2795329
User interfaces when and where they are needed: an infrastructure for recombinant computing
Users in ubiquitous computing environments need to be able to make serendipitous use of resources that they did not anticipate and of which they have no prior knowledge. The Speakeasy recombinant computing framework is designed to support such ad hoc use of resources on a network. In addition to other facilities, the framework provides an infrastructure through which device and service user interfaces can be made available to users on multiple platforms. The framework enables UIs to be provided for connections involving multiple entities, allows these UIs to be delivered asynchronously, and allows them to be injected by any party participating in a connection.
1987929
Using speakeasy for ad hoc peer-to-peer collaboration
Peer-to-peer systems appear promising in terms of their ability to support ad hoc, spontaneous collaboration. However, current peer-to-peer systems suffer from several deficiencies that diminish their ability to support this domain, such as inflexibility in terms of discovery protocols, network usage, and data transports. We have developed the Speakeasy framework, which addresses these issues, and supports these types of applications. We show how Speakeasy addresses the shortcomings of current peer-to-peer systems, and describe a demonstration application, called Casca, that supports ad hoc peer-to-peer collaboration by taking advantages of the mechanisms provided by Speakeasy.
29526990
The orbital browser: composing ubicomp services using only rotation and selection
Most ubiquitous computing environments are designed as collections of highly distributed and heterogeneous services. In this paper we describe a user interface, the Orbital Browser, which reduces the complexity of ubicomp service composition to two simple end-user operations: rotation and selection. We discuss the design requirements imposed by service composition and how we addressed them with our system.
1624330
Recipes for digital living [ubiquitous computing in consumer electronics]
As networked devices become increasingly ubiquitous, the potential benefits to users increase exponentially. However, this potential can't be fully realized if it is entirely up to developers and manufacturers to expose the combined functionality buried in the expanding network. Recipes for digital living - created and modified by users themselves - offer an easy-to-understand, logically consistent way to capture and share the various ensembles possible in the expanding world of networked components.
17905377
FLANNEL: adding computation to electronic mail during transmission
In this paper, we describe FLANNEL, an architecture for adding computational capabilities to email. FLANNEL allows email to be modified by an application while in transit between sender and receiver. This modification is done without modification to the endpoints---mail clients---at either end. This paper also describes interaction techniques that we have developed to allow senders of email to quickly and easily select computations to be performed by FLANNEL. Through, our experience, we explain the properties that applications must have in order to be successful in the context of FLANNEL.
12515579
Supporting serendipitous integration in mobile computing environments
Abstract In the richly networked world of the near future, mobile computing users will be confronted with an ever-expanding array of devices and services accessible in their environments. In such a world, we cannot expect to have available to us specific applications that allow us to accomplish every conceivable combination of devices that we may wish. Instead, we believe that many of our interactions with the network will be characterized by the use of “general purpose” tools that allow us to discover, use, and integrate multiple devices around us. This paper lays out the case for why we believe that so-called “serendipitous integration” is a necessary fact that we will face in mobile computing, and explores a number of design experiments into supporting end user configuration and control of networked environments through general purpose tools. We present an iterative design approach to creating such tools and their user interfaces, discuss our observations about the challenges of designing for such a world, and then explore a number of tools that take differing design approaches to overcoming these challenges. We conclude with a set of reflections on the user experience issues that we believe are inherent in dealing with ad hoc mobile computing in richly networked environments.
7260476
Visual Explorations for the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype
The Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype project addresses issues of access, browsing, delivery and understanding of georeferenced library items. Two visualization approaches that address these issues in different ways are under development: interfaces between some existing digital earth systems and the digital library, and spatial but nongeoreferenced information spaces. Both the abstract spatial and georeferenced projects are being evaluated for their educational potential in classroom and lectures, in labs and as tools for students to use on their own.
15703762
Armi: a High Level Communication Library for Stapl
ARMI is a communication library that provides a framework for expressing fine-grain parallelism and mapping it to a particular machine using shared-memory and message passing library calls. The library is an advanced implementation of the RMI protocol and handles low-level details such as scheduling incoming communication and aggregating outgoing communication to coarsen parallelism. These details can be tuned for different platforms to allow user codes to achieve the highest performance possible without manual modification. ARMI is used by STAPL, our generic parallel library, to provide a portable, user transparent communication layer. We present the basic design as well as the mechanisms used in the current Pthreads/OpenMP, MPI implementations and/or a combination thereof. Performance comparisons between ARMI and explicit use of Pthreads or MPI are given on a variety of machines, including an HP-V2200, Origin 3800, IBM Regatta and IBM RS/6000 SP cluster.
35525617
Eye movements and pupil dilation during event perception
Human observers segment ongoing activities into events that are reliable across observers [Newtson and Engquist 1976]. Segments can be small ("fine") or large ("coarse") with clusters of fine-grained segments relating hierarchically to coarse segments. Segmentation behaviour occurs even without instruction indicated by neural activity in the Medial Temporal complex (MT+)and Frontal Eye Field (FEF). Similar activation is observed during active segmentation [Zacks et al. 2001]. These two brain regions are known to be active during the processing of visual motion (MT+) and guiding saccadic eye movements (FEF). This, along with behavioural evidence [Zacks 2004], indicates that visual motion may play an important role in identifying events.
668272
First Results in the Coordination of Heterogeneous Robots for Large-Scale Assembly
While many multi-robot systems rely on fortuitous cooperation between agents, some tasks, such as the assembly of large structures, require tighter coordination. We present a general software architecture for coordinating heterogeneous robots that allows for both autonomy of the individual agents as well as explicit coordination. This paper presents recent results with three robots with very different configurations. Working as a team, these robots are able to perform a high-precision docking task that none could achieve individually.
12375394
The Alexandria digital earth prototype
This note summarizes the system development activities of the Alexandr ia Digital Earth Prototype (ADEPT) Project.5 ADEPT and the Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) are, respectively, the research and operational components of the Alexandria Digital Library Project. The goal of ADEPT is to build a distributed digital library (DL) of personalized collections of geospatially referenced information. This DL is characterized by: (1) services for building, searching, and using personalized collections; (2) collections of georeferenced multimedia information, including dynamic simulation models of spatially distributed processes; and (3) user interfaces employing the concept of a “Digital Earth”. Important near-term objectives for ADEPT are to build prototype collections that support undergraduate learning in physical, human, and cultural geography and related disciplines, and then to evaluate whether using such resources helps students learn to reason scientifically. Collections and services developed by ADEPT researchers will migrate to ADL as they mature.