Smart Artifacts Research Articles

Conception of Smartness: A Design Research on User Experience of Smart Artifacts

Conception of Smartness: A Design Research on User Experience of Smart Artifacts

SL: A Reference Smartness Level Scale for Smart Artifacts

During the last two decades, many products, research projects and prototypes were announced with different characteristics and capabilities, all adopting the “smart” qualifier word. If a smartness property could not be defined simply as true or false, defining a suitable range was not an easy task. This issue led to the proposal of some classification models, frameworks and taxonomies for project classifications, but none of them provide a clear and pragmatic smartness scale able to classify smart artifacts and serve as a reference. This paper aims to propose a smartness scale to help research and non-research communities to better quantify and easily understand the features and autonomy of smart artifacts. The proposed smartness scale considers the main function of physical-device components in smart systems. The provided smartness scale is based on a uni-dimensional typology that defines 12 different smartness levels, created based on our definition of “smart artifact” and by following an evolutionary set of capabilities ranging from traceable-only and sensing-capable artifacts to autonomous, adaptable and self-driven artifacts. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed smartness scale, an analytic model was defined and applied to several research- and market-based artifacts tagged as smart in order to extract their smartness levels.

Awareness and Education of Medical Students toward Artificial Intelligence and Radiology

Abstract Context: Artificial intelligence (AI) is focused on understanding the essence of human intelligence and developing smart artifacts that can perform the tasks that intelligence is said to entail when performed by humans. Aims: The aim of the study was to understand medical students views, understanding and level of confidence in working on AI and explore if AI influences their career intentions with specific regard to radiology. Settings and Design: 401 medical students of two medical colleges were included. Subjects and Methods: Four and one medical students of two medical colleges were included to complete an anonymous electronic survey consisting of Likert and dichotomous questions. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical analysis was performed with simple descriptive statistics in frequency and percentages. Results: In this study, 89.11% was the response rate of participants and majority (30.9%) of medical students strongly agreed about the awareness of AI. Nearly 36.3% of the medical students disagreed that they were less likely to consider a career in radiology due to AI. Around 29% of medical students strongly agreed for the scope of integration of AI in medical education of India. Conclusions: Medical students recognize the significance of AI and are eager to get involved. AI medical college curriculum should be broadened and upgraded. Students must be provided with practical use cases and drawbacks of AI so that they may not feel discouraged from pursuing radiology.

High-functioning autistic children programming robotic behaviour

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the ability of high-functioning autistic (HFA) children to programme robotic behaviour and sought to elucidate how they describe and construct a robot’s behaviour using iconic programming software.Design/methodology/approachThe robotic learning environment is based on the iPad, an iconic programming app (KinderBot), and EV3. Two case studies, of A. and N., both HFA children of average age 10.5, are the focus of this research.FindingsThe research revealed how the participants succeeded in programming the behaviour of an “other” at different programming complexity levels (from simple action to combinations of states of two binary sensors and rule with subroutine). A transformation from procedural to declarative description was also found.Practical implicationsThis research on the ability of HFA children to programme robotic behaviour yielded results that can be implemented in K-12 education. Furthermore, learning to programme robots and understand how robotic technologies work may help HFA children to better understand other technology in their environment.Originality/valueIn this research, the authors present an innovative approach that for the first time enables HFA children to “design” the behaviour of smart artefacts to use their sensors to adapt in accordance with the environment. For most HFA children, this would be the first opportunity to “design” the behaviour of the other, as opposed to oneself, since in most of their experience they have been largely controlled by another person.

Smart product design for automotive systems

Automobiles evolved from primarily mechanical to electro-mechanical, or mechatronic, vehicles. For example, carburetors have been replaced by fuel injection and air-fuel ratio control, leading to order of magnitude improvements in fuel economy and emissions. Mechatronic systems are pervasive in modern automobiles and represent a synergistic integration of mechanics, electronics and computer science. They are smart systems, whose design is more challenging than the separate design of their mechanical, electronic and computer/control components. In this review paper, two recent methods for the design of mechatronic components are summarized and their applications to problems in automotive control are highlighted. First, the combined design, or co-design, of a smart artifact and its controller is considered. It is shown that the combined design of an artifact and its controller can lead to improved performance compared to sequential design. The coupling between the artifact and controller design problems is quantified, and methods for co-design are presented. The control proxy function method, which provides ease of design as in the sequential approach and approximates the performance of the co-design approach, is highlighted with application to the design of a passive/active automotive suspension. Second, the design for component swapping modularity (CSM) of a distributed controller for a smart product is discussed. CSM is realized by employing distributed controllers residing in networked smart components, with bidirectional communication over the network. Approaches to CSM design are presented, as well as applications of the method to a variable-cam-timing engine, and to enable battery swapping in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.

