Object-Specific Interfaces in Smart Homes

2004

The trend of cheaper ubiquitous and pervasive technology has reached a critical point. A standardized integration of devices in the context of a home environment will be possible in the near future. HomeOS is an attempt to provide a standard interface for a context-aware application and device integration system. HomeOS offers three key features: crossplatform application portability; application following; and management of multimedia streams. HomeOS allows applications and home management services to run on a central server written in Java, and displays interface widgets on remote devices capable of acting as terminals. By implementing pre-defined Java interfaces, applications and devices can be integrated into HomeOS, which handles the details of routing events to the current location of a designated user.

Interaction Design and Architecture(s) Journal - IxD&A, 2020

End-user programming concepts are increasingly employed in smart home research to address the growing complexity of controlling smart home environments. Different approaches and visual styles of end-user programming have been proposed and implemented within this context. Smart home control does however not only necessitate end-user programming but also understanding and modifying existing program structures. In this study, we compare three different approaches regarding their suitability for this application context with a specific focus on intelligibility and modification performance. We conducted an empirical study with 39 users performing three types of tasks (understanding, configuring, and programming), using three different approaches for end-user programming (form-filling, data-flow, and grid-canvas). The results of our study found no significant differences regarding the intelligibility of the three different implementations but clear differences in the subjective preference of users as well as configuration and programming performance.

2018

Copyright © 2018 for this paper held by its author(s). Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. Abstract More and more smart home devices are hitting the market. While current applications on mobile devices and classical interface elements (e.g., wall mounted switches) are used to interact with these devices, we investigate in this position paper what interaction paradigm might be used in the future. We discuss different smart home devices and argue what interaction paradigm might be most useful. As an increasing number of smart home devices can act as autonomous agents interface paradigms like intervention interfaces or autonomous interfaces might become the main communication channel between the smart home user and the smart home system of the future.

2011

Nowadays, due to major technological developments, specifically in the area of multifunctional mobile devices, it is unthinkable not to imagine the evolution of smart home middlewares to integrate such kind of equipment, as it will provide users with an excellent integration of several services under a stunning user interface. In addition to this evolution, the use of a smartphone’s sensory capabilities can improve and innovate the way the user interacts with his home. This work aims to continue the middleware iDASH [1], which allows the creation of an abstraction layer, expanding it to mobile platforms, specifically equipments developed by Apple. Additionally, it enables the possibility of using smartphone sensors to trigger certain events in the context of smart home, as well as the ability to interact remotely in the context of a smart home. This can improve significantly the convenience and user’s satisfaction.

2004

The Archimedes Project is studying smart houses as part of a larger topic of “Human Centered Interfaces to Ubiquitous Computers.” Our research strongly suggests that the success of smart houses will depend on the creation of Intelligent Environments that embody the following three components: 1. A smart infrastructure that adheres to widely accepted standards 2. Smart appliances from many manufacturers that adhere to these standards 3. Human-Centered Interfaces that automatically adapt to the needs of individual users.

2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2009

This paper introduces MyHome, a framework of smart home by which household information is all at a finger tip. Through adopting Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) and Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) technologies, MyHome offers reliable automatic operations, fault tolerant and configurable home automation, high extensibility and large scalability. In its design, MyHome system is composed of a residential gateway MyServer and Internet accessible GUI MyIcon and MyMobile. MyServer is used to provide services regarding home security, inventory tracking, facility management, GPS location recording and family care. Inherently an interactive and multitasking system driven by peripherals connected through wireless sensor networks, the overall MyServer architecture is designed with six core service modules operating on a MOM. Each of these modules is designed as an OSGi bundles and is implemented by a programming template utilizing event publish/subscribe messaging mechanism. To facilitate program demonstration, simulator and scenario editor are also developed. A successful implementation of the proposed MyServer is also demonstrated in an emulated home environment where peripherals are connected through ZigBee wireless sensor network with data integrated into a database. With these clearly defined service modules and pertinent infrastructure to integrate household peripherals, this paper presents a practical approach to the implementation of a smart home.

Proceedings of the 10th SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software, 2011

Along with the associated film, this paper presents an approach to individually controlling home and office fixtures such as lights, window blinds, cooling and ventilation units with an 'intuitive gesture-based controller' using a smart phone. The implementation of the gesture controls is based on the magnetometer, gyroscope and accelerometer built into the most recent smart phones. The user simply points to target objects and completes specific gestures. For example, pointing to the top of a window and completing a "down"-gesture is interpreted as a command to lower the blinds at the window. Pointing the device to a light fixture and doing an "up"-gesture raises the light levels. In combination with addressable fixtures and wireless infrastructures, this phone controller reveals how a wide variety of fixtures in a building can be intuitively controlled by pointing, using only a single button and gesturing.

2012 12th Conference of Open Innovations Association (FRUCT), 2012

To assist independent living of senior citizens at their homes, a large variety of systems are used. The most sophisticated solutions are built using ambient technologies. A number of technology platforms are designed to provide ubiquitous services for maintaining a high quality of life while reducing operational expenses. Interoperability between platforms at different levels, including GUIs' dependences on devices is still a major weakness of many modern solutions. In a given work a vision of the Ubiquitous Home Environment is presented with respect to the ICT Home Services delivery. An implementation of a serving engine developed at Oulu University of Applied Sciences — the UbiHomeServer — is described. An abstracted view to its front-end is introduced. Such abstraction may reduce GUIs' dependences on devices and thus increase an interoperability of a system.

2003

This paper presents the development of a user-oriented framework to support the user reconfiguration of ubiquitous domestic environments. We present a lightweight component model that allows a range of devices to be readily interconnected and an editor to support users in doing this. The editor discovers available ubiquitous components and presents these to users as jigsaw pieces that can be dynamically recombined. The developed editor allows users to assemble lightweight sensors, devices such as displays and larger applications in order to meet their particular needs.

Connected technology in the home is growing rapidly due to advances in modern electronics. The growth of broadband is being followed by an associated uptake in home networks. At present the enabling technology tends to be visible and distinct (PCs, multimedia systems, Televisions, screens, etc). In the future, we predict the home will incorporate embedded systems and even greater networked-enabled shared resources resulting in a pervasive computing environment. Currently, there are a number of challenges to make this a reality. For example, how will users interact with the technology in a way that is intuitive and non-threatening; how will the wide range of devices communicate and coordinate their requirements and services? This paper describes research which is investigating the concept that as devices in the home become more interconnected and announce their capabilities over a network, a new model will present itself where devices are decomposed into functional components which may then be reused in a much more flexible way. An architecture to support this model is proposed and presents a novel approach to device configuration called Task Oriented Programming (TOP) together with work on meeting the challenge of providing suitable user interfaces in the pervasive home.