WLAB's internal projects and experimental prototypes are mostly related to the following areas of interest:
Mobile Device Management
Mobile "Infotainment"
Mobile Interaction with Physical Objects
Wireless Broadband Access in Remote Areas
MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT
1. Remote Device Management Platform
This is an OSS platform to support remote installation, management and synchronisation of mobile applications. It provides a completely automatic service that requires no end user action. A Web based remote administrator interface is included and an easy integration with common CRM systems as well as Sync4j is also provided. In the current version (SymbianOS-compatible only) connections with mobile devices are established via an "SMS push" mechanism which also allows to bar/disable/reset devices upon theft and/or loss.
2. Trigger-oriented Symbian Applications
We have developed SymbianOS mobile applications to execute "actions" and/or send out customised notifications upon specific events. Incoming voice calls, received texts (via SMS), taken pictures, change of device configuration, even passage through given areas (e.g. no coverage or change of cell coverage areas) can trigger alerts/alarms and/or determine the way information is displayed on the phone depending on context. Some examples:
SMS Banner: texts (via SMS) from a customisable list of senders are displayed on the screen as scrolling messages and can be be clicked on for further views;
Call Assistant: “on phone” answering machine intercepts phone calls and sends automatic and customisable alerts (via SMS) depending on users' context (e.g. “I’m on the bike!”);
SOS Emergency and/or Alarm: automatic texts (via SMS) or voice calls upon emergency and/or theft.
MOBILE "INFOTAINMENT"
1. BIKE SHARING - BONDI WIDGET
How far is the closest bike sharing station from my current position? How many bikes are there? A widget exploiting BONDI API, Google Maps and AJAX. It currently works on the bike sharing services in Rome, but it can be easily extended to support other locations and sharing services (e.g. car-sharing).
This widget provides you with the list of all the ATAC's bike sharing stations in Rome. The list is sorted from the nearest to the farthest station and can be easily browsed. For each station there are real-time information on the available bikes. Furthermore you can visualize your current position and the position of the selected station.
This is a joint work with DIS - Sapienza University of Rome. In particular we wish to thank the widget developers Lorenzo Bergamini, Ugo Colesanti, Anton Fedosov and Luca Filipponi... well done guys!
2. Location-aware Multimodal Sysstem
Mobile phone market is still lacking a satisfactory location technology, i.e. a technology which is accurate, but also economic and easy to be deployed. Nowadays, most of the proposed technologies with good accuracy require substantial technological and financial efforts. Our work shows how the simple and economic Cell-ID location technique can be practically exploited to implement more effective and efficient multimodal location services. In particular, it is possible for a user through a SymbianOS application (and a J2ME one soon) to speak up on her mobile the name of the street where she happens to be and receive on the display a map of the surroundings at a given level of accuracy. Visual maps come together with specific recognition grammars, voice comments and tips. The following features have been explored and implemented so far: Cell-ID location technique; visual and voice sequential interaction; background transparent communication of location on either voice or data channel; use of location information to customise ASR voice recognition grammars with ad hoc algorithms.
A combined use of pervasive short-range wireless infrastructure and traditional web technologies can support enhanced forms of location-aware mobile social networking. This project presents a ubiquitous distributed architecture to provide owners of modern Bluetooth and Java enabled mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, PDAs, flybooks) with a non-intrusive and automatic service to facilitate social connections while in nearby public sites (e.g. bars, pubs, clubs, discos, restaurants). We have designed and developed a system implementing a novel, easy-to-use, transparent and cost effective way to track friends and people of interest in "close enough" public sites. We consider our solution appealing to both users and public sites for a number of reasons. Users should like the fact that they can enjoy a portable application "silently" running in the background which can be easily and asynchronously accessed when desired. It also represents a low-cost solution for end-users and it is not dependent on long-range wireless communication infrastructures (e.g. cellular networks, GPS coverage). On the other hand, owners and managers of public sites could definitely benefit from a greater visibilty and a potential increase of customers due to people's expected higher mobility between sites while joining friends through the automatic tracking service built on our system.
Some related publications 2005 - IADIS WWW/Internet - Enhancing Location-Aware Social Networking through Short-Range Ubiquitous Computing (Stefano Puglia)
4. Mobile Voice Podcasting
We have developed a simple ubiquitous service allowing users on the move to call in and record podcasts with their mobile phone. A VoiceXML server automatically handles voice interaction to receive spoken messages which are recorded in standard audio files (e.g. wav, mp3) and published on a Web page. Users can then access and listen to these podcasts with their favourite browsers.
