be willing to do it once but Infrastructures Report, Feb 2001, EC 2001. Available not constantly even in the case of fre- by Friedemann Mattern
at: http://www.cordis.lu/ ist/istag.htm) quent changes of objects, inhabitants or 26 Ubiquitous Computing using a set of scenarios depicting dif- preferences in the environment. A and Embedded Operating ferent potential futures with four ficti- learning machine, I'll say. Systems Design by Michel Banâtre tious users. 28 Ambient Interfaces The following articles in this special for Distributed Work Groups Ambient Intelligence builds on three theme issue showcase the various by Tom Gross recent key technologies: Ubiquitous aspects of AmI research in Europe. In 29 GeoNotes: Social Enhancement Computing, Ubiquitous Communication addition to background information on of Physical Space and Intelligent User Interfaces – some of AmI related activities within the ERCIM by Per Persson and Fredrik Espinoza
these concepts are barely a decade old members we have a number of articles 30 Contextualisation in Nomadic and this reflects on the focus of current on the infrastructure for AmI environ- Computing by Markus Eisenhauer implementations of AmI (more on this ments followed with algorithms adding and Roland Klemke later on). Ubiquitous Computing means some of the intelligence required to 31 Scene Interpretation integration of microprocessors into reach our goal for 2010. for Video Communication everyday objects like furniture, clothing, by Monique Thonnat white goods, toys, even paint. Link: ISTAG; Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence 32 Mining Multimedia Documents Ubiquitous Communication enables in 2010; Final Report, Feb 2001, EC 2001: by Visual Content these objects to communicate with each http://www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htm by Nozha Boujemaa and Marin Ferecatu other and the user by means of ad-hoc and wireless networking. An Intelligent Please contact: 34 How can I be sure that my DVD player understands my TV? User Interface enables the inhabitants of Jari Ahola — VTT Information Technology E-mail: [email protected] by Wan Fokkink, Izak van the AmI environment to control and Langevelde, Bas Luttik interact with the environment in a natural and Yaroslav Usenko (voice, gestures) and personalised way 36 Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor (preferences, context). Networks by Stefano Chessa and Paolo Santi
8 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Ambient Intelligence: a UK Perspective by Ronan Sleep
The notion of Ambient Intelligence was developed during a series of ISTAG (Information Societies Technology Advisory Group) and other meetings as a guiding vision to give an overall direction to Europe’s Information Societies Technology programme. Ambient Intelligence is essentially an elaboration of Mark Weiser’s vision of Ubiquitous - but Calm Computing which stresses the importance of social and human factors as well as developing the base technologies on which aspects of the vision are founded.
The ISTAG meetings culminated in an which might be excluded. They are char- IPTS (Institute for Prospective acterised by Mark Weiser’s statement Technology Studies) document which about Ubiquitous computing: develops a number of scenarios illus- “Ubiquitous computing is roughly the trating Ambient Intelligence: see opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual http://www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htm. These reality puts people inside a computer- scenarios illustrate the breadth possible generated world, ubiquitous computing applications. Some are relatively near forces the computer to live out here in term and are based on applying intelli- the world with people.”. Seen in this gent agent technology via an extension light, Ambient Intelligence is the limit of of mobile communications systems, for a process which introduces the tech- example to support a busy executive nology into people’s lives in such a way perpetually travelling from meeting to that the introduction never feels like a meeting as in the ‘Maria, Road Warrior’ conscious learning curve: no special scenario. In contrast the ‘Ambient for interface is needed because human expe- Social learning’ is much more techno- rience is already a rich ‘Manual’ of ways logically demanding, assuming for of interfacing to changing systems and example holographic projection and the services. Somehow, we need to create ability to manipulate an individual’s technology that leverages this powerful sound field within a room. human resource rather than trying to sup- press it by requiring humans to partici- As the scenarios meetings progressed, pate in inflexible interaction protocols of participants became increasingly con- the sort supported by current call centre cerned with possible impacts of the tech- technology. nology on both individuals and societies. At one extreme, access to the ‘ambient From this perspective, realising Ambient Towards unobtrusive technology. Here a intelligence landscape’ could be Intelligence need not wait until we are prototype TESSA system for assisting the restricted to those engaged in high literally surrounded by the technology: it hard of hearing is being trialled at a Post Office Counter. Later generations of such powered decision making involving can begin by studying normal life, using technology should merge entirely into the much travel and many meetings. At the ethnographic and other techniques, and background. other extreme, the technology could be then exploring acceptable ways of using used in a much more diluted fashion to the technology to enhance everyday Intelligence, but the vision features make small, but ubiquitous improve- experience. As people become increas- strongly in a number of recent reports on ments in the lives of most citizens. By no ingly empowered, a point is reached the future of ICT in the UK. For example, means all uses of an ambient intelligence where as with the original telephone and an influential UK government report which are possible are desirable: issues its recent mobile offspring it becomes http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/dgrc_reports.htm of privacy, choice, and trust of human, possible to do things that were not pos- envisages the following developments organisational and artificial actors sible without the technology. Here at the during the next 5 years: become paramount: an ill-considered University of East Anglia in Norwich we • UK-based firms taking leading rush into exploiting the technology have a number of projects exploring this positions in the development of before it is both desired and trusted is all gradualist route to Ambient Intelligence, mobile computing, and contributing too likely to foster the sort of reaction eg ViSiCAST see http://www.visicast. to new global standards in the area faced by the promoters of GM foods. sys.uea.ac.uk/Publications.html#Presentations. • A further improvement in the availability of venture capital, and in Although Ambient Intelligence covers a More generally within the UK the terms experimentation with new business large range of concerns, both human and pervasive and ubiquitous computing are models technical, there are some technologies more prevalent than Ambient
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 9 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Research (see http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/ the opportunity to realise some of the people/cliff.jones/home.formal/UKCRC things which technology futurists talk toIR.pdf). about, but to do it in a very reasoned way. The Equator IRC will investigate all Other key challenges identified include aspects of the development of future System Design, the Information devices: the fundamental computational Powered Society, Devices and Theory, infrastructure required, the theories and and many of the issues covered within concepts that underpin it, the product these topics have a close match with design that will most enhance the device’s research issues relevant to Ambient function, and the likely ways in which it Intelligence. will be used. We’re looking at discov- ering and meeting future needs: what A signing avatar from the prototype A flagship UK research activity which should be developed and how it might fit TESSA systems. has similar motivations to the Ambient with the way people live now, and how Intelligence Vision (although with they might wish to live in the future. perhaps more of a Virtual Reality flavour We’re looking to see what may or may • Strong UK ‘content’ companies than Mark Weiser would have liked) is not be the future.” (The author partici- emerging in fields such as the EPSRC funded EQUATOR pated in several of the ISTAG meetings E-education and E-health Interdisciplinary Research Challenge (see which developed the Ambient • Cheap access combined with http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/documents/about_ Intelligence Landscape vision). demanding consumers for ICT epsrc/corporate_publications/newsline_ services which creates a population journal/newslin16/smarter.htm for a brief Links: ISTAG: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htm which is also skilled and innovative description). EQUATOR spans eight in ICT innovation sites, including the Universities of VISICAST: • Government agencies leading the Lancaster, Bristol, Nottingham, http://www.visicast.sys.uea.ac.uk/ way in releasing the commercial University College London, Sussex, Publications.html#Presentations value of under-utilised information Glasgow, Southampton and the Royal DGRC Reports: through the Internet College of Art, and will involve aca- http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/dgrc_reports.htm • Rapid growth of B2B and B2C demics from traditionally disparate disci- e-commerce. plines such as computing, sociology and EQUATOR: design. To quote Tom Rodden (project http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/documents/ UK Basic and Applied research in ICT is leader, now at Nottingham University): about_epsrc/corporate_publications/ newsline_journal/newslin16/smarter.htm also being increasingly guided by the “Rather than leap on every small techno- general vision of Ambient Intelligence: logical step forward, the project will think Please contact: indeed ‘Pervasive Computing’ is one of about how the world might be in five or Ronan Sleep — University Of East Anglia, five key research challenges identified in ten years time, and aim to design and Norwich, UK a recent report on UK Computing build devices for that moment. We have Tel: +44 1 603 592 693 E-mail: [email protected]
Ambient Intelligence in the Context of Universal Access
by Constantine Stephanidis
This article discusses Ambient Intelligence under a Universal Access perspective, as well as the Unified User Interface Development framework as a design and engi- neering methodology addressing, through a proactive and generic approach, the dimensions of diversity arising in the context of Ambient Intelligence.
The on-going paradigm shift towards a interactive technological environments ities, the variety of contexts of use, the knowledge-intensive Information emerge, making available concurrent increasing availability and diversifica- Society has brought about radical access to heterogeneous information tion of information, knowledge sources changes in the way people work and sources and interpersonal communica- and services, the proliferation of diverse interact with each other and with infor- tion. This dynamic evolution is charac- technological platforms, etc. mation. Computer-mediated human terized by several dimensions of diver- activities undergo fundamental changes, sity that become evident when consid- In this context, the ‘typical’ computer and new ones appear continuously, as ering the broad range of user characteris- user can no longer be identified: infor- novel, intelligent, distributed, and highly tics, the changing nature of human activ- mation artifacts are used by diverse user
10 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
groups, including people with different Intelligence, that calls for the develop- context adapted behaviour by automati- cultural, educational, training and ment of multi-sensorial interfaces sup- cally selecting interaction patterns employment background, novice and ported by computing and networking appropriate to the particular physical and experienced computer users, the very technologies present everywhere and technological environment). A Unified young and the elderly, and people with embedded in everyday objects. In this User Interface comprises a single different types of disabilities. Existing context, the technological environment (unified) interface specification defined computer-mediated human activities is seen as an all-encompassing com- by the following key properties: undergo fundamental changes, and a puting platform, composed of multiple • it encompasses user- and context- wide variety of new ones appear, such as distributed processing and interactive specific information access to on-line information, e-commu- units, and exhibiting various levels of • it contains alternative dialogue nication, digital libraries, e-business, on- intelligence. Ambient Intelligence incor- artifacts in an implemented form, line health services, e-learning, on-line porates properties of distributed interac- each appropriate for different user- communities, on-line public and admin- tivity (eg, multiple interactive devices, and context-specific parameters istrative services, e-democracy, tele- remote interaction capabilities), ubiqui- • it applies adaptation decisions, work and tele-presence, on-line enter- tous computing (the ‘invisible’ computer activates dialogue artifacts and is tainment, etc. Similarly, the context of concept, ie, user - environment direct capable of interaction monitoring. use is changing. The ‘traditional’ use of interaction), and nomadic or mobile computers (ie, scientific use by the spe- computing (eg, location awareness, Recent and ongoing applications of the cialist, business use for productivity interface migration). Ambient Unified User Interface development enhancement) is increasingly being com- Intelligence has the potential to provide framework include: plemented by residential and nomadic the user with a virtual space enabling • the AVANTI web browser, providing use, thus penetrating a wider range of flexible and natural communication with web-based user-adapted interaction human activities in a broader variety of the computing environment or with other (see article in ERCIM News 41) environments, such as the school, the users, providing input and perceiving • the PALIO platform for anyone and home, the market place, and other civil feedback by utilising proportionally all anywhere access to community- and social contexts. Finally, technolog- the available senses and communication oriented services, supporting location ical proliferation contributes with an channels, while optimising human and awareness and diverse platforms such increased range of systems or devices to system resources. as PCs, kiosks and mobile phones facilitate access to the community-wide (see article in ERCIM News 46) pool of information resources. These In the context of Universal Access, • the 2WEAR platform for migratory devices include computers, standard ambient intelligence is addressed interfaces to wearable devices, telephones, cellular telephones with through a proactive and generic supporting distributed dynamic I/O built-in displays, television sets, infor- approach, which accounts for all dimen- control (IST-2000-25286 ‘A Runtime mation kiosks, information appliances, sions of variation (ie, the abilities, skills, for Adaptive and ExtensibleWireless and various other ‘network-attachable’ requirements and preferences of users, Wearables’). devices. the characteristics of technological plat- Please contact: forms, the relevant aspects of the context Constantine Stephanidis — FORTH-ICS The notion of Universal Access has of use), and supports intelligent interface Tel: +30 81 391741 become critically important for ensuring run-time adaptation, ie, the capability of E-mail: [email protected] social acceptability of the emerging automatically adapting to individual Information Society. Universal access users’ characteristics and contexts of use implies the accessibility and usability of through the realization of alternative pat- Information Society Technologies (IST) terns of interactive behaviour. by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Its aim is to enable equitable access and active par- The Unified User Interface development ticipation of potentially all citizens in framework (see [Stephanidis, C. (Ed.). existing and emerging computer-medi- (2001). User Interfaces for All - ated human activities. Therefore, it is Concepts, Methods, and Tools. Mahwah, important to develop universally acces- NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates sible and usable technological land- (ISBN 0-8058-2967-9, 760 pages)]) pro- scapes, capable of accommodating all vides a design and engineering method- users in all potential contexts of use, ology supporting the development of independently of location, user’s self-adapting interfaces exhibiting both primary task, target machine, run-time user awareness (ie, the interface is environment, or the current physical capable of user-adapted behaviour by conditions of the external environment. automatically selecting an interaction patterns appropriate to the particular Universal Access is directly related to end-user), and usage context awareness the emerging concept of Ambient (ie, the interface is capable of usage-
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 11 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Ambient Intelligence within a Home Environment
by Mária Bieliková and Tibor Krajcovic
EUNICA (Extensible Universal Control of Appliances) is a prototype of an intelligent household system, developed by a team of five students from the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. With this system, the team won the fourth price at the annual IEEE Computer Society International Design Competition (CSIDC) World Finals.
Rastislav Habala, Jaroslav Kuruc, The heart of the EUNICA is the control From the user perspective, EUNICA is a Vladimir Marko, Dalibor Rak and Anton unit. Any appliance can be connected to system, which enables them to monitor Weissensteiner are all undergraduate the control unit using various types of and control appliances in a household by students at the Slovak University of connections (see Figure 1). Monitoring eurecos. Several eurecos can exist in the Technology and worked towards a and controlling appliances are visualized household. Any user can use any eureco, vision of a household where appliances on simple mobile Java based user inter- as each eureco is always adapted to the serve a user according her/his current face devices connected to the control current user. To make the eureco able to needs. The students designed and devel- unit using the Bluetooth wireless com- easily and comfortably identify its oped a prototype of the system called munications technology. All kinds of current user, the eureco prototype is EUNICA, which is intended to deliver inexpensive, physically compact equipped with a fingerprint scanner. various home-related services to the devices, such as PDAs are allowed. We users. It is sensitive and responsive to the call these devices ‘eurecos’ (EUNICA To simplify the monitoring and control presence of people (the occupants or vis- remote controls). They display and allow of appliances for various individuals and itors of a household). The user in the browsing information received from the groups (eg, children, adult, elder), the household is surrounded by a multitude of interconnected appliances. The network of appliances is invisible. Appliances serve the user according to her/his customs and preferences. The whole system exhibits some kind of intelligence, eg, it is able to recognize each individual in the household and adapt behaviour according their needs, it is able to recognize specific events (such as time or movement of a user) and act upon various situations.
An important feature of EUNICA is pro- viding mobility: mobile access to appli- ances on the one side and possible mobile connection of appliances on the Figure 1: The overview of Eunica. other. The wireless technology, namely Bluetooth, which presents the primary way of communication, is granting EUNICA’s great features to supersede control unit (represented in the EUNICA controls have to adapt and customise. conventional infrared remote controls. Markup Language that is based on The adaptability considers the number of However, EUNICA is not limited to a XML) and send user’s requests back to control elements, its layout and appear- single set of communication methods or the control unit. ance. In addition, EUNICA monitors a fixed set of appliances. It uses the open user’s actions and adapts to their prefer- concept of loadable drivers to be ready To fit the system to a house of any size ences (eg, EUNICA can detect the level for future appliances and technologies. the access to mobile components of the of light brightness the user uses most The system covers features allowing system in a big house is proposed often and later automatically sets to the access to appliances from outside of a through a network of access points (real- observed level). user’s household via phone lines or the ized by Bluetooth modules connected to Internet. EUNICA also provides strong the control unit). The appliances them- EUNICA provides sophisticated access appliance management functions that are selves are not part of EUNICA; however rights control. Parents can restrict kept hidden for the standard use. It pro- they should include support for watching particular TV channel for one vides a secure way of appliance installa- EUNICA. child, or forbid switching on the wash tion. machine for all children. EUNICA
12 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
brings new view to control over For testing and demonstration pur- appliances. It allows: poses two sample appliance proto- • a common way of appliances types were created: control (remote control of TV- • radio as an example of appliance sets, Hi-Fi) with adaptable and adaptive • to monitor state of appliances support (as real hardware (temperature on thermometer, appliance) remaining washing time, • heating as an example of highly surveillance camera in the desired appliance according children’s room or electronic market research provided during doorman) the project, see • to control appliances using http://eunica.host.sk/ menus (automatic program (as an appliance simulated on selections based on the amount computer). and kind of clothes inserted using the wash-machine menu) EUNICA is designed considering • to program various embedded security issues on several levels: appliances (heating system, security in communication between alarm), and help in automatic the control unit and appliances, data acquisition (eg, from security in communication among various kinds energy meters). modules inside the control unit and avoiding unconscious and con- Measured data is sent through the scious misuse of EUNICA and network to the energy providers Eureco design of radio control for children appliances. without a possibility of user inter- vention, so the user cannot abuse it. These requirements ensure co-operation Acknowledgement between drivers in the control unit, but We would like to thank our undergrad- The eurecos can also be used to access also security. Finally, manufacturers uate students Rastislav Habala, Jaroslav Internet resources such as email, weather have to design control pages in EUNICA Kuruc, Vladimir Marko, Dalibor Rak forecast or electronic newspaper. The Markup Language for their appliances. and Anton Weissensteiner for their system can support wearable computing excellent project work and presentation devices for tracking physiological The control unit is implemented using at the CSIDC World Finals in parameters, locating the users, etc. Sun Java2 JDK 1.3 Standard Edition, Washington, DC, and to ALEF, s.r.o. because of reducing the platform depen- and APIS, s.r.o. for providing us with In the view of manufacturers EUNICA dencies and taking advantages of exten- fingerprint scanner hardware and soft- represents a straightforward extension sibility including security architecture ware development kit. The work for appliances they produce. In order to and dynamic loading of new classes into reported here was partially supported by support EUNICA they should extend the running code. These features stood in Slovak Science Grant Agency, grant No. existing appliances with the Bluetooth or the good stead when outfitting the G1/7611/20 and by IEEE Computer another connection technology system with runtime module addition. Society via Computer Society Design (EUNICA provides versatility of appli- International Competition (CSIDC) ance connection - by serial or parallel The eureco is implemented in Sun Java2 2001. link, by net, AC power lines, or wireless JDK 1.3 Micro Edition (J2ME). It con- Bluetooth). Manufacturers should sists of Connected Limited Device Links: SUT CSIDC web page develop a driver that will be dynamically Configuration 1.0.2 (CLDC) specifica- http://www.dcs.elf.stuba.sk/csidc added to the control unit. It will enrich tion and reference implementation as CS-IEEE CSIDC web page the appliance with required logic, which well as Kilobyte Virtual Machine http://www.computer.org/csidc will perform the commands of the (KVM) reference implementation for control unit and send the state of the various platforms including Microsoft Please contact: Maria Bielikova — Slovak University appliance to the control unit. Windows, which we used. CLDC and of Technology / SRCIM KVM implementations are contained in Tel: +421 2 602 91 473 Drivers and appliances are not passive many portable personal appliances such E-mail: [email protected] components which only respond to a as PDA. Target platform for KVM is user requests. A wristlet on a child’s devices with low memory (512KB), hand can monitor her/his temperature battery operated and with limited com- and, if it increases, the EUNICA auto- munication capabilities, so it perfectly matically notifies the parents. Drivers fits the needs for remote control. and appliances have to satisfy certain requirements for installing and running.
