Research Areas and Projects
The mobile research group is a collection of researchers and
projects working with mobility and pervasive computing at University
of Aarhus. The group works with how mobile devices interact
and is integrated in the physical world and how they co-exist
with an existing complex pervasive computing infrastructure.
Large funded research projects with a large or major part focusing on mobility and mobile development:
Pervasive Positioning (2008-2012)
The Department of Computer Science has together with the Alexandra Institute Ltd. and a number other
partners recently received support from the Danish Foundation for Advanced Technology for a Project
entitled ” Galileo based pervasive positioning” and it is conducted in collaboration with Terma, Dansk
Landbrugs Rådgivningscenter, Systematic, Handelshøjskolen in Aarhus and University of Aalborg.
The goal in the project is to develop precise indoor location tracking systems and prepare for the
possibilities with the Galileo tracking system.
Partners: Terma A/S, Systematic Software Engineering A/S, Dansk Landbrugsrådgivning, Aalborg Universitet, Handelshøjskolen, Aarhus Universitet and Alexandra Instituttet.
Mobile Home Center - Home is where you are (2007-2011)
A major research project focusing on mobile technology has been funded by the Danish High Tech
Foundation. The project is a joined venture between B&O (Bang and Olufsen) and University of Aarhus.
Project summary
The objective is to develop B&O products and services to support a global sense of home by enabling users
to experience and produce media in different homes or while away from home.
This is achieved through development of a Mobile Home Center (MHC), i.e. a hub to establish secure
connections to the main home and media servers, to support users in experiencing home media on
equipment available anywhere, anytime. The MHC challenges calls for researchin several pervasive
computing areas. The challenges will be addressed by new PhD students and senior researchers. The results
of the project are: a prototype MHC infrastructure; a mobile product interface, e.g. a mobile phone, which
is the key to secure and seamless access to home media; and an interaction paradigm for future mobile and
global media experiences across changing contexts. The envisioned MHC goes beyond what individual
media products, e.g. iPods and phones offer today. The success criteria of the project are to deliver
industrial prototypes that nourish B&O product development as well as to publish general concepts for
experiencing “home is where you are”. Digital and mobile media are rapidly growing businesses worldwide,
and B&O is in an ideal position to address the high‐end market with products for customers with multiple
homes and extensive travel activity.
Partners: Bang and Olufsen
Urban Web (2007-2010)
A Mobile Social Context-Aware Web Infrastructure
Recent years have seen a dramatically increase in adoption of small mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. At the same time a rich variety of physical tagging and sensing mechanisms is emerging. Systems that combine mobile devices with sensor technology (e.g. Bluetooth, GPS, RFID, Cameras, etc.) have already demonstrated how information and services can be tailored to the user's current situation through use of context-awareness and pervasive computing techniques. While these systems are very useful context-aware information systems, they only focus on aspects of the user as consumer of information and not on the user as active participant and producer of information.
Project Manager: Allan Hansen
Partner: University of Aarhus
Link: http://www.interactivespaces.net/projects/project.php?projectId=49
Locuster (2007-2011)
The purpose of the Locusts project is to extend distributed software architectures, so that computers dynamically can utilise resources (storage, network, display, computation, etc) available at other nearby computers.This would allow small devices such as mobile phones to do tasks that they themselves cannot do satisfactorily on their own, but in conjunction with other, more powerful, computers are able to perform.
Project Manager: Niels Olof Bouvin
Partner: University of Aarhus
Link: http://www.interactivespaces.net/projects/Locusts/
Media Facades (2007-2011)
The purpose of the Media Facades project is to develop interactive media facades as integrated elements
of architectural interiors and exteriors. The specific goal is to build up new concepts for interactive media
facades in the fields of urban communication, entertainment and digital art, as well as for branding and
product presentation. The project contributes to new ways of displaying dynamic and interactive content –
including video and animations – on a large scale. The concepts for new media facades are realized as fullsize
prototypes, and in a variety of visual representations.
