Ambient intelligence is the vision of a technology that will become invisibly embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and context-sensitive, and autonomous. High-quality information access and personalized content must be available to everybody, anywhere, and at any time. This book addresses ambient intelligence used to support human contacts and accompany an individual's path through the complicated modern world. From the technical standpoint, distributed electronic intelligence is addressed as hardware vanishing into the background. Devices used for ambient intelligence are small, low-power, low weight, and (very importantly) low-cost; they collaborate or interact with each other; and they are redundant and error-tolerant. This means that the failure of one device will not cause failure of the whole system. Since wired connections often do not exist, radio methods will play an important role for data transfer. This book addresses various aspects of ambient intelligence, from applications that are imminent since they use essentially existing technologies, to ambitious ideas whose realization is still far away, due to major unsolved technical challenges.

The following are the proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Human and Machine Perception held in Palermo, Italy, on June 20 -23, 2000, under the auspices of three Institutions: the Cybernetic and Biophysics Group (GNCB) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and the two Inter-Department Centers of Cognitive Sciences of Palermo and Pavia University respectively. A broad spectrum of topics are covered in this series, ranging from computer perception to psychology and physiology of perception. The theme of this workshop on Human and Machine Perception was focused on Thinking, Deciding, and Acting. As in the past editions the final goal has been the analysis and the comparison of biological and artificial solutions. The focus of the lectures has been on presenting the state-of-the-art and outlining open questions. In particular, they sought to stress links, suggesting possible synergies between the different cultural areas. The panel discussion has been conceived as a forum for an open debate, briefly introduced by each panelist, and mainly aimed at deeper investigation of the different approaches to perception and strictly related topics. The panelists were asked to prepare a few statements on hot-points as a guide for discussion. These statements were delivered to the participants together with the final program, for a more qualified discussion.

Wearable Sensing and Intelligent Data Analysis for Respiratory Management highlights the use of wearable sensing and intelligent data analysis algorithms for respiratory function management, offering several potential and substantial clinical benefits. The book allows for the early detection of respiratory exacerbations in patients with chronic respiratory diseases, allowing earlier and, therefore, more effective treatment. As such, the problem of continuous, non-invasive, remote and real-time monitoring of such patients needs increasing attention from the scientific community as these systems have the potential for substantial clinical benefits, promoting P4 medicine (personalized, participative, predictive and preventive). Wearable and portable systems with sensing technology and automated analysis of respiratory sounds and pulmonary images are some of the problems that are the subject of current research efforts, hence this book is an ideal resource on the topics discussed.

This preface tells the story of how Multimodal Usability responds to a special challenge. Chapter 1 describes the goals and structure of this book. The idea of describing how to make multimodal computer systems usable arose in the European Network of Excellence SIMILAR - "Taskforce for cre- ing human-machine interfaces SIMILAR to human-human communication," 2003- 2007, www. similar. cc. SIMILAR brought together people from multimodal signal processing and usability with the aim of creating enabling technologies for new kinds of multimodal systems and demonstrating results in research prototypes. Most of our colleagues in the network were, in fact, busy extracting features and guring out how to demonstrate progress in working interactive systems, while claiming not to have too much of a notion of usability in system development and evaluation. It was proposed that the authors support the usability of the many multimodal pro- types underway by researching and presenting a methodology for building usable multimodal systems. We accepted the challenge, rst and foremost, no doubt, because the formidable team spirit in SIMILAR could make people accept outrageous things. Second, h- ing worked for nearly two decades on making multimodal systems usable, we were curious - curious at the opportunity to try to understand what happens to traditional usability work, that is, work in human-computer interaction centred around tra- tional graphical user interfaces (GUIs), when systems become as multimodal and as advanced in other ways as those we build in research today.

