Programming for Mobility @ IT-Parken Katrinebjerg,
Aarhus University
Programming for mobility poses new challenges
for computer science. This page is the home page of the mobility
group at University of Aarhus. The group consists of researchers
working on projects involving mobile technology. Welcome!
Forum Nokia Mobile Games Competition 2009 for University Students
This is a chance to design, implement and showcase new ideas for future mobile games. The Competition is open to students attending Aarhus University, which is one of the Forum Nokia PRO member Universities participating the Competition. This Competition offers university students an exclusive opportunity to win an expense paid trip and passes to the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in San Francisco in March 2009 as well as show the winning game to other conference attendees.
To enter, form a team of 2-3 people, create an appealing game that functions on a Nokia device, and submit it with the required documentation. Each team selects a name and nominates a Team Leader who represents the team in all communications with Organizers. The games may be on any Nokia-compatible platform, and the primary criteria for success include entertainment value, creativity and usability.
Teams are to create functional prototypes of their ideas. The judges look favourably on entries that innovate in areas such as in advanced device features (accelerometers, location based services), inspired mashups to mobiles, using the unique capabilities of handsets (messaging, photos, videos etc), or other forward-looking potentialities of mobile gaming.
Requirements
Platform is open, suggested platform is Flash or Flash Lite
Application/service must function on a Nokia device (Nokia S60, Nokia Series 40 and/or Nokia Internet Tablet)
External mobile competition: Betavin Widget Competition 2009
Betavine, a Vodafone Group R&D lab, is offering mobile developers a chance to win £20,000 in a new mobile widget competition.
Mobile Development Seminar
Date: February 26. 2009 8.30-16.00
Location: IT-Universitetet
Previous events and news
2008 December: New mobile research project: Ubiquitous User Interface Design The Ubiquitous User Interface Design (UUID)
by Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose
Ubiquitous User Interface Design The Ubiquitous User Interface Design (UUID) is a project aiming to provide a theoretical framework used to understand and support interaction in ubiquitous environments. A part of the project has evolved around the development of an alternative to the classical MVC (Model, View, Controller) architecture, which is used in almost all modern graphical user interfaces. The VIGO (Views, Instruments, Governors, Objects) architecture is geared towards multi-device interaction and is a further development of the Instrumental Interaction model, conceived by Michel Beaudouin-Lafon. Instrumental interaction focuses on the mediation of interaction through instruments, rather than understanding interaction as direct manipulation of objects. This approach provides a range of benefits when moving beyond a single desktop computer.
The following youtube video shows a simple prototype application of the architecture:
The video is a supplement to the paper VIGO: Instrumental Interaction in Multi-Surface Environments to be presented at CHI'09 Boston April 2009.
(Authors' version can be downloaded here: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~clemens/chi2009author.pdf)
December 2008 - Project "Rør verden" (Touch the world). Moesgaard Museum
In this project children from the 4th through 9th grade made use of mobilephones in a proces of documenting their exploration of a multicultural exhibition on Moesgaard Museum. The exhibition allowes the children to touch, try and taste certain artifacts from the third world. Exhibition was divided in 4 labs with different themes. The Nokia N-series mobilephones was connected to two computers, when a picture was taken, they were selected and downloaded to certain folders on one of the computers. Then with a automator script the picture was attached to an email, with predefined titles and tags, in regards of the lab in which the mobilephones was used. They were then autoposted to a wordpress blog using the postmaster plug-in. Videos were converted to flv and uploaded manually on a second computer using kalthura interactive video plug-in. The students then had the ability to edit their pictureposts and also edit video online, although these features were hardly used, mainly because of the lack of time for extra-curricular activities. Picture uploads were happening almost immediately and and automatic refresh of the class- blog was running on a projector for the kids to see. One student, seeing a cool picture of himself eating a strange fruit, on the white wall, asked: "can you put these picture online?" My reply was: "It already is..." The student: "Yes!"
