Project Team: Jason Elliott Kevin Scott Alexandre Stoytchev Rawesak Tanawongsuwan Send Us E-Mail

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Project Description

As the name of our group suggests, this project focuses on a system that provides users the flexibility to maintain their personal favorite environment while they move their positions to different places. We are mainly interested in the indoor scenario, especially the home environment. The overall picture of the project is to have an indoor positioning system that can tell the current position of the person. No matter where the person is in the house, the system should try to maintain or offer the user his favorite environment. We are working on the personal entertainment system, i.e Hi-Fi smart stereo. This idea will work if we install speakers in each room that we wish to listen to the music. Imagine the user turns on his favorite album in the living room. The user is listening (possibly working on their HCI assignment at the same time) to Elton John's newest album. Then he wants to get some milk (after he realizes to some ads!) from the kitchen. While he is walking down the hallway, the positioning system keeps updating his position, and the speakers in the hallway will get turned on while the music in the living room might get turned down. So he can listen to the music without having to pause it. The idea of the smart environment is not restricted to only the music system. This idea would be an example of how to apply the positioning technology along with the technology to control many devices to provide a nicer interface and also satisfy users' needs. Most users will be the target for this system since they are all living/working in some indoor environments. There will be some issues related directly to the design of such a system to balance the situations where there are many users in the same area, or how to interact with the system (changing songs, stopping songs, or giving priority to another person, etc.)

Usage scenario

Provide a description of a typical use of your system. Give this description in the form of a scenario description. You are trying to sell the reader on the idea behind your application, what it's intended use is. You can be entertaining and use any kind of pictures you may want to support your description.

Evaluation criteria

"Follow Me" will be evaluated in a lab setting, with the assistance of a system expert. The environment will be a simulated multi-room home, with a desktop computer providing a prototypical wall mounted or handheld interface. In addition, a voice interface will be simulated. The system will be evaluated by the development and evaluation teams on the basis of the following criteria:

Robustness

• Given a collection of music (and other audio sources) in some format, what access functionality should be available, and does the system provide it?
• Does the system clearly indicate it's state at all times? Can the state be explored?
• Can the system be interrupted and/or corrected?
• Are error conditions understandably presented, and options given for continuation?

Measures:


• How often was operational assistance required?
• How often was the system's state undeterminable? Under what conditions?
• How long (on average) does the user wait for system responses?
• How long did the user spend correcting input or output errors?
• How often were correct system responses given per user queries formed?

Accessibility

• Are the available operations easily perceived and understood?
• Are the interaction modalities readily accessible?
• Does the system respond in different modes? Consistently?
• Does the system respond in a manner that is familiar when compared to similar systems?

Measures:


• Of the features available, how many were used?
• Were system responses expected (correct) or confusing?
• Does the system conform to current "standard" interaction modes?

Satisfaction

• Does the system allow the owner/operator/user the ability to do everything he/she expects?
• What functionality should/should not be present?
• Did the system ever behave or respond in a confusing manner? Did it ever respond incorrectly?
• How would the user rate the system? How does the interface compare to more traditional access modes?

Measures

• User Interviews
• User questionnaire
• Observation of user during testing and system operation
• Interaction efficiency (comparison of expert vs. novice user)

The "old" system

Our team was unable to find a similar project to ours for comparison. However, we were able to find a couple of projects that deal with the two basic components of our system: positioning and distributed audio.

Below we give a summary of these two projects.

Positioning: Active Badge Location System

This technology comes from Olivetti Resaearch Laboratory in Cambridge, England. They have developed a system that allows tracking of people inside buildings if they wear an Active Badge. The badge emits a unique code for approximately a tenth of a second every 15 seconds (a beacon). This periodic signals are picked up by a network of sensors placed around the host building. A master station, also connecteed to the network, is given the task of polling the sensors for badge 'sightings', processing the data, and then presenting it in a useful visual form. The badge was designed in a package roughly 55 x 55 x 7mm and weights a comfortable 40g. Pulse-width modulation infrared signals are used for signalling between a badge and a sensor.

If a signal from a given badge cannot be obtained then the last position it was detected is reported. Supposedly a person should be wearing the badge as long as he is at work or is using the tracking system. People, however, are free to take off the badge at any moment and leave it on their desks.

The main application that Olivetti had in mind when developing the badge was to track workers and forward phone calls for them to the nearest phone around their current location. In this way people expecting incoming calls would not have to wait in their offices and can freely move around the building. Also, group meetings could be called in a very short notice since the exact location of each group member will be known.

http://www.cam-orl.co.uk/thebadge.html

Distributed Audio/Video Systems

Intelligent Home Technologies, Inc. offers the latest in home technologies to homeowners, architects and builders in the metropolitan Washington, D.C./Baltimore area.

Distribution of audio and video signals throughout the home is accomplished by a combination of low voltage wiring and special distribution equipment consisting of splitter/combiners or modulators. Infrared, radio frequency, RS232, or X-10 remote control may be included to provide total control of audio and video sources.

Audio may be distributed to speakers in individual rooms through distribution amplifiers. Each room may be equipped with an individual volume control or with a keypad. The keypad, RF remote or I/R remote allows the selection of the source (receiver, CD, DVD, etc.), various source functions (pause, forward, backward, next track, etc.), as well as control of volume, bass and treble.

External video signals (cable, DSS, video cameras) are sent to various locations throughout the home (downstream feed). Each location may have a TV for viewing the signals. In addition, each location in the home with a transmitting device (e.g., VCR, laser disc player, etc.) may transmit those signals back to the distribution center for retransmission throughout the home (upstream feed). Each location may also include infrared transmitters/receivers for remote control purposes. The infrared signals may be sent over 3 conductor wire, or may be multiplexed on the coax cable.

http://www.vni.net/homeautomation/av.htm

Summary

Our project will combine aspects of the above two projects. We probably would not be able to compete against each one individually but since we will provide more functionality as a whole our system may be more useful.

For the positioning part we will be using cameras and thus we will be able to locate the person in every one moment in time. The active bagde provides only approximate location since for 15 seconds there is no information. Rapid transitions from one room to another probabbly will not be detected until the next signal is emited from the badge. If we require that the audio signal is feeded to the speakers in the other room there can be a significant and annoying delay. Therefore, the badge is not appropriate for this partidcular application, plus it is too expensive. However, the badge has one key advantade to our system: it can track more than one person in a given room. Our visoin system will be pripmitive and can track at most one person per room.

As for the distributed audio we would never be able to compete with Intelligent Home Technologies in terms of hardware. However, we can use different computers to play the role of speakers in different rooms. Using software we will be able to achieve things that cannot be done easily in hardware. Some examples are: "Given a CD play only the songs that I like i.e., filter according to my preferences", "Do not play my favourite Rock song if it is 2a.m. give me Motzart instead". Overall the user will have much more flexibility in setting up the system.