Talks on Internet of Things Day 2012 - Abstracts and Bios

Why a consumer-oriented Internet of Things centre in Sweden? Kristina Höök

Around the globe, we can see a shift towards Internet of Things interactions (*). Companies and research centres focus mainly on utility applications, such as SmartGrids (distribution of electricity in the networks), dealing with traffic in cities, or M2M-communication to solve problems of automation. There are visions like China's intelligent cities, IBM’s vision of a Smarter Planet, Ericsson's focus on 50 billion connected devices, Berkeley's Mobile Millennium, and many, many other utility-oriented vision statements.

An area where we do not see as strong, coherent visions is in consumer-oriented applications: play, games, social media, sports, health, wellness, and recreation. But from the past, we know that entertainment - like computer games - have been important drivers behind technological innovations and dissemination. We already see many applications that combine sensors and actuators interacting directly with end-users, connecting to the cloud and cloud services, opening a whole space of possibilities for consumer-oriented applications: Kinect tracks your bodily movements, there are accelerometers integrating in shoes from Nike, FitBits from Philips collecting movement, pulse meters from Polar check your pulse, Runkeeper keeps track of your jogging. As these applications start thriving on the data generated by thousands of users, we truly shift into Internet of Things for consumers. This begs the question: what are the desirable consumer-oriented Internet of Things applications we should be building?

(*) In short, we define Internet of Things as the technology that makes it possible to place sensors and actuators on things and people and connect them to the net. This in turns generates massive amounts of data that can be turned into added value in the services.

Kristina Höök is a professor in Human-Machine Interaction at Stockholm University and lab manager at SICS. She started the Mobile Life centre in 2007 - a centre that has now grown into being 50 researchers, working in close contact with industrial partners such as Microsoft Research, Ericsson, Nokia, TeliaSonera and Stockholm City. Her research focuses on bodily and emotional interaction. She has published in high-rated venues such as ACM SIGCHI, DIS, NordiCHI, ToCHI, IJHCS, and the Royal Society in the U.K.

China Internet of Things Plan 2011-2015, Bu Fanjin

As the core of the new generation information technology industry, the mobile Internet is becoming an important force of promoting China’s economic development. According to statistics, China’s mobile Internet users reached 600 million, and it is showing rapid growth. Advantages of a large population and the background of the current economic development mode, transformation provides a huge development space for China’s mobile Internet industry. As a new industry area, we face many challenges, both technical and organizational.

Bu Fanjin, is the deputy Chief Engineer of CEST (China Electronics Standardization Institute), and the main initiator and author of Chinese  IoT action plan from 2011 -2015, which is the guide of Chinese Internet of Things,  including Technology, Standard, Industry, Application  and so on.

The Internet of people: integrating Internet of Things technologies is not a technical problem, Mike Kuniavsky

The technologies underlying most current Internet of Things visions are not particularly revolutionary. That of course doesn't mean that the visions are not compelling, just that the challenges in creating these visions have little to do with building new technologies. The real challenge is to identify what people want and need, and how - or if -automatic identification, distributed processing, and pervasive networking can help address those needs and desires. History is littered with failed technological visions. It is only by moving beyond an attachment to technological novelty for its own sake that any agenda for the Internet of Things will help people live happier, more productive lives.

Mike Kuniavsky is a user experience designer focused on ubiquitous computing user experience design. He co-founded Adaptive Path, an influential design firm, and ThingM, a micro-OEM. He wrote 'Observing the User Experience,' a book on user experience research, and "Smart Things," on the design of novel networked computing devices. Both books are widely used as university textbooks. As a consultant he has designed software, hardware, services, events and company cultures.

Living with Internet of Things, Oskar Juhlin

The Mobile Life VinnExcellence Centre provides a view into a future life with digital technology, and an enjoyment society where happiness, pleasure and play are adopted into all aspects. Already, these activities and experiences are fundamental parts of our daily lives and we orient towards them during leisure time and when engaging with other people. At the Centre, we show how enjoyment will be pursued given services that combine mobile technology and internet of things.

Oskar Juhlin is Director at the Mobile Life VinnExcellence Center and Professor at the Department of Computer and System Sciences at Stockholm University. He is Associate Professor (“Docent”) in applied information technology at the IT-university of Göteborg. He has been a research fellow at the Section for Science and Technology Studies at Göteborg University, and researched at the Viktoria Institute. Oskar is most known for his work on the use of mobile technology to enhance social interaction in road traffic, and lately for the research on collaborative social video production, fashion and human animal interaction.