Mobile Middleware: Embracing the Personal Communication Device
MobMid 2008
In conjunction with the 9th International Middleware Conference (Middleware'08)
Leuven, Belgium, December 2, 2008
http://kyle.gsd.inesc-id.pt/minema
The goal of the workshop is to foster exchange of ideas and lively discussions in order to identify problems
and solutions on building mobile middleware for personal communication devices. The presentation of
completed research as well as work in progress is expected to create a dynamic programme which should
encourage fruitful discussions and new collaborations. We welcome papers focused on identifying open
issues in the field, describing limits and advantages of existing solutions, or introducing novel techniques.
2008 Oct: New Course: Mobile services and context-aware communication
A new course in mobile services and context-aware communication is starting October 31th 2008. It is a master course targetted people from the industry and are taking place 4 Fridays in the fall.
Oct 2008: 10 interesting mobile student projects targeted interactive storytelling in an urban environment on mobile devices
As part of the course pervasive computing the students developed a number of interesting mobile application focusing on pervasive storytelling in the physical environment. See some of the videos on Youtube (the explanation is in Danish)
October 19th, 2008, Future Mobile Experiences: next generation mobile interaction and contextualization - Workshop at NordiCHI 2008, Lund, Sweden.
Workshop theme and goals
Within recent years the mobile phone has been transformed from purely a mechanism for voice calls, to an internet device with advanced multimedia capabilities, location-based services and a growing number of sensors. However, this expanding feature set poses a number of serious challenges for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and the inclusion of contextual information. The key questions become: How to design efficient, easy to use interaction on a small device capable of offering dozen of different services and applications? And how do we make the best use of user context within applications? This workshop will investigate these questions by focusing on four key themes:
Nokia – connecting Skanderborg festival (August 2008)
Six Nokia N95 were central actors in a large scale experiment during this years “Skanderborgfestival” in Denmark (www.smukfest.dk). The phones were used to track different staff members e.g. teams of stretcher carriers, emergency and security staff in order to support the communication and corporation among them, and between them and head of communication. Key personnel were provided with Nokia N95 phones (GPS enabled). As these phones are equipped with both GPS, still and motion picture capabilities and the ability to stream the required information in high quality, they offer the qualifying elements to be a part of the tested collaboration and communication system (a shared 3D workspace of the entire festival including scenes, emergency rooms, serving tents and much more).
The key personnel were tracked, when they were moving around the festival, and they were enabled to take pictures of critical issues to be transferred to the shared 3D workspace in the proper positions. The 3D workspace was distributed to four different command stations providing the common overview needed to support communication. The system development will be continued and the experiment will run during next years’ festival.
The Mobile Agent Framework (August 2008)
By Brian Jensen
The Mobile Agent Framework for mobile phones was developed in Python to run on the symbian platform. The goal was to investigate the possibilities and limitations of the symbian platform for mobile agent development. Although there were limitations on the operating system level and in the python port, the framework did enable agents to traverse from one mobile phone to another using WIFI.
For the project two mobile phones were borrowed from Nokia, one of which had GPS so the framework was made location aware. The framework has a simple event driven architecture which alerts inhabiting mobile agents of events, e.g. when the battery is low so they can act accordingly.
SpaceExplorer Demoed in Barcelona at S60 Summit
The SpaceExplorer Demo was presented and show cased in Barcelona at the S60 Summit.
Student Project: AugIM(May 2008), Aarhus Participant in the Nokia Student Competition
Developed by: Mads D. Kristensen and Morten H. Møller
AugIM demonstrates a powerful concept within distributed computing called cyber foraging. Cyber foraging enables small, mobile devices to utilise stronger peers in their vicinity enabling them to take on tasks that would not normally be feasible for mobile devices.
The AugIM is available for download for the N800 and a video showing the concept can be found following the link: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~madsk/augim/
Student Project: Commanding LEGO robots with Bluetooth(April 2008)
Developed by: Morten (Boris) Bruhn
Many visitors at the FUTURE PEOPLE booth at the UUG education expo in Hering and Odense were curious as to how the little LEGO robot seemingly reacted on its environment. Some were somewhat disappointed to learn that it was actually remote controlled via a Nokia N80 phone with Bluetooth while others were impressed with the many possibilities of modern mobile phones.
