Aware technologies for aging in place: understanding user needs and attitudes

Although computing technology has made inroads into home environments, it has yet to instigate a major shift in the design of homes or home activities. The convergence of television and the Internet is lagging behind expectations, and the combination of desktop computers, entertainment consoles, televisions, and cell phones has yet to form a cohesive whole. One possible reason for this lag in progress is that these technologies don't address a coherent need -they merely augment current entertainment and communication practices. We base our research on the premise that the next revolution of technology in the home will arise from devices that help older adults maintain their independence. A coherent suite of technologies will eventually let older adults be proactive about their own healthcare, will aid them in daily activities and help them learn new skills, will create new avenues for social communication, and will help ensure their safety and well being. The Aware Home Research initiative hopes to help older adults "age in place" by creating devices that can assist with daily tasks, offer memory support, and monitor daily activities. However, understanding user needs and attitudes is essential to deploying this technology.     

The console market

The home-based video games market is one of the largest within the entertainment industry, and has recently begun to rival the music and film sectors in terms of audience, sales and revenue. This is partially due to the high profile mass marketing of games consoles and titles over the last decade, especially by a trio of Japanese electronics companies (Nintendo, Sega and Sony); however, it is also due to the increasing complexity, visual attractiveness and interactivity of contemporary video games.In this paper, we identify a number of characteristics pertaining to games consoles and game development. Following this, we examine the state of the console market as of the summer of 2001, focusing on the main manufacturers, their consoles, and how they may fare in the near future.     

Evaluating digital entertainment system performance

Digital entertainment systems - which encompass a broad range of applications, including smart phones, set-top boxes, MP3 players, DVD players and recorders, game consoles, and digital cameras - have become the driving force behind the expansion of the semiconductor market, outstripping even PCs. Consider, for example, that in 2003, smartphones represented about 3 percent of the 500 million mobile phones sold worldwide, with analysts expecting them to grow at triple-digit year-over-year rates. Moving beyond the voice-centric model, more than half of the 600 million mobile phones sold in 2004 included a color display and digital camera. The implementation of more advanced features such as accelerated 2D and 3D graphics, videoconferencing, mobile multimedia, and games has raised the performance requirements of these model. The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium's DENBench suite of digital media benchmarks provides a spectrum of tools for assessing and refining the video and audio performance of digital devices.     

Kinematics, Dynamics, Biomechanics: Evolution of Autonomy in Game Animation

The believeable portrayal of character performances is critical in engaging the immersed player in interactive entertainment. The story, the emotion and the relationship between the player and the world they are interacting within are hugely dependent on how appropriately the world's characters look, move and behave. We’re concerned here with the character's motion; with next generation game consoles like Xbox360 ^TM and Playstation®3 the graphical representation of characters will take a major step forward which places even more emphasis on the motion of the character. The behavior of the character is driven by story and design which are adapted to game context by the game's AI system. The motion of the characters populating the game's world, however, is evolving to an interesting blend of kinematics, dynamics, biomechanics and AI drivenmotion planning. Our goal here is to present the technologies involved in creating what are essentially character automata, emotionless and largely brainless character shells that nevertheless exhibit enough "behavior" to move as directed while adapting to the environment through sensing and actuating responses. This abstracts the complexities of low level motion control, dynamics, collision detection etc. and allows the game's artificial intelligence system to direct these characters at a higher level. While much research has already been conducted in this area and some great results have been published, we will present the particular issues that face game developers working on current and next generation consoles, and how these technologies may be integrated into game production pipelines so to facilitate the creation of character performances in games. The challenges posed by the limited memory and CPU bandwidth (though this is changing somewhat with next generation) and the challenges of integrating these solutions with current game design approaches leads to some interesting problems, some of which the industry has solutions for and some others which still remain largely unsolved.     

Investigation on film cooling characteristics from a row of converging slot-holes on flat plate

Experimental and numerical researches were conducted to investigate the cooling performance of a single row of consoles (converging slot-hole) on a large-scale flat-plate model. The results show that the coolant flow from a row of consoles shows good lateral uniformity of adiabatic effectiveness, with regions of slightly enhanced cooling occurring between the consoles. For the console cooling geometry, the interaction between coolant jet from inclined console and the mainstream flow results in reasonable vo...     