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 13 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
A Flood of Intelligence - the Living Room Project
by Jukka Vanhala
The Living Room project studies the smart home environment. The project is unique in its approach of developing user interface paradigms and communication techniques for large collections of intelligent small objects.
Today we are able to add intelligence The everyday environment at the home some simple sensors, a microcontroller, into an object with about 20 Euros. We or at the office will still be a real physical a short-range radio link, and a battery are interested in what happens when the environment. The physical objects will into an object is about 20 euros. The size cost is eventually closer to 20 cents. The get new digital content and functions, of the device is about the size of a research is conducted at the Institute of but they still have their traditional func- matchbox. In about ten years it is pos- Electronics of the Tampere University of tions. How people will see the effect of sible to integrate all electronics onto a Technology in Finland by a research the Moore’s law is not in the high-end single chip and the cost and the size will group called Personal Electronics computers doing spectacular things, but drop dramatically. We reach an inter- Group, PEG. The project started in rather in the very small processors esting point when the intelligence adds summer 1999 and is continuing. embedded in every imaginable object less than 20 cents to the cost of the forming a very fine grain parallel multi- product. Then it is possible to have smart Let’s get Physical computer with a user interface spread things costing about 2 euros total, a price The concept of digital convergence is across the whole environment. tag on a say toothbrush or on a cone of expanding. We share the vision that the ice cream. ambient intelligence arises from the the Living Room project studies the convergence of three key technologies: smart home as a place where intelligence Natural and Control Interfaces Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous is embedded in practically all physical A smart object has a natural user inter- communication, and Intelligent User objects ranging from kitchen appliances face and a control user interface, which Friendly Interfaces. But there is also the to toothpicks. A home of the future can be physically separated. All objects fourth component, which is the real world might have thousands of active smart have a physical appearance and func- physical objects. objects. Today the cost of embedding tionality that represents its natural
The boundary between real world and the information world will vanish. Traditionally things have existed on their own sides. Food and tools clearly are material, books and email are mostly information. The new technology will connect the two worlds. A new car has dozens of micro controllers and a com- puter and a mobile phone are primarily information appliances. It becomes pos- sible to control the real world trough the network and make use of information contents by manipulating real world objects.
In addition to information processing, communication, and contents the everyday living environment gets a digital form. Eg imagine a tee shirt suit- able for children’s games. There would be a computer with a game contents downloaded from the network and sensors measuring the actions of the The interior of the player. The shirt communicates with the Living Room other players’ shirts. Clearly the tee shirt showing is a real physical object, which has been spotlights, the augmented with digital contents. floor with pressure sensors, and the smart flowerpot.
14 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
purpose. Tools have handles and a ferent kinds of terminals, thus the inter- Software is easily customizable for dif- refrigerator has a door and shelves. We faces must scale to meet the abilities of ferent requirements. The size of the con- call this the natural user interface. The the underlying hardware. troller is about 2 times 4 times 6 centime- design of it has traditionally been the job ters. of the industrial designers and the The Living Room mechanical engineers. Now they too Living Room is besides the name of the At the moment we are using a normal have to learn new skills, as the embedded projects also the name of the actual labo- office-PC with the Windows-98 oper- electronics will give new functionality to ratory where the new systems can be ating system as the control computer. old objects. The enhanced natural user evaluated. The 40 square meter labora- Eventually the controller will be a home interfaces utilizes sensors to measure the tory resembles a flat with a living room gateway type standalone computer but user action and the object reacts with and a bar kitchen. During the summer the prototyping work is much easier with actuators typical to each object. 2002 a new laboratory will be opened the good development tools available for with a two room fully equipped flat Windows-98. The user control interface As electronics is embedded into objects, including a full kitchen and a sauna. is implemented on an industrial PC with they will get also information content a touch screen. The computer is and ability to process information. The At the moment the infrastructure is ready embedded into the surface of a coffee information is in symbolic form and comprising of a short range RF-network, table. Similar control terminals can be therefore a smart object needs also an the design for the controller to be installed on walls and other surfaces. interface capable to represent and input embedded into smart objects, the master symbols. Without the communication control computer and the prototype Conclusions capability each of the objects would need system software with a control user and Future Development its own small control interface with interface. There are also a number of Traditional user interface research has probably a few buttons and a couple of smart objects including a flowerpot, a concentrated on the design of the control text lines on an LCD-display. It is diffi- door with locks, an array of spotlights, interface. When all objects in a smart cult to design a good interface with such shades, refrigerator, pressure sensitive space can be used to collect and dis- a limited set of controls. It is also clear floor, and even a smart wine bottle rack. tribute information the collection of the that most of these interfaces would have natural user interfaces will dominate the different logic and different appearance. Communication is done wirelessly with behavior. We call the collection of the Thus the user must learn to use dozens of a narrow band control network, which natural user interfaces a collective user badly designed interfaces. has been designed just for this purpose. It interface. There is not much empirical is based on the Nordic VLSI transceiver knowledge or experience on this because When the ability to communicate with chip, which operates on the license-free it would require a full implementation of the home network is an integral part of 433 MHz IMS band. The throughput is a smart home, which has not yet been the devices the situation improves. All 10 kbits/s and the reliable range is over built anywhere. The Living Room control interfaces can be detached from 30 meters, which is enough for the –project is working towards imple- the actual device much in the same normal rooms at home. Of course it is menting a prototype environment of a manner as a TV has a remote controller. not possible to transmit images or speech collective user interface. Our approach is Here we run into another well-known over the control network. For that very practical. We are interested both in problem. It is no better to have dozens of purpose there is the IEEE 802.11 wire- the overall architectural design and in the loose remote controllers instead of the less LAN connecting the control com- implementation details. Real world control interfaces on each device. The puter and the user interface terminals, experiments and prototype installations solution is to have a universal remote which are both PC-class computers. are used to test all designs. controller, which can control all possible devices. There are already such devices Many legacy products such as TVs and Link: http://www.ele.tut.fi/research/ on the market although they are pretty audio equipment use infra red transmis- personalelectronics/ limited in their design. A future control sion for communication. Since those device, the universal information appli- devices will be in use for at least another Please contact: ance, UIA, should have a large screen, a twenty years, there must be a way of Jukka Vanhala — Tampere University of pointing device, speech input and a stan- controlling them. An IR-receiver/trans- Technology, Institute of Electronics, Finland Tel: +358 3 365 3383 dard method to describe the appearance mitter is connected to the control com- E-mail: [email protected] and functionality of the interface, which puter via a serial link so that the same can be eg loaded from the web page of unified user interface as is used to the appliance manufacturer. Designing control devices via the RF-network can sets of ‘skins’ to control interfaces for be used. smart objects could become a new value added service. Service provider could be The controller to be embedded into smart independent of appliance manufacturers objects consists of an Atmel AVR-series and provide matching designs for all microcontroller, sensor interface elec- devices. There will also be a need for dif- tronics, the RF-link, and a battery.
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 15 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Ambient Intelligence and Home Networking for Wellness Management and Home Automation
by Ilkka Korhonen
Different ambient intelligence based services at home using the same infrastructure are within the scope of the the Wireless Wellness Monitor project carried out at VTT Information Technology.
Self-monitoring is an efficient tool in or user interface s/he has at hand the project studies how simple devices personal health management. Self- (persolisation, adaptation of user (such as a personal scale or coffee maker) monitoring of eg weight means daily interfaces, etc.). This implies application may be networked at home and how smart measurements of weight, storage of the of ambient intelligence (or, home health management and home automation results, and using the recorded weight networking, ubiquitous computing). applications may actually be implemented history to follow up possible changes in in the home networking infrastructure. weight. This would allow the user to learn The first part of the Wireless Wellness The project will produce two kinds of about the behavioural factors affecting the Monitor project (WWM I) was carried out results: 1) a home networking and ambient weight, and thereby to manage his/her between 1.8.1999 and 31.12.2000 (see intelligence concept, and 2) a weight. This is called behavioural feedback ERCIM News No 46, pp. 60-61; demonstration system, in which the model (see ERCIM News No 46, pp. 60-61; http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_ concept is implemented, including the http://www.ercim.org/publication/ News/enw46/parkaa.html). In that part a infrastructure and wellness management Ercim_News/enw46/parkaa.html). behavioural feedback model for health and home automation applications. Efficient self-monitoring requires daily management was presented, and a lab- actions (weighing, stroring of the result, prototype of ambient intelligence based Actual ambient intelligence enabled home browsing the feedback), which should weight management was developed and requires two levels of implementation. require minimal efforts by the user for it demonstrated. In the current continuation The first level provides the infrastructure to be successfully applied in the long-term. project (WWM II) we extent the concept and makes the technology ambient, Ideally, the measurements should be able to include home automation and other communicative. The second level builds to be made wherever and whenever functionalities. This is done in order to the actual smart applications; the convenient (mobility), the storage of the demonstrate that different ambient intelligence. One goal of the project is to results should occur automatically intelligence based services at home should study and demonstrate this two-layered (wireless communications, automatic user be running as different services on the application structure in case of health identification, existence of ambient same infrastructure, including a home management and home automation. A database services), and the user should be network, a home gateway, and different schematic illustration of the physical able to get the personalised feedback right user interfaces such as personal digital network to be built in the project is when needed, independent of time, place assistant, mobile phone, or TV. Especially illustrated in the figure. The main characteristics of the demonstration system are: 1) the intelligence is mostly located at a home server (OSGi server); 2) from the service point of view, the home network is IP-based; however, simple non-IP devices are represented by a proxy to the network thus allowing heterogenous physical connections to the network. The demonstration system is to be completed by the end of 2001, and user trials are to be carried out early 2002. Partners: VTT Information Technology, VTT Electronics, Nokia Research Center, IST Oy, Celotron Oy and the National Technology Agency of Finland (TEKES). Link: http://www.vtt.fi/tte/samba/projects/wwm/
Physical network of the Wireless Wellness Monitor II demonstration system. The Contact: architecture is based on home server (OSGi server) and IP-based networking. Simple Ilkka Korhonen — VTT Information Technology non-IP devices, such as health monitors or coffee machine, join the network physically Tel: +358 3 316 3352 by eg RS232 and are represented as IP-devices by a device proxy. E-mail: [email protected]
16 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Wired and Smart: from the Fridge to the Bathtub by Franz Miller
There’s a smart wired house in Duisburg; even the car and the garden are integrated in the network. The ‘Innovation Center for the Intelligent House’ will be used by researchers and industrial firms as a workshop and testing ground for future forms of living and working.
On the Internet, you can even take a look at the far side of the moon whenever you like, but you can’t look to see whether you’ve left the hot plate switched on in the kitchen at home. The Internet and mobile communications have penetrated every last remote spot of the globe, but strangely enough, the places closest to our daily lives, our homes, are still cut off from the communication networks. Household appliances and domestic systems are isolated from one another, The residential half of inHaus is fully furnished and equipped, enabling the present silently dumb. Wouldn’t it be a good state of the art to be tested. © Fraunhofer IMS / Axel Struwe. idea to enable all of these appliances to communicate, and link them together in an ‘intelligent house’? If we set up a network to connect heating systems, security alarms, TVs, fridges, ther- mostats, movement sensors, lighting and window shutters, we would be able to create completely new functions and save money too. The wired, partially automated and remotely controlled home, the ‘smart house’, is one of the biggest innovation projects of this decade. The inHaus complex integrates all of the functions of an experimental, networked dwelling house and a workshop of the The aim of smart-house technology is to Controlling inHaus from the car. future. Practically all of the installations save energy, increase security and © Fraunhofer IMS / Axel Struwe; are hidden behind the walls and tiles comfort, and to provide the basis for a Volkswagen AG. © Fraunhofer IMS / Axel Struwe. range of new services. Researchers all over the world are working on the vision of the ‘intelligent house’ – experimental to run for five years, this otherwise ordi- by a broadly based consortium of firms, houses are already in operation in the nary semi-detached house will be used to headed by the Fraunhofer Institute for USA, Japan, Holland, Sweden and develop, test and demonstrate many of Microelectronic Circuits and Systems Switzerland. But a great number of ques- the ways in which modern progress in IMS in Duisburg, who have all chosen to tions still remain open: Which data trans- information technology and communica- coordinate their components so that they mission standards are likely to be most tions can be integrated into our everyday work together. widely used? How can we make the best private and working lives. Two features use of what is technically feasible? And make inHaus stand out from other The beginnings of inHaus date back five above all: What do people want in their similar projects: It is both an experi- years, to the time when the first concepts homes? mental laboratory for living and a work- for data networks in domestic buildings shop for innovation, and will therefore were formed. So far, such networks have Now Germany, too, can join the ranks of continue to change in the light of new not made the breakthrough to the mass the innovators, with its own large-scale developments. And it is an open system, market, because there were no standards experimental project. The Innovation ready to accommodate all suppliers and or integration concepts. The existing Center for the Intelligent House, or concepts. This innovation center for solutions tend to be isolated projects. ‘inHaus’ for short, opened in April in future forms of living and working in a Over the next five years, the Duisburg Duisburg. In a project initially scheduled ‘smart environment’ is being supported
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 17 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
innovation center hopes to pave the way mobility. This means, for instance, that inHaus complex. Special emphasis has to series production. the technology must as simple as pos- been placed on new functions for saving sible to operate.” energy: Sensors in the rooms measure The inHaus complex is housed in a pair the temperature, humidity and air of connected buildings. One is an The operators of inHaus are testing quality, and automatically open and authentic home, with the laboratory for several networks simultaneously, both close the motor-driven windows. If a living and a home office, supplemented cabled and wireless. The system integra- thunderstorm approaches, the house by a car (the connect-Passat) and an intel- tion solutions are largely based on automatically makes sure that everything ligent garden. The other is a research and Internet technology. The IMS has is weatherproof. When the occupants development workshop, containing a embedded this technology in the appli- leave the house, the heating switches bathroom laboratory, a kitchen labora- ances and system components itself down to economy level. tory, the future craftsman’s workshop, (‘embedded Internet’). The multimedia the central building utilities room and a home cabling system HomeWay links “In ten years or so,” predicts Klaus planning and advice office, which also TVs, telephones and personal com- Scherer, “the intelligent house will have handles teleservices. puters, and provides any required service become a normal part of everybody’s in any room of the house. Hometronic life.” Already today, it is possible to Klaus Scherer of the IMS, initiator of the and EIB networks use wireless and cable catch a glimpse of the way of life and project and now project manager for connections to control all electrical ele- working to come. strategy and marketing, defines the ments, including heating – fully auto- objectives as follows: “On the one hand matically or by manual keypads, via The inHaus partners are: Ackermann, we want to find out how various appli- remote control or telephone and Internet. BurgWächter/Secu, Deutsche Telekom/ ances, components and infra-structures, To allow the Internet messages to leave T-Systems, Fraunhofer IMS, Geberit, which often operate on the basis of the house, the IMS and its partners have Grothe, Henkel, Honeywell, Kaldewei, extremely different standards applicable developed a Residential Gateway, as the Liebherr, Merten, Miele, Siedle, Sony, in different professional fields, can be central element linking the external and Stadtwerke Duisburg, Viessmann, made to work together in a single internal data networks. It works both Volkswagen, Winkhaus and ca. 60 com- system, in a useful and efficient way. In ways, so inHaus residents can connect ponent suppliers and sponsors other words: find ways for technologies with the appliances in their home while to understand each other better. And on they are at work – to check their status or Links: http://www.inhaus-nrw.de the other hand we want to find ways for issue remote-control commands. http://www.ims.fhg.de/englisch/index.htm technology and people to understand Another major element, providing links each other better. The aim is to provide with services in the outside world, is Please contact: people with genuine support in their ‘Smart Home’, a novel Internet service Klaus Scherer — Fraunhofer Institute living environment, in their world of platform that is connected to the for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems Tel: +49 203 3783 2 11 work, in communications and in Hometronic wireless network in the E-mail: [email protected]
Enabling Ambient Intelligence Research with SoapBox Platform
by Esa Tuulari
One approach for ambient intelligence research is to study what happens as sensing, computing and wireless communication capabilities are added to everyday objects. At VTT Electronics scientists have designed and implemented SoapBox, Sensing, Operating and Activating Peripheral Box, which makes this approach possible.