Student Project: KiteSurf Mobile (April 2008) Developed by: Brian Jensen, Morten Bohøj, Jakob Dam
In the project mobile phones were used in conjunction with a web service using short messages to communicate with users and create small social communities.
The basic technology was used to help Kite Surfers and support the following use cases:
* Receive automatic sms about the weather when different conditions are satisfied
* Announce when you go surfing and where by using short messages
Forum Nokia Mobile Innovation Competition 2008 for University Students (“Competition”)
Again this year student from University of Aarhus has the change to enter the Forum Nokia Mobile Innovation Competition for students. This year the prizes are even higher £5000 in cash + a trip to Barcelona at the end of May for the three top teams. And it is only Forum Nokia Pro Universities that can participate so the odds are good.
The developing language is free (Develop Linux applications for the Maemo Platform, Java applications, Python applications, Widsets orWidgets applications, Symbian C++ applications, Flash lite or something else). The only requirement is that the application has to be able to run on a Nokia Device.
Student Project: LiveTag (January 2008) Developed by: Marianne Hildesheim Bertelsen, Birgitte Malling Eriksen, Jens Gram, Thomas Riis Hansen
Under emnet "serious games" udviklede vi i kurset Design & Programmering
fundamentet for et system, der sætter fokus på færdselssikkerhed og
cykeltrafik ved at kombinere teknologi, spil og fællesskab. Den specifikke målgruppe er folkeskoleelever på 5.-8. klassetrin.
Systemet, der havde udviklingsnavnet LiveTAG (Live Traffic Action Game), er bygget op om en intern konkurrence på klasse- såvel som individ-niveau. Det gælder simpelthen om at køre så mange _fejlfri_ kilometer som muligt. Nøgleordet er "fejlfri", hvor vi kombinerede en Nokia N95 (og dennes Bluetooth- og GPS-enheder) til at indsamle oplysninger om tilbagelagt rute. Vha. en Bluetag (passiv
Bluetooth-enhed) kunne telefonen afgøre, hvorvidt cyklisten bar hjelm eller ej. Vi havde endvidere flere sensorer på tegnebrættet (registrering af orientering over skulderen, samt signalgivning med arme). GPS-koordinater og sensordata blev opsamlet på telefonen via en Python-applikation, der sidenhen kompilerede "waypoints" i en GPX-fil, som efterfølgende overførtes til systemets server. Her havde eleverne - gennem et web-interface - mulighed for at visualisere ruten (med beregnede færdselsforseelser). Denne funktionalitet blev implementeret i Python på baggrund af GPX-data og brug af Google Maps (jf. vedlagte screenshots).
Systemet blev udviklet i samarbejde med elever på Katrinebjergskolen i
Århus N. Ved projektets afslutning 7. januar var der ikke planer om at arbejde videre på projektet. Det er imidlertid blevet præsenteret for Rådet for Større Færdselssikkerhed.
17. januar 2008 - På-vej-hjem-møde: Udvikling af programmer og services til mobile enheder
Mobiltelefoner har udviklet sig til at være meget andet end en telefon og et apparat til at sende korte beskeder. Mobiltelefoner i dag er en kompleks computer, og med kraftfulde CPUer, OpenGL, 5-megapixel kameraer, GB hukommelse, GPS teknologi, trådløs bredbånd (WiMaxx, WLAN og 3G), NFC teknologi (RF-ID læser) og lignende teknologier er mobiltelefonen en interessant platform til at udvikle mobile applikationer.
Tid & sted:
17/01-08: kl. 15:00-17:00
IT-Universitetet
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
2300 København
October 2007: Development platforms for mobile P2P
Study group in mobile development
Description
-----------
The aim of this course is twofold: Firstly the students will
gain
knowledge of which development platforms are available when
developing
for mobile devices today, and secondly they will be introduced
to
solutions to common challenges that occur when developing mobile
applications. This means that we will be looking into both hardware
and
software platforms to learn how different types of devices may
be used
for prototyping mobile software, and that we will take a close
look at
how to approach challenges such as P2P communication, energy
efficiency,
location awareness etc.