The main focus points of the project are:
• Spatiality & Architecture
• Technology & Materials
• Interaction & Use
• Genre & Content
In addition to these points, the project investigates design processes in media facade design by applying
and developing media facade design methods and tools.
Partners: BIG Bjarke Ingels Group, Martin Professional A/S, The Animation Workshop, Wall of Pixels
Link: http://www.cavi.dk/projects/mediafacades.php
Nomadic Play in Mixed Environments Nomadic Play in Mixed Environments (ended 2004-2007)
The project focuses on exploring and developing new IT based concepts and artifacts supporting play, learning and communication for kids and teenagers. Kids’ activities are characterized by being nomadic in the sense, that they spend their daily life as “nomads” in transit between many physical places (“oases”) such as: school, after school, club, sports clubs, with pals, and often also in multiple homes. In their nomadic living, kids use digital toys such as computer games, mobile phones, mp3 players, etc. as cross boundary artifacts using the flexibility and mobility that technology provides to stage their personal way of living. The digital toys share the advantages in nomadic playing that they are easy to carry and use in many places both outdoor and indoor.
The goal of this project is to investigate the new forms of kids’ activity and explore how IT can be integrated in physical artifacts and environments in new ways in order to stimulate playful learning, imagination and conceptual thinking in the physical world. The project will take advantage of the qualities of IT, beyond the robot and motor approach taken in many toys today. Results of the project will be conceptual frameworks and scenarios as well as exploratory and functional prototypes.
Partners: LEGO
Link: http://www.interactivespaces.net/projects/project.php?projectId=36&mode=introduction
Some specific mobile development focuses diveded into five main research areas:
Location-based systems and tracking: These
projects focus on how to track mobile devices and use this information
to create novel services and applications. Examples are mobile
devices for tracking and providing presence information to clinical
workers or tracking on school children to provide novel teaching
forms.
- AwarePhone project
- Hycon project
- Positioning project
Infrastructure for pervasive and mobile systems: These
projects focus on how to develop an infrastructure that supports
pervasive and mobile systems where connectivity and devices
might change constantly. An example is the European Union project
Palcom.
- Palcom (EU)
-
Locuster project
- Hydra
(EU)
- LightPeers
Novel ways of interacting with mobile systems: These
projects focus on novel ways of interacting with mobile devices
and how to use mobile devices to easily interact with the surrondings.
An example is the Mixis system that use face tracking and other
computer vision algorithms to interact with mobile systems.
- Mixis project
- BibPhone project
Mobile Gaming: These projects work with how
to design mobile and pervasive games that supports engagement
and interaction. An example is the StarCatcher and DARE games
developed in collaboration with Lego.
- Nomadic Play in Mixed Environment project
Mobile Web: This research area focus on how
to develop web technology for mobile and pervasive environment.
Hycon demonstrate how annotation can be created on web pages
by using GPS information and the SpaceExplorer works with web
pages on multiple co-located displays including the mobile device.
- Hycon project
- SpaceExplorer project
If you have a new project or a correction to a description
please mail it to:
thomasr@daimi.au.dk
Selected Ongoing Research Projects
Positioning
Project
The positioning project focuses on making novel improvements
to the positioning technique of location fingerprinting. Based
on databases of pre-recorded measurements of network characteristics
sampled from different locations, denoted as fingerprints,
location fingerprinting techniques estimate a wireless
client's location by inspecting currently measured network
characteristics. The proposed novel improvements have been
evaluated with data from IEEE 802.11 wireless clients.
Contact 
Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Object Technology Group, and KIRK Telecom
LightPeers
LightPeers is a light-weight peer-to-peer (P2P) framework
for mobile computers supporting ad hoc groups for learning,
gaming, and playing by allowing peers in the field to produce,
share, and present digital material in a session. The LightPeers
framework includes protocols for:
discovery, session moderation, robust sessioncast transmission,
and multihop data dissemination. The LightPeers framework
is build directly on top of the UDP layer of the IP stack.
Besides the core protocols a suite of LightPeers applications
has been made to for use in an educational setting or for
gaming and playing.
