Building Intelligent Environments with Smart-Its
At SIGGRAPH 2003 Emerging Technologies

The Smart-Its project is interested in a far-reaching vision of computation embedded in the world. To communicate this vision to a larger audience, we created a demonstration proposal for the Emerging Technologies section of the SIGGRAPH 2003 conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in San Diego, USA. This year, Emerging Technologies recieved over 120 submissons. 21 of those were chosen for exhibition at the conference, and Building Intelligent Environments with Smart-Its was one of them.

SIGGRAPH 2003 had over 24.000 visitors, and the Emerging Technologies was one of the main attractions. Thousands of people attended the Smart-Its demo and talked to the exhbitions team, composed of people from Viktoria Institute, Lancaster University, ETH Zurich and Teco.

The exhibition

There were three main components included in the exhibition:

A demonstration of proactive furniture assembly was constructed by the Perceptual Computing and Computer Vision Group at ETH Zurich

An intelligent environment based on load sensing was constructed by the Ubicomp Group at Lancaster University

Finally, the Smart-Its platform and technology was demonstrated by Teco, University of Karlsruhe.

Below are a number of clickable images that show parts of the exhibition in more detail. For more technical information, refer to the presentation slides.

Pro-Active Furniture Assembly

In the furniture assembly demo, the various pieces of a flat-pack piece of furniture were equipped with Smart-Its sensors and LED lights.

The sensors detect the actions of the user and the current stage in the assembly.

The LEDs guide the user to the correct next action; green lights means that the action is correct, whereas red lights indicate that  something is wrong.

Click here to see the furniture assembly demo in action! (13 MB Quicktime)

Intelligent Environments with Load Sensing

The intelligent environments demo showed a number of objects equipped with Smart-Its: A table with load sensing in each leg, four chairs with pressure sensors under the seat, and a jug and two glasses with pressure sensors at the bottom.

Each of the objects broadcast information about their current state. By combining the information, it is possible to re-create the state of the entire environment: where each object is on the table, if someone is sitting in a chair, and so on. We can even find out if a glass is empty or full, or if a person is sitting at the front or back of the seat!

Finally, a server collects all the information and projects a view of the current state of the environment on a screen above the table. (Note that the silver vase is not shown - it was not part of our intelligent environment but decoration added by the SIGGRAPH staff!)

Presentation

For the first time at this SIGGRAPH, Emerging Technologies contributors were given the opportunity to present their work in a talk. We talked about the philosphy behind Smart-Its, the various versions of the hardware, and the technical details behind the Emerging Technologies exhibition.

Click here to view the slides from the Smart-Its presentation

Media coverage

A number of magazines, radio shows and television programs covered the Emerging Technologies exhibition in general and Smart-Its in particular. Here is a representative selection.

Smart Environments (scroll down the page!)
Computer Graphics World, July 2003

Emerging Technologies Display at SIGGRAPH Raises the Bar for Researchers Working in Real-Time Interactivity.
Digital Content Creation, July 18, 2003

The mother of invention: San Diego site of convention for cutting-edge technology
The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 27, 2003

Siggraph researchers push interactive envelope
EE Times, July 28, 2003

Graphics conference plays up interaction
ZDNet, July 30, 2003

The Age of Automation
ZDNet Australia, August 1, 2003

Go Digital
BBC World Service, August 11, 2003
Click here to see streaming video of the show!

Smart chips making daily life easier
BBC News, August 13, 2003

More information

The official SIGGRAPH documentation included:

Presentation of the Smart-Its project in the SIGGRAPH 2003 advance program and web site
1-page abstract published in conference DVD and CD-ROM
Smart-Its overview movie published in conference DVD (13,9 MB Quicktime)

A Special Issue of IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications on SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies was published in January 2004. It contained the following article:

Lars Erik Holmquist, Hans-Werner Gellersen, Gerd Kortuem, Albrecht Schmidt, Martin Strohbach, Stavros Antifakos, Florian Michahelles, Bernt Schiele, Michael Beigl, Ramia Mazé: Building Intelligent Environments with Smart-Its. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, January/February 2004, pp 56-64.

Several papers have been published that describe technical elements of the SIGGRAPH exhibition in more detail:

A Schmidt, K Van Laerhoven, M Strohbach, A Friday and HW Gellersen: Context Acquistion based on Load Sensing. In Proceedings of Ubicomp 2002, G. Boriello and L.E. Holmquist (Eds). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 2498, ISBN 3-540-44267-7; Springer Verlag, Göteborg, Sweden. September 2002, pp. 333 - 350.

Stavros Antifakos, Florian Michahelles, and Bernt Schiele: Proactive Instructions for Furniture Assembly. In Proceedings of Ubicomp 2002, G. Boriello and L.E. Holmquist (Eds). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 2498, ISBN 3-540-44267-7; Springer Verlag, Göteborg, Sweden. September 2002, pp. 351 - 360.

Do-it-yourself Smart-It

Information on how to build your own Smart-Its from standard components is available from the Lancaster Ubicomp Group's DIY Smart-Its page.

Behind the scenes

Finally, here are a few behind-the-scenes pictures from building the Smart-Its exhibition...

Where is pro-active furniture assembly when you really need it?!

The team, relaxing after a job well done! Left to right: Jani Boutellier, Michael Beigl, Martin Strohbach, Gerd Kortuem, Lars Erik Holmquist, Nicky Kern, Florian Michahelles and Timo Ahonen. (Tobias Zimmer and Bernt Schiele are missing from the picture)

Credits

The original SIGGRAPH 2003 proposal Building Intelligent Environments With Smart-Its was created by:

Lars Erik Holmquist, Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute
Stavros Antifakos, Florian Michahelles and Bernt Schiele, Perceptual Computing and Computer Vision Group, ETH Zurich
Hans-Werner Gellersen, Albrecht Schmid and Martin Strohbach, Ubicomp Group, Lancaster University
Michael Beigl, Teco, University of Karlsruhe

The Smart-Its team at SIGGRAPH 2003 Emerging Technologies consisted of:

We wish to thank the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies chair Josh Strickon, the E-Tech jury, and all the amazing volunteers and professionals who helped us set up and run the Smart-Its exhibition at SIGGRAPH 2003!

Smart-Its is a collaboration of Lancaster University, ETH Zurich, University of Karlsruhe, Interactive Institute and VTT. The project is part of the European initiative The Disappearing Computer, and funded in part by the Commission of the European Union, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences REsearch Council, and the Swiss Federal Office for Eductaion and Science.

This web page and most photos by Lars Erik Holmquist, August 2003.