Mitigating Microsoft with virtual consoles

The most striking aspect of computing in the 1990s, or at least the late 1990s, is the almost universal acceptance of windows as a way users interact with software. Users get a strong feeling of control, even exhilaration, in having several windows in production at once and being able to choose among them. Before windowing took over, the console, the display terminal together with the keyboard, was implemented primarily in hardware. Now that hardware is so much more capable than it used to be, it could run multiple virtual consoles just as easily as it used to run single consoles. The author discusses Microsoft's strength, virtual consoles in hardware and XML (Extensible Markup Language)     

Exploring software piracy as a factor of video game console adoption

The market for video game consoles is substantial and competition is heated. At the same time, software piracy has seen substantial literature coverage. The hardware controls that ordinarily prevent illegally modified software can be bypassed. As part of an ongoing research project, this paper explores the role of software piracy in the decision to adopt a video game console. This work presents a new research direction, observing software piracy as a previously unforeseen driver of system adoption. This study explores a set of consumers with low disposable incomes, who must make a moral choice with regard to consumption for entertainment. The study used focus groups and a literature review to develop a set of factors based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour. These factors were operationalised in a survey of 150 young adults. Analysis was conducted on the basis of adoption level and gender. In contrast to much prior information systems research, the ability to pirate console software was significant for adopters and both genders, but not non-adopters. Cost was not a significant factor.     

A future for entertainment-defense research collaboration

In 1997, the National Research Council (NRC) issued a report that specified a joint research agenda for defense and entertainment modeling and simulation. This report showed the excellent opportunities for synergy between the entertainment and defense industries. For years, they have been solving similar problems for very different application areas. While those two communities' opposing cultures have been difficult to reconcile, recent efforts have proven promising. The looming question is whether the military sector can follow the leaping technological pace in the entertainment sector. That pace indicates tremendous growth in the entertainment industry, which will be coupled with continued technological innovation. The article shows how those advances will be equally vital for future defense applications, thereby demonstrating the importance of continued and increased defense-entertainment collaboration     

Evolutions in Gaming

Game consoles are encroaching on PC territory, says Mark Claypool, associate professor in the computer science department at Wooster Polytechnic Institute. "Now they have hard drives, main memory, a programmable processor, a big graphics card, and networking." While game consoles aren't upgraded as often as PCs are-the last upgrades were four and five years ago-the most recent upgrades share the common denominator of "more": more power, better graphics, and more connections with other players. Last year's releases from the big three in gaming consoles-Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii, and Sony's PlayStation 3-represent an evolution in both technology and purpose, expanding game play and its applications.     

A sensor-based feet motion recognition of graphical user interface controls

Motion sensing has now become one of the crucial parts of modern life. The tech products for entertainment create huge competition in the modern market, with the front runners such as game and handset manufacturers. Users can use their own bodies to control the systems without Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) and Graph User Interfaces (GUIs). With many benefits, the technologies of NUI is getting more and more important, which also are usually accompanied by the sensor developments. Hence, system designers uses the sensors on the embedded platforms used to develop the system devices for different body movement control interfaces, such as using the gravitational sensor to control the systems or using touchscreen detection. However most of the body movement is restricted to the hand portion for the system platform, making it not as dynamic as the traditional monitor consoles. Thus, this restriction decreases the multitude and availability of controlling modes in system devices. In this study, a sensor-based gait recognition was proposed, in order to provide a novel natural user interface for control systems except the operating modes of gesture.     

Locking Out the Investigator: The Need to Circumvent Security in Embedded Systems

ABSTRACT

Embedded devices are becoming ubiquitous in both domestic and commercial environments. Although smartphones, tablets, and video game consoles are all labeled by their primary function, most of these devices offer additional features and are capable of additional interactivity. Given the proprietary nature of such devices in terms of hardware and software and the protection mechanisms incorporated into these systems, it is and will continue to be extremely difficult to use “traditional digital forensics” methodologies to access storage media and acquire data for analysis. This paper examines how consumer law may be stifling research that the forensic community could ultimately depend upon to examine devices.     

抗攻击的基于移动代理的分布式入侵检测模型

为了增强IDS（Intrusion Detection System）在广域网中的健壮性，本文在对几种典型的入侵检测模型进行分析的基础上，提出了抗攻击的基于移动代理的分布式入侵检测模型（Mobile Agent Based Distributed Intrusion Detection System Model，MABDIDSM）．MABDIDSM利用移动代理（mobile agent）在各局域网的控制台之间做环行移动，将各控制台上的入侵事件收集到管理中心进行综合分析处理．如果管理中心受到攻击，移动代理能够在剩余的控制台中选出新的管理中心，因此MAB-DIDSM在广域网范围内具有较强的抗攻击能力．     

Why digital entertainment drives the need for speed

By aggressively maneuvering to seize and expand their market share, the entertainment industry's biggest players are shaping a 21st century in which consumer demand for entertainment will drive computing innovation. Private sector research and development spending, which now accounts for 75 percent of total US R&D, will increase to about $187.2 billion in 2000, up from an estimated $169.3 billion in 1999, according to Battelle Memorial Institute's annual R&D forecast. The significant and expanding role entertainment technologies play in the development of computer hardware and software implies that this sector can provide insights into the directions our industry will take in the coming years     

The digital world's midlife crisis

We are in the midst of convergence between high definition television and game consoles and between handheld game machines and mobile phones. This market shift creates both big losers and big winners. IBM occupies the most favorable position with chip designs for all three next-generation consoles. But all the contenders find themselves facing an uncertain future. The players in this market are contending with what Clayton calls the "innovators dilemma". Each of the firm is immersed in an internal midlife crisis to redefine its identity so that it can triumph in the external struggle against its rival in the game market.     

