u-Texture: A Board-shaped Smart Material that Provides Ubiquitous Services

Naohiko Kohtake, Tadashi Yanagihara, Tomokazu Murakami, Masao Ideuchi, Daisuke Maruyama,

Ryo Ohsawa, Kengo Koizumi, Takuro Yonezawa, Hiroshi Sakakibara, Yuki Matsukura, Jin Nakazawa, Kazunori Takashio, Hideyuki Tokuda

Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University 5322 Endoh, Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-8520, Japan

{nao, willow, tomo, ide, marudai, ryo, mics, takuro, skk, matsu, jin, kaz, hxt}@ht.sfc.keio.ac.jp

ABSTRACT In this paper, we describes u-Texture, a board-shaped smart material that allows users to assemble various forms of smart furniture which instantaneously converts the non-smart space into a smart space where provides location-based context-aware services, service roaming, personalized services and the connectivity to the Internet, and which supports our daily activities unobtrusively. u-Texture has abilities to calculate, communicate with each other and another networked systems, recognize its orientation and surrounding, and output images and sounds. With these abilities, u-Texture enables to change own services dynamically by recognizing its orientation and surrounding environment. We introduce the usability of u-Texture concept with applications in this demonstration.

Keywords u-Texture, board-shaped smart material, self-organizable

INTRODUCTION In ubiquitous computing environment, many computational devices are installed or embedded in various furniture [3, 4]. These devices make the normal furniture into smart furniture and support daily activities stealthily. However, it is not easy for users to replace computational devices already embedded into furniture or connect various smart materials. A new easy-to-use smart furniture material is necessary. In our research, we are focusing on “board shape” which is basic to form most furniture such as walls, tables, desks, shelves, and chairs. The main idea of our proposed u-Texture is to enables to provide various services dynamically corresponding to combination. The appearance of u-Texture prototype is shown Figure 1. As a building block with a self-organizing capability, u-Texture can be assembled to form various forms of furniture and sense the shape of the entire furniture as well as its relative location and gradient. Based on such information of shape and location, u-Texture determines and adapts a function which it should perform. Then, users can construct various forms of smart furniture by recombining the same type of u-Textures, and also instantaneously assemble a smart space with essential flexibilities for the users.

Figure 1. u-Texture connects with another one horizontally and collaborates with each other by exchanging data.

DEMONSTRATIONS This demonstration introduces the usability of u-Texture concept with the following three applications. We can implement these applications by using the same type of u-Texture which senses its relative location within a given piece of furniture by gathering connection information from surrounding environment and changes own services dynamically. u-Texture can alter its function by recognizing automatically in what kind of system itself is assembled. One of example demonstrations is shown in Figure 2. Multi Window Users connect a u-Texture which shows a picture data on its display to another one horizontally and the same picture data is transferred and displayed on it. Then, when the combination of u-Textures shapes in equal ratio to one u-Texture (e.g., 2x2 u-Textures, 3x3 u-Textures), these u-Textures show the one expanded picture on their display widely. Digital Aquarium By connecting vertically a u-Texture to another u-Texture which exhibits a virtual aquarium as animation data, users can see an animation which shows vertical images of aquarium. Recognizing its position and direction, u-Texture alters its output data according to those two parameters. Aware Shelf / Table Users make a use of u-Texture on a part of a shelf or a table. By putting an item attached with a RF tag on such a shelf or a table, it can be showed information of the item on

u-Texture display, or users can search information about items which have been put on those furniture in the past.

Figure 2. Users can assemble the same u-Textures into various forms of smart furniture (e.g., walls, tables, boxes, or shelves)

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The prototype of u-Texture is 38 cm (15 in.) square, approximately the size and shape of a pizza box. u-Texture consists of the following devices mainly: a) basic computer components (e.g., processor, hard disk drive) b) sensor devices (e.g., accelerometer, touch display, RF-ID reader) c) communication devices (e.g., wired/wireless LAN, serial interface, and infrared interface) d) output devices (e.g., display, sound device) as shown in Figure 3. With these devices, u-Texture senses its relative location within a given piece of furniture by gathering connection information from surrounding u-Textures over a multihop wired network and by drawing a map of the entire furniture based on the gathered information. The appropriate application is executed on each u-Texture so that the u-Texture can adapt to the size and shape of the furniture. Applications can be installed or downloaded via network on demand. If multiple available applications are raised as appropriate, users choose one of them in this prototype. By having this architecture, u-Texture can create smart space individually (i.e., as a standalone u-Texture), collectively (i.e., as a piece of smart furniture built of a set of u-Textures) or in conjunction with other devices.

RELATED WORK Although there have been done a number of researches on improvement of smart space with things embedded with sensors and computers, only a few of them dealt with alternations of services corresponding to its combination. Smart Furniture [4] and Roomware [3] convert a non-smart space into a smart space where provides location-based context-aware services, service roaming, and personalized services instantaneously with computer augmented things in rooms like lamps, message boards, walls, tables, and others. However, function of each thing is not changeable by their combinations. On the other hand, still not to be things in rooms, things at an experimental level, which have an ability to change a service of each thing according to combinations and locations, has being researched.

Figure 3. Configuration of u-Texture

Triangle [1] is a physical computer interface in the form of a construction kit of identical, flat, plastic triangles. It allows users to be connected together both physically and digitally with magnetic, conducting connectors. When pieces contact one another, specific connections can trigger various services corresponding to its contact. Data Tiles [2] is a tagged transparent tile which integrates the benefits of both graphical and physical interfaces. It can be used as modular building blocks for computational expression with compositions of multiple tiles.

CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we have introduced u-Texture, a board-shaped smart material. The major advantage of u-Texture is that it enables to change own services dynamically by recognizing its orientation and surrounding environment with various embedded sensors. The prototype of u-Texture has been developed and some applications have also been implemented with the prototypes. With this smart material, users can assemble u-Textures into various forms of smart furniture on their demand. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research has been conducted as part of the Ubila Project supported by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. We thank Uchida Yoko Co. for their collaborative work on u-Texture.

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