MOBILE INTERACTION WITH PHYSICAL OBJECTS
1. RFID-based Nutritional Assistance
We have used low cost, high-frequency passive RFID technology (adopting the MIFARE standard) to develop a personal software assistant for out-of-home eating. The tool automatically customises food menus according to personal profiles including allergies, intolerances, dietary patterns, caloric intake, and budget information. As a proof-of-concept, we have created prototypes for two approaches:
A standard enterprise information system integrating RFID lets users scan their own RFID-enabled nutritional card on an RFID reader integrated into the food establishments’ information system to receive a customised menu.
A typical form of RFID-based “augmented paper” uses physical menus tagged with RFID labels. Users can read the labels, which contain information about food composition, with RFID enabled mobile devices. An ad hoc personal application then customises food choices on the basis of configurable personal profiles.
A mutichannel system has been developed to provide detailed and up-to-date extra information about food and drink products (e.g. ethnic/international, typical/local/regional) to enhance the eating experience. Food menus and physical objects (e.g. wine labels) have been augmented via RFID tags and both visual and voice user interfaces can be used for interaction. Information on tags can be twofold: direct (e.g. descriptions, stories, folklore) and indirect (e.g. urls, phone numbers). In the latter case a Mobile IP based smartroaming client has been integrated to allow a seamless communication/navigation/interaction on WiFi and GPRS/UMTS networks.
We are experimenting with ad-hoc multi-hop wireless networks made of battery powered tiny nodes that self organise themselves as a distributed system and cooperate to reach a common goal. Our main scenarios of interest are: vineyard monotoring, monitoring of historic buildings and works of art, acoustic pollution control via the Web (e.g. Google Maps).
4. Automatic video surveillance systems for traffic monitoring
The short movie below, shows the main functionalities of the new automatic video surveillance systems for traffic monitoring, developed by Nexse S.r.l. , jointly with the research group of prof. Luca Iocchi at the Department of Computer and System Science of SAPIENZA Università di Roma
The first part of the movie, shows the ability of the system to provide the average speed of the vehicles in a specific area. The diagram on top, shows some typical traffic patterns in the proximity of traffic lights: vehicles slow down when the traffic light is red and slowly increase their speed on green. The system can automatically detect vehicles moving at excessive speed.
The second part of the movie shows four counters displaying the flow of vehicles in a four-lane road. The accuracy of the system is up to (80%-90%) in each lane.
The last part of the movie, shows an example of automatic detection of traffic offence. In particular, the system can detect vehicles beyond the stop line when the traffic light is red.
This activity has been performed in the MOTUS project. MObility and TOurism in Urban Scenarios (MOTUS) is an INDUSTRIA 2015 project aiming at improving the management, sustainability and eco-compatibility of urban mobility. In MOTUS, citizens are key players and they act at the same time as customers and providers of infomobility services.
5. Remote Grocery Shopping Service via NFC
We propose a novel remote grocery shopping service combining the benefits of online food shopping from home with improved supply chain RFID enabled business processes and a user friendly NFC mediated interaction technique. We have designed and implemented both a JME and a SIMToolkit pervasive software application supporting such a service. The application relies on: 1) NFC enabled mobile phones, available both to customers ordering groceries remotely and to professional shoppers assembling customers' orders in merchants' shops, stores and warehouse; 2) RFID tagged food products and groceries to be purchased. We successfully carried out initial experiments and a user study of the application on real NFC mobile phones. An heterogeneous group of 25 people aged 22-70 and selected among students, retired and professionals was involved in the HCI study and the initial results revealed interesting and encouraging findings.
5. Touch-based interactions with Web social networks
We have worked on "touch-enabling" popular Web-based social networking systems, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace. As millions of people use these systems to store their connections with others and share many aspects of their online life with some communities, we aimed at including in these virtual sites also social events and connections occurring in the real world. Near Field Communication (NFC) is currently perceived by many as the actual enabler of intuitive touch-based interactions both with physical objects and with mobile devices in ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks. We have exploited NFC specific API (on enabled portable devices) and Web “social” API (e.g. Facebook API, Google Open Social API) to devise software applications capable of transforming physical touches and gestures into virtual social actions and events. Thus, many real social situations can also be recorded and shared on social websites. For instance, two people becoming friends at a party might also get linked on a Web-based social network by simply having their own NFC enabled phones touching each other.
WIRELESS BROADBAND ACCESS IN REMOTE AREAS
1. Wireless Broadband System: Hiperlan, WiFi and AAA
We have set up a wireless Hiperlan link (of about 2.5 Km) to connect a remote building of the Sapienza University of Rome to the university's central building. Local users share connectivity via traditional WiFi Access Points. The access is regulated by means of a properly customised open-source AAA Radius system. We have also experimented with WiFi location systems such as Ekahau.
