PERSONAL MOBILE DEVICE FOR SITUATED INTERACTION YANG-TING SHEN, TAY-SHENG TENG Information Architecture Lab, Department of Architecture, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. bowbowshen@yahoo.com.tw Abstract. The objective of the paper is to explore how the personal mobile devices help the user to interact with space and get personal service. We embed the RFID tag in PDA for the sake of identifying the space. The space adapts itself to fit the user s need by reading the data on the electronic tag. And the user uses PDA to interact with the space and record the interactive experience. We establish an interactive scenario between the user and the space to experiment how the system work. 1. Introduction Until recently, personal mobile devices were increasingly used to deal with the personal tasks in daily life. The functions of personal mobile devices include: (i) Cell phone, (ii) Organizing personal information or schedule, (iii) Accessing internet, (iv) Sending or receiving e-mail, (v) Remote controll, (vi) Spatial navigation (GPS). The most popular personal mobile device is the cell phone. Cell phones are largely used to support the subtitles of our everyday life. In addition, people use PDA to organize personal data, schedule tasks, and remind meetings. Increasingly, people connect to the internet using personal mobile devices to explore websites or send and receive mails. In addition to these functions, we regard personal mobile devices as personal digital agents. Besides, as it is argued that humans are surrounded with successive artificial skins that continually vary in number and character according to changing needs and circumstances (Mitchell, 2003), we expect the agents to play an important role of a channel helping people to connect with the next skin of space. The skin of space consists of multimedia and ubiquitous computers that vanish into the background. When we use personal mobile devices to interact with space, the space becomes human explicit boundaries. However, there is a problem, that is, how to compute across the boundaries between private and public, implicit and explicit, personal and multi-user, permanent and temporary interactions. In other words, the personal mobile devices should be considered as media that help us to interact with space for personal services. When we access a space, the space can identify our positions and identification by connecting our personal mobile
PERSONAL MOBILE DEVICE FOR SITUATED INTERACTION 383 devices such as PDAs. We interact with the space by PDAs that ensure that interaction is personal. Moreover, these daily experiences of interaction can be stored and retrieved by PDA. So our human experience is accumulated and incrementally modified with the interleaving interactions between personal digital devices and interactive spaces. 2. The Scenario In this paper, we regard personal mobile devices as personal digital agents. We use personal mobile devices to extend personal identification in the environment. And the environment can also identify us through the personal mobile devices. So we become unique to the environment. The personal mobile devices become our second skins the digital skins. The second skins not only demonstrate our identification, but store and retrieve our memory and experience. In this paper, we develop a scenario to describe how the personal mobile devices help people to extend their digital skins. This scenario pays attention to the interaction between exhibition spaces and people. 1. The user holds the PDA embedded with an RFID tag. The user imports his personal data in the electronic tag including personal ID, habits, interests, etc. When the user accesses the exhibition space, the exhibition space has an RFID reader to detect the electronic tag embedded in PDA and conveys the data to server PC in the back space. By means of those data, the exhibition identifies the user and modifies its setting to match the user s interest. The operations include projecting welcome messages on the wall, turning on the air conditioner, and showing some hints such as sparking LED lights to attract the user s attention based on the user s interest. These operations occur as soon as the user steps into the exhibition space. 2. At the same time, the user uses PDA to connect with the backend server by Wireless LAN and gets the corresponding information displayed on PDA s screen. The corresponding information supported by the server PC shows some icons and messages to suggest the next step. The user clicks on the icon on the PDA s screen and gets further hints, suggesting his going to the area of sparking LED light. The area of sparking LED light shows some information based on the user s interest which is imported in the RFID tag in advance. The user goes to the area of sparking LED light and visits multimedia exhibitions. During the visit, the user picks up a physical model. As this moment, the projector starts to project a set of 3D animation to introduce information of this model. When the user puts the physical model down, the animation stops and changes to the original setting. In the meanwhile, the server PC remotely delivers the website about the information