Automatons, sales-floor control and the constitution of authority

Workplace authority in contemporary contexts is increasingly being constituted through online automatons, internet platforms whose logic is diametrically opposed to the notion of hierarchical knowledge. They govern the organization of work and derive legitimacy from three principles: (1) the streaming of information into a network composed of all workers; (2) the transparency of the information and measurements they provide to workers; and (3) their automatic self-regulation, which obscures the role of management in their design. Via interviews and on-site observation in a large computer chain store, I examined how one automaton controls workers through a complex system of sales contests. To lure workers into active engagement with the automaton, management offers hefty prizes to contest winners and also strives to legitimate the automaton’s operation by presenting the contests as fair and just. Through the behavioural scripts inscribed into it, the automaton fosters belief in markets as efficient means of resource allocation and promotes self-interested behaviour and arm’s-length social ties. Smart artefacts like this automaton, which foster belief and generate authority through workers’ prescribed engagement with them, are, I argue, emerging as effective managerial tools in a variety of work contexts, part of a pattern of increasing automation of workplace authority.

The reappearing tool: transparency, smart technology, and the extended mind

Some thinkers have claimed that expert performance with technology is characterized by a kind of disappearance of that technology from conscious experience, that is, by the transparency of the tools and equipment through which we sense and manipulate the world. This is a claim that may be traced to phenomenological philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, but it has been influential in user interface design where the transparency of technology has often been adopted as a mark of good design. Moreover, in the philosophy of cognitive science, such transparency has been advanced as necessary for extended cognition (the situation in which the technology with which we couple genuinely counts as a constitutive part of our cognitive machinery, along with our brains). By reflecting on concrete examples of our contemporary engagement with technology, I shall argue that the epistemic challenges posed by smart artefacts (those that come equipped with artificial-intelligence-based applications) should prompt a reassessment of the drive for transparency in the design of some cases of technology-involving cognition. This has consequences for the place of extended minds in the contemporary technological context.

Hyperhistory, the emergence of the MASs, and the design of infraethics

The Copernican revolution displaced us from the center of the universe. The Darwinian revolution displaced us from the center of the biological kingdom. And the Freudian revolution displaced us from the center of our mental lives. Today, Computer Science and digital ICTs are causing a fourth revolution, radically changing once again our conception of who we are and our “exceptional centrality.” We are not at the center of the infosphere. We are not standalone entities, but rather interconnected informational agents, sharing with other biological agents and smart artifacts a global environment ultimately made of information. Having changed our views about ourselves and our world, are ICTs going to enable and empower us, or constrain us? This paper argues that the answer lies in an ecological and ethical approach to natural and artificial realities. It posits that we must put the “e” in an environmentalism that can deal successfully with the new issues caused by the fourth revolution

Extending MAM5 Meta-Model and JaCalIV E Framework to Integrate Smart Devices from Real Environments.

This paper presents the extension of a meta-model (MAM5) and a framework based on the model (JaCalIVE) for developing intelligent virtual environments. The goal of this extension is to develop augmented mirror worlds that represent a real and virtual world coupled, so that the virtual world not only reflects the real one, but also complements it. A new component called a smart resource artifact, that enables modelling and developing devices to access the real physical world, and a human in the loop agent to place a human in the system have been included in the meta-model and framework. The proposed extension of MAM5 has been tested by simulating a light control system where agents can access both virtual and real sensor/actuators through the smart resources developed. The results show that the use of real environment interactive elements (smart resource artifacts) in agent-based simulations allows to minimize the error between simulated and real system.

Implementing Smart Factory of Industrie 4.0: An Outlook

With the application of Internet of Things and services to manufacturing, the fourth stage of industrialization, referred to as Industrie 4.0, is believed to be approaching. For Industrie 4.0 to come true, it is essential to implement the horizontal integration of inter-corporation value network, the end-to-end integration of engineering value chain, and the vertical integration of factory inside. In this paper, we focus on the vertical integration to implement flexible and reconfigurable smart factory. We first propose a brief framework that incorporates industrial wireless networks, cloud, and fixed or mobile terminals with smart artifacts such as machines, products, and conveyors. Then, we elaborate the operational mechanism from the perspective of control engineering, that is, the smart artifacts form a self-organized system which is assisted with the feedback and coordination blocks that are implemented on the cloud and based on the big data analytics. In addition, we outline the main technical features and beneficial outcomes and present a detailed design scheme. We conclude that the smart factory of Industrie 4.0 is achievable by extensively applying the existing enabling technologies while actively coping with the technical challenges.