SoapBox is put together from commer- By installing SoapBoxes in everyday cial components. It possesses small size, objects we really can have computers low power consumption, RF-communi- everywhere. With the wireless commu- cation in unlicenced radio-band and a set nication link all these computers are con- of in-built sensors. It also has IO capabil- tinuously connected to the user device, ities to connect to user devices. As user enhancing user-real world communica- devices we use mainly PDA’s which tion to entirely new level compared to Figure 1. SoapBox architecture consisting nowadays offer decent support for appli- situation with no such system or systems of one central Box attached to the user device (in the back of the Palm, not cation development. However, using a based solely on existing commercial shown) and several remote Boxes PC or laptop is also possible. devices (see Figure 2). locating in the environment.
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Figure 2: Enhancing user - real world interaction. Left: Original situation. Centre: Cellular phone alone doesn’t help much. Right: Adding SoapBoxes in both ends solves the problem.
From the devices point-of-view also the Luckily in many applications high bit user is part of the environment. In the rate is not needed since only short mes- SoapBox architecture we can easily sages are used and time between mes- instrument the user with SoapBoxes. For sages is rather long. SoapBox electronics example measuring and recognicing user consists of two printed circuit boards activity and user behaviour is much (see Figure 3), one containing the easier if the sensors are distributed in the sensors and the other containing all the limbs than concentrated in the belt or other electronics. This makes it easy to back, as is the situation with many wear- develop further versions in a modular able computers. fashion.
Application Examples SoapBox software has been imple- In general it is very easy to invent and mented mainly in C language. A few implement new applications based on lines of assembly language has been SoapBoxes. For example sensing if used mainly in timing critical parts. All doors are open or closed, if someones the application software can be written in chair has moved lately, or if there are lot C, utilizing the API offering services for of traffic in the corridor offer a basic set RF- ans RS-communication as well as Figure 3: Picture of SoapBox boards, of applications that can be implemented for reading sensors. A single channel illustrating the size and shape of the with SoapBoxes. 868 MHz radio is used for two way, half electronics. duplex wireless communication. A small By installing a SoapBox in the ceiling of helical antenna fits inside the SoapBox a mailbox we can use the proximity encapsulation. Maximum data rate is 10 Acknowledgement sensor for detecting letters (or anything kbps and maximum transmit power is 1 This work has been partially conducted similar) inserted in the mailbox. The mW. A real-time clock and calendar in European joint research project SoapBox then transmits an RF-message circuit is also included. It can be utilized ‘Beyond the GUI’ under ITEA cluster indicating “new mail available”. If the for example for timing control functions project of the EUREKA network, and owner of the mailbox is nearby with his and for recording timestamps for financially supported by TEKES PDA and central SoapBox attached to it, detected events. The sensor board of (Technology Development Centre the message is received and the user is SoapBox ver. 1.0 includes four different Finland), to which organisations the informed about new mail. In a factory or kinds of sensors: author wish to express his gratitude. a store the possibility to monitor the • Three axis acceleration sensors. These usage of for example fork-lifts could sensors can be used to measure Link: http://www.ele.vtt.fi/projects/iie/ provide valuable information. With the acceleration or tilt of the device SoapBox this can be done without • Illumination sensor. The intensity of Please contact: installing any tags or cameras in the visible light can be measured. The Esa Tuulari — VTT Electronics building. Instrumenting the moving dynamic range of the sensor enables Tel: +358 8 551 2334 object is enough to start with. both indoor and outdoor measurements E-mail: [email protected] • Electronic compass can be used for Technology sensing the direction of the Box and Short range wireless communication is also for detecting magnetic objects one of the key features of the SoapBox. • Optical proximity sensor for The challenge has been to combine low measuring relative distances. This power consumption and such perfor- sensor is based on sending IR pulses mance parameters as communication and measuring the intensity of range, bit rate and message delay. reflected light.
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 19 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Designing for Ludic Aspects of Everyday Life
by Bill Gaver
Researchers at Royal College of Art, UK, are developing design-driven techniques to explore people’s lives, create evocative design proposals, and develop prototypes of new systems that focus on emotional and sociocultural effects.
If technology is to become ‘ambient’ in the sense of surrounding us throughout our lives, the question is not only what form it should take – web pages, ubiqui- tous computing, tangible media, infor- mation appliances, etc. – but what roles it might play in our lives. What is tech- nology good for? How can it support our values, individually, socially, and cultur- ally?
There is a danger that as technology moves from the office into our homes, it will bring along with it workplace values such as efficiency and productivity at the expense of other possibilities. People do not just pursue tasks and solve problems, they also explore, wonder, love, worship, and waste time. These activi- ties, captured by the notion of ‘Homo Ludens,’ or people defined as playful creatures, are meaningful and valuable, Figure 1: Alternatives proposals: Data Lamp, Dawn Chorus, Telegotchi and Intimate but difficult to handle from traditional View camera. perspectives on Human Computer Interaction. Thus we are developing design-driven techniques to explore trains local birds one’s favourite songs. order to develop possibilities for ludic people’s lives, create evocative design The Intimate View camera allows sepa- technologies further, we are currently proposals, and develop prototypes of rated lovers to transmit close-up pictures engaged in a long-term research pro- new systems that focus on the emotional of their surroundings for moments of gramme called Equator in collaboration and sociocultural effects. intense shared focus, while the Telegotchi with eight UK academic institutions. The is a virtual creature with no controls, Equator Project is focusing on merging What sort of technologies might be appro- allowing people to practice their psychic the virtual with the real in situations such priate for Homo Ludens? One exploration powers as they enter into a relationship as performance, play, museums, and took the form of a palette of design pro- with it. These proposals are what Tony cities. Our group is focusing on technolo- posals called Alternatives. Over a period Dunne has termed ‘value fictions,’ gies for the home, seeking to explore the of about three months, we conceptualised exploring unusual values using plausible values people have in their lives away about 20 products in the domains of technologies in order to question the from work. To do this, we are expanding home, street, intimacy, and wonder (see restricted scope currently assumed.In the Cultural Probes method originally Figure 1). Presenting each using collages developed for another project. Having that suggested but did not specify their recruited about 20 households through forms, and short descriptions that contex- advertisements in the popular press and tualised them and explained how they on shop windows, we have distributed might be experienced, these proposals ‘Domestic Probe’ packages, with a were meant to spur the imagination and variety of rovocative tasks to which they open new spaces for design. The Data are asked to respond (see Figure 2). These Lamp, for instance, is about the size of a materials include disposable cameras floor lamp and allows images to be dis- with requests for pictures (eg ‘the most played on its façade or released to paint uncomfortable place in your home,’ ‘the surfaces in a room. Dawn Chorus is an view from your kitchen window,’ ‘some- artificially intelligent bird feeder that Figure 2: Domestic Probe package. thing red’), a device for recording a vivid
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dream when they awake, a glass for lis- tributed sensors so that the state of her tion, but they capture some of the possi- tening to interesting sounds around their home can be translated into prophecies bilities we see for technology aimed at home, and a collection of bizarre news and prognoses. One man enjoys gazing at supporting people’s domestic lives. They articles for them to annotate. The Probes his tank of tropical fish and identifies a may seem whimsical, but it would be a are, in some ways, like the projective tests certain chair as the most uncomfortable mistake to dismiss them on that ground: used by psychoanalysts: suggestive but spot in his home, so we are thinking about for unless we start to respect the full range ambiguous, they elicit revealing frag- transforming the chair into a control of values that make us human, the tech- ments from participants which inform and centre from which he can guide a small nologies we build are likely to be dull and inspire our designs. telerobotic camera to watch his fish from uninteresting at best, and de-humanising within the tank. Finally, a musician who at worst. With most of the Probe returns in, we are lives in a penthouse flat may be offered a beginning to develop new product con- system in which sounds transmitted to his Link: http://www.crd.rca.ac.uk cepts based on the replies. For instance, home from wireless microphones are one woman revealed rigid notions of a sampled and ordered rhythmically to Please contact: properly ordered house, shows a strong allow him to make music from the noises Bill Gaver — Royal College of Art, UK interest in horoscopes and fortune-telling, in his environment. These proposals are in Tel: +44 20 7590 4296 and seeks ‘positive energy’ in her life. For their early stages, and no doubt will E-mail: [email protected] her, we are developing a system of dis- develop and change before implementa-
Ubiquitous Service Environments by Carl Gustaf Jansson and Peter Lönnqvist
The FUSE (Future Ubiquitous Service Environments) group focuses on transparently accessible configurations of services made available on assemblies of personal / public / mobile / stationary devices that melt into the periphery. FUSE is affiliated with KTH in Stockholm and funded by both national and EU sources, eg the IST FET Disappearing Computer project FEEL (2001-2003).
Service Environments are dynamic con- The situation of today can be remedied • development and test of prototypes of figurations of services available in phys- in two ways: interactive services that support ical spaces for both collaborative and • Establishing a richer set of channels distributed as well as local work individual use. An important objective is for interaction, by disassembling • design of ubiquitous hardware to achieve service environments that are interactive devices (order of 10 ->100) environments with the two foci above, open, transparent, adaptive and degrade accommodating non-conventional to diversify and to synchronise gracefully with respect to capabilities of appearance of interactive devices, • HMI issues such as design of the interactive devices available in the mix the use of private and public interfaces for small devices, tangible room. The term ubiquitous refers to the devices, the use of mobile and interfaces, multi-modal transparency, objective that device technology prefer- stationary devices as well as the use adaptability as well as properties of ably should be designed in such a way of several modalities (sound, visual conscious/non conscious interactions that it melts into the periphery when not and tactile modalities) • AI issues like negotiation mechanisms needed (ambient or calm technology). • Enforcing synchronised behaviour of for intelligent software agents for services and devices, by configuring synchronisation of services and Inhibiting factors for the realisation of devices in a wireless, dynamic and implementation of autonomous and ubiquitous service environments are ad-hoc fashion, creating adequate proactive services in a form called device technologies of today charac- mechanisms for context sensitivity ‘active documents’ terised by heavy, bulky, focus both for physical and organisational • Software Security and privacy issues demanding devices, weak integration contexts and finally allowing for focussed on client authentication and between IT- non IT devices, strong divi- collaboration and communication access control in dynamic and ad-hoc sion between private and public devices, between services. environment weak local communication among • systems complexity issues, like devices, too many wires for energy and The FUSE group focuses on the fol- problems raised by scaling up in terms communication and static individual lowing issues: of number of devices, modalities and behaviours and configurations of • design of software architectures for services as well as emergent devices. ubiquitous service environments behaviours in the system.
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 21 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
AN ACTIVE DOCUMENT is a daemon supervising all activities in IN THE SIMPLEST case the active document tries, WHEN THE GIVEN conditions are met, the active document a work process. As long as the active document's conditions for through different means, to detect who is present in a can appear using the most appropriate modality. appearing are not met, it is in an idle mode. room.
1. A person enters the meeting room carrying her laptop and an 2. The person announces her presence by pushing her 3. The document moves itself to the room and tries to find a identification button. A document is waiting somewhere for identification button into a receptor. The document will public display where it will present itself. events (like meetings) to occur. now detect that two persons, members of the same project, are in the same room and therefore it assumes that there is a meeting going on.
Active documents supporting teamwork.
Current FUSE projects include: sensitive and able to detect specific FUSE is a research group at the Dept. for • FEEL, an EU IST FET Disappearing events as well as these active Computer and Systems Sciences at KTH Computer Program project, aiming at documents strategies for materialising in Stockholm, Sweden. FUSE is also mechanisms that ensures less themselves on the technology affiliated with the new centre for intrusions on collaborative work from available in the space where the event Wireless Systems at KTH. FUSE co- parallel electronic individual and occurs. This project involves both operates directly with SICS and the distributed work. The project attacks aspects of human machine interaction, University of Southampton within the the problem by employing a number computer security and artificial FEEL project and more loosely with of the above mentioned principles. intelligence (see figure). ERCIM members such as GMD and The work involves both prototype • Agent Based Technology, a project INRIA through related projects within design and simulations. funded by the Swedish funding the Disappearing Computer Initiative. • I-space, funded by the Swedish agencies NUTEK/VINNOVA, Link: Wallenberg Foundation, aiming at focussing on negotiation mechanisms http://www.dsv.su.se/fuse/ interactive spaces where the for software agents. Negotiation ‘technology level’ can be easily among software agents is used as the Please contact: adjusted and where specific ‘working primary mechanism for synchroni- Carl Gustaf Jansson — Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden. modes’ can be easily restored. In a sation of services. Both rationalistic, Tel: +46 8 16 1605 collaborative project with CS dept. at market-based and social paradigms E-mail: [email protected] Stanford University, project based for negotiation have been utilised. courses at both locations will utilise co-designed interactive spaces. A Future extensions of the work as outlined substantial grant has also been in current project proposals include: received for establishing an • handling mobile robots as active interactive space with ambient participants in the interactive spaces characteristics in the educational • handling seamless and graceful facilities at KTH in Kista. degradation of functionality of • MEETPCC, a project funded by the services when moving between Swedish Foundation for strategic interactive spaces with different research (SSF. The project focuses on characteristics active documents that supports work • exploring social paradigms for processes and which are context negotiation among multiple services.
22 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Offering a Consumer-Oriented Ambient Intelligence Environment by Valerie Issarny
OZONE is an IST project that aims at specifying and implementing a generic framework that will support the effective use and acceptance of ambient intelligence in the consumer domain. Nine INRIA research teams are contributing to OZONE, focusing mainly on the service enabling and software environment layers of the OZONE framework.
The objective of the OZONE project is to demonstrator of a new transportation service should be deployed dynamically develop novel concepts, techniques and system based on fully automated vehicles. in a way that guarantees both the func- tools to provide invisible computing for The OZONE research will concern the tional and the non-functional properties the domestic and nomadic personal use human interface with the transportation that are expected from the service by the of information technology. The devel- system: reservation and call of vehicles, end-user. The approach undertaken to oped concepts aim at improving the on-board control and information, city meet the aforementioned requirements acceptability and usability for the information, etc. The information support lies in the combination of two technolo- average customer. One of the important will be based on fixed terminals (home or gies: concepts is the application of advanced office or city) as well as portable and on- • mobile agent technology will be technologies to support the user centric board devices. exploited for the specification of the retrieval and consumption of information complex services to be deployed compared to the, current practice, com- The service enabling layer comprises dynamically with respect to both the puter centric approach. This requires enabling technologies for seamless base services to be used and the user special emphasis on natural interfaces service discovery based on the user’s environment that put the user in the foreground, and location and context, and for multimodal • component-based technology will be the system in the background. Security and secure access to available and person- exploited for the integration of and privacy are prerequisites for con- alized services. Core of the work will existing services, hence enabling their sumer acceptance of these systems and focus on the design and implementation use by mobile agents. are covered in the project’s objectives. A of a linguistic knowledge management final objective deals with the provision of support environment to supply the situa- The OZONE IST project will start in a strong technology base, enabling pow- tion sensitive information to the services November 2001. The project will first erful, but energy-efficient, computing. operating in the framework, so that they investigate the specification of the generic can adapt to the context in a dynamic way. OZONE framework, based on require- The OZONE project targets the provi- Next to this functionality, functionalities ments elicitation and extensive inventory sioning of a generic framework that is will be developed to support the applica- of the relevant technology domains. The not tailored to a specific environment but tion of multimodal user interfaces from project will then elaborate the generic that is rather able to integrate new tech- the services as well as measures to protect framework enabling consumer-oriented nologies as they appear. The framework the privacy of the user. For the multi- ambient intelligence applications, which architecture is based on a layered modal interfaces, the combination of will be assessed using applications from approach ranging from ‘service speech input with pointing devices will the extended home environment area. The enabling’ functionality over the ‘soft- be the starting point; the application of INRIA research teams contributing to ware environment’ towards the under- vision will be investigated as an exten- OZONE are: Langue & Dialogue, Maia lying ‘platform architecture’. An incre- sion to this idea. and Parole at INRIA-Lorraine, Cosi and mental approach of specification, design Temics at INRIA-Rennes, Sirac at and prototype implementation will be The software environment layer provides INRIA-Rhone Alpes, and Imara, applied to arrive at enabling technolo- the necessary support for achieving Moscova, and Solidor at INRIA- gies, providing a generic invisible com- service delivery, independent of connec- Rocquencourt, The other partners of puting framework driven by demon- tivity, device in use and power supply OZONE are: Philips (Project coordinator, strator scenarios from the extended means. Component-oriented software The Netherlands), Interuniversity Micro home environment area. development methodology, and currently Electronics Center (Belgium), Labo- available tooling to help the development ratoire d’Electronique de Philips (France), The main focus of INRIA in OZONE is and deployment of distributed software EPICTOID (The Netherlands), Technical on the service enabling and software envi- systems will be taken as a starting point University Eindhoven (The Netherlands), ronment layers. INRIA also contributes to for the design of the software environ- and Thomson Multimedia (France). some specific aspects of the platform ment. However, these technologies are architecture layer, relating to silicon com- not sufficient to seamlessly offer services Please contact: Valerie Issarny — INRIA pilation technology and resource manage- to users from the existing services that are Tel: +33 1 39 63 57 17 ment. INRIA will further develop a available worldwide. Any requested E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 23 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Global Ambient Intelligence: The Hostess Concept
by András Lörincz
The Neural Information Processing Group of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, launched a project 24 months ago to develop a general methodology for distributed collaborating goal-oriented experts (including humans) without using any assumption on synchronization. The expert community will have adaptive means for distributed computing, editing, and decision-making. Medical applications and home monitoring are in focus.
