To conclude the reseach symposium in Tokyo we visited the DFG office in Tokyo. It was very good to communicate our first hand impressions about an exciting event in person.
On the way we saw an interesting poster – reminding us of 150 years of friendship between Japan and German – for more see: www.dj150.jp
As discussed this morning we invite participants of the symposium to apply for research visits to intensify research collaborations. Here is the template for Proposals for Research Visits. Please use this template to apply electronically to jpde@hcilab.org. The deadline is April 15th 2011.
Please send us the presentation you gave at the Symposium. Can you email us a PDF or Powerpoint file to jpde@hcilab.org and tell us if we you would be happy to share it publicly or if you do not want to have the slides online.
Please have a look at the Program for the Symposium Interaction with Smart Artifacts.
Embedded information and communication technology allows us to create smart artifacts. Advances in ubiquitous computing, sensor and actuator technologies, and artificial intelligence enable researchers and practitioners to implement and deploy devices and environment that show smart behavior. There are many examples of reactive and proactive systems, including cars, meeting rooms, display environments, and tools. Functions like adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance in cars are intelligent behavior. Meeting rooms that keep track of their usage and select media and lighting according to the situation are a further example of smart assistance. Displays that are adapting content to the people (e.g. gender, age, number of people) in front of it are commercially available. Tools that restrict usage to qualified personal and appropriate contexts and that keep track of the way they are used have been explored in research projects. All these artifacts have in common that the user interacts and with them without fully understanding the mechanisms that drive the smart behavior. In many cases this leads to a frustrating user experience and potentially dangerous situations. With new smart artifacts that are currently explored it these areas it becomes essential to understand the interaction issues as otherwise it is likely that the complexity in the interaction will likely to fail such products.
Research in Germany and Japan is leading in the domain of smart artifacts and several research projects in Japan and Germany address the challenges that arise in creating interactive and intelligent artifacts. Exchanging insights in this domain hence appears very valuable and will likely have a significant impact on future research in this domain and eventually on products such as cars, appliances, robots, displays, and furniture.