This book explores the role of cognition in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) assessing how the field has developed over the past thirty years and discusses where the field is heading, as we begin to live in increasingly interconnected digital environments. Taking a broad chronological view, the author discusses cognition in relation to areas like make-believe, and appropriation, and places these more recent concepts in the context of traditional thinking about the psychology of HCI. HCI Redux will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in psychology, the cognitive sciences and HCI. It will also be of interest to all readers with a curiosity about our everyday use of technology.

Life-like characters is one of the most exciting technologies for human-computer interface applications today. They convincingly take the roles of virtual presenters, synthetic actors and sales personas, teammates and tutors. A common characteristic underlying their life-likeness or believability as virtual conversational partners is computational models that provide them with affective functions such as synthetic emotions and personalities and implement human interactive behavior. The wide dissemination of life-like characters in multimedia systems, however, will greatly depend on the availability of control languages and tools that facilitate scripting of intelligent conversational behaviour. This book presents the first comprehensive collection of the latest developments in scripting and representation languages for life-like characters, rounded off with an in-depth comparison and synopsis of the major approaches. Introducing toolkits for authoring animated characters further supports the ease of use of this new interface technology.

Life-like characters being a vibrant research area, various applications have been designed and implemented. This book offers coverage of the most successful and promising applications, ranging from product presentation and student training to knowledge integration and interactive gaming. It also discusses the key challenges in the area and provides design guidelines for employing life-like characters.

This book describes the important role of emotion in a hyper-connected society and how product development and manufacture change. It explores how our work and lifestyle may be affected by forthcoming technologies and presents key research on multisensory informatics, one of the most important tools for making the most of emotion. This fourth volume of the Emotional Engineering Series focuses on the human issues relating to Cyber Physical Systems, or Industrie 4.0, and discusses the important role emotion plays in these smart environments. Introducing related works in the field of multisensory research, which provide the basic tools for becoming context- and situation aware in this imminent revolutionary society, it discusses not only the changes in production and product development this new revolution will bring about, but also highlights how emotion plays a crucial role in making us happy in such a connected society and in bringing about harmonization between human and human, between human and machine and, last but not least, in maintaining a good work-life balance.

The focus of this ninth volume is on human/technology issues that arise from the design, development, application, operation, evaluation, and maintenance of advanced systems with regard to training in complex environments. Areas covered include: a user-oriented design analysis of a virtual environment training system, a cognitive task analysis technique for virtual environment training, advanced embedded team training, human centered automation for air traffic control, human performance modelling in system design, and scenario-based training.

This book integrates a wide range of research topics related to and necessary for the development of proactive, smart, computers in the human interaction loop, including the development of audio-visual perceptual components for such environments; the design, implementation and analysis of novel proactive perceptive services supporting humans; the development of software architectures, ontologies and tools necessary for building such environments and services, as well as approaches for the evaluation of such technologies and services.

The book is based on a major European Integrated Project, CHLI (Computers in the Human Interaction Loop), and throws light on the paradigm shift in the area of HCI that rather than humans interactive directly with machines, computers should observe and understand human interaction, and support humans during their work and interaction in an implicit and proactive manner.

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning

Edited by: Vivien Hodgson, Maarten de Laat, David McConnell and Thomas Ryberg

"This book brings together a wealth of new research that opens up the meaning of connectivity as embodied and promised in the term networked learning . Chapters explore how contexts, groups and environments can be connected rather than just learners; how messy, unexpected and emergent connections can be made rather than structured and predefined ones; and how technology connects us to learning and each other, but also shapes our identity. These exciting new perspectives ask us to look again at what we are connecting and to revel in new and emergent possibilities arising from the interplay of social actors, contexts, technologies, and learning."

"Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of British Columbia"

"Despite creating fundamentally new educational economics and greatly increasing access - teaching and learning in networks is a tricky business. These chapters illuminate the complex interactions amongst tools, pedagogy, educational institutions and personal net presences helping us design and redesign our own networks. In the process, they take (or extract) network theory from the practice of real teaching and learning contexts, making this collection an important contribution to Networked Learning."