The research has originated by noticing the need for adaptive asynchronous information collection and control methods for distributed decision- making. Several experiences (see, eg http://www.eds.com/case_studies/case_ arkansas.shtml) point towards this direc- tion. Our model example is the complex case of Parkinson disease patients (PDPs) using Deep Brain Stimulators (DBS). Simpler systems can be derived Crawlers: as analogies of this case. Left: breadth first crawler, middle CF crawler of the NEC Institute, right: ELU NIPG crawler. The diameter of the red circles is proportional to the number of hits at a given site. The color of lines shows recency of the search. Dark blue: early part of the search. For PDPs, histories of individual patients Light blue: recent part of the search. The size of travel is inversely proportional to the show that sporadic experiences at dif- line thickness. ferent hospitals need to be collected to improve evaluation. Remote setting of important for efficient human communi- tion and in computation tasks. The the DBS, augmented reality with infor- cation, including facial expressions, project is ‘just-in-time-research’. We mation collection and data management prosody, body talk, and behavioral pat- develop components under the assump- together, could form global ambient terns. In case of Parkinson disease tion that Quality of Service will be avail- intelligence (GAI) for full support of the patients global ambient intelligence able for internet networks in about two patients. Data management should meet needs to exploit: years. constraints derived from Good Clinical • the medical history of the patient Practice and could be seen as an exten- (available locally or over the internet) State-of-the-art techniques have been sion of drug administration procedures. • the medical history of other patients adapted, developed, and are ready to use GAI can serve the patient, can help the • mobile communication outside of on the following fields: connectionist doctor and can estimate risk. Adaptive safe environments (PDPs with DBS parallel algorithms, reinforcement tools for such (safety critical) applica- often engage in activities outdoor) learning for partially observable environ- tions have become available by our latest • optimization of the neural prosthetic ments, parallel techniques for satisfia- achievements in reinforcement learning device, the DBS, with option for bility problems, adaptive and robust (RL). Optimization of decisions on con- remote control control methods, tracking and proba- tinuing data collection or executing an • visual, acoustic and haptic augmented bilistic inference methods, internet tech- action can be termed as optimization of reality tools nologies. The components are developed perception-action loops. Such chal- • distributed data editing in a modular fashion. Some of the com- lenging optimizations concern partially • (provisional) access control ponents are in use or are ready to use. observed environments, being in the • decision-making in this safety critical Examples include text clustering and focus of RL research. We are not aware situation. classification tools for search on the of any similar global approach on the internet and other databases, tree valida- field. A particular aspect of the project is that tion, clustering and classification tools decision is achieved by combining the for XML documents, time series recogni- The project aims at defining the assessments of experts who may be tion and time series prediction tools, ‘hostess’, ‘who’ is a goal-oriented agent located at different sites and may have internet crawler and hostess technology with possibly adaptive and distributed different roles. The access to (medical) in JAVA. subsystems. The hostess ‘serves’ data may improve the decisions at the someone, eg a patient, a visitor, the expense of real time, communication At each stage, the technologies we have owner of a home, or groups of those. For time, and computational costs. Risk-sen- adopted or developed undergo functional the interactions with people served, the sitive decision-making needs to consider testing. For example, our internet hostess makes use of signals that are pipeline operations, both in communica- crawler has been under testing. Medical
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doctors will help to improve graphical • XML access control (XACL) for The figure is about our internet crawler user interfaces. Two other components provisional authorization that combines support vector machine close to testing are: • reconfigurable hardware components. and RL. Three graphs show the search • connectionist knowledge representation patterns of the traditional breadth first (CFR) for individual (human) experts Sub-components of the project have crawler, the state-of-the-art context which/who are not present during potentials for other immediate applica- focussed (CF) crawler (NEC Institute), decision-making tions. and our crawler. It can be seen that our • facial expression recognition software. crawler travels further and collects more Individual sub-projects have been and information (given by the red circles). Results on these components will be are supported by: The efficiency of our crawler is almost available in six months. CFR will be • EOARD of US Air Force, London an order of magnitude better than that of tested by its distributed editing capabili- (Structure based identification of the state-of-the-art NEC crawler. ties for expert teams. We see no bottle- XML documents) neck for global ambient intelligence. • Honda Future Technology Research, Link: http://www.inf.elte.hu/~lorincz Today, all essential technology compo- Germany (image processing for nents are within reach, including: humanoid robots) Please contact: • JavaSpaces, the flexible message- • Panasonic, Osaka (Software-hardware András Lörincz — Eötvös Loránd University, ware between available/existing co-synthesis with pipeline operation Hungary software components at various sites using intelligent properties). Tel: +36 1 463 3515 E-mail: [email protected]
Ubiquitous Computing Infrastructures by Friedemann Mattern
Incorporation of computing power into everyday objects gives rise to ‘smart things’. To enable communication and cooperation among such smart objects, new information infrastructures are required. The Distributed Systems Group at ETH Zurich addresses the challenges of designing and implementing such infrastructures.
Ubiquitous computing aims at making represent context information, and support new functionality, novel interac- computers available throughout the envi- enable reliable and scalable service cre- tion patterns, and intelligent collaborative ronment, while rendering them effec- ation. behavior. Eventually, Smart-Its should be tively invisible. Real-world objects that as cheap and as small as state-of-the-art contain embedded processors and One of the major ubiquitous computing radio tags (RFIDs), but in addition they sensors provide novel ways of accessing projects at ETH Zurich is the Smart-Its will also be able to communicate with information, but they may also react to project. It is one of 16 projects conducted peers, and they will be customizable in their environment and they may provide under the European Union’s their behavior. In order to facilitate a new emergent functionality when inter- Disappearing Computer initiative within meaningful integration in their environ- acting with other smart things. the Future and Emerging Technologies ment, Smart-Its are equipped with various programme. Its goal is to develop unob- sensors providing context information. This vision of smart objects in particular trusive, deeply interconnected smart and ubiquitous computing in general is devices (so-called ‘Smart-Its’) that can be Smart-Its only develop their inherent grounded in the belief that microproces- attached to everyday items in order to potential when acting in a collaborative sors and advanced sensors will soon environment together with other Smart- become so small and inexpensive that Its providing different sensor informa- they can be embedded in almost every- tion and services. They require a back- thing. It is expected that billions of such ground infrastructure in order to access objects will be interwoven and con- distributed services, connect to remote nected together by wireless networks, devices, or exchange application-spe- forming a world-wide distributed system cific information. Among others, such several orders of magnitude larger than services include location and security today’s Internet. Infrastructures for services as well as services for the prop- cooperating smart objects have to cope agation of context information. with a highly dynamic environment and One of the first Smart-Its prototypes, based on an Atmel microcontroller. should, among other things, provide Bluetooth modules allow communication The Smart-Its project is conducted in location information to mobile objects, between different devices. cooperation with the Perceptual
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Computing and Computer Vision Group prime concern in a world of highly inter- nology, our graduate level curriculum (ETH Zurich), the Cooperative Systems connected, autonomous smart devices focuses on state-of-the-art research in Engineering Group (Lancaster University, that will eventually permeate our ubiquitous computing. In our ubiquitous U.K.), TecO (University of Karlsruhe, everyday lives, effectively placing us computing laboratory, students can Germany), PLAY (Viktoria Institute, under constant surveillance. devise and build their own smart envi- Sweden), and VTT. The research areas ronments using handheld devices (eg, being addressed include: embedded Furthermore, we cooperate with the mobile phones or pen-based computers), device development, perceptual com- University of St. Gallen in the M-Lab ID systems (eg, smart cards or RFID puting methods for collective perception, project to identify and create business tags), and wireless communication infrastructures for smart devices, architec- applications for smart things in the area of equipment such as Bluetooth or WLAN. tures for context-awareness, and evalua- business-to-business. The goal of the M- tion of application scenarios. Lab is to build up a critical mass of highly Links: http://www.inf.ethz.ch/vs/ qualified researchers and practitioners in http://www.inf.ethz.ch/vs/res/ubicomp.html At ETH Zurich, we are engaged in the field of applied ubiquitous computing. http://www.inf.ethz.ch/vs/res/proj/smartits.html developing and evaluating appropriate http://www.m-lab.ch/ communication schemes and adequate Ubiquitous computing is also part of our infrastructures for cooperating Smart-Its. teaching activity. Besides teaching fun- Please contact: Friedemann Mattern — SARIT/ETH Zurich However, we also interested in security damentals of distributed systems, dis- Tel: +41 1 632 05 36 and privacy issues, since this will be of tributed algorithms, and Internet tech- E-mail: [email protected]
Ubiquitous Computing and Embedded Operating Systems Design
by Michel Banâtre
A research activity at INRIA concerns the impact of Ubiquitous Computing on operating system design, particularly the aspects related to Java for appliances, Spontaneous Information Systems and context awareness.
One of the main purposes of an operating be defined as making computer systems in a strictly autonomous way during a system is to provide the basic mechanisms pervasive, enhancing user interaction with mission for which we do not know, a to manage hardware resources available the environment, as seamlessly as possible. priori, the tasks which will be run on architectures in order to run applica- Obviously context awareness plays a major • these systems may have to ensure soft tions in an efficient way. Obviously, its role in this area. The Ubiquitous real time constraints due to possible purpose is not limited to hardware Computing research area is not new, Marc multimedia applications resources management, it provides all Weiser identified it ten years ago. • these systems have to take into account facilities for their virtualization to make However, at that time the need of specific the specificity of some kind of resources accesses easier. equipment in term of communication facili- resources, in particular the energy, the ties or terminals made difficult to imagine physical context and the mobility of the Resource management is always the what kind of applications could benefit user, and the limited amount of some problem that operating systems researchers from the new research area. Today, the situ- resources such as memory or CPU have to solve. Obviously solutions pro- ation is totally different with the develop- • these systems have to be designed vided ten years ago, need to be strongly ment of wireless communication facilities taking into account the instability of reconsidered, mainly due to the evolution (eg GSM), the new generation of mobile cellular networks (bandwidth, of the hardware architectures and also to phones and PDA, the short distance wire- connection, etc). new application domains. Some of these less technology (wavelan, bluetooth, etc.). application domains have already been Some research projects are running, but To summarize, we can advocate that oper- carefully considered. For example a lot of they are mainly concerned with the defini- ating systems have to be reconsidered research has been carried out concerning tion of user interfaces or interaction sce- taking into account constraints related to multimedia applications. Here, one of the narios between the user and its PDA, which the physical environment at large. To do main problems is to guarantee a ‘quality of leads to the notion of ‘wearable computers’. that, we need to examine the impact of service’ (QoS) which can be defined in A great deal of research remains to be ubiquitous computing in areas such that terms of security, availability or efficiency: done about operating systems to support resource allocation, load balancing tech- Today, the growing interest for mobile Ubiquitous Computing. Reasons for this niques, scheduling algorithms, etc. It is devices (PDA, cell phones, Car are: clear that a lot of results exist concerning Information Systems, etc.) requires • these systems could be considered as these activities, but the challenge is to advanced researches in the emergence of embedded systems as they have to provide global solutions, which take into ‘Ubiquitous Computing’. Intuitively it can ensure some minimal running facilities account simultaneously, for example, soft
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real time requirements, energy consump- • concurrent execution of multimedia a device may use a protocol that other tion and short distance wireless connection. applications, by handling associated devices are unaware of. timeliness requirements Our research theme is devoted to the • efficient execution of applications by The last important feature of spontaneous design of such operating systems, through exploiting the underlying architecture systems is that the value of the information three main activities. One is related to the • parallelism together with minimal can be highly localized in time and place. design and the implementation of a Java power consumption, through the For instance, information about a traffic Development Environment that allows the provision of complementary scheduling jam can be useful to a person in a car who development of Java multimedia applica- and load balancing policies. is one kilometer from the jam, but the tion targeted appliances, the other one information is useless one day later or to concerns spontaneous information Currently, the research is devoted to anyone who is not in a car. Information in systems based on ‘Short Distance taking the benefit of the underlying hard- a spontaneous network is highly contex- Wireless’ (SDW) technologies, and the ware in order to improve the efficiency of tual and situational. last one is about location awareness. our environment. All of these problems combined are partic- Java Development Spontaneous Information Systems ular to spontaneous information systems Environment for PDA A spontaneous information system is a and suggest a new form of building and The main goal of this activity is to envi- system composed of computing devices that operating systems as the user’s physical sion the use of wireless appliances that are carried by people and that communi- mobility has to be taken into account at the allow the user to perform actions such as cate by a Short Distances Wireless resource management level (energy, CPU, Internet accesses, application down- (SDW) interface. Devices can only com- etc). Currently we are involved in two loading, and phone calls. However, the municate with each other when they are main directions, one related to the pro- actual provision of the aforementioned within a relatively short distance. Since posal of predictive scheme in order to esti- environment on the wireless appliance is devices are mobile, a device may leave a mate the communication time depending far from straightforward; hardware and network at any time – simply by being on users’ mobility. The other is concerned software solutions still need to be devised. moved out of communication range of other with data location and accesses. In order to Our research concerns software solutions devices. Spontaneous networks are analo- integrate all these results a demonstrator is design. A wireless software environment gous to human groupings: people can only under construction. must meet the following requirements: directly communicate when they are close, • maximize efficiency so as to support strangers that meet may exchange informa- Location Awareness efficient execution of applications, tion, and this exchange may lead to further Location awareness is the last important possibly run concurrently exchanges (notably of more sensitive infor- aspect to consider: ubiquitous computing • minimize power consumption so as to mation) as the relationship develops. A enables the system to fade into the environ- provide users with highly autonomous, person can find himself in a network at any ment, by its potential to guess the context small-sized appliances time, and the network around him or her of the users without requiring explicit • maximize availability so that users can varies over time. It is very easy to imagine interactions from them. Up to now, most benefit from their appliances despite relevant applications of this paradigm: localization services were used to build the occurrence of failures medical domain, e-commerce, PDA-to- applications related to navigation (helping • support multimedia applications, which PDA information exchange, games, etc. the user to locate himself or other entities in have ‘soft’ real-time constraints the environment, like GPS car navigation • support dynamic downloading of Among all the challenges we have identi- system). We believe that a lot of research applications (eg through Internet). fied, we have selected some which still has to be done for a true context-aware demonstrate the real need for new system, which uses localization as a part of A Java environment achieves the latter research. One is coming from the fact that the context representation (along with requirement. Furthermore, the de facto the network composition is dynamic and time), to go further than a navigation appli- standard status of Java leads to a signifi- localized. Devices can only communicate cation. Currently we have designed an cant amount of available software, which with devices in their neighbourhood, and original solution based on SDW technolo- will continue to grow. However, pro- once a device leaves the range of commu- gies to dynamically sense the relevant viding a Java environment for appliances nication, it no longer forms part of that context aspects of a mobile user. that both supports multimedia applications network. A device can only use the infor- and exploits the underlying hardware, mation available on its current network. Acknowledgements which could be a multiprocessor, is an The second one is autonomy. For instance, Java Development Environment for PDA open issue and constitutes the main core of many spontaneous systems are formed activity is supported by Texas-Instruments our current research. A Java runtime envi- mainly by PDAs, which are pro- and the Spontaneous Information Systems ronment has been designed that allows the grammable devices. On the one hand, this activity is supported by Alcatel R&D development of Java multimedia applica- makes the range of possible applications tions, targeted for appliances. Such an large. On the other hand, it introduces Please contact: Michel Banâtre — INRIA environment supports: extra complexity since devices may Tel: +33 2 99 84 72 85 interact in unforeseen ways. For example, E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 27 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Ambient Interfaces for Distributed Work Groups
by Tom Gross
The Computer-Supported Cooperative Work group of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied IT develops ambient interfaces bridging the gap between the physical and the electronic world and supporting distributed work groups with a shared environment of mutual information and orientation providing a basis for smooth coordination.
Knowledge workers typically work in ERCIM News No. 36, January 1999); a numbers of ambient interfaces to indi- both the physical world with physical WebCam with microphones and standard vidual offices and public places in office artefacts and in the electronic world with software was used to capture noise; and buildings). electronic artefacts. At the same time they the ‘Vision Command’ from LEGO was work at various places and cooperate with used to capture movement. Some simple In the second generation we developed colleagues at the same or at a distant binary ambient interfaces, which can be AwareBots, ambient interfaces presenting places. So, as the knowledge workers’ switched on and off, were developed to awareness information with the gestalt of activities and plans span across media, present the information. Relaisboards with robots. Based on LEGO’s Mindstorms locations and work groups, they need to eight relais allowed to control eight binary Robotics Invention System, a broad variety spend a considerable amount of time and ambient interfaces. For instance, the fish of AwareBots were designed and created energy for orientation and coordination. tank starts releasing bubbles, or a propeller by project members. For instance, the starts blowing air into the user’s face when AwareBot in the right picture of the figure We are developing a hybrid setting that certain events occur. Depending on the can indicate the login of a colleague by bridges the gap between physical and frequency of the releases of the bubbles, lifting its hat and the manipulation of a doc- electronic worlds and provides a frame- the bubbling starts to aggregate, ie, when ument by rotating its body. In order to log work for orientation in both worlds. In interesting events occur in high frequency, into the system and to set the status to this hybrid setting, ambient interfaces there are still bubbles from the former ‘Available’, the user simply presses the arm are the basis for a shared environment of releases and the bubbling on a whole gets of the AwareBot. Other AwareBots can roll mutual information fostering intuitive rougher indicating that a lot is going on. their eyes when the user’s Web pages are and adequate behaviour of distributed Additionally, the release of the bubbles accessed and capture movement outside of participants in a cooperative setting. The produces subtle sounds of the motor and the owner’s office. Additionally, a WAP ambient interfaces act as sensors in the the bubbles. Thus the user can capture the interface was developed that allows mobile physical world and capture various types information visually and acoustically. The users to query for information and enter of information such as the position and propeller addresses the haptic sense of the information manually while on the move. orientation of a user, noise in a coffee user by blowing air in a subtle way into the room or movement in the hallway. On user’s face. For the design of the third generation the the other hand they act as indicators pre- existing designs will be evaluated and pos- senting digital information in the phys- This first generation was deployed in sibly consolidated. As an overall output we ical environment of the user by means of users’ offices and in a public coffee room. plan to come up with basic guidelines for projections of digital information on the From the users’ feedback three mayor the design of ambient interfaces capturing wall and physical artefacts such as fish requirements for the second generation of and presenting information in the user’s tanks, propellers, or robots (see Figure). ambient interfaces were derived: cus- physical environment in order to provide tomisability (ie, the developers and users shared guidance. The ambient interfaces In a first generation of ambient interfaces should be able to easily and rapidly build described are based on the TOWER the sensors were mainly developed and adapt ambient interfaces); aesthetics system and its event and notification based on existing technology. The (ie, the users should like and appreciate the infrastructure (cf. ERCIM News No. 42, MOVY system was used to capture the presence of ambient interfaces); and low July 2000). They are being developed in position and orientation of a user (see cost (ie, it should be possible to deploy big the IST-10846 project TOWER, partly funded by the EU, with the partners Aixonix, blaxxun interactive AG, FhG, UCL, and WS Attkins.