384 YANG-TING SHEN, TAY-SHENG TENG of 3D animation and saves it in the user s PDA. After exploring the area, the user may want to visit different information. So the user modifies his personal data in the RFID tag by the RFID writer in the exhibition space. The exhibition space re-detects the modified RFID tag and starts a new pattern of interaction. 3. After exploring the exhibition area, the user moves to another exhibition area. The user interacts with the new exhibition space again through his PDA embedded tag. The user gets new interaction patterns that are different from the previous exhibition space because the personal electronic tag has been modified. 3. Interaction Experience In this scenario, one of the main concepts is provision of personal service. The RFID tag embedded in PDA makes the exhibition space proactively identify the user. And the exhibition space can adapt itself to fit the user s need by reading habits, interests, and records. Different users interact with the exhibition space and have different interaction based on personal data stored in personal RFID tags. The service of space is customized, that is, people act in the same place but get different experiences. Another main concept is adaptive design of personal digital database. In the past, people s daily experiences come from long-term memories in this brains, but the memories aren t supported or augmented by any computational devices. By wearing the RFID tag embedded in PDA, human experience can be recorded, modified, and reused. If the computer detects the changed data, the computer changes the spatial setting to adapt to the new interaction rules. Furthermore, the new rules may trigger new interaction and create new experiences. The personal digital database is correspondingly extended and modified continuously. Besides, the user can take the personal digital database away and reuse it in other places. However, there will be a new mode of interaction because of the modified tag embedded in PDA. 4. Implementation We divide the implementation of the system into three layers: (i) Import (ii) Information processing (ii) Export. This architecture is shown as follows. Figure 1 shows three functional requirements of the personal services including import, information processing, and export function. On Layer 1, there are four devices to receive signals, and import signals into the server database and tag database. When the server database receives the signals from Layer 1, the backend server database analyzes the digital signals and transform the signals into the
PERSONAL MOBILE DEVICE FOR SITUATED INTERACTION 385 Figure 1. Three parts of implementation. identifiable information. Then the server database exports the identifiable information to Layer 3. So the devices on Layer 3 come up with some responses based on the signals on Layer 1. Figure 2. The system architecture of PDA in ambient media exhibition space. Figure 2 shows that the user holds PAD embedded RFID tag into exhibition space. The RFID tag has imported some personal data. We plan four grids including ID, Habit, Interest, Record (Tag Database of Layer two) to record personal data in
386 YANG-TING SHEN, TAY-SHENG TENG the FID tag. First, we transform the personal data into code for the sake of writing into the RFID tag. The other reason is to make the RFID device identify the electronic tag by the code. For example, the user may enjoy a physical environment with air conditioning and yellow lighting. Once the user goes into the exhibition and approache the RFID device, the latter detects the RFID tag and receives the binary codes in this tag. The RFID device delivers those codes to server PC in the backspace of the exhibition space. The backend server database analyzes those codes and transforms the codes into scripts which the server PC can identify. Based on those scripts, the server starts to activate the devices on Layer 3 through the RF device. For example, the projector may project some texts and images to welcome the user. The air conditioning is activated. The yellow light turns on. The LED in the part of the exhibition area sparks to attract the user s attention. This is so because of the codes recorded in the RFID tag s grid. At the same time, the user uses PDA to connect to server PC by Wireless LAN for the sake of synchronous information to get the scenario supported by the server in the exhibition space (synchronous information of Layer 3). The processes of scenario consist of three parts: (i) Receiving and analyzing data (ii) Computing processing program (iii) Visualizing the result of computing. The PDA only needs to synchronize with the server to get the visual result of the scenario. The PDA needs no computing or pre-loads of any programmes. The visual scenario supported by the server shows some hints to the user. By reading those hints, the user knows how to interact with the exhibition space further. In the process of interaction, the visual scenario may suggest to the user to pick up the related model or go through the floor boards for further interaction. There are some sensors embedded for the sake of detecting the user s action. Once those sensors detect the user s action, they convey some signals to the server. After the backend database analysis, the exhibition shows some virtual information like animation corresponding to the user s action. At the same time, the user can request the server to send the website of the virtual information to save in the PDA. When the user finishes the interactive scenario, the user can modify the RFID tag via the RFID Writer device to save his experience (Tag Database of Layer 2 Record). Therefore, the personal experience is recorded and accumulated continuously by PDA. 5. Conclusion This paper describes how the personal mobile devices help the user to extend his digital boundary and get personal service in an interactive space. The interaction occurs between users and spaces. In the future, we attempt to extend the domain to study the connecting of two or more spaces by the personal mobile devices when the user takes the personal mobile devices from one space to others. The personal information should follow the user flowing from one place to another. The spaces
PERSONAL MOBILE DEVICE FOR SITUATED INTERACTION 387 work synchronously or asynchronously to exchange users information by interacting with the personal mobile devices. Finally, we could construct a ubiquitous personal database by the personal mobile devices.