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Seminar WS 2007/08: Advances in Human Computer Interaction

News

Deadline for reports: 14.3 - Check new section Reports for details.

Content

The ways in which humans communicate with computers have changed dramatically in the past few years. A compelling example of a new interaction paradigm is Microsoft Surface.
In general, advanced interaction metaphors rely on new concepts, models, and technologies that have to be designed, investigated, or adopted from other research disciplines.

The talks are organized in the following topic clusters:

• Smart Objects and Tangible Interfaces
• Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence
• Affective Computing and Virtual Characters
• Multi-Modal Interaction and Dialog Systems

The seminar's aim is to discuss concepts, models and technologies used for advances in human computer interaction. As a result, the participants get a broad overview of advanced HCI research.

General Requirements

Good command of English for understanding research papers. Most of the discussed papers are written in English.

Study qualifications: a successfully finished lecture in the area of AI or an intermediate degree (Vordiplom) or bachelor in computer science.

Requirements for Certificates

A seminar certificate has the following requirements:

• Regular attendance.
• A talk (English, 30-35 minutes, 10 minutes discussion).
• A report (English) that covers the facts addressed in the talk and the related discussion.
• Participant should be in the role of the discussion manager for one talk.

Reports

Language of reports: Englisch

Deadline: 14.3.08

Size: 10-15 pages

Format: file format is PDF, page style is LNCS, which can be found on the LNCS springer web page. Start with the Default Author Instructions file. This is also an example how the LNCS style looks.

General requirements - reports should:

• be understandable and well formatted!
• cover the individual topic of the talk, questions that have been arised during the discussions, and they should address relevant issues of other talks.

Reports reviewed until: 31.3.08 - Beginning by this date each supervisior contacts his students for individual feedback.

Final deadline: 10 days after feedback is given. This ensures that everybody has the same time to finalize the report after s/he has received feedback.

Notes:

• Reports can be also submitted before the announced deadline.
• Please remember that reports have to be in final state when submitted!

Organisation

Language of talks: Englisch

Date: every Thursday, 16 c.t. - 18, no talks at 20.12 and 21.02

Location: Seminar room II (H 04) in the math building E 2 5, basement

Kick-Off meeting and talk assignment: Thursday, October 25th, 16 c.t

Talks

The list below shows all talks and their assigned lecturer and chair.
Note: Some of the literature can only be downloaded from a computer that has an internet address of the Saarland University. In case of problemes please contact your supervisor.

• 25.10.2007
  • Kick-Off and Introduction (slides)
    Lecturers: Patrick Gebhard, Michael Kipp, Martin Rumpler, and Michael Schmitz
    
    
• 08.11.2007
  • The Future of Smart Everyday Objects (slides)
    Lecturer: Sven Steudter
    Chair: Dalibor Topic
    Supervisor: Michael Schmitz
    
    
  • This talk will provide a vision of intelligent, networked objects and how they might change our life. A quite general topic that will provide an introduction to the field and outline the implications that the paradigm of smart objects might have on our society.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Living in a World of Smart Everyday Objects - Social, Economic ...
    - Auswirkungen des Pervasive Computing auf Gesundheit und Umwelt. Studie des Zentrums für Technologiefolgen-Abschätzung(relevant chapters: 8, 9)
    - ITU Internet of Things Report
    
    
• 15.11.2007
  • Cooperative Artifacts (CAs) (slides)
    Lecturer: Michael Gerke
    Chair: Sven Steudter
    Supervisor: Michael Schmitz
    
    
  • CAs are independent smart objects that are able to sense their state, communicate with other CAs and share and evaluate context information in order to work towards a common goal. For example chemical containers that cooperatively detect potentially hazardous situations and trigger alarms or request relocation.
    
    
  • Resources
    - A Taxonomy of Collaborative Context-Aware Systems
    - Cooperative Artifacts
    - Cooperatively Augmenting Smart Objects with Projector-Camera Systems
    
    
• 15.11.2007
  • Intelligent Kitchen Utilities (slides)
    Lecturer: Maria Luschkova
    Chair: Ahmad Salin Doost
    Supervisor: Michael Schmitz
    
    
  • This talk will give an overview of projects that instrument kitchen appliances and utilities in order to sense user activities and goals, to provide context aware services in a kitchen environment.
    