Links: http://tower.gmd.de/ http://orgwis.gmd.de/~gross/
Please contact: Tom Gross — Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology Tel: +49 2241 14 2091 User with TOWER world; fish tank; propeller; AwareBot. E-mail: [email protected]
28 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
GeoNotes: Social Enhancement of Physical Space by Per Persson and Fredrik Espinoza
Positioning technology is often associated with locating people in geographical space. The GeoNotes system, however, positions pieces of information. GeoNotes allows all users to annotate physical locations with virtual ‘notes’, which are then pushed to or accessed by other users when in the vicinity.
GeoNotes started in the summer of 2000 stores meta information about the usage and is an ongoing project at the of the note, such as the number of times HUMLE-lab at Swedish Institute of it has been read, when it was last read, Computer Science. Although the final and so on, as data in a MySQL database. application will rely on systems that handle automatic positioning of mobile GeoNotes is an open and mass-scale devices, the primary workload so far has annotation system, allowing not only been on the application side. Today commercial or organizational annotators GeoNotes is a Java application that to add to the information space, but all allows a user to add content, a GeoNotes users. In this way it is more similar to place label, sender information, and graffiti, toilet scribbles, sticky notes and access restrictions. The user then posters than to commercial marketing chooses a lat-long to define the place of channels. the GeoNote, either through a map inter- face or ‘here’. As a mass-scale annotation system we can expect public and private spaces to The base server handles transactions of be cluttered with GeoNotes. These traces notes for all clients (see Figure 1). It per- of other people create a nice social forms requests from clients to insert notes, overlay over geographical space, and retrieve notes from a location, and to thus support social awareness and pro- Figure 2: The pie-chart circle provides an update a single note. It stores the actual cesses in those spaces. At the same time, ‘at-a-glance’ overview of the immediate GeoNote information space. On the right note data (its contents), be it text, audio, or however, information overload will hand side of the screen is the list of the video, as an entry in the Wherehoo become a problem, making navigation titles of individual GeoNotes. database (http://wherehoo.media.mit.edu/). support and filtering the core foci of Wherehoo is a service for storing loca- GeoNotes. tion dependent data in a client indepen- rejecting GeoNotes senders (MacDonald’s dent manner. It stores data coupled to a Users can browse a map for GeoNotes or advertisements, for instance), provide field that describes the physical location use the at-a-glance overview displayed valuable information to profile the user of the data as a latitude/longitude posi- in Figure 2, which provides GeoNotes of and to cluster those profiles with other tion. To retrieve data, one specifies the the immediate surroundings. The size of users’. In this way only those GeoNotes location and a radius and the service the circle represents the number of that are shared within such a cluster of returns all entries in that area. The server GeoNotes at this particular place. The similarity will be pushed to the user. Such pie-chart represents different sorts of filtering techniques can also be comple- GeoNotes, for instance notes specifically mented with traditional word-based directed to the user or relating to some search engines: ‘only push GeoNotes that content. At the right hand side of the contain the words ONE-ROOM interface, there is a scrollable list of all APPARTMENT or CAR FOR SALE’. GeoNotes at this specific place. Once Future activities of the project involve clicked, the user accesses the individual deploying the GeoNotes service on some GeoNote. The next step in the imple- positioning enabled PDA and conducting mentation is to provide a search engine user evaluation. for GeoNotes (perhaps in combination with a map interface). Links: Figure 1: The GeoNote System http://www.sics.se/humle/projects/GeoNotes/ Architecture. Clients connect to the server using RMI. The server uses a GeoNotes pushed to the user will be fil- Please contact: socket connection to store content data tered with social recommendation and Per Persson — SICS about notes in the Wherehoo database collaborative filtering techniques. Tel: +46 70 600 1805 and SQL commands to store meta data E-mail: [email protected] about the usage of notes in the MySQL Information about users putting up notes, database. reading notes, rejecting notes or even
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 29 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Contextualisation in Nomadic Computing
by Markus Eisenhauer and Roland Klemke
Contextualised information presentation and interaction gives Nomadic Computing its backing. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT), prototypes and services are currently being developed in the framework of the project ‘Situation Awareness in Motion’ (SAiMotion), a cooperation between FIT and other Fraunhofer Institutes that concentrates on context modeling and Human-Computer Interaction.
The baseline for the acceptance of infor- using all relevant situative parameters user implying the physical environment mation and communication systems is a for proactive information supply and (location, objects in the vicinity, light simplified information presentation user interaction. intensity, volume) actual tasks and adapted to situation, task and user. On the targets of the user, the current state of one hand, simplified means a reduction Contextualisation affairs in the processing of the task, the of information by adapting the informa- The process of information contextuali- characteristics of the device – concerning tion presentation to the context (a task, sation requires filtering, annotating and in- and output of information, as well as situation and user adapted choice of aggregation of information contents. The the user’s profile of interests and prefer- information) but on the other hand, it identification of the relevant situative ences. Depending on the present situation means driving at an intuitive interaction parameters in agreement with the above the probable current information need is with the SAiMotion-system itself. This described context dimensions help to narrowed down – and is possibly pre- article will concentrate on the first aspect solve this task. The information need of dictable, so that the information needed of information adaptation. In SAiMotion, the user is determined by the primary task could be anticipated by the system. simplified information presentation is as well as his present location. The objec- achieved through automatic proactive tive is to assist the user by a proactive Additionally the emerging contexts selection of information and context-sen- supply of actually relevant information create a framework for user coordination sitive presentation of the contents with (and functionality) so that the search and at different locations allowing an explicit consideration of important envi- selection of information does not distract implicit coordination of location inde- ronment variables, like daytime, noise, him from the primary task. Information pendent communication and cooperation and the situation of communication. and communication systems thus are of users. As already mentioned the being used to enrich the professional and problem of privacy is to be taken into Context in Nomadic Computing personal weekday with useful additional account since users are not always For context adapted information presen- information. willing to disclose their situation or parts tation and interaction the development of of their situation (eg their location) to the a suitable context and process model is Information Selection SAiMotion-system or other users. vital determining the individual informa- and Anticipation tion needs on the basis of location, envi- Context adapted services are dependent In contrast to location and situation ronment, situation, user, task and activa- on the reception of the situation of the independent information access deter- tion features. In most context definitions four dimensions of context are consid- physical space ered (Klemke, 2000; Schilit, 1994): the Location electronical location of the user in either electronic (eg an URL) or physical space, the iden- tity of the user implying a user model interests with information about the user’s inter- Identity preferences ests, preferences and knowledge, the time (day/night time working hours, Context knowledge weekend, etc) and the environment (the task or activity in a current situation; day/night-time other users). Approaches that take Time context into their account usually focus working hours / one or only few aspects like the users leisure time current position in physical space to adapt the information selection and pre- task / activity environment sentation. Beyond to these approaches other users SAiMotion aims to provide an exhaus- tive situation model identifying and Context Typology
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mining the paradigm of ‘anything, provides useful information about the Moreover multimodal interaction and anytime, anywhere’ it is vital for the city, including map, hotel information, pro-active presentation mechanisms that above described activities to provide transportation, current events, sight- adapt to environmental variables like information dependent on the present seeing, and culture etc. daytime, noise, situation of communica- location and situation and to support tion will lead to context sensitive inter- suitable methods of user interaction and The most important advance will be action. The SAiMotion-system on its information presentation: The anticipated information supply: Relevant own will meet a situation- and user- SAiMotion-system provides support for information will be proactively selected adapted interaction. Several partners are the completion of a task, by providing for the present task sequence or interest involved in the activities like navigation help, information about of the user. With the help of user, situa- Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische nearby local resources that are useful for tion and task monitoring it will be pos- Datenverarbeitung IGD), Fraunhofer- the completion of the task, selecting sible to reduce the information explosion Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und information adapted to the particular sit- to information that match the interest and Organisation (IAO), Fraunhofer Institut uation, task and user preferences, moni- needs of the user to anticipate the next für Zuverlässigkeit und Mikro-integra- toring the current goals and sub goals interaction with the SAiMotion-system tion (IZM), Fraunhofer Institut für including a warning of possible conflicts and the possible content of the next Integrierte Schaltungen (IIS); and adapting the interaction with the request. The SAiMotion-system proac- Fraunhofer Institut für Publikations- SAiMotion-system to the modality tively scans for useful information and und Informationssysteme (IPSI). appropriate for the context. Moreover has it ready for the next request. the SAiMotion-system is capable pur- Link: http://fit.gmd.de/projects/saimotion/ suing multiple tasks: at the counter it Conclusion reminds the user of an overdue cash SAiMotion will lead to a great improve- Please contact: transfer and presents the current balance, ment in the efficacy of the user interac- Markus Eisenhauer — Fraunhofer Institute at the supermarket it provides the shop- tion with the system. Time saving and for Applied Information Technology ping list and the current special offers, in information focusing contribute to a Tel: +49 2241 14 28 59 E-mail: [email protected] an exhibition it provides a tour or infor- greatly improved interaction and to mation about the exhibits, on a journey it greater contentment of the user.
Scene Interpretation for Video Communication by Monique Thonnat
Based on Scene Interpretation, a Video Communication System can improve permanent and informal communication between distant individuals. Such a system has been realized by the Orion team at Inria Sophia Antipolis from 1999 to 2000.
By Scene Interpretation, we mean For these reasons, we propose to use an the scenario analysis, the VC system can detecting and tracking several individ- interpretation system to be a part of the decide what to send to the network, a uals in a scene (eg an office) and recog- global VC system to automate these tasks. zoomed sub-image of the camera or a fil- nizing their behavior (eg ‘two persons tered (blur) image. For example, if the are meeting near the blackboard’). The Given image sequences of everyday system recognizes a work meeting situa- concept of video communication is dedi- office life, our proposed interpretation tion, the VC system can automatically cated to allow permanent and informal system is able to analyze the behavior of broadcast a blurred image to protect Communication and group awareness individuals. This system is composed of visitor’s privacy. Moreover, if the sce- between spatially separated individuals three modules. First, from images the nario ‘the user is writing on the black- (including video-conference). Current detection and classification module board’ is recognized, the system can video communication (VC) systems rise detects moving regions by subtraction to broadcast an image zoomed on the two problems. First, the static nature of a background image and it classifies blackboard area. the cameras interferes with the real word moving regions into mobile objects activity; ie the VC system should auto- adding a label giving its type, such as In this article, we focus (1) on the matically follow and zoom at the main individual or noise. Second, the tracking tracking module and (2) on the behavior individual in the office. Second, the level module associates the mobile objects recognition module. The tracking of availability (protection of privacy) has with already tracked targets that corre- problem is a central issue in scene inter- to be set up automatically, if not, the spond to real individuals. Third, the sce- pretation as the lost of a tracked object studies show that VC systems will be narios recognition module recognizes prevents from analyzing its behavior. less accepted. the scenarios relative to the behavior of We have developed a tracking method, tracked individuals. Finally, thanks to based on a 3D model of the scene
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 31 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
the number of people in the office: green (nobody in the office, maximum of avail- ability), orange (low probability of guests in the office, medium level of avail- ability) and red (high probability of guests in the office, meeting situation, no availability). Currently, the two main limitations of the system are the mix of individual identifiers in difficult cases (eg long crossings) and to handle situations where individuals are mixed with mobile The left image illustrates the tracking results, whereas the right image comes from a 3D objects corresponding to noise (eg a chair animation illustrating the behavior recognition. Colored cylinders represent the individual identifiers detected and tracked in the office. Each person has it’s own color. moved by a person).
The first results of this Video (including 3D geometric and semantic This interpretation system has been tested Communication System based on Scene information), on explicit models of indi- on several office sequences. The longest Interpretation are encouraging. We are viduals (including the 3D size of the sequence is 15 minutes time long. Some planning to model more sophisticated mobile objects and the presence of skin of these sequences are available on the scenarios and to complete the scene areas) and of individual’s trajectories web, at http://www-sop.inria.fr/ model to include 3D scene objects that and on the computation of several pos- orion/personnel/Alberto.Avanzi. These are able to move (like chairs and doors). sible paths for each individual (using a sequences show people entering the This new model will prevent paths to be time delay to improve the robustness of office together, crossing and overlapping mixed with mobile objects corresponding the algorithm). Resulting algorithm is each other. An example of scenario to the motion of these scene objects. This able to cope with severe occlusions, recognition “two people are meeting in work has been done in collaboration with merging/splitting individuals, errors in the office” is illustrated by the figure. the IIHM and PRIMA teams from the detection and in classification. For the This scenario illustrates the case when University Joseph Fourrier in Grenoble. behavior recognition module, we have guests are visiting the office and when developed a description language, close the availability level should decrease (we Link: http://www-sop.inria.fr/orion/ to natural language, which enable users don’t want to broadcast guest pictures). to specify the behaviors they want to be Guests can be recognized according to Please contact: recognized. By this way, the users can the place where they sit. On a 3D anima- Monique Thonnat — INRIA configure their own VC System and tion, a flag (cube), showing the avail- Tel: +33 4 92 38 78 67 setup a desired level of their privacy. ability level, changes its color following E-mail: [email protected]
Mining Multimedia Documents by Visual Content
by Nozha Boujemaa and Marin Ferecatu
The IMEDIA research group at INRIA develops content-based image indexing techniques and interactive search and retrieval methods for browsing large multimedia databases by content.
Everyday, the average person with a on the complex issue of intelligent retrieval system, we find it convenient to computer faces a growing flow of multi- access to multimedia data streams. The divide image databases in two categories: media information, particularly via the prototype software IKONA illustrates • The first category concerns specific internet. But this ocean of information this research lead at IMEDIA. image databases for which a ground would be useless without the ability to truth is available. When indexing the manipulate, classify, archive and access Specific and Generic Image Signatures database, the designer will consider them quickly and selectively. However Visual appearance is automatically mea- these ground truths and tune the multimedia is dominated by images, sured by numerical signature of image models or range of parameters with respect to bandwidth and com- features such as color, texture, shape, or accordingly, maximising the system plexity. most often a combination of them. More efficiency. We have developped specific image signatures have to be specific signature for face recognition The IMEDIA team achieves research, developed for special content and situa- and detection and fingerprint collaborations, and technology transfer tions. For designing an effective image identification.
32 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Figure 1: Generic image database. Left: Selecting a query image in IKONA; the red border indicates the selected image. Right: Query results for the selected image.
Figure 2: Specific Image database. Left: Selecting a query image with relevance feedback mecanism in IKONA. Right: Query results for the selected image. For more results on face retrieval, see http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~sahbi/Web/ercim.html
• The second category includes IKONA System Architecture mode, etc...) and a network module to databases with heterogeneous images Our CBIR software IKONA, is based on communicate with the clients. where no ground truth is available or a client-server architecture and aims to obvious. Examples include stock be flexible, easily extensible, easy to use, The client needs to be portable and is photography and the World Wide intuitive, and does not enforce special written in Java; it normally should run on Web. The user should be assumed to knowledge or training. every computer architecture that sup- be an average user (not an expert). In ports Java Runtime Environment (JRE). this context, generic image signatures The server needs to be fast and is written It presents the user with an easy to use are computed in order to describe in C++. It includes image feature extrac- Graphical User Interface (GUI), sets the general visual appearance such as tion algorithms (signatures), user inter- query mode for the server and display color and texture. action policies (retrieve by visual simi- the search results. larity mode, relevant feedback mode, partial query mode, points of interest
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 33 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
The communication protocol is modular Region based queries are being inte- number of keywords for a non annotated and extensible, ie it is easy to add new grated into IKONA. In this mode, the image and their weight. Further research functionality (new feature extraction user can select a part of an image and the on keyword propagation, semantic algorithms, searching methods, security system will search images (or parts of concept search and hybrid text-image access restrictions, etc) without dis- images) that are visually similar to the retrieval mode are being carried on. turbing the overall architecture (imple- selected part. This ineteraction allow to mentation). By default, IKONA does a the user to precise to the system what Short Term Involvement and Event ‘retrieve by visual similarity’ in response part or particular object is interesting in Several industrial partenership are going to a query, which means that it search all the image. In this case, since the query is on: Judicial Policy for pedophilia prob- images in all databases and returns a list focused, the system response is enhaced lems, TF1 French Chanel with more effi- of the most visually similar images to the with regards to the user target since the cency in TV journal preparation, France query image. background image signature is not con- Telecom R&D, Thalès and Thomson sidered. We have developed segmenta- Multimedia. IMEDIA has organized a Interactive Search tion based methods as well as point of first workshop of a series on multimedia In order to deal with generic databases, interest methods to achive partial content access management topic spon- Ikona includes a relevance feedback queries. sored by NSF Digital Library Initiative technique which enables the user to with IBM (Watson research center) and refine their query by specifying over Hybrid Image and Text Indexing Berkeley University. This workshop was time a set of relevant and a set of non-rel- While text indexing is ubiquitous, it is attended by approximately 35 distin- evant images. Relevance feedback inter- often limited, tedious and subjective for guished researchers from both academia action methods try to use the information describing image content. Visual content and industry and from both Europe and the user supplies to the system in an image signatures are objective but has no United States. It provide a forum for attempt to ‘guess’ what are his inten- semantic range. Combining both text and active researchers in this area to tions, thus making it easier to find what image features for indexing and retieval exchange ideas on the most recent he wants. IKONA has a RF mode for cat- is very promising area of interest of research progress and challenges in the egory search in image databases, which IMEDIA team. We first work on a way to area of multimedia content browsing, means it can help the user to find more do keyword propagation based on visual indexing and retrieval. rapidly certain categories of images in similarity. For example, if an image large databases with browsing and user database has been partially annotated Links: http://www-rocq.inria.fr/imedia/ profiling methods. This interaction allow with keywords, IKONA can use these to compensate the ‘semantic gap’ in such keywords for very fast retrieval. Based Please contact: image search system. on the indexed visual features and the Nozha Boujemaa — INRIA keywords index, IKONA can suggest a Tel : +33 1 39 63 51 54 E-mail: [email protected]
How can I be sure that my DVD player understands my TV?
by Wan Fokkink, Izak van Langevelde, Bas Luttik and Yaroslav Usenko
In the context of the ERCIM Working Group on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems, protocols within HAVi (Home Audio Video Interoperability) and FireWire were analysed using a combination of state-of-the-art methods and tools for verification and testing.