The first four lectures in the course give an introduction to
four
mobile development platforms. After these four lectures the
participants
should choose one of the platforms and start working on a programming
project using the chosen platform. The rest of the lectures
will be
concerned with general challenges for mobile development that
should
apply to all platforms.
Form
----
The lectures in the course will be held by the participants
themselves.
When the course starts a list of topics that must be covered
as well as
accompanying literature will be made. For a single student the
course
will thus consist of reading the literature, participating in
a number
of lectures as well as giving one or more lectures on a topic.
Exam: The exam will be project based. At the end of the course
all
students must present and demo a small project (e.g. a piece
of software
running on a mobile device or some self-developed API enabling
mobile
development for a specific platform). These projects should
use one of
the mobile platforms covered in the course.
Points
------
10 ECTS
Topics
------
1) The Maemo platform - development for Nokia internet tablets.
2) Mobile development using J2ME.
3) Python for S60.
4) Symbian C++.
5) P2P communicaton.
6) Approaches towards location awareness.
7) Usability issues when working with small mobile devices.
8) Mobile architecture.
9) Cyber foraging.
10)
...)
xx) Evaluation and project presentations.
6 Dec 2007- Microsoft Windows Mobile
Foredraget holdes af Michael Alrøe, Lektor ved Ingeniørhøjskolen i Århus. Michael arbejder til daglig med
undervisning indenfor Microsoft Windows CE, software engineering, objetkorienteret programudvikling, UML, realtidsprogrammering.
Der findes flere styresystemer der kæmper om de mobile enheder. Et af disse systemer er Microsofts
Windows Mobile, hvor specielt .NET Compact Framework anvendes til udvikling af både stand-alone og
enterprise applikationer. Foredraget vil give et overblik over Windows Mobile/.NET Compact Framework,
samt de udviklingsværktøjer der benyttes. Foredraget vil indeholde teoretisk gennemgang med konkrete
kodeeksempler.
Indhold:
· Introduktion til Microsoft Windows CE arkitektur.
· Grundlæggende programmering af .NET Compact Framework.
· Programmering af brugergrænseflade.
· Multithreading
· Kommunikation (Serial, BlueTooth)
· Pocket Outlook Object Model.
Sted: 6/12-07: Kl. 15.00 - 16.30
Det lille auditorium
Åbogade 15
8200 Århus N
21 Oct 2007- 802.11-based Positioning Systems: From Monitor Sniffing to MOVER,
Thomas King, University of Mannheim
Wednesday d. 21 kl 14.15-15.00, Turing-014, Aabogade 34, 8200 Aarhus N
The talk starts with a brief introduction into 802.11-based positioning systems. After presenting state-of-art scanning techniques to measure the signal strength of access points within communication range of a mobile device, the talk discusses that these scanning techniques cannot be used for communications and positioning at the same time. A novel scanning technique called Monitor Sniffing mitigates many of the problems inherent with the current approaches. The talk closes with an overview over the joint-research between the University of Mannheim and the University of Aarhus on a system called MOVER. MOVER combines Monitor Sniffing and the current scanning techniques to preserve the communication capabilities of mobile devices while simultaneously allowing positioning.
3.-9. September Demonstration of Visual Tags for School Children as Part of Science Promotion Days
"Natur i Teltet" - a public show of science and research in Aarhus Festival use Nokia N80 and N95 phones to help its participants access the content of web page adresses encoded within visual SemaCode tags. The tags are placed on posters and the online content - which also include a per-tag weblog - relate to the content of the poster.
30 of August 2007 Mobile Developer Days in Aalborg
2007
Mobile Developer Days will take place from Thursday 30th to
Sunday 2nd September 2007 at Aalborg University Denmark. The
main idea is to create a platform where developers, network
operators, service providers, and mobile manufactures can exchange
their ideas and visions in the field of mobile communication. Read
more...
