Posts tagged iot

Call for Book Chapters: Hyperconnectivity and the Future of Internet Communication

Over the past few decades, there has been a revolution in computing and communication. This book will examine and expose future internet communication technologies and telexistence paradigms to allow a hyperconnected presence of all our five senses, as well as non-verbal and emotional communication, through digital networks and the physical world of humans and devices/gadgets.

Proposals Submission Deadline: December 15, 2012

Publisher: IGI Global.

Editor: Adrian David Cheok (Keio University, Tokyo, Japan)

Read the full call.

Aca-article: Take Me I’m Yours - Mimicking object agency (on IoT)

Through a design demonstration, this paper speculates upon a future context in which objects will begin to talk to us and even give us instructions. The purpose of the research is to anticipate a time when correlations between the data sets that are associated with different objects are found and the objects themselves are used to impart this ‘new’ knowledge back to us.

Authors: Chris Speed and Duncan Shingleton

ABSTRACT - […] Located within the technical and cultural context of the Internet of Things, this paper introduces a lineage for our relationship with objects from 1. Read Only, 2. Read and Write and 3. Read, Write and Act. The paper proceeds to establish the conditions for a third generation of Internet of Things by articulating the nature of networks, their structure and their capacity to support the principles of Actor-Network Theory which may lead to a condition in which objects may take on a form of agency.

The paper further introduces an iPhone App entitled Take Me I’m Yours that operates as a working but speculative design project mimicking the conditions in which objects may talk to us. The designers speculate a design fiction in which object databases may begin to identify associations and propose ‘actions’ to a user. The application and demonstration at UbiComp 2012 will offer delegates an opportunity to experience a sense of what it may feel like in the future when objects may begin telling us what to do.

Open access: http://fields.eca.ac.uk/?p=942

Aca-article: A manifesto for do-it-yourself internet-of-things creation

This paper presents a manifesto directed at developers and designers of internet-of-things creation platforms, aiming at providing a framework for do-it-yourself systems enabling non-technical users to create internet-of-things applications.

Authors: Dries De Roeck, Karin Slegers, Johan Criel, Marc Godon, Laurence Claeys,
Katriina Kilpi, An Jacobs

Presented at NordiCHI ‘12

Open access: http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/facdep/social/com/mediac/cuo/admin/upload/IdDiYSEforit_CRv2.pdf

ABSTRACT - This paper presents a manifesto directed at developers and designers of internet-of-things creation platforms. Currently, most existing creation platforms are tailored to specific types of end-users, mostly people with a substantial background in or affinity with technology. The thirteen items presented in the manifesto however, resulted from several user studies including non-technical users, and highlight aspects that should be taken into account in order to open up internet-of-things creation to a wider audience. To reach out and involve more people in internet-of-things creation, a relation is made to the social phenomenon of doit-yourself, which provides valuable insights into how society can be encouraged to get involved in creation activities. Most importantly, the manifesto aims at providing a framework for do-it-yourself systems enabling non-technical users to create internet-of-things applications.

Conference on Internet of Things (Paris, Sep 26)

This conference, gathering academics and professionals, will address both ongoing developments and legal and standardization issues related to the Internet of Things.

When and where: Sep 26, 2012, Paris, France. Read more.

MORE - The conference will see the release of the new issue of Communications & Strategies entitled Internet of Things: A new avenue of research, here’s what they write about it:

The Internet of Things (IoT) endows objects with intelligence and ability to communicate, connecting people and machines anywhere, anytime. IoT applications exist in various domains: health, domotics, security and control, the supply chain. IoT exemplifies - and is driven by - major changes in technological convergence, pervasiveness and ubiquity, increases in mobility, traceability, and so on. This special issue aims to develop a better understanding of what the Internet of Things is and what its potential impacts may be. This Dossier includes contributions from different fields of research in order to grasp the various dimensions of IoT in a multidisciplinary perspective (law, economics and management, political science, etc.). With also two interviews with Rudolf van der BERG, Economist & Policy Analyst at OECD, and Nicolas PAUVRE, Innovation Project Manager at GS1 France.

Aca-article; Thingies for Dummies - A smart home infrastructure for the rest of us

In this paper, the authors introduce an infrastructure that enables end-users to bring simple smart home devices into their homes and install them. The infrastructure makes use of equipment already present in many homes – Wi-Fi networks and smartphones – and is based on common web technologies.

Authors: David Thomas, Egil Hansen, both IT University of Copenhagen

Published in: undisclosed.

ABSTRACT- A number of smart home infrastructures and technologies exist. However, these are not commonly adopted by homeowners as they are often too expensive, complex and difficult to retrofit in existing homes. We introduce an infrastructure that enables end-users to bring simple smart home devices into their homes and install them. Our infrastructure makes use of equipment already present in many homes – Wi-Fi networks and smartphones – and is based on common web technologies. We include a bootstrapping process to connect UI-less devices to Wi-Fi networks, and an approach to generate user interfaces for these devices. We have evaluated our designed infrastructure via a user test of an implemented prototype, and our evaluation participants found the prototype easy to install and use overall.

Access paper, open access: https://blog.itu.dk/SPCL-F2012/files/2012/06/5thingiesfordummies.pdf

What is so smart about the “smart” city? Deconstructing Smart Cities.

This paper analyses recent contributions to the ‘smart city’ discourse, the context conditions under which it has emerged, the conceptual orientations developed, and the implementation strategies derived. It remains rather open what the actual pursuit of a ‘smart city’ is, and therefore, which winners and losers we are to expect from realization.

Title: Deconstructing Smart Cities: An Intertextual Reading of Concepts and Practices for Integrated Urban and ICT Development.

Author: Marc Wolfram, Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Dresden, Germany.

