UbiComp Info  

   UNDER CONSTRUCTION    
(last update:  03/18/2001 )

1 Vision

• Ubiquitous Computing (Mark Weiser)
  
  
• As We May Think (Vannevar Bush)
  This influential article was originally published in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. 
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2 Classic Systems

• PARCTAB
  The PARCTAB system is a research prototype developed at Xerox PARC. 
  
• Active Badge
  A classic location system within a building developed at the Olivetti Research Laboratory (aquired by AT&T in 1999).
  
• Smart Rooms
  Developed at MIT Media Lab. Using cameras, microphones, and sensors, the system tries to capture what people are doing in a room. For example, a virtual dog on a large projection screen responds to gestures of a person in front of the screen. This system was used to construct a number of unique application environments.
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3 Ongoing Research

Research Groups

• Xerox PARC
  This page contains links to various interesting projects at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
  
• FCE (Future Computing Environments) Group
  The Classroom 2000 (now it's called eClass) is one of their projects. Currently they are building a living laboratory for ubiquitous and everyday computing in the home (Aware Home).
  
• Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Lab
  Focuses on "the seamless coupling of physicality and virtuality."
  
• Things That Think (TTT) Consortium
  This consortium of MIT Media Lab includes a number of projects related to UbiComp.
  
• AT&T Laboratories Cambridge
  Interesting research projects including Active Bat (The Ultrasonic Location System).
  
• Input Research Group, University of Toronto
  This group did a lot of work on haptic input to computer systems. Bill Buxton may be one of the most well-known person in this field. He provides an extensive directory of sources for input technologies on his website. By "haptic", they mean input that involves physical contact (such as by the hand or foot).
  
• i-LAND project, GMD (German National Research Center for Information Technology).
  i-LAND stands for "an Interactive Landscape for Creativity and Innovation".  They have built a unique system by integrating so-called roomware components (Dynawall, InteracTable, CommChairs, and Passage). [See also: Roomware and Cooperative Buildings.]
  
• Microsoft Research EasyLiving Research Group
  This page provides the overview of the effort at Microsoft Research to build an intelligent environments using Vision Technologies 
  
• Human Computer Interaction (Intelligent Environments) group at MIT AI Lab
  Three research projects are listed under this name. Intelligent Room, which was presented at the 1st international workshop on Cooperative Buildings, seems to have evolved to a new project called Hal: The Next Generation Intelligent Room. It seems that they are building something interesting using Vision, Gesture and Speech Recognition techniques. Vision Interface Project works on perceptual human-computer interfaces.
  
• Vision and Modeling Group at MIT Media Lab
  A number of unique projects led by prominent researchers: research topics include Sandy Pentland's Perceptual Intelligence  Rosalind Picard's Affective Computing and Aaron Bobick's Seeing Action. Some examples of their projects: Smart Rooms, Smart Desks, Smart Chair, Smart Spaces, Smart Clothes, Affective Tangibles, Tanigble Phone, smartCar, Visually Aware Interactive Spaces, etc.
  
• Human Computer Interaction Projects at IBM Research 
  Interesting projects including BlueEyes (Attentive Environments, eye/gaze, head, person tracking), Interfaces for pervasive computing, Natural Interactions (Gesture recognition -- DreamSpace), Personal Area Communication (PAN)
  
• Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project
  Experimental hardware and software testbeds were built using high-resolution wall-mounted and tabletop displays (Interactive Murals and Interactive Tables), laptops, PDAs, wireless LAN, LCD-tablets, laser pointer trackers, microphone arrays, pan-and-tilt cameras. Their major research thrusts include a scalable distributed display architecture, architectures for the integration of multiple people and devices, interaction styles and associated toolkits, and a generalized interaction architecture (which is based on a ser-centered interaction model.)
  
• Interaction Laboratory, Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.
  Members: Jun Rekimoto, Toshiyuki Masui and Kim Binsted. A number of interesting projects including HoloWall, Matrix Code, Pick-and-Drop, Augmented Surfaces, Time-Machine Computing, Real World GUI, Real World Programming and HyperMask. More information can be found at individual pages of each researcher.
  
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Some Examples of Interesting Research Activities

Integrated Design of Smart Environments

• Swisshouse Program
  I thought they were building an interesting house somewhere in Boston. They probably talked about their visions at the 2nd International Workshop on Cooperative Buildings.
  