基于CORBA的应用软件集成器

CORBA是一个面向组件的分布式系统规范,为基于组件的应用软件提供运行环境和各种服务,使应用软件能运行于多种硬件和OS平台,也使应用软件的开发可以在分布式环境下进行。该文设计了一个面向应用领域的软件开发集成器,它脱离了源代码的束缚,利用集成的CORBA功能和服务,使应用软件开发直接在组件的层次上进行,使面向领域的软件开发更加方便、简单,而组件的可视化和可拖动性使组件的柔性联接更加直观,为领域应用人员调整和重组应用软件提供方便,是一个真正面向用户的软件集成器。     

Definition of standards-based building blocks for multimedia content management

The emergence of new ways of rendering multimedia content from a multiplicity of devices like tablets, smartphones, consoles or smart TVs, opens a complete set of new opportunities for multimedia services providers. It is important that the development of those disruptive services is done in an interoperable way. Existing service-oriented middleware platforms and recently developed standards devoted to the definition and implementation of complex multimedia services may speed up its development. In this context, the identification of different content management scenarios including the high-level functionalities they require is an important aspect to be able to implement services in a flexible and interoperable way. Use of standards and standards-based architectures will be a key aspect to combine services offered by different providers. In this paper, we propose the definition of standards-based building blocks based on the high-level functionalities required by content management and distribution scenarios. This will facilitate provision of complex new services specially focused, but not limited to, the management and distribution of multimedia content.     

Compact and efficient green lasers for mobile projector applications

Abstract— Efficient and very‐compact projectors embedded into mobile consumer‐electronic devices, such as handsets, media players, gaming consoles, and GPS units, will enable new consumer use and industry business models. A keystone component for such projectors is a green laser that is commensurately efficient and compact. A synthetic green‐laser architecture is described that can achieve efficiencies of 15%. The architecture consists of an infrared distributed Bragg reflector laser coupled into a second‐harmonic‐generation device for conversion to green.     

民族元素在游戏美术视觉形式美中的运用探究

网络游戏是一种新兴的娱乐方式,人们在进行网络游戏时,会受到其文化思想内容的影响。作为新兴的文化娱乐活动,网络游戏具有传播文化的使命。在色彩缤纷的网络游戏里,传统视觉元素是重要的表现素材,探究民族元素在游戏美术视觉形式美中的运用,对于网络游戏的民族化发展有重要的现实意义。     

Multi-console intelligent satellite graphics

The Department of the Army has undertaken the development of a graphics design system in order to satisfy a variety of engineering requirements. The system is being developed under the overall project, entitled: “Multidisciplined Engineering Design Evaluation and Analysis (MEDEA).” Goals inherent to the developing system are: hardware independence for local processors and graphic consoles, network orientation for resource sharing: multi-user independent operation and reasonable reaction to satisfy attention requests.The approach taken to realize these goals is one that provides a multi-program, multi-task environment. The environment is provided by an interrupt driven Multi-task Operating System (MTOS) that operates on a priority scheme to govern program execution and resource allocation. The priority system is dynamic in nature and governed by ‘static’, ‘relative’, and ‘time’ factors.Graphic processing is supported at the terminal. Large scale computations are supported remotely at large mainframes. Communications between the terminal and the remote mainframe are managed by a MEDEA Interface program resident at the remote site. The MEDEA interface resolves the peculiarities of the host system and allows the terminal graphic applications to view remote mainframe computational resources in a standard fashion.The hardware comprising the MEDEA design terminal is centered around an intelligent satellite terminal Ipporting a cluster of non-homogeneous graphic consoles. Test bed for the MEDEA design terminal has been implemented and will be used to debug and tune the MTOS system. define the minimum hardware configuration and provide a realistic production environment during system development.     

High-resolution, real-time 3D imaging with fringe analysis

Real-time 3D imaging is becoming increasingly important in areas such as medical science, entertainment, homeland security, and manufacturing. Numerous 3D imaging techniques have been developed, but only a few of them have the potential to achieve realtime. Of these few, fringe analysis based techniques stand out, having many advantages over the rest. This paper will explain the principles behind fringe analysis based techniques, and will provide experimental results from systems using these techniques.