    
  • Resources
    - The Diet-Aware Dining Table: Observing Dietary Behaviors over a Tabletop Surface
    - Analysis of chewing sounds for dietary monitoring
    - A Knife and a Cutting Board as Implicit User Interface Towards Context Aware Kitchen Utilities
    - Intelligent Spoon, MIT Media (project web page)
    
    
• 22.11.2007
  • Interacting with Smart Products (slides)
    Lecturer: Saied Tehrani
    Chair: Quraischy Homeira
    Supervisor: Michael Schmitz
    
    
  • Smart Products as a special instance of Smart Objects are interactive objects with a focus on their role as a product, i.e. objects that are produced, delivered and sold to end-consumers (amongst others). This talk will introduce different approaches to provide shopping assistance and other services.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Intelligent Cokes and Diapers: MyGROCER Ubiquitous Computing Environment
    - Personalized In-store E-Commerce with the PromoPad: an Augmented Reality Shopping Assistant
    - IntelliShopper: A Proactive, Personal, Private Shopping Assistant
    - The Anthropomorphized Product Shelf
    
    
• 22.11.2007
  • Intimate Interfaces (slides)
    Lecturer: Dalibor Topic
    Chair: Michael Gerke
    Supervisor: Michael Schmitz
    
    
  • Intimate Interfaces comprise devices or systems that mediate emotional communication between people, e.g. creating a feeling of connectedness between distant partners. The social and emotional component are important factors here, complemented by concepts of ambient displays and tangible user interfaces.
    
    
  • Resources
    - PillowTalk: Can We Afford Intimacy?
    - LumiTouch: An Emotional Communication Device
    - Digital Selves: Devices for intimate communications between homes
    - Keep in Touch: A Tactile-Vision Intimate Interface
    - More projects
    
    
• 29.11.2007
  • Tangible Bits (slides)
    Lecturer: Ahmad Salin Doost
    Chair: Benjamin Hollinger
    Supervisor: Michael Kipp
    
    
  • You should track down the papers cited in Ishii, Ullmer (1997) to learn more about the presented systems.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Ishii, Ullmer (1997) Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms
    - Ullmer, Ishii (1997) The metaDESK: Models and Prototypes for Tangible User Interfaces
    
    
• 29.11.2007
  • Multitouch Interfaces (slides)(handout)
    Lecturer: Henning Peters
    Chair: Avishek Anand
    Supervisor: Michael Kipp
    
    
  • Give a survey of existing techniques. Focus on the two given papers and look at Trümper's report for further sources.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Han (2005) Low-cost multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection
    - Dietz, Leigh (2003) DiamondTouch: A Multi-User Touch Technology (TechReport)
    - Trümper (2007) Multi-Touch-Systeme und interaktive Oberflächen (Seminar Report)
    
    
• 6.12.2007
  • Interactive Tables (slides)
    Lecturer: Avishek Anand
    Chair: Vitaly Friedman
    Supervisor: Michael Kipp
    
    
  • The talk should focus more on the various interaction techniques/metaphors presented in the papers, and somewhat less on the hardware.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Patten, Recht, Ishii (2006) Interaction Techniques for Musical Performance with Tabletop Tangible Interfaces
    - Magerkurth, Memisoglu, Engelke, Streitz (2004) Towards the Next Generation of Tabletop Gaming Experiences
    - Magerkurth, Stenzel, Streitz, Neuhold (2003) A Multimodal Interaction Framework for Pervasive Game Applications
    - Tse et al. (2006) MULTIMODAL MULTIPLAYER TABLETOP GAMING
    
    
• 6.12.2007
  • Microsoft Surface Technology (slides)
    Lecturer: Vitaly Friedman
    Chair: Henning Peters
    Supervisor: Michael Kipp
    
    
  • This talk requires some own research. Get your information from the Microsoft webpages (and others, e.g. wikipedia, youtube) and try to give a good and clear overview over the various applications and interaction styles that the Surface will support. The two papers can complement the talk (the second one is optional, there will probably not be enough time).
    
    
  • Resources
    - Microsoft Surface Homepage
    - Wilson (2005) PlayAnywhere: A Compact Interactive Tabletop Projection-Vision System
    - Wilson, Robbins (2006) PlayTogether: Playing Games across Multiple Interactive Tabletops
    
    
• 13.12.2007
  • SenseCam (slides)
    Lecturer: Daniel Fass
    Chair: Ali Rahmani
    Supervisor: Michael Kipp
    
    
  • Present both the "MyLifeBits" vision and the SenseCam device. The papers have a large overlap (and papers 3+4 are just different versions of the same paper).
    