Introducing Virtuality to Enhance Game-related Physical Artifacts

Various smart artifacts that embed computers and sensors have been developed. Some of these artifacts include extra hardware components to enhance their functionalities, but the components are always real, not virtual. Ubiquitous computing technologies for introducing virtuality offer the possibility of adding virtual components to physical artifacts, but this possibility has not been sufficiently exploited in previous research. In this paper, we present the Augmented Trading Card Game (Augmented TCG) as a case study for enhancing physical artifacts by integrating virtuality. Augmented TCG monitors the opponent’s movement using MS Kinect and maps them onto a virtual character representing the opponent rather than directly displaying the real opponent’s actions. An image of the opponent’s card is also projected onto the table in front of the player. Thus, the player feels as if he/she is playing face-to-face with the opponent. Moreover virtuality allows more information to be displayed during game play. We conducted several experiments to examine how players feel while playing a game,, and we present Augmented TCG experiences as a case study in integrating virtuality into physical artifacts.

Hybrid gaming environments: keeping the human in the loop within the Internet of things

This paper discusses the issues and realization of hybrid gaming environments that allow human users to utilize ubiquitous computing technology in order to provide novel interaction experiences. The paper first discusses recent trends in human–computer interaction and the emerging application domain of hybrid gaming that is realized with tangible user interfaces and smart artifacts. Then, the field of hybrid games is discussed and analyzed in more detail through the thorough discussion of a conceptual model for hybrid games. Finally, the concrete realization of the hybrid game “In search for the Amulet” is presented as an example for the emerging field of hybrid games.

Universal access to awareness information: using smart artefacts to mediate awareness in distributed teams

This paper presents a set of design recommendations for team awareness systems based on fundamental social and technical requirements. The work was motivated by recurring usability problems identified in evaluations of state-of-the-art awareness systems. Based on these findings, it is argued that the limited success of existing systems is mostly caused by conceptual shortcomings, which can be overcome by adhering to a set of design recommendations elaborated in this paper. To demonstrate the validity of this argumentation, the development and evaluation of an ambient awareness system is illustrated.

Pareto set analysis: local measures of objective coupling in multiobjective design optimization

Multiobjective optimization focuses on the explicit trade-offs between competing criteria. A particular case is the study of combined optimal design and optimal control, or co-design, of smart artifacts where the artifact design and controller design objectives compete. In the system-level co-design problem, the objective is often the weighted sum of these two objectives. A frequently referenced practice is to solve co-design problems in a sequential manner: design first, control next. The success of this approach depends on the form of coupling between the two subproblems. In this paper, the coupling vector derived for a system problem with unidirectional coupling is shown to be related to the alignment of competing objectives, as measured by the polar cone of objective gradients, in the bi-objective programming formulation. Further, it is shown that a measure describing the case where a range of objective weighting values for the system objective result in identical design solutions can be normalized when the system problem is considered as a bi-objective one. Changes to the mathematical structure and input parameter values of a bi-objective programming problem can lead to changes in the shape of the attainable set and its Pareto boundary. We illustrate the link between the coupling and alignment measures and the outcomes of the Pareto set. Systematically studying changes to coupling and alignment measures due to changes to the multiobjective formulation can yield deeper insights into the system-level design problem. Two examples illustrate these results.

The User's Touch

The home of the future will be able to offer comfortable, safe and supportive home spaces. Smart systems and artefacts will know users’ routines and anticipate their needs. While the vision of the home of the future is promissory, it is the user who supports UbiComp systems, but certain technical and social challenges must be addressed before the smart home can become a reality. Unexpected human behavior makes it difficult to identify and predict domestic activity. Thus, if a system is not reliable or trusted enough to take actions on behalf of users, context-aware designs must allow for user participation to support the systems’ performance. In this article, the authors use their experience designing a context-aware system to illustrate how the users’ “touch”, that is, their active involvement, is still a requirement for today’s UbiComp designs. The configurable system described supports parents awareness of their children’s activity. Responses from a user study indicate that parents engaged positively with this kind of mediated, rather than proactive, computing-based support.

