Community Being together wherever you are

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CommunityBeing together wherever you are

• Johnny Widén
• Media Technology CDT
• Luleå University of Technology

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Content
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Summary

• Möten med andra är en mycket viktig del av livet.
  Vi tar fram teknik som gör att man på ett enkelt
  sätt kan ha rika möten med familj, vänner och
  kollegor även om dessa befinner sig på annan
  plats eller i rörelse. Rika möten kännetecknas av
  djup, kvalitet och substans. Tekniken kan vara
  audio, video, chat och delade ytor för text,
  bilder och teckningar.
• Meeting with others is a very important part of
  life. We develop technology that makes it simple
  to have rich meetings with family, friends, and
  colleagues even if they are located elsewhere or
  are on the move. Rich meetings are charactarised
  by depth, quality, and substance. The technology
  can be video, audio, chat, and shared areas for
  text, pictures, and drawings.

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Communication

• Assynchronous
• Email
• Messaging
• Forums

• Synchronous
• Audio
• Video
• Chat
• Messaging

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Mediated Human Communication
Human
Mediated
Scalable and dynamic
Adaptive
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Communication model
Face-to-face communication
Mediated communication
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Research issues

• Scalable distribution of real-time media to
  dynamic groups
• Dynamic adaptation
• User interface design
• Group awareness

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Scalable distribution of real-time media to
dynamic groups

• Scalable distribution of real-time media for
  static groups is solved by matching groups with
  IP Multicast groups
• How to achieve scalability with highly dynamic
  settings where each user creates their own groups?

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Room metaphore
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Room metaphore - static
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Community metaphore - dynamic
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Dynamic adaptation

• How to interconnect various communication media
  such as traversing audio to text, text to audio,
  activity cues to audio to support more limited
  devices?
• How to interconnect various communication tools
  such as desktop computers, hand held devices,
  wearable computers, and fixed and mobile phones
  without sacrificing good quality when it is
  available?

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Adaptive
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Examples of dynamic groups

• Geographic position
• - I want to interact with all users within 1 km
  radius interested in human power vehicles
• User state
• - I want to interact with of my friends that
  currently are not sleeping
• Work relation
• - I want to interact with my project group

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Mobile e-meetings
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User interface design

• How should dynamic groups be presented so that a
  user is clearly aware of not only what groups
  s/he has created, but also who has added him/her
  to a group?
• User interface and interaction methods for
  wearable computers.
• Ways of presenting continuously changing
  information in a non-obtrusive way to the user of
  a wearable computer.

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Group awareness

• How to create a better awareness and better sense
  of presence in groups using today's desktop
  computers?
• How to create more awareness and sense of
  presence in groups using a combination of desktop
  computers and light weight tools, such as PDA's
  and mobile phones?

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Mobile Collaborative Interface for Distributed
Workers
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Scenario driven applied research

• Results
• Prototypes (running software/systems)
• Good academic results
• We want the results to be utilized!
• We live as we preach!

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Protoypes

• MIM - Mobile Instant Messaging
• MIM Web Gateway
• Marratech Pro client for messuring user behaviour
  
• Telephony via SIP in Marratech Pro to invite
  another SIP client or recieve an incoming call in
  an existing meeting
• Inviting a SIP client (POTS telephony) in an
  existing e-meeting from a Marratech E-meeting
  Portal

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MIM - Mobile Instant Messaging
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MIM Web Gateway
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Marratech Pro client for messuring user behaviour
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Telephony via SIP in Marratech Pro

• Telephony via SIP in Marratech Pro to invite
  another SIP client or recieve an incoming call in
  an existing meeting
• Inviting a SIP client (POTS telephony) in an
  existing e-meeting from a Marratech E-meeting
  Portal

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Goals

• Engagement
• 3 researchers
• 8 phd students
• 3 co-operating organisations
• Information and knowledge deployment
• 10 demonstrations done 2
• 15 publications done 4
• Substantial results
• 10 prototypes done 5
• Growth
• 3 exams - done 2
• 1 new network

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Time plan (1)

• Project time 2003-01-01 2004-12-31
• Prototypes will be implemented and papers written
  continuously. The time plan below will be updated
  when more information is available.

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Time plan (2)
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E-corridor

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Spontanous meetings

• Spontaneous meetings are important
• Critical decisions often made there
• Mikael Wiberg, In between Mobile Meetings, 2001

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E-visitor at a fair

• A fair in Stockholm
• Remote participants in Luleå
• A much greater experience than with a fixed web
  cam
• Audio environment of great importance
• This was very good!!

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Co-operating projects within Vital

• Meetings
• Meetings are central in society. User interfaces
  for communication have to be intuitive and be
  adapted to mobility
• Situate
• Services based on the users position, context,
  and situation simplify the usage of complex
  communication systems
• ABC - Always best connected
• In mobile communication the best available
  network connection should automatically be used
  based on user profiles for bandwith, latency,
  costs, or other parameters

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Opportunity or threat?
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Questions?
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M.Sc. Thesis proposals

• Important parameters in network-based visual
  communication
• Automatic subtitling for videoconferences using
  audio-visual sensor fusion
• Object based low bit-rate video codec using a
  Flash engine
• User quality control