Dr. Peter ParnesAssociate Professor

Luleå University of Technology

April 24, 2006

techtechmediamedia

Dr. Peter Parnes

• Associate Prof. Media Technology • Applied Research • Chief Scientist Marratech

• Collaborative Work Environments - CWE• Computer mediated human

communication • Wearable computers

• Peter.Parnes@ltu.se, A3307, 0706614567• http://media.csee.ltu.se/~peppar/

Imagine a worker being able to know when all his colleagues are available,

where they are, and what they are doing and to be able to interact with them on the colleagues’ own terms

anytime, anywhere?

Agenda

• E-meetings • Always Best Communication – ABC • Effortless Communication • Nomadic Communication • Situation Aware Systems• Thelma • Ubiquitous Human Communication• Collaborative Work Environments – CWE

Human communication

Face to Face Electronic Meeting

1995 “Programvaruteknik”

(CDT)

Dick’s vision

The Electronic Meeting 1998 – Marratech spin-off from Media Technology

E-Meetings

1. Meetings via the net

2. Net-based education • One to many with questions back • Group discussions

3. E-corridor • 24-hours per day• Sense of presence within a group

Meetings via the net• Different meeting patterns

• Planned meetings • Project meetings, administrative meetings,

discussion meetings

• Spontaneous meetings • One to one • Group

• With or without an agenda

Advantages with e-meetings

• Participants can do other things while they wait for the meeting to start. – Somebody is always late

• Independent of locality

• Partly time independent – Recording

Advantages…

• One ear participation

• Minutes are created in real-time – Everybody can see the results – Available directly after the meeting

Net-based Education

Lectures

Group work

Lab-assistance

E-corridor

eKorridoren

Net “addiction” * 2

• Must have network access – Internet...– Phone…

• You get dependant on using the tools!

Augmented meetings• Extend physical meetings

• All present part of local e-meeting

• Additional value to meeting

• Archiving

• Conferences…

Recording!

• All meetings can be archived • Identical copy! • Access for students

– Exam study – Exam correction!!!

• Old Courses – Own education – Advertisement via free courses (student recruiting) – Transfer between teachers

History online• Record everything – all the time!

Always Best Communication

Always Best Communication - ABC

• Users want to communicate with each other – Any place – Any time– Any device

• How can we utilize wireless networks in supporting ABC?

Simple Scenario

• Session and device mobility – A user is late for an online meeting

• The system knows this from the user’s calendar

– The system automatically dials the user’s mobile phone

• Audio participation

Step 2

– The user reaches her office • This is noted by location awareness

– The system automatically joins the online meeting and ask the user where she wants the audio

• In the mobile, PC audio or desktop phone? • User selects desktop phone on the PC screen and

the call is transferred from the mobile.

Problems

• How to detect locality with good enough precision?

• How to swap between different wireless and fixed carriers? – Carrier mobility

• How to swap between devices– Session mobility

• How to keep the current session running?

Effortless Communication

How can human communication be improved?

• Improved group feeling

• What does users perceive as better? – Sound- and image quality – New media sources

• How can communication be adapted to different network conditions? – ABC

• How to handle new mobile devices?

Scalability

Mobile e-meetings

Scalable Group Communication

Nomadic communication

Wearable systems

• How to create usable wearable systems?

• Combination of existing hardware

• User Interface – Interaction with devices in the vicinity – Change of screen (handheld <> HMD)– Dynamic change of media format

• (speech – text)

Eventcasting

Use of wearable systems

• Care (in the home, elders) – Nurse sees journal in the eye monitor– Patient communicates with doctor using flat

screen – Doctor comments privately to the nurse

iceBear

Wearable and Tele-Presence

• Participate through other eyes

• Mediated Communication – Knowledgeable beacon

Applications for mobility, not applications used in a mobile setting!

Situation aware systems

• Systems that know what is happening around them

• User state– Stress, position, calendar, email queue,

time/day

• How to gather this information? • How to present it?

– Locally vs. other users -> privacy!!!

• How to use this information?

Applied Research

• Scenario driven research

• Dual results: – Academic results– Prototypes (running software)

• The results should be used!

It should just work!

Vision:Thelma

Thelma

• Better spontaneous real-time group support via the net Standard web technology

+ Ajax / Web 2.0

+ Conferencing

• Allow for web conferencing where place is defined by the web

Light vs. Heavy clients

• Light weight – Web version – Thelma – Separate tools – Connected to certain web-areas – Spontaneous interaction

• Heavy weight – Downloaded version – Marratech – Webstart vs . Installed

Problems

• How to make it general?

• Media synchronization?

• Heavier media support? – Microphones, video cameras

• User interface when many join / leave

Vision:Ubiquitous Human Communication

Ubiquitous Human Communication

• Imagine rich media sensors – Includes audio in (microphone) and audio out

(speaker)• but not necessarily in the same device

– Includes video in (camera) and video out (display)

• but not necessarily in the same device

– Not all in same device (might be 4 different)– “Cheap” – Doesn’t have to run on batteries – WLAN

Available everywhere

• We put these all over a work place – Offices – Corridors – Homes

• Use together with good enough positioning of all users

• Allow for “free” communication anywhere

Ubiquitous Human Communication

Problems

• How to make the sensors cheap

• Distributed echo canceling/suppression and multi-channel audio playback

• Multi-view video grabbing presented– Several video views to multiple video display

devices on the other side.

Problems…

• WLAN model when using high quality video feeds (sustained 1-25Mbps per video channel and several channels).

• Power? – Perhaps skip WLAN and go for ethernet +

power over ethernet instead?

Collaborative Work Environments

• Mix everything already mentioned– Smart buildings – Distributed team support – Maintenance – Mobile Communication (4G) – Synchronous plus asynchronous communication

• Conference: CWE-Europe– Brussels 2006 May 10-11– Luleå 2007 June 14-15 – http://www.cwe-europe.org/

Summary

• E-meetings • Always Best Communication – ABC • Effortless Communication • Nomadic Communication • Situation Aware Systems • Thelma • Ubiquitous Human Communication• Collaborative Work Environments – CWE

Comments?

Dr. Peter Parnes

Associate Professor

Peter.Parnes@ltu.se

+46 70 6614567

http://media.csee.ltu.se/

techtechmediamedia