Internet of Things 2008

International Conference for Industry and Academia
March 26-28, 2008, Zurich (Switzerland)
Organized by ETH Zurich, University St.Gallen, and MIT

www.internet-of-things-2008.org

The term “Internet of Things” has come to describe a number of technologies and research disciplines that enable the Internet to reach out into the real world of physical objects. Technologies like RFID, short-range wireless communications, real-time localization, and sensor networks are now becoming increasingly common, bringing the Internet of Things into commercial use. They foreshadow an exciting future that closely interlinks the physical world and cyberspace — a development that is highly relevant to researchers, corporations, and individuals.

This conference will be the first that brings leading researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry together to facilitate sharing of applications, research results, and knowledge. The three-day event will feature keynotes from industrial and academic visionaries, technical presentations of cutting-edge research, reports on the user-experience from seasoned practitioners, panel discussions on hot topics, poster sessions summarizing late-breaking results, and hands-on demos of current technology.

Be sure to mark your calendars if you want to know more about:

* Novel services and applications in an Internet of Things (IOT)
* Emerging IOT business models and process changes
* Communication systems and network architectures for the IOT
* Technologies and concepts for embedding sensing, actuation,
communication, and computation into networked things
* Experience reports from the introduction and operation of net-
worked things in areas such as healthcare, logistics & transport
* Security & privacy aspects of IOT infrastructures & applications

Scientific contributions are expected to be published in the Springer LNCS series. We are particularly interested in work addressing real-world implementation and deployment issues. For submission instructions and further information, see the full call at: www.internet-of-things-2008.org/cfp/

Important Dates:

- Sep. 15, 2007 Technical papers submissions deadline
- Oct. 20, 2007 Workshop/tutorials/demo proposals due
- Nov. 15, 2007 Technical papers acceptance notifications
- Nov. 30, 2007 Workshop/tutorials/demo acceptance notification
- Dec. 10, 2007 Technical papers camera-ready version due

A paper by Antti Juustila and Toni Räisänen titled “Atelier Infrastructure for Ubiquitous Computing” has been accepted to the 30th IRIS conference. Antti and Toni are working for IPCity at the University of Oulu, mainly related to work packages 4, 5, 6 and 7. IRIS (Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia) is organized this year in Tampere, Finland (www.iris30.fi).

IRIS represents probably the oldest yearly IS Conference in the world. The IRIS began in 1978 as an annual working seminar for Scandinavian researchers and PhD students. Over the years, there has been an increasing number of participants from outside Scandinavia.

Abstract of the paper:

Ubiquitous computing systems, running on distributed heterogeneous hardware and operating system platfoms, benefit from an overlaying software infrastructure hiding the complexity of the underlying technology form the applications. A software infrastructure for ubiquitous computing should enable ubicomp software components and applications consisting of these components to communicate with eachother over different types of networks, using different types of protocols. We describe an infrastructure called Atelier Infrastructure for ubiquitous computing systems, aiming at supporting the application developers in building distributed ubiquitous applications in heterogeneous hardware, operating system and programming environments. The Atelier Infrastructure addresses the abstraction, programming language independence, extendability and configurability requirements for an ubicomputing infrastructure by a messaging based communication and a distributed micro kernel software architectural pattern.

From Technology Review (05/17/07) Greene, Kate:

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard’s lab in Bristol, U.K., are developing software that will let people use their portable devices as platforms for GPS-enabled games and tours. HP Labs recently launched a site that provides location-based games and city walking tours. The site also offers the opportunity to modify some of the existing games and tours, or even create a new application from scratch. The HP project uses a concept known as augmented reality, or combining physical data with virtual information. As location and guidance technology improves and PDAs become more powerful, numerous augmented reality programs are being developed. Nokia is working on a project that will help people navigate new areas. The user simply has to take a picture of a landmark, and the program uses GPS coordinates to create a hyperlink with the image. Research manager for HP’s project Phil Stenton says this type of technology will be useful for such things as entertaining out-of-town guests during work hours. University of Bristol computer science professor Cliff Randal says HP is making an important contribution to this type of research. However, not everyone is completely impressed with HP’s initial offering. Georgia Institute of Technology computing professor Blair McIntyre, who has developed similar software for local tours, says HP is not creating a truly immersive augmented-reality experience. Stenton admits that the program has some limitations, but notes that future versions could include software for working with Bluetooth wireless devices, infrared sensor data, in-phone accelerometers, and possibly even heart-rate monitors. Stenton believes that future generations of this technology will allow people to create programs such as exercise routines that can be shared with friends.

Click here to view full article: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18746/

The Virtual 2007: call for papers
Deadline for abstracts; May 15th.

The research programme Man Medium Machine [M3] and the School of Communication, Technology & Design at Soedertoern university college, invites to a three-day conference on the theme “The Virtual: interaction”.

The conference will be held at Almasa conference centre, in the archipelago of Haninge, south of Stockholm.

The theme of this year’s “The Virtual” conference is interaction. ‘Interaction’ is naturally at the core of many researchers strive to understand people’s use and engagement with information technology. ‘Interaction’ also attempts to capture the interdisciplinary focus that the conference has developed in previous years. The conference seeks to create a meeting space for research that spans from interaction design and HCI to social and humanistic perspectives on technology. ‘Interaction’ is also about the relation between people and how they are affected by digital media, their living situation, and so on.

We hope to attract researchers that like to involve in a discussion of how these two fields of research may enrich each other. The particular themes of this years conference include, but are not limited to:

- technology for the experience of nature
- the body and/in information technology
- art, body and design
- new forms for media production
- amateurs, end-users, and hobbyists as digital media producers
- games that transcend physical and virtual boundaries
- novel methodologies and approaches in interaction design practice
- consumer and user participation in media and storytelling
- sketching of interactive behaviour
- expressions of ideology in design and digital technologies
- gender and intersectionalist studies of interaction practices
- the construction of identity, gender, normality, etc., in virtual communities
- the interaction between online and offline subjectivites, actions, identities, etc.

