Laboratories Tour

Demonstration Event at Hasso Plattner Institute

Date: June 20^th 2010

Research at the Human Computer interaction Lab at Hasso Plattner Institute focuses on interactive devices, in particular on miniature mobile devices and touch input (see recent projects). Prof. Patrick Baudisch has been running the lab since 2008, after eight years at Microsoft Research and Xerox PARC. Hasso Plattner Institute has been ranked #1 among computer science departments nationwide since 2009.

Transportation: a 27 minutes nonstop ride with S-Bahn S7 from Tiergarten (walking distance from Ernst Reuter Haus) to Hasso Plattner Institute (walking distance from stop Griebnitzsee). For attendees who prefer to drive, a map is available at http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/baudisch/contact.html

Things to see: We would prepare a series of demos of recent work including Lumino, RidgePad, Touch Projector each of which we will present as fullpapers at CHI 2010, as well as more recent engineering-related HCI projects around mobile computing and interactive multitouch systems. One of them is our by-then-to-be-completed 8m2 hi-res FTIR floor (see photos below).

Further information about projects at: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/baudisch/projects.html

Tours at DAI-Labor & Deutsche Telekom Laboratories

Date: June 21^st 2010

The DAI-Labor, one of the largest research institutes on smart services in Germany, and the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, the research division of the Deutsche Telekom AG, invite you to visit their shared laboratories at the Technische Universität Berlin. On different stations you can get in touch with the latest research results and prototypes showing new interaction techniques as well as innovative usage scenarios.

Experience the "Home Operating System" providing personalized and context-adaptive services for inhabitants of smart environments. Software assistants running on the "Home Operating System" are integrated with the appliances and sensors of our smart home testbed and exhibit situation-dependant behaviour based on context information. They communicate with the user in a multimodal way, by utilizing the currently available interaction possibilities (graphical, voice and gesture) and are thus accessible from anywhere in our smart home. During the tour several user interface adaptation scenarios will be presented to demonstrate the utilization of user interface models at runtime. This includes user interface migration following the user as she moves within the environment and adaptation to the different devices as well as context-adaptive layouting of the user interface, e.g. depending on the distance of the user to a display.

The second part of the tour includes four projects of the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories. The Mobile Wallet project shows solutions on the basis of Universal Integrated Circuit Card (the next generation SIM card) in combination with near field communication technology that enhance the cell phone through the inclusion of mobile payment and identity management functionalities, which are easy to use and secure at the same time. Against the background of the “Connected life and work” strategy, possibilities are opened up as result for new convergent services for all areas of life. The MagiTact project demonstrates device interaction with mobile devices based on integrated compass (magnetic) sensors. The user can send different interaction commands by movement-based gestures using a properly shaped magnet (e.g. pen, rod, ring) to the mobile device. The gestures can be used for instance to turn pages, zoom in and out, control a music player, and reject/accept calls. The Weight Shifting Mobiles project investigates weight-shift as a means of tactile information display. Various applications are presented on a physically working prototype. Finally, the Virtual Cocktail Party shows the cocktail party effect, which describes the ability of the human ear to pick out and concentrate on a particular conversation in a roomful of people who are all talking at the same time. The Virtual Cocktail Party makes use of this effect: in a virtual communication environment, acoustic scenes are rendered spatially, i.e. in three dimensions. This makes it possible to distinguish between voices, helping to increase the quality of conference calls.

During the visit you can freely move between all of the stations and take your time for the things most interesting for you. There will also be enough time for questions and discussions with the responsible researchers during the tour as well as on the Welcome Reception afterwards.

Venue

The demonstration will take place in the 15^th floor of the Telefunken-Hochhaus and is only a 10 minutes walk away from the conference location. To get there from the conference venue, walk down the "StraBe des 17. Juni" until you reach the Ernst-Reuter-Platz. The Telefunken-Hochhaus is the 20-story building on the other side of the Ernst-Reuter-Platz.

See location at Google Maps.

Background Information

The DAI Laboratory and the "Agent Technologies in Business Applications and Telecommunications" group are part of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the Berlin Institute of Technology. The DAI Laboratory focuses on research and development with the goal of developing technologies for the next generation of services and distributed systems. About 100 highly qualified researchers and students make the DAI Laboratory one of the largest and most recognized research institutes for Smart Services both in Germany and internationally.

The Telekom Laboratories are the central research and development unit of the Deutsche Telekom. They stand for international world-class research and the development of trend-setting products and services. Currently, more than 300 experts and researchers work in the Laboratories: among them 125 Telekom employees, 65 postdoctoral staff and around 80 postgraduates, research students and students from all over the world. They collaborate closely with business and international research establishments to engineer innovative solutions for simpler, faster and better communications.

Last update: October 10, 2010