"Terry Anderson, Athabasca University"

"What kinds of learning can social networking platforms really enable? Digging well beneath the hype, this book provides a timely, incisive analysis of why and how learning emerges (or fails to) in networked spaces. The editors do a fine job in guiding the reader through the rich array of theories and methods for tackling this question, and the diverse contexts in which networked learning is now being studied. This is a book for reflective practitioners as well as academics: the book's close attention to the political, pedagogical and organisational complexity of effective practice, and the lived experience of educators and learners, helps explain why networked learning has such disruptive potential but equally, why it draws resistance from the establishment."

"Simon Buckingham Shum, The Open University"

"The networked learning conference, a biannual institution since 1998, celebrates its 14th year in this volume. Here a range of studies, reflecting networked learning experiments across Europe and other global contexts, show important shifts away from a conservative tradition of e-learning research and unpeel dilemmas of promoting learning as an elusive practice in virtual environments. The authors point towards important futures in online learning research, where notions of knowledge, connectivity and community become increasingly elastic, and engagements slide across material and virtual domains in new practices whose emergence is increasingly difficult to apprehend."

""

"Tara Fenwick University of Stirling."

The chapters in this volume explore new and innovative ways of thinking about the nature of networked learning and its pedagogical values and beliefs. They pose a challenge to us to reflect on what we thought networked learning was 15 year ago, where it is today and where it is likely to be headed.

Each chapter brings a particular perspective to the themes of design, experience and practice of networked learning, the chosen focus of the book. The chapters in the book embrace a wide field of educational areas including those of higher education, informal learning, work-based learning, continuing professional development, academic staff development, and management learning.

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning will prove indispensable reading for researchers, teachers, consultants, and instructional designers in higher and continuing education; for those involved in staff and educational development, and for those studying post graduate qualifications in learning and teaching.

This, the second volume in the Springer Book Series on Researching Networked Learning, is based on a selection of papers presented at the 2012 Networked Learning Conference held in Maastricht, The Netherlands."

This is the first book on brain-computer interfaces (BCI) that aims to explain how these BCI interfaces can be used for artistic goals. Devices that measure changes in brain activity in various regions of our brain are available and they make it possible to investigate how brain activity is related to experiencing and creating art. Brain activity can also be monitored in order to find out about the affective state of a performer or bystander and use this knowledge to create or adapt an interactive multi-sensorial (audio, visual, tactile) piece of art. Making use of the measured affective state is just one of the possible ways to use BCI for artistic expression. We can also stimulate brain activity. It can be evoked externally by exposing our brain to external events, whether they are visual, auditory, or tactile. Knowing about the stimuli and the effect on the brain makes it possible to translate such external stimuli to decisions and commands that help to design, implement, or adapt an artistic performance, or interactive installation. Stimulating brain activity can also be done internally. Brain activity can be voluntarily manipulated and changes can be translated into computer commands to realize an artistic vision. The chapters in this book have been written by researchers in human-computer interaction, brain-computer interaction, neuroscience, psychology and social sciences, often in cooperation with artists using BCI in their work. It is the perfect book for those seeking to learn about brain-computer interfaces used for artistic applications.

This book describes how domain knowledge can be used in the design of interactive systems. It includes discussion of the theories and models of domain, generic domain architectures and construction of system components for specific domains. It draws on research experience from the Information Systems, Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction communities.

Human-System interaction has been and will continue to be of interest to many researchers of various disciplines: engineers, computer scientists, psychologists, and social scientists. The research in Human-System Interaction (HSI) has progressed from the era of using anthropomorphic data to design workspace to the current period which utilizes human and artificial sensors to design sensory-based cooperative workspace. In either of these developments, HSI has been known to be complex. In 1994, we initiated a series of symposiums on Human Interaction with Complex Systems. It was then that various ideas surrounding HSI for today and tomorrow were discussed by many scientists in the related disciplines. As a follow-up, in 1995 the Second Symposium was organized. The objective of this symposium was to attempt to defme a framework, principles, and theories for HSI research. This book is the result of that symposium. The 1995 symposium brought together a number of experts in the area of HSI. The symposium was more focused on expert opinions and testimonies than traditional meetings for technical papers. There were three reasons for that approach.