The Internet of Things: Time for Action, Adam Dunkels

We have developed the Internet of Things more than ten years, always with a technical focus. And we succeeded. The open source Contiki operating system, developed and used by developers and companies from all across the world, provides Internet IPv6 connectivity for battery-operated systems. The technology is standardized, interoperable, stable, and efficient. We have now reached the point where the technology is ready to be used on a larger scale: to provide a tremendous value that make our lives better, more fun, and more efficient.

Adam Dunkels  is a Swedish software engineer, researcher and co-founder of the Networked Embedded Systems Group at SICS. His research is mainly focused on networking technology and distributed communication for small embedded devices and wireless sensor networks on the Internet. Adam is best known to the embedded community as the author of the uIP (micro-IP) and lwIP TCP/IP protocol stacks. He is also the creator of protothreads and author of the Contiki operating system. Adam is a founder of the IPSO Alliance, who promotes IP networking for smart objects such as embedded systems and wireless sensors, and author of the alliance's white paper.

Internet of Things Meets the Cloud, Ali Ghodsi, KTH and Berkeley University of California

Internet-enabled devices are omnipresent. These devices collect data about us, lets us check our email, calendars, or just keep in touch with our friends on Facebook or Twitter. Even though there is a surge in Internet-enabled computing devices, the bulk of their computation is happening on the cloud. Evermore computation and data is moving to the cloud, where it can be analyzed, computed, and stored. The datacenter is the new computer.  Yet, there is no software stack that enables us to use it as one computer. This talk will outline what such a stack might look like, and how future applications might benefit from running on it.

Ali Ghodsi got his PhD from KTH-Royal Institute of Technology in 2006. He is visiting researcher at UC Berkeley since 2009 and is on leave as an Assistant Professor from KTH. His research interests include distributed computing in general, and cloud computing specifically.

Finding values in big data, Jan Höller

Jan Höller will talk about the transition of M2M, which can be referred to as "Intranet of Things",towards a true Internet of Things. This transition will bring a new set of challenges and will also require a new set of solution tools. The challenges and new tools will be briefly introduced.

Jan Höller is a Master Researcher at Ericsson Research where he is responsible for Architecture and Strategies on Internet of Things and M2M. He was part of the team that created and established the Ericsson vision of “50 Billion Connected Devices” leading up to the corporate vision of the Networked Society. Jan is also on the Board of Directors of the IPSO Alliance which promotes IP in Smart Objects. He has been with Ericsson since 1989 and held various positions in strategic product management and research management in the IP networking and Services areas.

.NET Gadgeteer: A Platform for Custom Devices, Steven Johnston, Microsoft

.NET Gadgeteer is a new prototyping platform conceived to make it easier to design and build custom electronic devices and systems. It is comprised of three main elements: solder-less plug-and-play modular electronic hardware; object-oriented managed software libraries which are accessible using a high-level programming language and established development environment; and 3D design and construction tools designed to facilitate a great deal of control over the form factor of the resulting electronic devices. Each of these elements is designed to be accessible to a wide range of people with varying backgrounds and levels of experience and at the same time provide enough flexibility to allow experts to build relatively sophisticated devices and complex systems in less time than they are used to.

Steven Johnston, Microsoft and University of SouthHampton, has been kind enough fill in for Steven Hodges, who had to cancel due to illness.

A training app for the Swedish Olympic cross country ski team, by Christer Norström

Winter sports science is growing with the ever-increasing focus on achieving the best results possible. To maximize performance and stay at the top in cross country skiing, research in bio mechanics, physiology, and skiing techniques is required, as well as in equipment such as skis, poles and waxes. In this talk we will present a concept for using sensor technology in the field for improving technique, training methodology and tactical skills in cross country skiing. The concept is built on sampling of inertia sensors, advanced data analysis and visualization. The goal of the project is GOLD medals in the next Olympics in Sochi. The project is a collaboration between Nationellt Vintersportcentrum in Östersund, SICS and KTH.

Christer Norström is the CEO of SICS and professor in Computer Science and Engineering at Mälardalen University, Sweden. Christer is also a cross country skiing trainer for kids and has a deep interest in cross country skiing. Christer leads currently a cross country skiing project applying sensor technology to improve technique and training methodology together with Nationellt Vintersportcentrum in Östersund, SICS and KTH.