Sentient Computing Andy Hopper Presenter : Youn Do Lee Oct 31, 2005

Why this presentation  There have been many presentations about location systems  Active bat, Active badge, Cricket, Radfinder, etc.  This presentation is about issues beyond the location systems  Refining location information  What to do with location information

Contents  INTRODUCTION  REASERCH ISSUES  Location sensing  Spatial monitoring  Data distribution  Applications  OBSERVATION

Sentient Computing?  Sentient computing is  The proposition that applications can be made more responsive and useful by observing and reacting to the physical world  A form of ubiquitous computing which uses sensors to perceive its environment and react accordingly

Sentient computing project  AT & T Laboratories Cambridge  Active bats  Follow-me systems  Now defunct  Reference  Mike Addlesee, Rupert Curwen, Steve Hodges, Joe Newman, Pete Steggles, Andy Ward, Andy Hopper, Implementing a Sentient Computing System, IEEE Computer Magazine, v.34 n.8, p.50-56, August 2001

Location Sensing  Categorising the concept of location  Containment  Active badge, Cricket  Proximity  Bluetooth  Co-ordinate  GPS, Active bat

Active badge

Active bat

Spatial monitoring  Location systems provide raw spatial facts about objects  But location-aware applications need more than raw spatial data  They need spatial relationships between objects that are significant  How to decide whether a spatial relationship is significant

Spatial monitoring (cont’d)  One possible approach  Operating on the basis of zones of containment surrounding objects Person X is “holding” Keyboard K Person X can be “seen” by camera B but not by camera A

Data distribution  Beyond location-publishing application  An automatic control of the digital environment without user intervention  For example  The personal desktop follows the user to any nearby device  To archive this, A platform for connecting and displaying information on all these devices are needed in addition to location information

Data distribution (cont’d)  VNC (Virtual Network Computer)  A simple device independent protocol  The viewer has no state, and simply displays information graphically  The connection from viewer to server is also stateless, just keystrokes and pointer clicks

Applications  Opening and closing doors automatically  A textual indication of where someone is, how fast the are moving, how long they have been there  Showing the local context, including who and what else is nearby  Personalization by teleporting VNC desktops  Surveillance applications which the selection of a particular camera is based on spatial data

Contents  INTRODUCTION  REASERCH ISSUES  Location sensing  Spatial monitoring  Data distribution  Applications  OBSERVATION

Observation  Attempts at automatic control without user intervention have not proved enduring  Automatically teleporting to the nearest screen  Automatic routing of phone calls  Once more than a simple inference is attempted it seems that hit a brick wall  The sighting of three or more Active Badges in a single space => “meeting” ?

Observation (cont’d)  One potential research direction is to provide much more feedback to the user  Visual and aural feedback with perhaps every nearby wall being used display may be one approach  The user can interact in a much more informed way and help guide any decision-making process  Perhaps a way to make progress beyond the engineering level is to imagine a “perfect” sensing system with full coverage of the environment

Thank you, any question?