There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

In this work, algorithms are developed and evaluated to de- tect physical activities from data acquired using five small biaxial ac- celerometers worn simultaneously on different parts of the body. Ac- celeration data was collected from 20 subjects without researcher su- pervision or observation. Subjects were asked to perform a sequence of everyday tasks but not told specifically where or how to do them. Mean, energy, frequency-domain entropy, and correlation of acceleration data was calculated and several classifiers using these features were tested. De- cision tree classifiers showed the best performance recognizing everyday activities with an overall accuracy rate of 84%. The results show that although some activities are recognized well with subject-independent training data, others appear to require subject-specific training data. The results suggest that multiple accelerometers aid in recognition because conjunctions in acceleration feature values can effectively discriminate many activities. With just two biaxial accelerometers - thigh and wrist - the recognition performance dropped only slightly. This is the first work to investigate performance of recognition algorithms with multiple, wire-free accelerometers on 20 activities using datasets annotated by the subjects themselves.

/pdf/activity-recognition-from-user-annotated-acceleration-data-lh3b5ajkau.pdf

Activity recognition from user-annotated acceleration data

How we Think

The theory of affordances

Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

Tiny embedded devices attached to everyday objects can transform them with sensing, perception, computation, and communication abilities.

Smart-Its: computers for artifacts in the physical world

What are current and future challenges that incorporating eye tracking into game design and development creates? The Second EyePlay workshop brings together academic researchers and industry practitioners from the fields of eye tracking and games to explore these questions. In recent years, gaming has been at the forefront of the commercial popularization of eye tracking. In this workshop, we will share experiences in the development of gaze-enabled games, discuss best practices and tools, and explore future challenges for research. Topics of interest lie at the intersection of eye tracking and games including, but limited to, novel interaction techniques and game mechanics, development processes and tools, accessible games, evaluation, and future visions.

EyePlay Revisited: Past, Present and Future Challenges for Eye-Based Interaction in Games

Welcome to UbiComp/ISWC 2015, the premier international forum for pervasive, ubiquitous, and wearable computing, which takes place from September 9-11, 2015 in Osaka, Japan.

The 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2015) is the third installment of the merged format between "Pervasive" and "Ubicomp", the two most renowned conferences in the field. As in previous years, it is co-located with the 19th International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC 2015) --- the premier forum to present cutting-edge research results in the fields of wearable computing and on-body mobile technologies. ISWC and UbiComp have been co-located with big success since 2013 in Zurich. This year, the two conferences feature two independent technical programs, but offer a single adjunct track, featuring joint posters, demos, workshops, tutorials, and a common doctoral school. As in previous years, ISWC and UbiComp operate as a single event, i.e., attendees are free to attend events from both conferences interchangeably.

Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

Context Nuggets: A Smart-Its Game

Existing gaming controllers are limited in their end-user configurability. As a complement to current game control technology, we present the VoodooIO Gaming Kit, a real-time adaptable gaming controller. We introduce the concept of appropriable gaming devices, which allow players to define and actively reconfigure their gaming space, making it appropriate to their personal preference and gaming needs. The technology and its conceived usage are illustrated through its application to two commercially available computer games, as well as through the results of a formal user study.

/pdf/the-voodooio-gaming-kit-a-real-time-adaptable-gaming-f3wu047xun.pdf

Hans Gellersen

Papers

Smart-Its: computers for artifacts in the physical world

EyePlay Revisited: Past, Present and Future Challenges for Eye-Based Interaction in Games

Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

Context Nuggets: A Smart-Its Game

The VoodooIO gaming kit: a real-time adaptable gaming controller