Reading Circle 2010-03/15

Date: 03/15-2010
Participants: Azadeh, Liting, Miao
Today's Tasks: Disscus the second paper, "SmartOffice: An Intelligent and Interactive Environment"

Azadeh:
This article is about an intelligent environment (IE) which is
named SmartOffice. Users can work normally in this office. Interaction
happens in this environment using gesture and voice. SmartOffice is a
combination of several modules which work coherently. To provide such
an environment a resource-oriented system is required. All modules in
the context communicate with a supervisor as a resource. Actually the
supervisor is a resource manager. The supervisor is programmed with a
rule-based language and controls several different independent modules
and makes them cooperate together via “push” and “pull” messages.
The SmartOffice is composed of :
• 50 sensors
• 3 actuators
• 1 video-projector
• 2 speakers
In the SmartOffice architecture part we see that the office is a
square form room with a large office desk and one whiteboard and is
equipped by 7 cameras, 1 wide angle camera, 8 microphones, 1 video
projector, 2 speakers and 6 Linux Pentium III PCs. 4 of these PCs are
for vision processing in the other words user tracking and activities
recognition. 1 PC is responsible for video projection and image
processing of the MagicBoard and finally 1 PC hosts the supervisor.
All of the computers are connected to a local network. So this IE
works with all these components and equipments to provide a complete
natural space. The system architecture is centralized. All modules
communicate with a supervisor. Two communication types existing in
this system are push and pull messages. In push message a writing
process initiates the communication and interrupts the recipient
process to give new facts. However in a pull message the recipient
starts the communication and receives the data from a writing
process.
Here two modules are described. The MagicBoard is one of them. It
is an ordinary whiteboard which is augmented with a camera and
projector which allows the combination of physical information and
digital information on the board. The camera digitalizes the physical
information and observes the users. A menu and calculator are
projected on the board (applications). The users can use gestures to
run augmented commands, e.g. printing, copy-pasting, etc. The
MagicBoard components are: fast finger tracker, X-window system,
applications: calculators, menu,…
User Localization is another module that is going to be described
here. This module’s duty is to be aware of the users’ location in the
SmartOffice. To predict the users’ intentions the system must track
them constantly with cameras.
Regarding our project, we can use some information mentioned in
MagicBoard part. In MagicBoard the user can do the commands by real
gestures and in our project (game) we are going to apply this
capability to use laser spot as a real shooting gun. Also we can
utilize some aspects of the user localization module e.g. the user
(player) tracking on the game floor and detecting the sitting or
standing positions of the players as it is mentioned in activities
recognition technique part in the article.

Liting:
The article presents the SmartOffice, which uses a flexible resource-oriented integration protocol in order to anticipate the user’s activities to communicate useful information. The SmartOffice consists of two major modules: the MagicBoard and the user localization. The author claims that nowadays computers are not truly user friendly, because users must engage in an explicit oriented dialogue with the computer, instead of using more natural ways of interaction. The article states that computers should not involve a new way of working but augment the current working modes, which provides a natural and free interaction. For our project we are not using intelligent environment but a more natural exercising environment. The SmartOffice uses finger tracing system, however, we uses the similar principle of tracing laser point via camera. To use the laser tracing provides a more natural and free playing than simple using mouse and gamepad. While using user localization is reinforced by a predictive model. We can make a hypothesis that to improve more realistic, we should use predictive model to sense the position and distance of the player, which we assume that the game will be more intelligent and realistic like the real life.

Miao:
This article is talk about an intelligent environment called SmartOffice. There are two major modules involve with the SmartOffice: Magic Board and a user localization module. The Magic board is an ordinary white board and it integrates with the camera and video-projector which in order to sensor the action of the user and showing the result of the user’s action. The user localization module is used to guess user’s intentions. It is depends on the user’s action to guess what the user going to do in next step. And this article also mention that the computer should not involve with the user’s action and the environment has to smart understanding the user’s intention and action.