IST 2004 Event, 15-17 November 2004, “Netherlands Congress Centre”, The Hague. I had a poster there and demonstrated the robot Tony.
The goal of this exhibit is to demonstrate how effective multidisciplinary research efforts are, what the impact of user-centered design methodologies can be, and how crucial the cooperation between specialists from the behavioural and the engineering sciences is to achieve innovative solutions for people’s problems. Research projects of graduate students of the Technical University Eindhoven conducted in public/private cooperation R&D projects will be shown. The demonstrations will illustrate the power and effectiveness of multi-disciplinary education programs at the graduate and post-graduate level. User-system interaction is at the core of these programs, which bring people from different backgrounds, i.e., behavioural and technical sciences, engineering and design disciplines, together. The demonstrations focus on problems and situations from the daily life of people, they address viable and sensible solutions, and maintain the balance between user requirements and technology driven solutions. The exhibit aims to demonstrate the effect and inspiration that is radiated by multidisciplinary research and education programs. The demonstrations will show results from different research projects which all have their roots in user-system interaction technologies and methodologies. The following demonstrations will be presented. – ASTRA: People will see how you can capture and send pictures and handwritten notes with a mobile device to a home-bound device, which displays these messages and additional reachability information. The focus is on the social environment of families on their wishes for maintaining provicy and on the feeling of awareness. An innovative user interface on the home-bound device incorporates different aspects of availability, awareness and presence, and has navigation possibilities which are time and location related. – Read-it: People will see a tabletop with multi-modal interaction with tangible objects. The system is designed to help children with learning to read. It is based on the concept of a matching card game that supports memory for 5-7 year old children. – Powerball: People will see a 4-player table-top game, working with a projected display, which aims to allow disabled children to play together with non-disabled children. The design aim and strength has been to enable enjoyable play, encourage cooperation between children and social interaction around the game. – Robotic toys, interfaces and tangible interaction devices: People will see how interactive toys can be used as entertainment devices or management system, can express emotional behaviour or be part of an entertainment show. And show how a robot with such expressive abilities can function as a universal easy to use and approach interface to drive other less intelligent systems like home equipment. – Video conferencing with eye contact: People will see how eye contact can be made and maintained even when people are still moving their heads. Not having natural eye contact is a notorious problem for video conferencing systems. – P2P physical interaction: People will see the effects of tangible and tactile feedback when they use peer-to-peer systems.