LOWERING THE BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN-ARTIFACT INTERACTION SYSTEMS

The development of wireless sensor networks enables sensors to be embedded in everyday artifacts to create smart artifacts. Smart artifacts can deliver a variety of context-aware human-centric services. However, current systems mainly rely on ad-hoc definitions of context information, which makes it difficult to achieve knowledge sharing, reuse and reasoning. Moreover, smart-artifact applications developed by experts sometimes cannot meet end users' needs, but current systems do not allow end users to exert control over their smart homes. To avoid having to start from scratch when building new smart-artifact systems, and to empower experienced computer users to participate in the control of their smart environments, we developed a new knowledge infrastructure called Sixth-Sense. Unlike previous systems, Sixth-Sense builds on semantic web technologies. It defines a normalized ontology (called SS-ONT) using OWL. SS-ONT is focused on modeling general human-artifact interactions, and reflects several vital aspects of these interactions, such as artifact property and status description, and artifact-artifact and artifact-human relationships. Using this ontology model as a basis, we address some of the principles involved in performing context querying and context reasoning. An initial user study with 14 experienced computer users was conducted to determine the usability of our system. We also evaluate the runtime performance of our system and discuss some of the lessons learnt from the evaluation.

Home‐Explorer: Ontology‐Based Physical Artifact Search and Hidden Object Detection System

A new system named Home‐Explorer that searches and finds physical artifacts in a smart indoor environment is proposed. The view on which it is based is artifact‐centered and uses sensors attached to the everyday artifacts (called smart objects) in the real world. This paper makes two main contributions: First, it addresses, the robustness of the embedded sensors, which is seldom discussed in previous smart artifact research. Because sensors may sometimes be broken or fail to work under certain conditions, smart objects become hidden ones. However, current systems provide no mechanism to detect and manage objects when this problem occurs. Second, there is no common context infrastructure for building smart artifact systems, which makes it difficult for separately developed applications to interact with each other and uneasy for them to share and reuse knowledge. Unlike previous systems, Home‐Explorer builds on an ontology‐based knowledge infrastructure named Sixth‐Sense, which makes it easy for the system to interact with other applications or agents also based on this ontology. The hidden object problem is also reflected in our ontology, which enables Home‐Explorer to deal with both smart objects and hidden objects. A set of rules for deducing an object′s status or location information and for locating hidden objects are described and evaluated.

Orientation sensing for gesture-based interaction with smart artifacts

Orientation sensing is considered an important means to implement embedded technology enhanced artifacts (often referred to as ‘smart artifacts’), exhibiting embodied means of interaction based on their position, orientation, and the respective dynamics. Considering artifacts subject to manual (or ‘by-hand’) manipulation by the user, we identify hand worn, hand carried and (hand) graspable real world objects as exhibiting different artifact orientation dynamics, justifying an analysis along these three categories. We refer to orientation dynamics as ‘gestures’ in an abstract sense, and present a general framework for orientation sensor based gesture recognition. The framework specification is independent of sensor technology and classification methods, and elaborates an application-independent set of gestures. It enables multi sensor interoperability and it accommodates a variable number of sensors. A core component of the framework is a gesture library that contains gestures from three categories: hand gestures, gestures of artifact held permanently and gestures of artifact that are detached from the hand and are manipulated occasionally. An inertial orientation sensing based gesture detection and recognition system is developed and composed into a gesture-based interaction development framework. The use of this framework is demonstrated with the development of tangible remote controls for a media player, both in hardware and in software.

Designing smart artifacts for smart environments

Smart artifacts promise to enhance the relationships among participants in distributed working groups, maintaining personal mobility while offering opportunities for the collaboration, informal communication, and social awareness that contribute to the synergy and cohesiveness inherent in collocated teams. Two complementary trends have resulted in the creation of smart environments that integrate information, communication, and sensing technologies into everyday objects. We distinguish between two types of smart artifacts: system-oriented, importunate smartness and people-oriented, empowering smartness. The system-oriented and people-oriented approaches represent the end points of a line along which we can position weighted combinations of both types of smartness depending on the application domain. We developed the Hello.Wall, our version of an ambient display, for the Ambient Agoras environment. The Hello.Wall transmits organization-oriented information publicly and information addressed to individuals privately.

Multi-sensor context-awareness in mobile devices and smart artifacts

The use of context in mobile devices is receiving increasing attention in mobile and ubiquitous computing research. In this article we consider how to augment mobile devices with awareness of their...