Web:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bentor/LightPeers/
Contact
Bent Guldbjerg Christensen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces, and LEGO Company
Aware-Phone
The AwarePhone project focuses on interruptions and collaboration
in hospitals. It closely resembles the presence concept
in Nokia phones. In the project several prototypes have
been developed in Symbian C++, which e.g. uses Bluetooth
and Infrared communication to location tracking. It uses
the phones calling capacabilities to place calls and it
uses GPRS to transfer data between the phone and a central
server. The system is currently being tested out at a local
hospital.
Web
http://www.pervasive-interaction.org/Aware/
Contact
Thomas Riisgaard Hansen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Pervasive Healthcare
Hycon
The Hycon framework is a platform for building context-aware
hypermedia applications. The framework runs on a number
of platforms including mobile phones and tablet pcs.
The system uses GPRS for data trasfering and GPS for
location tracking. The system has been tested in a
number of applications.
Web
Link to HyCon/ContextIT
Contact
Allan Hansen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces
Mixed Interaction
Spaces
The mixed interaction spaces project works with computer
vision on mobile phones for interaction purposes. A number
of different vision algorithms have been tried out and dozen
of applications have been developed. E.g. a map navigation
application, an image navigation application and some more
advanced multi-user systems for e.g. sharing and interacting
with pictures on large shared surfaces.
The newest version of the system supports face
tracking as input.
Web
http://www.pervasive-interaction.org/Mixis/
Kontakt
Thomas Riisgaard
Hansen
bibPhone
The bibPhone concept enables children to annotate physical
material with digital recordings; children are able to add
oral comments to books by placing the bibPhone over a RFID
tag on the book; putting an ear to the book enables hearing
the comments recorded by others. The concept originated
from children’s reluctance towards doing written reviews,
and the fact that more and more libraries are adopting RFID
technology on information material. The bibPhone can be
used for “treasure hunting” for messages in books or enabling
children to have a secret information layer attached to
selected books can also be imagined. Furthermore the concept
is not restrained to information materials but could also
be used with regard to adding RFID tags to specific elements
in the physical environment, enabling new forms of play
and information exchange.
Web
Link
to bibPhone
Contact
Andreas Lykke Olesen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces
Nomadic
Play in Mixed Environments
Nomadic Play explores digital infrastructures for
pervasive play. It's a collaboration between LEGO
Company, The University of Aarhus, and Aarhus School
of Architecture. The focus is on supporting playful
activities, using the mobile phone as a hub. We
have developed several prototypes.
StarCatcher: A minimalist version
of classic Capture-the-Fag, this locative game is
written in Java (J2ME), using the HyCon framework
(see below). The phone (Nokia 6600) connects via
Bluetooth to a GPS receiver. The objective of the
game is to find the hidden (virtual) star. The winning
team become Star Winners, the rest get the Loser
Star.
DARE!: This game or play environment
is built to support humour, friendly battle and
identity construction among tweens (kids, primarily
girls, aged 7 to 12). In its current form, it's
a digital version of Truth-or-Dare, supporting video
and sound. The GUI is written in Adobe Flash Lite,
and the low-level stuff runs in Python for Series
60, all on Nokia 6630s.
See this recent DIS paper for a more in-depth description.
Mock Games: A New Genre of Pervasive Play
Webhttp://www.interactivespaces.net/projects/project.php?projectId=36
Contact
Martin Brynskov
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces
Palcom
Connectivity' prototype: The prototype
addresses the basic issues of initiating, understanding,
and maintaining various connections between devices. Specifically
it addresses issues relating to getting a computer (PC)
to connect to the internet via a cell phone, highlighting
a number of issues about the non-intuitive ways current
platforms deal with both the initial establishment of connection
and user feedback in cases of connection break-downs.
'Transient Locations' prototype:
The Transient Locations prototype takes into account
the dynamic management of the user location from
a networking point of view. This means providing
users with suitable network connections despite
their continuous and mostly unpredictable movement
patterns. The prototype manages the network connections
of a user device over a number of wireless technologies.