• The Adaptive House, Boulder, Colorado
  Michael Moser's group have constructed a prototype of a control system in an actual residence. The house is equipped with many sensors and actuators. The system which is based on neural network techniques etc. learns to manage heat, water, air heat, lighting and ventilation.
  
• Augmented Surfaces
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Handheld Devices and CSCW

• NotePals at UC Berkeley
  This is a "Lightweight Meeting Support Using Personal Digital Assistants and Note-Taking Appliances". It automatically combines individual's meeting notes into a shared meeting record. An extension of NotePals may be used for supporting distributed collaborative learning.
  
• Integrating Information Appliances into an Interactive Workspace
  This is a part of the research activities at the Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project. Check the Pubilications section at the bottom of the page.

Infrastructure

• Networking for Smart Spaces Project and AirJava at NIST Information Technology Laboratory
  It seems that they are building a test bed to explore the use of Java, Jini, and multicast technology together with wireless systems (like Bluetooth and HomeRF) as a networking foundation for pervasive computing or smart spaces.
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Gesture

• Dynawall/ InteracTable
• Visual Instruments for an Interactive Mural
  "presents a design for interacting with a prototype device combining a large, high-resolution wall-mounted display and an optically tracked laser pointer." This is a part of the research activities at the Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project. Check the Pubilications section at the bottom of the page.
• Pick and Drop: A Direct-manipulation Technique for Multiple-Computer Environments
  Proposed by Jun Rekimoto at Sony CSL. Simple gestures allow users to "pick" a digital object from one computer and "drop" it into another computer. GMD's DynaWall uses a similar interaction method for transporting data across multiple devices as well as within a large shared display device.
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Capture and Access

classroom2000

u berlin

Information Appliance

as we may read

Paper and Electronic Documents

EnhancedDesk

InteractiveDesk

CHI97 session

Matrix Code

Tangble/ Tactile User Interface

• mediaBlocks
  An interesting system developed at MIT. People can transport and edit sequences of digital video clips using physical blocks.
  
• InformativeThing
• Passage
• EDC
• Bricks
• ThingsBoard

Vision-based System

• The Kids Room: An Interactive Narrative Playspace
  This is an interesting work by Perceptual Computing Group at the MIT Media Laboratory. They transformed a child's bedroom into a unique environment for fantasy play. A sophisticated vision system detects kids' positions and actions in the room and feed them to the narration control system. This seems to be one of the activities in the context of the Digital Life consortium.

Two-Handed Interaction

• Responsive Workbench
  This is a project at Stanford Computer Graphics Lab. It is based on a 3D interactive workspace developed at GMD. Using shutter glasses and 6DOF head trackers. One of their focuses is Two-Handed Manipulation.
• HoloWall

4 Enabling Technologies

General

• IBM Pervasive Computing

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Handheld Device

• Reading Appliance
• PDA

Display Technology

• Electronic Paper

• DataWall 
  DataWall was designed at MIT Media Lab a number of years ago to realize seamless full-motion, ultra high-resolution projection display.

Automatic Identification

• RFID
• RTLS
• GPS
• Barcode System
• Electronic Scale

Biometrics

Distributed Computing

• XML

MEMS

Devices/ Electronics

(a company selling TCP/IP Chip)

Moser Electronics

UI Toolkit

• Jazz
• Pad++

5 Community

Journal

• IEEE Personal Technologies
• TOCHI

Conference/ Workshop/ Symposium

• International Workshop on Cooperative Buildings
• CHI
• CSCW
• HUC
• UIST
• DARE
• Workshop on Perceptual User Interfaces  
• IBM Conference on Ease of Use (Make It Easy)
• Smart Spaces

Online Community

6 Important Publications

Communications of ACM, May 2000 and March 2000, 1993 AR stuff

Check IEEE Computer too

7 Related Concepts

Wearable Computig

• The MIT Wearable Computing Web Page
  This page contains an introduction to the field of wearable computing, a resource for some technical information and links to some related events.
  

Augmented Reality

Telepresence

Tangible Bits  

Roomware  

Cooperative Buildings

Augmented Reality

Invisible Computer 

8 Related Link Collections

• Computer Vision Homepage
  A comprehensive site providing information on Hardware, Software, Demos, Test Image, Conferences, Publication, General Info, Links, Search, etc.
  
• Intelligent Environment Resource Page
  This page (at Microsoft Research) provides a collection of links related to Intelligent Environments. 
  
• Links to Augmented Reality & Computer Augmented Environments
  This page is maintained by Jun Rekimoto at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.