Published in proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development in the Information Society GeoMultimedia 2012.

Open access: http://programm.corp.at/cdrom2012/papers2012/CORP2012_192.pdf

ABSTRACT - Concepts of ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ cities currently enjoy great popularity. They offer frameworks for interpreting certain linkages between information and communication technology (ICT) and urban development, and put forward a particular agenda for action. In this, they claim a broad legitimacy for guiding stakeholders, drawing on findings from a number of strands of scientific inquiry. Furthermore, building on the everlasting albeit problematic promise of technology as a key to resolve pressing societal problems, they equally constitute an attractive reference for actors at all levels and across sectors. But despite their striking virulence in research, policy and practice, it remains rather open what the actual pursuit of a ‘smart city’ is, and therefore, which winners and losers we are to expect from realization.

Against this backdrop this paper puts forward an intertextual reading of recent contributions to the ‘smart city’ discourse, probing in particular the context conditions under which it has emerged, the conceptual orientations developed, and the implementation strategies derived. It appears that, while suffering from affinities to technological determinism and urban entrepreneurialism, ‘smart cities’ largely neglect the need to select and balance goals for integrated urban and ICT development, and to develop suitable approaches for actually doing so. Instead, by conflating the descriptive and the normative, ‘smart cities’ tend to substitute an orientation at societal ends by an orientation at selected means, thus supporting path optimization but structurally evading radical urban change. Hence, in order to become meaningful for enhancing sustainable and resilient local development, such concepts need to be embedded within a much wider cultural change perspective that should underpin especially the social, ecological and political dimensions of ‘smart’ urban development. In particular, they need to strengthen their focus on and engagement with the governance of integrated urban and ICT development.

Article: Towards a Narrative-Aware Design Framework for Smart Urban Environments

This article presents a novel approach to the design of smart city systems that takes into account not only technical installations in a future Internet of Things environment, but also the power of human storytelling in an always-on networked world.

Authors: Lara Srivastava and Athena Vakali, Department of Media Communications, Webster University, Geneva, Switzerland and Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Published in The Future Internet - Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Open access full-text is available here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/013265227140q447/fulltext.pdf

ABSTRACT - Innovation in smart city systems is based on the principle that devices, places and everyday things can each be enabled to serve people in a real-time and responsive manner. This chapter presents a novel approach to the design of smart city systems that takes into account not only technical installations in a future Internet of Things environment, but also the power of human storytelling in an always-on networked world. It is only when environments are both sensor-driven and socially-aware that a more holistic, and therefore more useful, urban narrative can emerge in the future Internet context. The present chapter proposes a new narrative-aware design framework and applies it to a hypothetical city scenario in order to highlight its main components and the benefits it may offer to a future Internet city’s actors.

Keywords: Smart cities, sensor data analysis, social data mining, smart urban services, Internet of things, narrative, storytelling, navigation, mobility, sensors, web 2.0.

Article: Exploring New Connections between the Physical and Digital for Future Heritage Interpretations

New forms of connections between information and the physical world create opportunities for novel activities around heritage. This paper analyses a technological progression from linking data and content to locations, towards data captured by and linked to everyday objects.

Authors: Tim Coughlan, Michael Brown, Robert Houghton, (Horizon Digital Economy Research) and Glyn Lawson (Human Factors Research Group)

Published in CHI 2012 Workshop: Heritage Matters, 5-10 May 2012, Austin, Texas.

Open access: http://oro.open.ac.uk/33674/1/Coughlan_Brown_Houghton_Lawson.pdf

ABSTRACT - New forms of connections between information and the physical world create opportunities for novel activities around heritage. This paper analyses a technological progression from linking data and content to locations, towards data captured by and linked to everyday objects. The former is exemplified by a study which explored community-based inquiry activities at a historical cemetery site. To explore the latter, we are developing a series of scenarios and visualisations to analyse peoples’ interpretations of contextual footprints – current and historical data gathered through the Internet of Things.

White Paper: Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems Sustained by the Future Internet

This paper focuses on how European cities are currently developing strategies towards becoming “smarter cities” and the lessons we can draw for the future.

Authors: Hans Schaffers, ESoCE Net; Nicos Komninos, URENIO; Marc Pallot, INRIA

Open access, download here.

Aca-article: Semantic connections - A new interaction paradigm for smart environments

The environments we inhabit contain a growing number of networked, interactive products. User interaction is changing from interaction with single products into interaction with a larger system of products. In this article, we introduce an interaction paradigm where we view smart environments in terms of connections and associations between the actors and artefacts within the environment.

Access here, open access, go to page 18.

Authors: Bram van der Vlist, Gerrit Niezen, Jun Hu, Loe Feijs, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology.

Published in Design and Semantics of Form and Movement

ABSTRACT - As the environments we inhabit contain a growing number of networked, interactive products, both users and designers need a better understanding of how these products can potentially work together. User interaction is changing from interaction with single products into interaction with a larger system of products. This trend faces designers with a challenge: to create meaningful interactions for users to deal with the complexity of the larger ecosystem of technologies users function in. In this article we introduce an interaction paradigm, where we view smart environments in terms of connections and associations between the actors and artefacts within the environment. In this notion of Semantic Connections, meaning is pivotal. We report on a search for a theoretical foundation for our approach in existing semantic theories. We attempt to use and extend these theories beyond their traditional focus on the appearance of objects and interaction with them in isolation, towards designing for systems of interoperating products. We illustrate our contribution by providing examples of products and design prototypes that implement our ideas. Although our research is ongoing and the theory unfinished, we believe that sharing our work can fuel the discussion on how designers may deal with the challenges in contemporary interaction design.

Keywords: Product semantics, interaction design, smart home.