Keynotes
Jon Hindmarsh http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/mgmt/staff/jonhindmarsh.html
Senior Lecturer in Work Practice and Technology King’s College, London

Dates to remember
May 15th - deadline for abstracts.
June 15th - notification on acceptance for paper presentation.
August 15th - last day for paper submission and payment of conference fee.

http://m3.sh.se/virtual2006.

From Guardian Unlimited (UK; 05/10/07; Fitzpatrick, Michael)

An experiment in ubiquitous computing is being undertaken in Tokyo to address the problems inherent in a bustling metropolis that has no street names. “Just as we built up roads, the next step in civilization is to build a total information network that will form part of the fabric of things around us,” says Tokyo University professor Ken Sakamura, who is leading the Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project to provide an interactive landscape that aids people in their everyday dealings. The Japanese government is investing in the project, whose potential advantages include better guidance for the visually impaired, interactive guidance for tourists, and navigation around hostile areas for foreign journalists and salarymen. The system enables total user control through a combination of electronically tagged objects–never people–and handheld communication devices that are read/write only and thus do not expose private information. Given the system’s massive infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, the participation of commerce in the enterprise is vital, according to Sakamura. A pilot project revealed technical and security challenges, including cross-interference from outlawed radio transmitters and problems with the prototype reader; Sakamura says the mobile phone will eventually assume the role of reader, via the employment of a remote server. He envisions a world in which microcomputers that provide people with location-specific information are embedded in all physical objects. “They will operate in a concerted manner, processing, exchanging information with each other within the ubiquitous computing architecture,” he explains.

After the first year of this project, the need for computer vision-based user interfaces was identified which should include technology for computer-based interaction with physical maps and map/model-based tracking. The project is looking for an additional partner with outstanding computer vision and augmented reality expertise who is able to develop core technology in these directions. The required technologies are summarized as follows:

1. Augmenting paper maps: for urban planning situations, paper maps are appropriate because they provide a high-resolution, yet large-scale view of the environment. However, these maps lack dynamical information such as locations of moving vehicles or simulation results. An augmented map should be developed which combines both static information on physical maps and dynamical information using projector-based augmentation information.

2. Handheld map tracking: similar to the augmented paper maps, a portable map tracking algorithm should be developed which allows augmentation on handheld devices rather than direct augmentation on physical maps.

3. Model-based outdoor tracking: we are looking for robust model-based outdoor tracking algorithms which are complementary to GPS and INS tracking. Based on rapid acquisition techniques of 3D models of the environment, robust tracking should be developed which runs on handheld devices (i.e. ultra-mobile PCs, smartphones).

For more information, see this (pdf).
There is also a Guide for proposers here (pdf).

Peach First Summer School. Santorini, GREECE - July 4/5/6th 2007

Are you a PRESENCE junior RESEARCHER (industry or Academic), Or presence PhD student? Would you like to attend the first Peach Summer School!

Registration opened until APRIL 20th 2007! Peach has money to support your travel and logistic expenses!

Summer School title: “Towards Human Machine Confluence - Presence Technologies and Foundations”.

The Peach Summer School will have morning lectures, in which Presence experts will share with the students Presence technologies, measurement and Foundations, and working group afternoons, where Presence measurements and applications demos will be provided. Finally each day will have a poster session where students will present their work to the attendees and experts.

http://school.peachbit.org

BEING THERE, BUT NOT, WITH NEVEJAN (Doors of Perception Report April 2)
Doors’ lifelong friend and collaborator Caroline Nevejan has completed the dissertation for her PhD on “presence and the design of trust”. Her timing could hardly be better. As George Monbiot so inconveniently demonstrates in “Heat”, each passenger on a return flight from London to New York produces roughly 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. “There is no technofix to the disastrous impact of air travel on the environment…the only answer is to ground most of the aeroplanes flying today” concludes cheerful George. So Nevejan’s topic, the design of presence in technologically mediated environments, moves centre stage.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~nevejan/presence/
http://www.being-here.net/

MAPPING THE NECKLACE (Doors of Perception Report April 2)
Can you roam a park which doesn’t, as such, exist? How do you map something ephemeral like a memory, or a noise? In the City of Durham, the Necklace Park has opened for business - virtually. On May 5-7, you are invited to join spies, geeks, performers and other lone rangers to track, create, and compose your own park along a12 mile stretch of the River Wear with its 1,000 years of river-linked experience.
http://www.mapping-the-necklace.org.uk/

SNOUT - PARTICIPATORY SENSING (Doors of Perception Report April 2)
In next week’s Snout ‘participatory sensing carnival’ in London, artists, producers, performers and computer programmers demonstrate how to create wearable technologies, from scavenged media, in order to map the invisible gases that affect our everyday environment. The project also explores how communities can use this visual evidence to participate in or initiate local action. The performance will show in action two prototype Snout sensor ‘wearables’ based on traditional carnival costumes. Venue: Cargo, 83 Rivington St, Kingsland Viaduct, London, EC2A 3AY, Tuesday 10 April.
http://www.iniva.org

FLASHMOB - a mailing list to discuss and convene flashmob and related place-specific performative activities to inform performance research (relates to events in the city). To join the list, see here: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/FLASHMOB.

“In modern usage, flash mob describes a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disperse. They are usually organized with the help of the Internet or other communications networks.” Wikipedia

For more information on flashmob, see eg. these links:
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob
-http://flashmob.com/