A young trend in consumer electronics is HAVi and the IEEE 1394 high-speed multiple digital audio and video streams the ubiquitous, transparent and intelli- serial bus, better known as FireWire, quickly, reliably and inexpensively. Its gent integration of audio, video, commu- target a dynamic interconnection of dif- architecture is scalable and a user can nication and information services that ferent pieces of equipment in the home add or remove systems and peripherals have become so widely used in the 20th environment. HAVi is a common, easily at any time. FireWire has rapidly century. One of the key features of this openly-licensable specification for net- become the de-facto standard in the integration is the ability of digital equip- working digital home entertainment interconnection of digital devices. ment to communicate reliably in a flex- products that has been developed by ible fashion, which typically includes the eight multinationals. Devices connected Although intelligent household goods plug-and-play ease of use. The look and in a HAVi network can inter-operate, are mostly not safety-critical, validation feel of ambient intelligence, however, using each other’s resources and func- of their correctness is an important issue. can be instantly destroyed by a single tionality. HAVi is built on FireWire, The financial implications of errors or crude error message. which is designed to carry all forms of bad performance can be enormous,
34 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
CWI conducts verification ficult to discover this deadlock by means of embedded systems. of testing. Illustration: I.A. van Langevelde (2001). Third, the FireWire tree identify protocol for spanning a tree in the network topology was tackled at the University of Nijmegen. This tree identification fails if the network topology contains a loop, which is signalled using a time-out mechanism. With the timed model checker UPPAAL it was detected that the timing constraints of FireWire are too lenient: they allow for scenarios in which there is a time-out but no loop in the topology. Furthermore, the FireWire root contention protocol was studied, which comes into play in the finale of the tree identify protocol where two nodes compete to become the root of the tree.
Correctness of this root contention pro- tocol was established by a number of case studies using a combination of UPPAAL and probabilistic I/O automata. In collaboration with the because of their mass replication and nication between devices is faster than University of Aalborg, precise timing damage to consumer interests. The high communication between components constraints were derived. A young initia- complexity of the protocols underlying within one device. These aspects were tive is the analysis of the IEEE 1394.1 such products (specifications typically taken into account in a subsequent speci- standard for Bus Bridges, being devel- require several hundreds of pages) turn fication of the HAVi leader election pro- oped to connect FireWire networks their verification into a major challenge. tocol. through so-called `bridges’. The initial A number of protocols within HAVi and modelling of the standard in Promela at FireWire have been analysed success- A second study targeted the Link layer of CWI and the University of Nijmegen has fully using formal methods. FireWire using the language µCRL and already revealed a number of bugs in the the associated tool set, both developed at draft specification, in the algorithm that One notable study involved the analysis CWI. FireWire describes the serial bus updates routing tables. Some of these of the so-called HAVi leader election in three layers: the Transaction layer discoveries have been taken into account protocol, which was carried out at CWI. offers an interface of high-level instruc- in the latest draft of the standard. The In HAVi, controllers, acting as hosts for tions, such as reading and writing of aim is to conclude this verification digital devices, elect among themselves data, the Link layer transforms these before the standard is finalised, thus con- a leader with the best capabilities to instructions into packets of bits, and the tributing further to the standardisation supervise their controlling tasks. Each Physical layer is concerned with the process. Envisioned extensions of this time when a change in the network of the actual sending and receiving of the bits. project include the analysis of stochastic underlying FireWire interface occurs, The analysis brought to light a serious aspects at the University of Twente. the controllers need to re-elect a leader. case of underspecification: when the The HAVi leader election protocol was Link layer receives a packet from the Concluding, these case studies bring specified in the specification languages Physical layer, the handling of a request home the point that communication LOTOS, Promela and µCRL. The from the Transaction layer is left unspec- between for example a DVD player and resulting models were analysed using ified. Different solutions were proposed a TV can benefit from the analysis of the model checking techniques, which facil- independently at CWI and at the underlying protocols by means of formal itate the automated verification of University of Kiel. At INRIA Rhône- methods. behavioural properties. This analysis Alpes a model checking analysis revealed that the leader election protocol revealed a deadlock, due to a flaw in the Links: http://www.cwi.nl/sen2/ does not meet some critical safety prop- communication scheme between Link http://www.inrialpes.fr/vasy/fmics/ erties and that there are situations in and Transaction layer. The shortest exe- http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/firewire-workshop/ which the protocol does not converge to cution trace leading to this deadlock con- the election of a leader. These errors sists of fifty consecutive transitions, Please contact: were due to a lack of detail in the HAVi which indicates that it would be very dif- Wan Fokkink — CWI Tel: +31 20 592 4104 specification. They occur when commu- E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 35 SPECIAL THEME: AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor Networks
by Stefano Chessa and Paolo Santi
Scientists at CNR address the problem of identifying faulty mobiles in ad hoc wireless networks and propose an energy efficient silent fault diagnosis protocol.
Wireless sensor networks are receiving around the park for control and mainte- For this reason, we have developed a dis- increasing attention due to their ability to nance. Mobile stations are connected to the tributed silent fault diagnosis protocol monitor a wide variety of environments, sensor network through the nearest sensor. explicitly designed for wireless sensor net- ranging from remote geographical regions This way, the rangers can be alerted of works. The protocol takes advantage of the to industrial plants, from office buildings to abnormal events, and they can quickly shared nature of communications and aims toxic urban locations. A wireless sensor intervene where needed. However, if there at minimizing the total number of bits network is usually composed of hundreds is no provision for sensor maintenance, exchanged for the purpose of diagnosis, or thousands of sensors equipped with eventually the batteries will be depleted thus reducing the energy consumption computation, sensing and communi- entailed by the protocol execution. cation devices, which are coordinated The protocol first constructs a span- in a distributed mode in order to ning tree of the graph representing the collect information on their surround- network topology, then exchanges ings. During the lifetime of the diagnostic information only along the network, the information collected by edges of the tree. This allows a signifi- the sensors is periodically transmitted cant reduction in the number of mes- to sink nodes, which can be either sages to be sent for the purpose of mobile or base stations. Sink nodes diagnosis. We have shown that the are used by external operators to protocol exchanges the minimum retrieve the information gathered by number of bits required by any diag- the network. nosis algorithm for wireless sensor networks, thus proving its optimality. Due to the limited energy supply of sensors, protocols for sensor networks We have also studied the problem of should be designed with the goal of A park monitoring scenario. identifying soft-faulted mobiles in ad minimizing energy consumption. For hoc networks. Contrary to the case of this reason, energy-efficient information and crash. As a consequence, the number silent faults, soft-faulted nodes can con- dissemination protocols for sensor net- of non-operating sensors in the system will tinue to communicate with other units, works have been recently proposed in the increase until the system gets discon- although with altered behavior. We have literature. These protocols exploit network nected, and is no longer functional. In such proposed a new comparison-based diag- redundancy to achieve fault tolerance: a scenario, sensors should provide diag- nostic model based on the one-to-many when a sensor crashes (either because of nostic information along with sensor data, communication paradigm. We show that battery depletion or due to a catastrophic thus enabling rangers to maintain network using this strategy the ability to diagnose event), neighboring sensors can cover, at functionality by replacing faulty sensors or soft faults in the presence of mobility is sig- least partially, its sensing task. However, by recharging depleted batteries. For this nificantly reduced with respect to the sta- none of these protocols provide explicit purpose, sensors in the network should tionary case, meaning that a somewhat knowledge regarding the state (faulty or execute a distributed diagnosis protocol, weaker notion of diagnosis should be con- fault-free) of the sensors in the network. In either periodically or on-demand. sidered under this scenario. We have also our opinion, the extraction of explicit diag- designed a distributed soft faults diagnosis nostic information from the network could However, existing distributed diagnosis protocol for stationary ad hoc networks be important in those situations in which protocols have been designed either for based on the new model. The analysis of sensors repair/ reconfiguration is feasible. multiprocessor computers or for wired the time and communication complexity of computer networks. As a consequence, all the protocol shows that efficient soft faults In order to motivate this hypothesis, con- the protocols proposed so far assume that diagnosis in this scenario is possible. sider the following example. A sensor units communicate according to the one- network is used to help rangers to monitor to-one paradigm typical of wired networks. Please contact: Stefano Chessa — IEI-CNR/Pisa University a vast natural park. The sensors, which This means that, if applied to sensor net- Tel: +39 050 2212 736 have limited energy supplies and are works, these models are unable to take E-mail: [email protected] mostly static, provide information about advantage of the shared nature of commu- or Paolo Santi — IMC-CNR the presence of animals, tourists, fire, nication, and are thus not feasible or at best Tel: +39 050 3152411 flooding and so on. Rangers, who are extremely energy consuming. E-mail: [email protected] equipped with mobile stations, move
36 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Domain Specific Languages by Arie van Deursen and Jan Heering
CWI is developing tools and methods to support the effective use of domain specific languages in real life software engineering projects.
The challenge of software engineering is to create flexible, reliable, scalable and maintainable systems. To achieve this, the software engineer must apply a wide variety of tools and techniques. One of these is to take advantage of the under- lying application domain, by means of a domain-specific language (DSL), which provides a notation that can be used to compose applications from a set of con- cepts tailored towards a specific applica- tion domain. Details of the underlying implementation platform are captured by knowledge built into the DSL compiler. Seismic modelling and other computational modelling software benefits from the This compiler can translate the DSL into, Sophus approach to software construction which is being developed at CWI in for example, executable code, calls to cooperation with the University of Bergen, Norway. library routines, database transactions, or HTML forms.
The Risla language is a case in point. It selecting suitable DSL domains, and for cooperation with TI-partner Lucent). was developed by CAP Gemini and capturing domain knowledge into a DSL Last but not least, major progress has MeesPierson, in cooperation with CWI. and its compiler; to develop meta-tools been made with the development of tools Given a description of the essential for the rapid prototyping of domain-spe- and meta-tools as incorporated in the ingredients of an interest rate product cific languages; and to gain more experi- ASF+SDF Meta-Environment. Results (loan, swap, financial future, ...), the ence, via case studies, with the use of of the project can be found at Risla compiler can generate data struc- domain-specific languages in a commer- www.cwi.nl/projects/dsl/ tures in VSAM format, data entry cial setting. Legacy applications are screens in CICS format, and COBOL often a valuable (but hard to exploit) Links: DSL project: routines for registering modifications in source of domain knowledge. Therefore, http://www.cwi.nl/projects/dsl/ the product or for yielding management the DSL project takes legacy systems Interactive Software Development information. A DSL compiler relieves and software understanding tools as one and Renovation at CWI: the user from unnecessary details and of its point of departure. So far, we have http://www.cwi.nl/sen1/ machine dependencies. gained experience with a variety of anal- Please contact ysis and renovation problems, including Arie van Deursen and Jan Heering — CWI As a result, changes in the ICT infras- documentation generation for (mostly Tel: +31 592 4075 / 4130 tructure have to be accommodated only COBOL-based) legacy systems (in E-mail: [email protected], once in the DSL compiler. After re-com- cooperation with the Software [email protected] pilation of all DSL programs, the desired Improvement Group, ABN AMRO, infrastructure-related changes have been Roccade and others), and analysis of C effectuated without making a single and and SDL systems, both in change to the DSL programs themselves. cooperation with Lucent, partner in the Contrast this with the traditional situa- national Telematics Institute (TI). In tion that domain-related knowledge and addition, we gained experience with a infrastructure-related knowledge are variety of DSLs: RISLA for the financial intermixed in the program code. The use domain (in cooperation with TI-partner of DSLs thus leads to greater flexibility Cap Gemini), Sophus for writing partial and less maintenance. differential equation solvers (in cooperation with University of Bergen, The DSL project is carried out under the Norway), used for instance in the area of auspices of the Telematics Institute (TI) seismic modeling for oil exploration, and and has as goals to develop methods for a router description language (in
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 37 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
QuantifiCare: A new INRIA spin-off in Medical Image Processing
by Jean-Philippe Thirion
QuantifiCare is a newly created spin-off of INRIA, located in Sophia-Antipolis and dedicated to Medical Image Processing applications. Its first target is the quantification of disease evolution for the objective measurement of drug efficacy.
Created by several former researchers of Evolution of multiple sclerosis INRIA in March 2001, QuantifiCare plaques measured using S.A. is a French company, located in QuantifiCare’s technology. Top left is a baseline image slice, Sophia-Antipolis and dedicated to the extracted from a complete MR applications of Medical Image scan of the head. Top right, Processing. The first phase of its activity bottom left and bottom right are is to design specific protocols for the successive exams of the same subject, acquired with a 3 weeks follow-up of disease evolution such as interval each, and matched and ischemia, arrhythmia, osteoporosis, subtracted with the baseline lesions or tumors volumes. Amongst the image. Growing lesions appear studied pathologies are Coronary Artery as white annuli and shrinking lesion as black annuli. Other Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke and techniques are used to quantify Cancer. QuantifiCare’s techniques take more precisely different as input volumetric images such as attributes of MS plaque Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI), cat- evolutions such as the ‘mass effect’. scans, Nuclear Medicine images (SPECT, PET∑), 3D ultrasound and provide quantitative measurements of physical parameters. According to the American Heart strated and many alternative treatments Association, more than 7 million are currently under evaluation, for which QuantifiCare is relying upon a unique Americans have a history of Coronary QuantifiCare’s technology is providing expertise in 3D image matching in order Artery Disease and 600,000 people are highly accurate evaluation of changes, to track very precisely subtle changes dying each year in the US, due to this not only with respect to the number of along time. Inter-patients image matching disease. Two current treatments are pro- plaques, but also with respect to hidden is also used to relate the information of posed, which are bypass grafting effects of the pathology such as ‘mass different individuals and allow for popu- (600,000 operations per year) and angio- effects’, that is, local volume variations lation model analysis or data mining plasty (500,000 operations per year). As within the brain or brain atrophies. applications. An important technology these operations are costly and invasive, QuantifiCare owns the right on a transfer, relying on a large number of many alternative treatments are currently patented technology, which has allowed, general-purpose libraries, as well as on being developed, such as angiogenesis, for the first time, to quantify such dedicated matching methods, including laser revascularization, thrombolitics, effects. three patents, has been signed between radiation therapy. MPS-Quant is cur- QuantifiCare and INRIA in June 2001. rently used in two retrospective drug trial The first customers are pharmaceutical This technology has been developed over studies, one for Angiogenesis, involving companies. QuantifiCare is designing the years by an INRIA research team 60 patients and one for laser revascular- dedicated measurement to quantify drug called EPIDAURE, created in 1989 by ization, with 260 patients. efficacy and takes care of all aspects Nicholas Ayache. Jean-Philippe Thirion, related to imagery in Phase II or Phase the Chief Executive Officer of Multiple Sclerosis corresponds to fewer, III drug trials. The proposed services are QuantifiCare as well as several other co- but younger patients: about 350,000 including the centralization of image founders of the company, are former patients are identified in the US and data coming from multiple clinical senior researcher of EPIDAURE. 450,000 in Europe. These patients are centers, the archiving and remote pro- generally aged between 20 and 40 years. cessing of the image data and also orig- Two product lines have already been Some drugs have already been approved inal image-based data mining capacities. developed by QuantifiCare and are cur- for a subset of MS patients, who are pre- The results of QuantifiCare’s computa- rently improved: MPS-Quant, based on senting the ‘relapsing-remitting’ form of tion can be used directly to support evi- the analysis of Myocardial Perfusion the disease. It has been shown, from dence of efficacy for the registration of a Scintigraphy (MPS) studies for MRI measurements, that the number of new drug or a new treatment. Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and relapses was decreasing when beta-inter- MS-Quant for the follow-up of Multiple feron is used. However, no long term The current effort of the company is to Sclerosis (MS). beneficial effects have been demon- establish a set of research contracts and
38 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
drug trial participation with pharmaceu- disease evolution can lead to gains of imaging is used to monitor the evolution tical companies. It is currently recruiting several orders of magnitude in the statis- of patients. Marketing and Sales persons from the tical results of a trial involving hundreds pharmaceutical field. A mid-term objec- or thousands of patients and can decide Link: http://www.quantificare.com tive is to establish formal collaborations upon the registration or rejection of the with other academic research teams in new drug. The stakes are high and Please contact: image processing, within or outside QuantifiCare‚s ambition is to maintain Jean-Philippe Thirion — QuantifiCare S.A., INRIA, to keep the technology of the its technology to the up most level, to France company updated. Each percent gained increase the chances to measure the Tel: +33 4 93 00 60 86 E-mail: [email protected] in sensitivity for the measurement of slightest effect of a drug, when medical
MIA — Querying Multimedia Databases by Arjen de Vries
The Multimedia Information & Analysis (MIA) project investigates the problem of access to multimedial collections.