This book redefines community discovery in the new world of Online Social Networks and Web 2.0 applications, through real-world problems and applications in the context of the Web, pointing out the current and future challenges of the field. Particular emphasis is placed on the issues of community representation, efficiency and scalability, detection of communities in hypergraphs, such as multi-mode and multi-relational networks, characterization of social media communities and online privacy aspects of online communities. User Community Discovery is for computer scientists, data scientists, social scientists and complex systems researchers, as well as students within these disciplines, while the connections to real-world problem settings and applications makes the book appealing for engineers and practitioners in the industry, in particular those interested in the highly attractive fields of data science and big data analytics.

This book explores how our lives and social interactions have become split between two intertwined, but not integrated, realities: the physical and the digital. Our sense of presence in the here and now has become fragmented, and yet earlier design approaches reinforced the problem, rather than leading to improvements. The authors address these issues by laying out a new human computer interaction (HCI) design approach - human-experiential design - rooted in a return to first principles of how people understand the world, both consciously and unconsciously. The application of this approach to the design of blended reality spaces is described in detail. Examples and scenarios of designing them to overcome the problems inherent in a variety of mixed reality settings are provided. Human-Experiential Design of Presence in Everyday Blended Reality will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in interaction design, psychology, HCI and computer application studies, as well as practicing interaction designers and computer professionals. It will also be of interest to communication, media and urban design students, and to all readers with an interest in the technology-mediated future.

This book provides a practical and strategic perspective on IT and cyber security for corporations and other businesses. Leading experts from industry, politics and research discuss the status quo and future prospects of corporate cyber security. They answer questions such as: How much will IT security cost? Who will provide IT security? Can security even be fun? The book claims that digitization will increasingly pervade all areas of the economy, as well as our daily professional and personal lives. It will produce speed, agility and cost efficiency, but also increasing vulnerability in the context of public, corporate and private life. Consequently, cyber security is destined to become the great facilitator of digitization, providing maximum protection for data, networks, data centres and terminal devices.

The volume contains all papers presented at the Working Conference on Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction (EHCI'95), grouped into the topic areas Formal Methods, Tools, Multimedia, Architecture, CSCW, and Design. It includes transcripts of all discussions among the presenters and the conference participants. It further contains the results of several mini-workshops held during the conference on topics like the Human Context, How to make Formal Methods Useful, Rapid Implementation and Development, Usability Testing, CSCW Mini Scenarios.

This book records one of the continuous attempts of the IFIP Working Group 8. 2, studying the interaction of information systems and the organization, to explore and understand the shifting boundaries and dependencies between organizational activities and their computer support. The book marks the result of the IFIP WG 8. 2 conference on "Designing Ubiquitous Information Environments: Socio-Technical Issues and Challenges. " Since its inception in the late 1970s, IFIP WG 8. 2 has sought to understand how computer-based information systems interact and must be designed as an integrated part of the organizational design. At that time, information systems handled repetitive and remote back-office functions and the main concern was work task design for repetitive input tasks and the potential impact of improved information support on organizational decision-making and structure. The focus of the information system design shifted in the 1980s when computers became part of the furniture and moved into the office. Reflecting this significant change, IFIP WG 8. 2 in 1989 organized a conference dedicated to the design and impact of desktop technology in order to examine how organizational processes and the locus of action changed when the computer was moved into the office. Sixteen years later, we are experiencing another significant change. Computers are now becoming part of our body and sensory system and will move out of the traditional office locations and into the wilderness. Again, IFIP WG 8.