August 7th-8th 2007 The educational facilities of the
future
Workshop at Danfoss Universe,
The aim of this workshop
was to explore the future of educational practice in primary
schools. Advances in mobile and ubiquitous technologies have
created new opportunities for learning practice that stretch
beyond traditional classroom learning. Pupils can search, document
and produce digital material in a number of learning arenas,
e.g. at home, in the local community, and in their spare time.
During the workshop, 16 pupils were equipped with Nokia N95
phones and asked to produce a web-based newspaper featuring
text, audio and video. Pupils chose their own topics and went
out into the local environment interviewing people, producing
videos and searching digital resources on the fly. The results
of the workshop were a range of concrete educational programs
that utilise modern technologies and let pupils act creatively
in the learning process. Further, the workshop provided insights
into learning practice that involves heterogeneous technologies
across diverse domains.
24. May 2007 Programming for Mobility
An afternoon presentation for companies about how to get started
programming for mobility and a discussion of different programming
languages and platforms.
Time: Kl. 15.00 - 17.00
Place: Det store auditorium
IT-huset
Åbogade 15
8200 Århus N Read
more ... Slides ...
18-22 of April 2007 - Mobile social choreographies: performing
our urban spaces through locative media
In connection with the conference "Close Encounters - Artists
on artistic research in dance"
(http://www.danshogskolan.se/dh/forskning_ku/close_encounters/close_encounters.html)
at University College of Dance in Stockholm, Lone Koefoed (University
of Aarhus) and her collaborators Dr Susan Kozel (SFU, Vancouver)
and Camille Baker (SmartLAB,
London) will be giving a workshop entitled "mobile social
choreographies:
performing our urban spaces through locative media". The
workshop will introduce professional choreographers to locative
media and will investigate the spatial, social, urban and embodied
poetics that is opened up when we take seriously the suggestion
that locative media engineers performances and choreographies.
16 of April 2007 - MOBILITY: COLLABORATION & TRANSACTIONAL
ASPECTS
Speaker: Mads Nygaard, Department of Computer Science, Norwegian
University of Science and technology
Time/place: Monday, April 16, 2007, 13:00 - 14:00 / Ada-018
The theme of this research is mobile transaction processing
systems, focusing on versatile data sharing mechanisms in volatile
mobile environments.
Organizer: Lars Kristensen
24. April 2007 Alexandra Sponsors the mobile group
The Alexandra
Institute has joined the group of sponsors and is currently
sponsoring the work in the mobile group.
5. April 2007 Forum Nokia Champion
Thomas Riisgaard Hansen has become a Forum Nokia Champion and
is joining a group of acknowledged researchers and developers
working with Nokia. Read
more ...
14. Marts 2007 Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen visited Center
for Interactive Spaces
On March 14th, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen - owner of LEGO - visited
Center for Interactive Spaces. He was joined by Foundation manager,
Morten Aagaard, Senior director, Electronics R&D, Erik Hansen,
and LEGO Professor Mitch Resnick, from MIT MediaLab, USA. The
purpose of the visit was to discuss the activities in the joint
research project Nomadic Play. The project is developing mobile
applications for children. http://www.interactivespaces.net/news/news.php?newsId=81
2007.02.19 Developing Bluetooth for Lego
At the Interactive Spaces meeting Morten Holdflod will demonstrate
the outcome of working for/with LEGO. Central parts of the Bluetooth
functionality in LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is developed in collaboration
with Center for Interactive Spaces on a consultancy basis via
the Alexandra Institute Ltd. (i-rummet, Hopper building 9-10)
2007.02.15-17 Presentation of distributed mobile system
at conference
January 2007 Phones to support research and teaching
Nokia has sponsoret 12 high-end mobile phones for use in the
teaching and research at the University of Aarhus. TDC has sponsoret
SIM-cards for the phones. The phones can be borrow to specific
research or student projects by contacting Thomas
Riisgaard Hansen
January 2007 Python extention for using the accelerometers
on the Nokia 5500
2007.01 Mobile Application Competition - Section Denmark
Nokia invites students to a contest in which they have a chance
to prove and hone their skills as mobile application designers.
