active signage demo ideas

[Seth Teller <teller@lcs.mit.edu>]

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?]

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.

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.

patrick, others -- opinions?

seth.