    
  • Resources
    - Gemmel et al. (2004) Passive Capture and Ensuing Issues for a Personal Lifetime Store
    - Gemmel et al. (2002) MyLifeBits: Fulfilling the Memex Vision
    - Gemmel et al. (2006) A Personal Database for Everything (extended TechReport)
    - Gemmel et al. (2006) Personal Database for Everything
    
    
• 10.1.2008
  • Spoken Dialogue Systems (slides)
    Lecturer: Ali Rahmani
    Chair: Sebastian Schwarzbach
    Supervisor: Martin Rumpler
    
    
  • Spoken Dialogue Systems are programs which communicate with users in spoken natural language, for example, to make travel arrangements, route telephone calls or control devices. This talk will introduce basic concepts, components, architectures and algorithms of spoken dialogue systems.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Jurafsky D. & Martin James H. (2000) Dialogue and Conversational Agents. Chap. 19 of: Jurafsky, D. & Martin, James H. (eds), Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics and Speech Recognition, Prentice Hall. (contact your supervisor to get a copy)
    - Ralf Engel (2006) Natural Language Understanding. Pages 195--208 of: Wahlster, W. (ed) SmartKom: Foundations of Multimodal Dialogue Systems. Cognitive Technologies Series, Springer Verlag. (contact your supervisor to get a copy)
    
    
• 17.1.2008
  • W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity (slides)
    Lecturer: Michael Kanonik
    Chair: Wolfgang Burgard
    Supervisor: Martin Rumpler
    
    
  • This talk gives an overview of the W3C initiative on multimodal architectures and interfaces. It discusses the interaction requirements and the components of the proposed multimodal interaction framework as well as the role of multimodal markup languages and data exchange formats.
    
    
  • Resources
    - W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity
    - W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework
    - Extensible MultiModal Annotation markup language
    
    
• 17.1.2008
  • Multimodal Dialogue Systems (slides)
    Lecturer: Quraischy Homeira
    Chair: Saied Tehrani
    Supervisor: Martin Rumpler
    
    
  • Multimodal dialogue systems extend spoken dialogue systems by taking into account other modalities like, for example, gestures, facial expressions and gaze behavior. This talk presents problems and solutions related to multimodal fusion and fission by looking at early and current multimodal dialogue systems.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Richard A. Bolt (1980) Put-That-There: Voice and Gesture at the Graphics Interface
    - Wahlster et al. (2006) Dialogue Systems Go Multimodal: The SmartKom Experience. Pages 3-27 of: Wahlster, W. (ed) SmartKom: Foundations of Multimodal Dialogue Systems. Cognitive Technologies Series, Springer Verlag.
    - Engel, R. & Pfleger,N. (2006) Modality Fusion. Pages 223-236 of: Wahlster, W. (ed) SmartKom: Foundations of Multimodal Dialogue Systems. Cognitive Technologies Series, Springer Verlag. (contact your supervisor to get a copy)
    
    
• 24.1.2008
  • Tangible Interaction with Intelligent Virtual Agents (slides)
    Lecturer: Matthias Loskyll
    Chair: Peter Feld
    Supervisor: Martin Rumpler
    
    
  • Tangible interaction with Intelligent Virtual Agents provides interesting opportunities and poses new challenges compared to spoken dialogue systems. This talk presents the main problems by looking at an interactive edutainment installation that uses an instrumented set of physical objects to influence the conversational behavior of two virtual characters. The talk explains how the narrative structure and the dialogue content have been modelled with the SceneMaker authoring tool and disucusses the strength and weaknesses of this approach.
    
    
  • Resources
    - VirtualContructor at DFKI
    - Ndiaye et al. (2005) Ambient Intelligence in Edutainment: Tangible Interaction with Life-Like Exhibit Guides. In: Proc. of the Conference on INtelligent TEchnologies for interactive enterTAINment (INTETAIN'05)
    - Using Real Objects to Communicate with Virtual Characters. In: Proc. of the 5th International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA'05)
    - Authoring Scenes for Adaptive, Interactive Performances. In: Proc. of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'03)
    Klesen et al. (2003) Staging Exhibitions: Methods and tools for modelling narrative structure to produce interactive performances with virtual actors. In: Special Issue of Virtual Reality on Storytelling in Virtual Environments, Springer-Verlag. (contact your supervisor to get a copy)
    
    
• 24.1.2008
  • Mixed and Augmented Reality (slides) (eyetoy video) (ultrasonic video)
    Lecturer: Peter Feld
    Chair: Daniel Fass
    Supervisor: Martin Rumpler
    
    
  • Augmented Reality (AR) is a variation of Virtual Reality. AR systems supplement (augment) the real world with virtual (computer-generated) objects that appear to coexist in the same space as the real world. This talk gives an overview of the state-of-the art in Augemented Reality by presenting applications, devices, characteristics and problems of AR technology.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Ronald Azuma (1997) A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6, 4 (August 1997), 355--385.
    - Ronald Azuma et al. (2001) Recent Advances in Augmented Reality. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 21, no. 6 (Nov/Dec 2001), pp. 34--47.
    - Rozier et al. (2000) Hear&There: An Augmented Reality System of Linked Audio.
    - Butz & Krueger (2006) Applying the Peephole Metaphor in a Mixed-Reality Room
    