This book comprises a variety of breakthroughs and recent advances on Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) intended for both researchers and practitioners. Topics addressed here can be of interest for those people searching for last trends involving such a growing discipline. Important issues concerning this book includes cutti- edge topics such as Semantic Web Interfaces, Natural Language Processing and - bile Interaction, as well as new methodological trends such as Interface-Engineering techniques, User-Centred Design, Usability, Accessibility, Development Meth- ologiesandEmotionalUserInterfaces. Theideabehindthisbookistobringtogether relevant and novel research on diverse interaction paradigms. New trends are gu- anteedaccordingtothedemandingclaimsofbothHCIresearchersandpractitioners, which encourage the explicit arrangement of new industrial and technological topics such as the previously cited Interfaces for the Semantic Web, and Mobile Interfaces, but also Multimodal Interaction, Collaborative Interfaces, End-User Development, Usability and User Interface Engineering. Chapters included in this book comprise a selection of top high-quality papers from Interaccion 2007, which is the most important HCI conference sponsored by AIPO (the Spanish HCI Association). Papers were selected from a ranking - tained through double-blind peer review and later meta-review processes, cons- ering the best evaluated paper from both the review and presentation session. Such a paper selection constitutes only 33% of the papers published in the conference proceedings. We would like to thank the reviewers for their effort in revising the chapters included in this publication, namely Silvia T. Acuna, ~ Sandra Baldasarri, Crescencio Bravo, Cesar A.

Modern society has been transformed by the digital convergence towards a future where technologies embed themselves into the fabric of everyday life. This ongoing merging of social and technological infrastructures provides and necessitates new possibilities to renovate past notions, models and methods of information systems development that accommodates humans as actors within the infrastructure. This shift introduces new possibilities for information systems designers to fulfil more and more everyday functions, and to enhance their value and worth to the user. Reframing Humans in Information Systems Development aims to reframe the phenomenon of human-centered development of information systems by connecting scientific constructs produced within the field of information systems which has recently provided a plethora of multidisciplinary user views, without explicitly defining clear constructs that serve the IS field in particular. IS researchers, practitioners and students would benefit from Reframing Humans in Information Systems Development as the book provides a comprehensive view to various human-centered development methods and approaches. The representatives of the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Collaborative Work will also find this book an excellent resource. A theoretical handbook and collection of practical experiences, are included along with critical discussions of the utilization methods in ISD and their implications with some interconnecting commentary viewpoints.

Computational Models of Mixed-Initiative Interaction brings together research that spans several disciplines related to artificial intelligence, including natural language processing, information retrieval, machine learning, planning, and computer-aided instruction, to account for the role that mixed initiative plays in the design of intelligent systems. The ten contributions address the single issue of how control of an interaction should be managed when abilities needed to solve a problem are distributed among collaborating agents. Managing control of an interaction among humans and computers to gather and assemble knowledge and expertise is a major challenge that must be met to develop machines that effectively collaborate with humans. This is the first collection to specifically address this issue.

Robot manipulation is a great challenge; it encompasses versatility -adaptation to different situations-, autonomy -independent robot operation-, and dependability -for success under modeling or sensing errors. A complete manipulation task involves, first, a suitable grasp or contact configuration, and the subsequent motion required by the task. This monograph presents a unified framework by introducing task-related aspects into the knowledge-based grasp concept, leading to task-oriented grasps. Similarly, grasp-related issues are also considered during the execution of a task, leading to grasp-oriented tasks which is called framework for physical interaction (FPI). The book presents the theoretical framework for the versatile specification of physical interaction tasks, as well as the problem of autonomous planning of these tasks. A further focus is on sensor-based dependable execution combining three different types of sensors: force, vision and tactile. The FPI approach allows to perform a wide range of robot manipulation tasks. All contributions are validated with several experiments using different real robots placed on household environments; for instance, a high-DoF humanoid robot can successfully operate unmodeled mechanisms with widely varying structure in a general way with natural motions. This research was recipient of the European Georges Giralt Award and the Robotdalen Scientific Award Honorary Mention.