ISA 2013 workshop report: a report on the Fifth International Workshop on Indoor Spatial Awareness

Abstract

In our increasingly urbanized world, the World's population spends more and more time indoors. Indoor environments become our new natural habitat, and we conduct more and more activities enclosed by walls, moving vertically rather then horizontally, and without direct access to sunlight. Our daily activities are assisted by a range of sensors and human-machine interfaces that assist our senses and facilitate the transition between indoor and outdoor environments. The combination of the unnatural indoor environments, novel technologies augmenting our interaction, and the ubiquitous connection to the Internet results in an entirely new ecosystem with particular challenges to our spatial abilities, spatial interactions (between humans, machines and the built environment) and spatial needs. The series of ACM Workshops on Indoor Spatial Awareness addresses these challenges and explores the cognitive and semantic challenges, positioning and data processing requirements and technological innovations needed to facilitate the smooth transition to this ecosystem.