    
• 31.1.2008
  • Multimodal Generation for Virtual Characters (slides)
    Lecturer: Sebastian Schwarzbach
    Chair: Matthias Loskyll
    Supervisor: Patrick Gebhard
    
    
  • Virtual Characters have a purpose. They are used for example as partners, assistants or guides that explain the functionality of interfaces, devices, or software applications (MS Word). When explaining complex scenarios to one or more humans interactively, the characters actions and the content of the explanation has to be synchronized. The talk should cover different systems and models.
    
    
  • Resources
    - Thomas Rist et al. (2003), A Review of the Development of Embodied Presentation Agents and Their Application Fields
    - Elisabeth André (2000) The Generation of Multimedia Presentations
    - Elisabeth André, Thomas Rist (1995) Generating Coherent Presentations Employing Textual and Visual Material
    - Elisabeth André, Thomas Rist (1996) Coping with Temporal Constraints in Multimedia Presentation Planning
    
    
• 31.1.2008
  • Expressive Virtual Characters (slides)
    Lecturer: Gregor Mehlmann
    Chair: Michael Kanonik
    Supervisor: Patrick Gebhard
    
    
  • How to build expression into virtual characters? A central goal is to make them believable, natural and engaging. The talk should give an overview what models, methods, and techniques are used for this.
    
    
  • Resources
    - V. Vinayagamoorthy et al (2006), Building expression into virtual characters.
    - C. Peters et al (2006). Social capabilities for autonomous virtual characters
    
    
• 7.2.2008
  • Recognizing and Expressing Affect
    Lecturer: Wolfgang Burgard
    Chair: Maria Luschkova
    Supervisor: Patrick Gebhard
    
    
  • The interaction between humans strongly relies on emotional signals. They help humans to understand the situation of dialog partners. To let computers mimic the way human communicate, it is essential that computers recognize affect and is able to express it. The talk should cover some of the actual concepts, models, methods, and techniques.
    
    
  • Resources
    - R. Picard (2000) Toward computers that recognize and respond to user emotion.
    - A. Haag et al. (2004) Emotion recognition using bio-sensors: first steps towards an automatic system.
    - R. Picard (1997) Affective Computing. (chapter II-6, and II for general overview, the book can be lend for copying)
    
    
• 7.2.2008
  • Emotional Interfaces and Input Devices (slides)
    Lecturer: Quan Nguyen
    Chair: Gregor Mehlmann
    Supervisor: Patrick Gebhard
    
    
  • To inform Virtual Characters or humans about one's own emotional state, technical devices can be used for this. The talk should inform about the on-going research in this area.
    
    
  • Resources
    - H. Shin et al. (2007) Emotional Interface for Instant Messenger Chat
    - A. van Breemen, C. Bartneck (2003). An emotional interface for a music gathering application.
    - Ana Paiva et al (2003) SenToy: a Tangible Interface to Control the Emotions of a Synthetic Character
    - Ana Paiva et al. (2002) SenToy in FantasyA: Designing an Affective Sympathetic Interface to a Computer Game.
    
    
• 14.2.2008
  • Natural Machines (slides)
    Lecturer: Benjamin Hollinger
    Chair: Quan Nguyen
    Supervisor: Patrick Gebhard
    
    
  • Robots in any form get more and more integrated in the human world. The interaction with those machines should be agreeable and as natural as possible. The talk should address these issues as well as social aspects.
    
    
  • Resources
    - T. Fong et al. (2002) A surveyof socially interactive robots
    - Cory D. Kidd (2006) A Sociable Robot to Encourage Social Interaction Among the Elderly
    - C. Brezeal (1999) Robot in Society: Friend or Appliance?
    
    

Contact

Patrick Gebhard building E1 1, room 119.2 email: gebhard(at)dfki.de phone: 0681-302-3393

Michael Kipp building D3 2, room +2.08 email: kipp(at)dfki.de phone: 0681-302-5387

Martin Rumpler building D3 1, room C.22 email: rumpler(at)dfki.de phone: 0681-302-5269

Michael Schmitz building E1 1, room 124 email: schmitz(at)cs.uni-sb.de phone: 0681-302-3496

Additional Info

Bachelor's and master's thesis, HiWi jobs ...

Subsequent to a successfully mastered seminar a bachelor's and master's thesis as well as a HiWi job can be offered.

About a talk

Giving a talk.