Finding textual information on the ever extremely popular, and digital photo- and thousands of pictures. Yet, the toughest growing Web is already quite a chal- film-cameras become increasingly problem in searching picture archives lenge, let alone searching the forth- common. Technology developed in MIA with current systems, is that query results coming wealth of multimedia docu- focuses therefore on retrieving ‘that song are hard to understand even for their soft- ments. This research provides the basis with that nice little melody’, or ‘that ware developers. The end-user cannot be for a new generation of search engines on picture of our sailing, with the Boston expected to comprehend why an example a multimedia Web, and supports digital skyline; when the weather was nice, was picture of a sunset at sea results in archiving in large companies. It is carried it 1997, or 1998?’ (however beautiful) pictures of African out by CWI and seven partners (universi- savannas. Such inaccurate answers are an ties as well as companies) with funds MIA’s database team at CWI focuses on unwanted side-effect of the uncertainty allocated to the Amsterdam Science and two themes: scalability and query formu- inherent to posing the question, exposing Technology Centre (WTCW). lation. The target in the first theme is pro- the wide gap between our high-level per- cessing queries in a collection exceeding ception and the (necessarily) much Digital multimedia documents are best one million pictures. Common simpler methods for image analysis. stored centrally and distributed through approaches based on the colour distribu- broadband Internet, allowing remote tion of an example image break down for We seek to reduce this gap with better for- access from anywhere anytime; shortly, collections of this size, because often mulated search requests, based on two even from your mobile phone. And, either all objects or none are found. different but complementary approaches. digital data are easily exchanged, also Moreover, some ‘back of the envelope’ On the one hand, we assist the user with enabling the reuse of existing material. calculations show that the required time automatic query formulation; in our Furthermore, people at home create ever per iteration of the search process yields opinion, many improvements can be more digitized data: making your own unacceptable response times as soon as achieved by collecting more information compact discs with music has become the collection grows beyond several about the user’s interest in a carefully crafted, interactive query process. On the other hand, we attempt to give users more insight into the query process inside the system itself, enabling them to intervene in that process and eventually adjust it (query articulation). An interesting chal- lenge in our research is to find the correct balance between these two approaches.
Links: http://www.cwi.nl/WTCW/MIA/ http://www.cwi.nl/ins1
Please contact: Arjen de Vries — CWI Tel: +31 592 4306 Initial query results (upper row) from a photo collection can be improved by feedback E-mail: [email protected] from the user (lower row) (Illustration: CWI).
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 39 EVENTS
SPONSORED BY ERCIM Sixth ERCIM FMICS International Workshop
by Hubert Garavel
FMICS is the ERCIM Working Group on Formal Methods for Industrially Critical Systems. Launched in 1996 by Diego Latella and Stefania Gnesi (CNR Pisa), the FMICS working group is currently chaired by Hubert Garavel (INRIA Rhone-Alpes).
The 6th ERCIM FMICS workshop was The opening talk of the workshop was The 6th FMICS workshop benefited held in Paris on July 16-17, 2001. The given by Jean-Eric Pin, Scientific from the financial support of INRIA program committee was chaired by Director of ERCIM. During the two days, Rhone-Alpes and ERCIM. The work- Stefania Gnesi (IEI-CNR) and Ulrich Ultes- fifteen talks were presented, carefully shop proceedings (240 pages) have been Nitsche (University of Southampton). The selected by the Program Committee with published by INRIA. workshop was held in the LIAFA labora- a rejection rate of 50%. Also, two invited tory (University Paris-7) and the local orga- talks were given, the first one by Cindy Links: FMICS Working Group web page : nization chair was Mihaela Sighireanu. Eisner (‘Automatic Detection of Vacuity http://www.inrialpes.fr/vasy/fmics/ in Temporal Logic’) and the second one 6th FMICS Workshop web page: The meeting was attended by 38 persons, by Joseph Sifakis (‘Modeling Real-time http://www.dsse.ecs.soton.ac.uk/FMICS2001 both from academia and industry In par- Systems’). ticular, it is worth mentioning that com- Please contact: Hubert Garavel — INRIA panies such as Ericsson, Giesecke & A special issue of the scientific journal Tel: +33 4 76 61 52 24 Devrient GmbH, IBM, Instrumentointi ‘Formal Methods in System Design’ will E-mail: [email protected] Oy, Motorola, NASA, Simtech, and gather the best papers presented during TransEDA were present at the 6th the workshop. ERCIM FMICS workshop.
SPONSORED BY ERCIM IEA/AIE-2001 Conference Report
by László Monostori and József Váncza
IEA/AIE-2001 — The Fourteenth International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems was held during 4-7 June 2001, in Budapest, Hungary. The conference that covered all main research areas and many application domains of AI was supported in part by ERCIM.
The success of engineering depends on Intelligence (AI). Knowledge gleaned program chair and co-chair were László the recognition and use of several syn- here is valid not only in this particular Monostori and Soundar Kumara, respec- ergic factors. While the analytic application area but provides valuable tively. The conference was organized by approach is the key in solving some hints to the perspectives in the theory of SZTAKI in co-operation with a number well-defined subproblems, creativity AI and in its potential for solving other of international scientific societies as helps us to get free of prejudices and in problems as well. AAAI, ACM/SIGART, ECCAI, ERCIM finding useful analogies. Moreover, crit- to name but a few ones. The main spon- ical thinking opens up the way of argu- Having recognized the above features of soring institutions of the event were mentation with inexact premises and engineering problem solving, the ISAI, ERCIM, the Hungarian Academy rules. While engineering is based on International Society of Applied of Sciences, and the Hungarian Ministry such complex mental features, it is Intelligence (ISAI), more than a decade of Education. perhaps more transparent than some ago, initiated a series of conferences other human activities: its world is of named Industrial & Engineering The Call for Papers announcement man-made artifacts that should be useful Applications of Artificial Intelligence & attracted many researchers and engineers in a broad sense of the word. Expert Systems (IEA/AIE). The from all over the world. A total of 104 Hungarian AI community was honored papers — representing 21 countries and This resulted in the opinion that by con- by the invitation of the ISAI to host the all continents — were selected for pre- sidering the advancements in engi- IEA/AIE-2001 conference (June 4-7, sentation. The accepted papers covered neering of intelligent systems, one may 2001, Budapest, Hungary), which was all the main research areas of AI and have a proper view of the state of the fourteenth in the series. General chair many different application domains. research in the whole area of Artificial of IEA/AIE-2001 was Moonis Ali,
40 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 EVENTS
The plenary talk of the conference was and business, software engineering, and Links: delivered by Tibor Vámos (SZTAKI) on tutoring. Conference: ‘Triple R: Representation, Retrieval, http://www.sztaki.hu/conferences/ieaaie2001/ Proceedings: Reasoning’. The technical presentations Proceedings of IEA/AIE-2001 were pub- http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/ were held in 2-3 parallel tracks in ses- lished by Springer Verlag under the title 0558/tocs/t2070.htm sions on search, knowledge representa- ‘Engineering of Intelligent Systems’in tion, model-based reasoning, machine the series of Lecture Notes in Artificial Please contact: learning, data mining, soft computing, Intelligence (LNAI 2070). Electronic László Monostori, József Váncza — SZTAKI evolutionary algorithms, distributed access to the papers of the volume is pos- Tel: +36 1 466 5644 problem solving, expert systems, pattern sible (see links). The extended versions E-mail: {laszlo.monostori;vancza}@sztaki.hu and speech recognition, vision, language of some selected papers are considered processing, planning and scheduling, for publication in the International robotics, autonomous agents, design, Journal of Applied Intelligence. control, manufacturing systems, finance
SPONSORED BY ERCIM Workshop on User Interfaces to Data Intensive Systems by Epaminondas Kapetanios
The second international workshop on User Interfaces to Data Intensive Systems (UIDIS) took place at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, Switzerland, 31 May - 1 June 2001. The two-days workshop has been attended by 24 participants.
The mission of the workshop was to con- of domain knowledge and data in parallel coordinates approach as a visu- tinue the tradition of previous workshops semantically difficult to interpret alization technique for high-dimensional in Interfaces to Database Systems (IDS databases. The presentations were information spaces. The workshop has 1992, IDS 1994, IDS 1996) and the 1st related to context aware query been considered a success by the partici- UIDIS 1999. The emphasis, however, languages as well as to information pants and organizers alike. A number of has been put to a human-centered way of retrieval techniques sponsors have contributed to its suc- human-computer interaction, especially, • designing effective user interfaces for cessful organization: ERCIM; the when data intensive systems are con- interactive systems in terms of Association of Computing Machinery cerned. The workshop tried to find solu- embedding user/system interaction (ACM - Special Interest Group tions to problems such as interaction issues into conceptual design (UML), Computer-Human Interaction with high-dimensional spaces, accessing constraints based specification of (SIGCHI); the Swiss Federal Institute of large and semantically difficult to inter- user interface patterns, considering of Technology (ETH), Zurich; the pret database schemas, understandability possible outcomes in a user/system GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical of data and user/system interactions, interaction environment, as well as company, and the University of Zurich. through a variety of 12 accepted papers the semi-automatical derivation of which have been selected out of 17 sub- user interfaces by using XML Please contact: Epaminondas Kapetanios — ETH Zurich mitted papers by the program com- • providing comprehensive visualization Tel: +41 1 632 7261 mittee. techniques which enable the E-mail: [email protected] recognition of interesting information In particular, the workshop brought patterns as well as the presentation of together researchers practitioners in information. information management systems, com- puter-human interaction, knowledge The two invited talks addressed the based methodologies and visualization. accessing and organizing large informa- The papers were organized in three ses- tion spaces. The first talk put the sions which mainly addressed: emphasis on the semantics based (onto- • context aware data querying and logical) approach, on the example of information retrieval techniques in contents management for business-to- order to restrict the navigational businsess electronic commerce, while space and increase understandability the second talk discussed the use of the
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 41 EVENTS
1st International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction
by Constantine Stephanidis
The 1st International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction (UAHCI 2001) took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 5-10 August 2001, jointly with the Ninth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2001), the Symposium on Human Interface (Japan) 2001, and the 4th International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics.
The establishment of this new interna- Interaction, such as Universal Design, 22-27 June 2003, jointly with the Tenth tional conference is largely due to the Adaptive and Intelligent Interfaces, International Conference on Human- dedicated work of the ERCIM Working Architectures and Tools, Multimodal, Computer Interaction (HCI International Group ‘User Interfaces for All’, which, Continuous and Ubiquitous Interaction, 2003, http://hcii2003.ics.forth.gr), the since its institution in 1995, has carried User Diversity and User Participation, Symposium on Human Interface (Japan) out a variety of activities bringing Human Factors, Ergonomics, Guidelines 2003, and the 5th International together researchers and teams who and Standards, Access to Information, Conference on Engineering Psychology share common interests and aspirations, Applications, Assistive Technologies, and Cognitive Ergonomics. and contribute to the endeavours towards and Cultural, Social, Ethical and Legal making the emerging Information Issues. The Proceedings of UAHCI 2001 Links: Conference website: Society equally accessible to all citizens. have been published by Lawrence http://hcii2001.engr.wisc.edu/ Erlbaum Associates (ISBN 0-8058- Working Group ‘User Interfaces for All’: The UAHCI 2001 conference has 3609-8). http://ui4all.ics.forth.gr/ attracted strong international interest, with 228 papers presented, covering a The Second International Conference on Please contact: Constantine Stephanidis — FORTH wide range of topics in the area of Universal Access in Human-Computer Tel: +30 81 391741 Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction will be held in Crete, Greece, E-mail: [email protected]
SPONSORED BY ERCIM ECOOP 2001 - 15th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming
by László Kozma
ECOOP 2001 took place at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary from 18 to 22 June 2001. It was organized under the auspices of AITO (Association internationale pour les technologies objects), with sponsorship from IQSOFT, the Hungarian Ministry of Education, NOKIA, GRAPHISOFT, Microsoft Research, ERCIM, ERICSSON, VT-SOFT, SZÁMALK and SZÁMITÁSTECHNIKA. About four hundred people participated in the events.
The conference was chaired by Gerti 22 workshops and 21 tutorials were spoke about Mondrian, a functional Kappel from Johannes Kepler selected out of respectively 30 and 48 scripting language designed especially University, Linz and László Varga from high quality proposals. The opening for the new Microsoft .NET platform. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. keynote address was given by Charles Mondrian is useful for functional pro- The Programme Committee was chaired Simonyi from Microsoft Research. His grammers who would like to be able to by Jørgen Lindskov Knudsen from paper entitled ‘Languages, Objects, and inter-work more closely with other lan- University of Aarhus, Denmark. Intentionality’, was a very impressive guages that target the .NET Common discussion on ‘intentionality’ as an Language Runtime and for object- The first two days (Monday 18 and important aspect of natural language, oriented programmers who would like to Tuesday 19) were dedicated to work- and the uses of intentionality in com- explore being able to write and access shops and tutorials. During the last three puter languages and in object-oriented objects written in functional languages. days of the week (20-22), the main con- programming. Erik Meijer, Microsoft ference took place together with an exhi- gave the second invited talk entitled Alistair Cocburn, Humans and bition, demos and poster sessions. ‘Scripting .NET Using Mondrian’. He Technology gave the third invited talk
42 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 EVENTS
entitled ‘People and the Limits of topics related to the object-oriented were successful in attracting many Methodology’. He spoke about that paradigm including sharing and encap- young researchers whose enthusiasm people had a nasty habit of running sulation, type inference and static anal- and fresh ideas greatly contributed to the neatly drown up methodologies. It is not ysis, language design, implementation success of the event. The conference pro- that they intend to do, it just that people techniques, reflection and concurrency, ceedings were published by Springer - are packed as ‘individuals’ while metho- testing and design. Verlag, Berlin - Heidelberg in Germany. dologies are packed in ‘roles’. From an organizer’s point of view, the Please contact: László Kozma — Eötvös Loránd University, Eighteen technical papers out of the 108 conference was very successful. The Hungary submitted papers were selected for pre- technical presentations, tutorials and Tel: +36 1 209 0555 sentation and covered a broad range of workshops were of high quality. We E-mail: [email protected]
First DELOS Summer School on Digital Library Technologies by Maristella Agosti and Vittore Casarosa
The First DELOS International Summer School on Digital Library Technologies (ISDL 2001) was held in Pisa, Italy, from 9-13 July 2001, under the direction of Maristella Agosti, University of Padua, Italy.
Being the first Summer School organ- for an informal exchange of ideas. The The School was attended by 52 students ised by the DELOS Network of programme of the school included: from 16 different countries (Australia, Excellence, it was decided to have a • ‘Introduction to Multimedia Digital Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, broad programme covering most of the Collections’ by Carl Lagoze, Cornell India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Poland, fundamental issues underlying the multi- University, USA Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, The disciplinary area of Digital Libraries. • ‘New Models for Scholarly Netherlands, UK). 36 students were from Future editions of the DELOS Summer Dissemination’ by Robert Wilensky, universities and research institutions, and School may focus on specific issues and University of California, Berkeley, the remaining 16 were from libraries and technologies of interest in the area of the USA archives. DELOS was able to partially Digital Libraries, providing more in • ‘Architectures and Open Access to fund the participation of 24 students by depth coverage of the topics selected. Digital Libraries’ by William Y. covering their enrolment fees. Arms, Cornell University, USA The ISDL programme was organised in • ‘Information Retrieval Models and An evaluation form was distributed at the nine half-day lectures, having as invited Methods, Metadata, and Evaluation’ end of the course asking students to rate lecturers leading researchers in the by Norbert Fuhr, University of different aspects of the school on a scale digital library field, both from the US Dortmund, Germany from 1 to 5 (bad to good). About 75% of and Europe. Each lecture was devoted to • ‘Online Information Access from the students filled in the form with 86% a fundamental topic of Digital Libraries, Handheld Devices’ by Andreas of the students giving a rating of between addressing both the methodological Paepcke, Stanford University, USA 4 and 5 for the school overall, 85% giving aspects and the presentation of the • an invited talk on ‘Public Access to a rating of between 4 and 5 for the social results of some of the most innovative Digital Materials’ by Brewster Kahle, events overall, and 87% giving a rating of and significant Digital Library projects. Internet Archive, USA between 4 and 5 for support overall. The School was divided into two parts: • a short demo by Rui Amaral, INESC Lectures were rated individually, with the first part, from Monday to ID, Portugal 70% of the ratings falling between a Wednesday morning, devoted to more • ‘Cross-language Retrieval’ by Carol score of 4 and 5. A section of the evalua- general topics, and the second part, from Peters, CNR-IEI, Italy tion form provided space for comments Thursday to Friday, addressing more • ‘Text Categorization and Information and suggestions which will be considered specific topics. On Wednesday after- Filtering’ by Fabrizio Sebastiani, when planning the next Summer School noon there was an invited talk, a short CNR-IEI, Italy in June 2002. All in all, the school can be demo and the social programme (a • ‘Video Digital Libraries’ by Howard judged to have been a success, with many guided tour of Lucca and a social dinner Wactlar, Carnegie Mellon University, students expressing interest in attending in an old villa outside of Pisa). Most of USA ISDL2002. the participants and lecturers resided at • ‘Libraries in the Digital World’ by the conference centre for the duration of Elizabeth Lyon, UKOLN, UK. Please contact: Vittore Casarosa — IEI-CNR the School, allowing ample opportuni- Tel: +39 050 315 3115 ties for getting to know each other and E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 43 EVENTS
Joint DELOS-NSF Workshop on Personalisation and Recommender Systems in Digital Libraries
by Alan Smeaton and Jamie Callan
The Joint DELOS-NSF Workshop on Personalisation and Recommender Systems in Digital Libraries held at Dublin City University June 18-20, 2001, brought together 57 researchers and practitioners from 14 countries to discuss the development of personalisation and recommender systems and techniques, particularly as they apply to digital libraries.
