Re: active signage demo ideas

[Magdalena Balazinska <mbalazin@MIT.EDU>]

Hi Seth,

The following are some comments on your demo proposals. I mixed them 
with broader functionality suggestions for the active signage. Many of 
them are probably not do-able, but perhaps some reduced version of them 
could be interesting.



Seth Teller wrote:

>SLAM/BMG folks --
>
>here are a few active signage capabilities that
>might make cool demos, and make the signs more
>useful not only to visitors but to LCS people.
>
>1) at some active sign, i use the touchscreen and BMG
>maps to locate NMS, then hari's office.  the sign 
>offers me a touchscreen option for a voice-over-IP 
>"house phone" call to hari, using its own microphone,
>network connection, and speaker.  [we would need to
>bridge the LCS network onto the building/campus phone
>system.  i think the speech group already does this 
>for galaxy, etc. -- does anyone know how?]
>  
>

I'm confused about the user's goal. If the user's goal is to contact 
Hari, then he or she should go through an online directory instead of 
maps. I think maps would be better used once the person is found and 
contacted. I would rather go with the following scenario:

1) at some active sign, I use the touchscreen to navigate through a 
personel directory and find Hari. I double-click on his name. The 
software contacts Hari's personal automatic secretary which determines 
that the current best way to reach Hari is through phone (there are 
several projects in the pervasive community about automatic ways of 
figuring out the best mechanism to talk to someone). Then we establish 
the phone conversation as Seth described.

We could then have additional features such as:
a) How do I get to Hari's office => use maps to show me
What would actually be neat is for the user to get updated paths as he 
or she moves through the building without having to re-do all the steps. 
Something like, "Hi Magda, you're almost there. You need to go right 
now." We could demo this by using 2 signs next to each other. Users 
could simply type in there names if they would like updated information. 
The information would expire after a certain time.
b) Show me where is Hari and how do I get there?
c) Is anyone else from NMS present in the building?
d) Could I contact Hari's secretary instead of him?


>2) once the call is made, have the sign pipe its
>video of you up to the callee's web browser -- sort
>of the closed-circuit cable TV in apartment buildings.
>[does anyone know how to do this kind of a push to
>a random person's browser?  another option would be
>for the sign to email or IM the callee a URL, which
>s/he would have to click to get the live video feed.]
>
>3) have every sign do background estimation with its
>camera, i.e., model every pixel as changing (slowly)
>due only to lighting variation.  thus foreground
>objects -- people standing in front of the sign --
>could be segmented out and displayed in a little 
>inset window on the sign.  this would be cool
>visual feedback that the sign "knows you're there"
>and is trying to figure out what to offer you.
>  
>

I would find it very freaky to see my face appear on the sign. It would 
make me feel like I'm being watched. However, I wouldn't mind if signs 
could "recognize" people and react to them based on some kind of 
history. For example, the sign could say: "Hello Magda, you're ealy this 
morning. You're the first one in for this morning's Medusa meeting." or 
"Hello Magda, you're too late for your meeting with Hari, he left 10mn ago."

>4) detach an active sign from the wall, put a cricket
>listener (with directional capability) on it, and 
>demonstrate how it reconfigures itself according to
>its location and orientation -- rewording directions,
>reordering resource listings, changing the displayed
>arrows, paths etc.
>  
>

This would be a nice demo for the active sign.

Magda

-- 
Magdalena Balazinska
PhD Student
Laboratory for Computer Science - MIT
http://nms.lcs.mit.edu/~mbalazin/