Some of these are infrastructure-based networks
such as GPRS, UMTS or various flavours of Wireless
LANs. Others are instead ad-hoc networks such as
Bluetooth. A set of user-driven criteria is combined
together with the system awareness of the network
environment and of the current communication operations
to grant the user the best connection available.
The 'BlueBio' prototype: is able
to assist healthcare professionals in monitoring
patients by use of wireless biomonitors. A mobile
phone can connect to a base station distributing
signals from a number of biomonitors, thus enabling
the phone to display live patient data (e.g. an
ECG).
A breathing exercise support service:
Developed as part of prototypes developed in support
of pregnant women, their family, and the healthcare
professionals surrounding them. The service is intended
to ease the execution of a training programme for
birth preparation. A device carried by the pregnant
woman searches the environment for a device with
vibrator functionality, e.g. a phone. Once discovered,
the device transfers a small service enabling the
phone to vibrate in predetermined intervals.
Examples of planned prototypes
Using phone with camera to take photos of patients
involved in major incidents, connecting photo with
live patient data, personal data (like social security
number) and electronic patient data and transferring
such data between accident site and a remote location
functioning as 'accident overview center'.
Using a mobile phone as a remote controlling device
in a number of different settings. For example,
for remote controlling video and still cameras.
Webhttp://www.ist-palcom.org
Contact
Jesper Wolff Olesen
Sponsor
EU project
Previous Research Projects
Info-pillar
The Info-pillar is the exhibit window for libraries'
digital magazins. URL's on magazines are pushed
over Bluetooth to the phone which acts as a URL
container. The user can then move to a PC and view
the selected magazine by pushing the URL to the
PC also through Bluetooth. The push system is created
so it automatically can push URLs (BlueSpamming)
Web
Link to iBib
Contact
Allan Hansen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces
iFloor
In the interactive floor application users interact with a
projected floor interface. A camera tracking systems allows
the users to drag a cursor on the floor. Through SMS messages
can be posted to the floor in form of questions and aswers.
WebLink to
iFloor
Contact
Allan Hansen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces
E-Cell, E-Bag
This project works with the concept of a digital school
bag based on mobile phones. The students use their
mobile phone to log into different interactive systems
and their electronic bag is displayed on the shared
surface. Material gathered can be stored and accessed
from the childrens electronic school bag.
Web
Link to iSchool
Contakt
Allan Hansen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Interactive Spaces
Personal
Medical Unit
Personal Medical Unit - as part of a large research
project on the design and implementation of pervasive
computing technology for personal healthcare and
emergency situations, we are developing the Personal
Medical Unit (PMU). One important hardware platform
for a PMU would be peoples mobile phone. Hence,
a mobile phones should contain (relevant parts of)
a person's medical record and would be able to securely
transfer this information to e.g. a rescue worker
in an emergency situation.
WebPersonal
Medical Unit Paper
Contact
Jakob Bardram
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Pervasive Healthcare
Liwas
Liwas works with Ex Hoc-infrastructure to mixed
mobile and stationary sensor networks e.g. for the
use in cars. The system can e.g. register information
about the road (slippery, dry, wet). A part of the
infrastructure in mobile gateways, which conncets
mobile hubs through the internet (Java Nokia 6600).
The mobile devices have also been tested as interaction
devices in the car where mobile phones offers easy
access to display, sounds and more.
Webhttp://www.isis.alexandra.dk/software/projekter.htm#liwas
Contact
Klaus Marius Hansen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Object-Oriented Software Systems
GoalRef
Goalref is a system designed to help the referee
determine if their is scored a goal in soccer. An
electronic system in the goal automatically register
if the ball is within the goal and sends a message
to the referee.
In the test a Nokia 6600 was used with Bluetooth
and wireless communication between the goal system
and the referee. The program was developed in J2ME
within Eclipse (EclipseME and Nokias Developer Suite
for J2ME 2.1).
Webhttp://www.isis.alexandra.dk/software/projekter.htm#goal
Kontakt
Henry Michael Lassen
Sponsor
ISIS Katrinebjerg, Object-Oriented Software Systems
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