Ambient Intelligence Group

The Ambient Intelligence research group has been established in May 2008 within the >Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology. We conduct research in the areas of wearable computing, pervasive/ubiquitious computing, tangible interactions, augmented reality, multimodal human-computer interaction, data mining and sonification, with overlap to the field of cognitive interaction technology, driven by a threefold mission:

• to increase the communicative abilities of intelligent artifacts towards a more seamless, natural and effective interaction with human users,
• to explore and develop novel ways of human-computer interaction in everyday contexts and particularly for applications in multi-modal data exploration and the access to information spaces,
• to bring ambient intelligence into application for a positive humanitarian purpose, such as in medicine, physiotherapy, education, for connecting people, to support human-human cooperation, taking into account that resulting CITs (cognitive interaction technologies) should respect the user, be harmless by design, trustworthy and offer a well-balanced mix of modalities to their users.

Sonification, the non-speech display of information using sound, is an particularly neglected display modality that we actively explore for applications in ambient intelligence, in combination with scientific and ambient visualization, and non-standard display techniques such as audiohaptic displays.

Taking into account that human attention is a limited resource that ambient technology needs to respect in order to support human interaction, we develop, use, and investigate techniques to estimate and model human attention as well as attention-respecting ways to communicate with humans in various contexts and environments. These contexts include – but are not limited to – Personal Assistance in Augmented Reality systems, intelligent rooms, tabletop interaction systems and portable and wearable devices.