Students from the University of Aalborg, Aarhus, and Copenhagen
are invited to submit their application by the 04.05.2007 at
12:00 at the local representative (note, a pre registration
is required beforehand).
Please refer to the link below http://mobiledevices.kom.aau.dk/
for the full details of the competition. For the best national
application a price money of 5000 Euro and a trip to a conference
in Budapest is granted.
For more information and registration mail or contact (registration
deadline Februrary 28th (extended)):
Thomas Riisgaard Hansen (thomasr@daimi.au.dk)
Hopper-12
2006.12 Frank H. P. Fitzek, The Way towards 4G Wireless
Networks Subtitle: Cellular Controlled
Peer to Peer Networking
date: 6th December, 11.00-12.00, Lille Auditorium,
IT-Huset
abstract: The talk introduces a novel communication
architecture and
associated collaborative framework for future wireless communication
systems. In contrast to the dominating cellular architecture
and the
upcoming peer-to-peer architecture, the new form envisions a
cellular
controlled short-range communication network among cooperating
mobile
and wireless terminals. The novel architecture together with
several
possible cooperative strategies will bring clear benefits for
the
network and service providers, terminal
manufacturers as well as the end users. By examples from nature
cooperation strategies are derived. First implementation on
mobile
devices are introduced and discussed.
Frank H. P. Fitzek is an Associate Professor in the Department
of
Communication Technology, University of Aalborg, Denmark heading
the
Future Vision group. He received his diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) degree
in
electrical engineering from the University of Technology -
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) - Aachen,
Germany,
in 1997 and his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from
the
Technical University Berlin, Germany in 2002 for quality of
service
support in wireless CDMA networks. As a visiting student at
the Arizona
State University he conducted research in the field of video
services
over wireless networks. He co-founded the start-up company acticom
GmbH
in Berlin in 1999. In 2002 he was Adjunct Professor at the University
of
Ferrara, Italy giving lectures on wireless communications and
conducting
research on multi-hop networks. In 2005 he won the YRP award
for the
work on MIMO MDC and in 2005 he received the Young Elite Researcher
Award of Denmark. His current research interests are in the
areas of 4G
wireless communication networks, cross layer protocol design
and
cooperative networking.
2006.11 Lill Kristiansen ENME: An ENriched MEdia application utilizing context
for session mobility in a telecom system;human and technical
issues.
Date: Friday, November 17 at 9:15-10.00 in Ada 333.
Abstract: AWAREphone (and other simular systems
such as 'AT&T active address book)
is utilizing context/location/status PRIOR to placing a phone
call.
Coming from a telecom background we are studying also changes
INSIDE the
phone systems, and this makes it posssible to utilize context
also to
change an ONGOING call in various ways.
We have implemented an application called ENME (ENriched MEdia).
ENME is keeping track of your location via RFID. The application
is
keeping track of wanted media types (such as audio and video),
the current
media types and available media types at the varios
locations/terminals/zones. This allows the application to move
and change
an ONGOING call e.g. from voice telephony on a PDA to voice
and video on a
bigger screen as the caller or callee is approaching a zone
with richer
equipment.
We are discussing some human factors related to mediated comunication
in
general. We are also discussing combined use of AWAREphone and
ENME, or
other 'smart call systems' in a hospital as seen from patients,
nurses and
doctors.
CV Lill Kristiansen:
Lill Kristiansen has her education from Univ. of Oslo in mathematics
and
computer science. She is now a professor in telematics at ntnu
(former
NTH) in Trondheim Norway. She has 10 years of experience from
R&D in
telecom from Telenor and Ericsson, including work with TINA,
IN
(intelligent networks) and IP multimedia telephony. The work
includes both
continuous and discrete terminal mobility, as well as user mobility
across various terminals with concepts such as session mobility.
She has a technical background, but has studied use of ICT in
health care
for the last 5 years. The presentation will NOT be very technical
(unless
someone asks specific technical questions).
Forum Nokia Mobile Innovation Competition 2008 for University Students (“Competition”) 