The concept of personalisation is about emphasis the papers were generally con- were evaluated in some manner, but few making systems different for individual sistent with past research in this area, of the evaluations could be called rig- people or groups of people and one type which has been adaptation of existing orous. It might be clear how to evaluate of personalisation that is growing in use is technologies, mostly from Information a movie recommender system, but it is recommender systems. These take input Retrieval or Machine Learning, often less clear how to evaluate more complex directly or indirectly from users and based combined with creative methods of systems. Researchers in this area need to on user needs, preferences and usage pat- acquiring training data. This suggests that begin considering a broad approach to terns, they make personalised recommen- the area is not yet mature enough to have evaluation that embraces not just quanti- dations of products or services. These spawned its own specific and tailored tative evaluation, but also methods and vary from recommending books to buy or techniques, or the theoretical models that tools from disciplines such as sociology. TV programs to watch, to suggesting web would support them, which is a sign that While recognising the importance of pages to visit. The ultimate goal of such there is much more work yet to be done. evaluation, we worry that an overem- recommender systems is to reduce the phasis on evaluation will stifle new ideas amount of explicit user input and to Workshop participants naturally felt that in this fledgling field. Finding the right operate, effectively, based on usage pat- personalisation is an important research balance between creative development terns alone, thus giving users what they area, and that it will receive greater atten- of new ideas and scientific evaluation want without them having to ask. tion in the coming years but there was less remains an issue. agreement on how it will be applied in the Within the digital library environment, context of digital libraries. Most of the Finally, prior research on personalisation personalisation and recommender ‘success’ stories are systems that and recommender systems has focused systems may have different characteris- encourage additional consumption, for on relatively short periods of time. tics because individual user behavior and example of movies and books but it is Systems are beginning to be deployed traffic patterns may differ significantly harder to find systems that provide other that are intended for daily use over long from those of Web and E-commerce types of improvements that might be more periods of time (two were discussed in environments. For example, few digital applicable in a digital library environment. this workshop), but little is known about libraries will see millions of transactions how such systems and their users might within a short period of time, digital As is often the case, research has been evolve over time. It is important to begin library resources may be structured and influenced strongly by the data available studying long-term personalisation more stable as compared with commer- and movie recommender systems are a issues, for example following a partic- cial sites, and digital library characteris- popular research vehicle because movie ular group of users over a several year tics and usage patterns may provide databases are freely available on the period. Workshop participants felt that opportunities for types of long-term Web. Some researchers have access to funding bodies need to give greater learning that would be difficult or more interesting datasets, but these are attention to longer-term projects. impractical in other environments. often proprietary, which makes research results difficult to evaluate and repro- The complete workshop proceedings are Fifteen papers and three invited talks were duce, and which raises a barrier to entry available at http://www.ercim.org/ publi- presented at the workshop, while moder- by new researchers. Workshop partici- cation/ws-proceedings/DelNoe02/. ated discussion sessions at the end of each pants agreed that there is a strong need day provided an opportunity for partici- for a more diverse set of generally-avail- Please contact: Alan Smeaton — Dublin City University, pants to reflect on the day’s talks and to able data resources for personalisation Ireland address recurring themes and issues. research, and encourage the funding E-mail: [email protected] Although the workshop included talks on community to consider this in their software architectures, several deployed funding decisions. Jamie Callan — Carnegie Mellon University, systems, and a user study, most of the pre- USA E-mail: [email protected] sentations focused on algorithms for Evaluation is a related problem. Most of making recommendations. In spite of this the systems discussed in the workshop
44 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 EVENTS
CLEF2001: Workshop of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum by Carol Peters
The results of the second evaluation campaign of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum were presented at a Workshop held on 3-4 September, immediately before ECDL2001 in Darmstadt, Germany.
Cross-Language Evaluation Forum pro- but many innovational strategies were Ellen Voorhees (NIST) on the philos- vides an infrastructure for the testing and also tested. It was notable that many ophy of IR evaluation in which she out- tuning of mono- and cross-language groups had built on results reported in lined the methodology that has been information retrieval systems working CLEF 2000. The rest of the first day was studied for TREC and adopted by CLEF. with European languages. The main dedicated to descriptions of the experi- In the afternoon, the criteria adopted by focus of the activity is to stimulate the ments and discussions on a number of the CLEF to create the topic sets and development of multilingual information key issues affecting cross-language produce the relevance assessments were retrieval systems, ie systems capable of systems. These included the problem of described by Christa Womser-Hacker matching a query in one language against merging the results of a search over a (Univ. Hildesheim, Germany) and document collections in many languages. number of document bases in different Djoerd Hiemstra (Univ. Twente, languages in a meaningful way, and a Netherlands). As a result of the success of the comparison between methods used for CLEF2000 campaign, it was decided to indexing texts in multiple languages. In the final session of the Workshop, the extend the test suite provided for this preliminary programme for CLEF 2002 year’s participants. In particular, the mul- On the second day, ideas for new activi- was outlined. While the multilingual task tilingual corpus was increased to nearly ties were presented. Julio Gonzalo will remain unaltered, the bilingual task one million documents in six languages (UNED, Madrid) and Douglas Oard has been considerably strengthened. instead of four languages: Dutch and (University of Maryland) first reported Groups will be able to test their systems Spanish were added to the English, the results of the experimental interac- choosing from target document collec- French, German and Italian collections. tive track that was focussed on the end tions in at least five European languages The main task of CLEF2001 thus user and the document selection task. and perhaps more. Investigations are required participants to search a docu- The aim was to investigate how the currently underway as to the feasibility ment collection in five languages, results of a cross-language system can of adding both Finnish and Swedish. extracting their queries from a topic set best be presented to users who have no Monolingual system testing will again offered in twelve different languages knowledge of the target language(s) in be offered and the interactive track will (nine European and three Asian lan- order to facilitate their selection of those be extended to become an official CLEF guages). The same topic set could be used documents that do contain relevant task in 2002. in the bilingual retrieval task to search information and merit further examina- either a Dutch or an English target collec- tion. Marcello Federico of itc-IRST, Copies of the Workshop presentations tion. Tasks testing monolingual, domain- Trento, then illustrated a proposal for the are available on-line on the CLEF Web specific, and interactive text retrieval design of a track for a preliminary testing site. The proceedings will be published systems were also offered. Thirty four of systems for cross-language spoken for the second year running by Springer groups participated in one or more of the document retrieval, thus moving CLEF in their Lecture Notes for Computer tracks – fourteen more than in 2000. towards an investigation of multilingual Science series. CLEF is a collaboration multimedia systems. between the US National Institute for The results of the CLEF2001 experi- Standards and Technology and the ments were presented in a two-day In the following session, Donna Harman European Commission. CLEF2000 and Workshop held in Darmstadt at the from the US National Institute for 2001 were supported by the DELOS beginning of September. The Workshop Standards and Technology (NIST) and Network of Excellence for Digital was attended by nearly fifty researchers Noriko Kando (National Institute of Libraries. CLEF 2002 will be funded and system developers from both Informatics, Japan) reported on the independently under the 5th Framework academia and industry. activities of the TREC and NTCIR eval- IST programme of the Commission. uation campaigns for cross-language In the opening session, one of the orga- systems (for Arabic and Asian lan- Link: http://www.clef-campaign.org/ nizers, Martin Braschler of Eurospider guages, respectively) . In their next cam- Information Technology, Zürich, gave an paign, NTCIR intends to adopt the CLEF Please contact: overview of the campaign and sum- model for evaluating multingual Carol Peters Ð IEI-CNR marised the main trends that emerged this retrieval systems operating on Chinese, CLEF Coordinator year. All the traditional approaches to the Japanese, Korean and English. The Tel: +39 050 315 2897 E-mail: [email protected] cross-language task had been employed session concluded with an invited talk by
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 45 EVENTS
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION domains, process algebras, Petri nets, MMM 2001 — 8th International event structures, real-time systems, ERCIM News is the magazine of ERCIM. hybrid systems, decidability, model- Published quarterly, the newsletter reports on Conference on Multimedia checking, verification techniques, refine- joint actions of the ERCIM partners, and aims ment techniques, term and graph to reflect the contribution made by ERCIM to Modeling the European Community in Information rewriting, distributed programming, Technology. Through short articles and news Amsterdam, 5-7 November 2001 logic constraint programming, object- items, it provides a forum for the exchange of oriented program-ming, typing systems information between the institutes and also MMM 2001 will continue the and algorithms, case studies, tools and with the wider scientific community. ERCIM News has a circulation of 7000 copies. Multimedia Modeling series’ explo- environments for programming and veri- ration of models and abstractions for fication. ERCIM News online edition is available at multimedia creation, representation, http://www.ercim.org/publication/ERCIM_News/ storage, delivery, processing, presenta- More information: http://www.fi.muni.cz/concur2002 ERCIM News is published by ERCIM EEIG, tion and final interface. This year’s foci BP 93, F-06902 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex will be on authoring and creation, stan- SPONSORED BY ERCIM Tel: +33 4 9238 5010, E-mail: [email protected] dards, intelligent delivery and presenta- ISSN 0926-4981 tion, and the recent (re-)introduction in ISSTA — International Director: Bernard Larrouturou the field of semantic models for multi- Symposium on Software Central Editor: media and for the Web. Peter Kunz Testing and Analysis E-mail: [email protected] Topics concentrate on mulitimedia Tel: +33 1 3963 5040 authoring; aspects of information pre- Rome, 22-24 July 2002 Local Editors: CLRC: Martin Prime sentation; multimedia standards and E-mail: [email protected] models; semantic models for multimedia ISSTA is a leading research conference Tel: +44 1235 44 6555 and for the Web; multimedia modeling in software testing and analysis, bringing CRCIM: Michal Haindl together academics, industrial E-mail: [email protected] of real world scenarios; model-based Tel: +420 2 6605 2350 graphics, video, vision and virtual researchers, and practitioners to CWI: Henk Nieland reality; formal methods and multimedia exchange new ideas, problems, and E-mail: [email protected] information; Multimedia databases. experiences. The ISSTA programme Tel: +31 20 592 4092 will include research papers, panels, and CNR: Carol Peters More information: invited presentations. E-mail: [email protected] http://www.cwi.nl/conferences/MMM01/ Tel: +39 050 315 2897 FORTH: Constantine Stephanidis Call for Papers E-mail: [email protected] SPONSORED BY ERCIM Authors are invited to submit papers Tel: +30 81 39 17 41 describing original research in testing or FhG: Dietrich Stobik E-mail: [email protected] CONCUR 2002 — 13th analysis of computer software. Papers Tel: +49 2241 14 2509 International Conference describing theoretical or empirical INRIA: Bernard Hidoine research, new techniques and tools, and E-mail: [email protected] on Concurrency Theory Tel: +33 1 3963 5484 in-depth case studies of software testing and analysis methods and tools are SARIT: Harry Rudin Brno, Czech Republic, Tel: +41 1 720 3707 welcome. E-mail: [email protected] 20-23 August 2002 SICS: Kersti Hedman As ISSTA 2002 will be colocated with E-mail: [email protected] the Workshop on Software Performance, Tel: +46 8633 1508 The purpose of the CONCUR confer- SRCIM: Gabriela Andrejkova ences is to bring together researchers, papers on software testing, analysis, and E-mail: [email protected] developers and students in order to verification techniques targeting soft- Tel: +421 95 622 1128 advance the theory of concurrency, and ware peformance issues are particularly SZTAKI: Erzsébet Csuhaj-Varjú E-mail: [email protected] promote its applications. Interest in this sought. Tel: +36 1 209 6990 topic is continuously growing, as a con- More information: TCD: Carol O’Sullivan sequence of the importance and ubiquity http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/ISSTA2002/ E-mail: [email protected] of concurrent systems and their applica- Tel: +353 1 60 812 20 VTT: Pia-Maria Linden-Linna tions, and of the scientific relevance of E-mail: [email protected] their foundations. Submissions are Tel: +358 9 456 4501 solicited in all areas of semantics, logics Free subscription and verification techniques for concur- You can subscribe to ERCIM News free of rent systems. charge by: ¥ sending e-mail to your local editor Principal topics include (but are not ¥ contacting the ERCIM office (see address above) limited to) concurrency related aspects ¥ filling out the form at the ERCIM website at of: models of computation and semantic http://www.ercim.org/
46 ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 IN BRIEF
CALL FOR PAPERS • System architectures and platforms INRIA — Claude Castelluccia, for pervasive computing Pervasive 2002 — reseach fellow at INRIA is the winner of • Middleware and pervasive computing the 2001 Communication & Systems International Conference infrastructures Award. Intended to reward young on Pervasive Computing • Mobile, wireless, and wearable researchers who bring significant inno- technologies vations to important applications, the Zurich, Switzerland, • Innovative small computing and CS 2001 scientific price was awarded to 26-28, 2002August intelligent devices Claude Castelluccia for his work on • Emerging applications and mobile mobility in the future Internet protocol The objective of the International business issues IPV6. Detailed information at Conference on Pervasive Computing • Scenarios for information appliances http://www.inrialpes.fr/planete/ will be to present, discuss, and explore • Service discovery protocols latest technical developments in the • Content distribution and delivery INRIA — Olivier Faugeras is recipient emerging field of pervasive computing • User interfaces for invisible and of the ‘2001 World technology Award’ as well as potential future directions and embedded computing in the category ‘Information issues. Leaving aside low-level hard- • Context awareness Technology - Software’. The Award ware and transmission technology topics • Security and privacy issues. recognises the programmes and capabil- as well as peripheral socio-economic More information: ities of which information technology aspects, the conference will focus on http://www.pervasive2002.org/ hardware makes use. It includes tradi- technical infrastructure and application tional software applications using inno- issues. SPONSORED BY ERCIM vative or enhanced techniques, as well as more comprehensive subjects such as Relentless progress in basic Information STACS — 19th International virtual reality or artificial intelligence. Technologies (IT) - microprocessors, Symposium on Theoretical http://www-sop.inria.fr/robotvis/robotvis- memory chips, integrated sensors, eng.html storage devices, and wireless communi- Aspects of Computer Science cation systems - continues to bring ever CLRC — Professor John Wood suc- smaller, lighter, and faster systems-on-a- Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France, ceeded Gordon Walker as CCLRC’s chip. As a result, beyond large hosts, March 14-16 2002 Chief Executive. PCs, and laptop computers, IT systems He took up his are now invading every aspect of life to Topics presented at STACS include (but post on 1 April the point that they are disappearing are not limited to): 2001 and his inside all sorts of appliances or can be • Algorithms and data structures, appointment is worn unobtrusively as part of clothing including: parallel and distributed for four years. and jewelry. This explosive spread of IT algorithms, computational geometry, John Wood was can be compared to the spread of electric cryptography, algorithmic learning appointed Pro- motors over the past century but theory fessor of promises to revolutionize life much • Automata and formal languages Materials Engin- more profoundly than elevators or elec- • Computational and structural eering and Head of Department at the tric car windows ever did. At the same complexity University of Nottingham in 1989 and time, pervasive computing poses pro- • Logic in computer science, including: subsequently became Dean of found challenges including technical, semantics, specification, and Engineering in 1998. He is Chairman of safety, social, legal, political, and eco- verification of programs, rewriting the Office of Science and Technology’s nomic issues. and deduction Foresight Panel on Materials, having • Current challenges, for example: The objective of this conference will be been appointed in 1997. Professor theory, models, and algorithms for Wood has held a number of director- to present, discuss, and explore latest biological computing, quantum technical developments in the emerging ships and consultancies with industry computing, mobile and net and has acted as an adviser on materials field of pervasive computing as well as computing. potential future directions and issues. issues to governments. He is a Fellow of Leaving aside low-level hardware and More information: the Royal Academy of Engineering and transmission technology topics as well http://www-sop.inria.fr/stacs2002/ has been awarded both the Grunfeld and as peripheral socio-economic aspects, Ivor Jenkins Prizes of the Institute of the conference will focus on technical Materials. Professor Wood received the infrastructure and application issues. It Citizen of Honour of Cluj-Napaca in will include presentations, panel discus- Romania for his ‘help in restructuring sions, poster sessions, and demos on sub- materials engineering education in jects like: Romania’.
ERCIM News No. 47, October 2001 47 ERCIM Ð The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of European research and development, in information technology and applied mathematics. Its national member institutions aim to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry.
Central Laboratory of the Research Councils Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom Tel: +44 1235 82 1900, Fax: +44 1235 44 5385 http://www.cclrc.ac.uk/
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, IEI-CNR Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa, Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy Tel: +39 050 315 2878, Fax: +39 050 315 2810 http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/
Czech Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics FI MU, Botanicka 68a, CZ-602 00 Brno, Czech Republic Tel: +420 2 688 4669, Fax: +420 2 688 4903 http://www.utia.cas.cz/CRCIM/home.html
Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica Kruislaan 413, NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel: +31 20 592 9333, Fax: +31 20 592 4199 http://www.cwi.nl/
Foundation for Research and Technology Ð Hellas Institute of Computer Science, P.O. Box 1385, GR-71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece Tel: +30 81 39 16 00, Fax: +30 81 39 16 01 FORTH http://www.ics.forth.gr/
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Schlo§ Birlinghoven, D-53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany Tel: +49 2241 14 0, Fax: +49 2241 14 2889 http://www.fhg.de/
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique B.P. 105, F-78153 Le Chesnay, France Tel: +33 1 3963 5511, Fax: +33 1 3963 5330 http://www.inria.fr/
Swedish Institute of Computer Science Box 1263, SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden Tel: +46 8 633 1500, Fax: +46 8 751 72 30 http://www.sics.se/
Swiss Association for Research in Information Technology Dept. Informatik, ETH-Zentrum, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland Tel: +41 1 632 72 41, Fax: +41 1 632 11 72 http://www.sarit.ch/
Slovak Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Dept.of Computer Science, Comenius University, Mlynska Dolina M SK-84248 Bratislava, Slovakia Tel: +421 7 726635, Fax: +421 7 727041 http://www.srcim.sk
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Ð Számítástechnikai és Automatizálási Kutató Intézete P.O. Box 63, H-1518 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36 1 4665644, Fax: + 36 1 466 7503 http://www.sztaki.hu/
Trinity College, Department of Computer Science, Dublin 2, Ireland Tel: +353 1 608 1765, Fax: 353 1 677 2204 http://www.cs.tcd.ie/ERCIM
Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT Information Technology, P.O. Box 1200, FIN-02044 VTT, Finland Tel:+358 9 456 6041, Fax :+358 9 456 6027 http://www.vtt.fi/