RUFAE Augmented Environments

We were one of the founding labs of RUFAE. RUFAE is an international network of research institutions designing and studying interactive spaces. RUFAE's industrial and academic research labs, from France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and the U.S., cover architecture, cognitive science, computer science, and psychology. The collaboration currently manifests itself in three main aspects:

• Spaces: Each member lab is creating and using a prototypical augmented space.

• Ideas: In monthly phone/video/application sharing conferences betwen our augmented spaces, we present our research, discuss common projects, and share technical expertise. This helps to improve our spaces, their interconnectedness and compatibility, and to establish good practice through real use.

• People: We have begun to exchange students and researchers between member labs, to transfer technology, and to work on common research projects.

RUFAE Members

Laboratory of Design for Cognition

AMBIENT Smart Environments of the Future

CMU Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workspaces

UCSD Distributed Cognition and HCI Laboratory

Stanford Interactive Workspaces

FUSE Group at KTH Stockholm

Aachen Media Computing Group

Laboratory of Professional Activity Support

NSF: Image-Based Information Access and Organization
There is an astonishing amount of information on the web and it is constantly increasing. To avoid being overwhelmed by the volume of information available and confused by its uneven quality, people need assistance in efficiently finding task-relevant information and in effectively managing complex dynamic information collections.
    Current interfaces primarily employ textual representations for accessing and organizing information collections. Access is either via taxonomies or queries to search engines and results are typically organized as lists or hierarchies of web page titles. Given the ability of images to assist memory and the common exploitation of space in everyday problem solving to simplify choice, perception, and mental computation, it is surprising that so little use is made of images and spatial organization to aid information access and organization.
    In this project we investigate the use of spatial and temporal organization of images to assist in accessing and organizing information. We are exploring several image-based applications and associated representational techniques. In addition, we conduct ethnographic and experimental investigations of spatial and temporal strategies for image-based access and organization.

Human Centered Intelligent Driver Support Systems: A Novel Multi-Modal "Driving Ecology" for Enhanced Safety
The main goal pursued in this research is to support the driver in attention management, perception, decision-making and control. A human centered driver support system will be developed that will allow the vehicle to act as an extension of the driver's cognition, that is aware of drivers' inherent attentional limitations, and that evaluates the state of the environment and the driver in a manner consistent with drivers' perception of criticality and performance.
    Our prototype driver support system abandons the notion of binary warnings and classical notions of false alarms as a primary means to communicate criticalities to the driver and explores a new role of communications between vehicle and driver that places the driver central in the monitoring and control loop at all times. The system provides information about events that show signs of potential interference with the drivers' intentions through sensory channels capable of processing information even if the driver's visual and verbal attention is overloaded. Primary focus in initially directed to the tactile channels, but other modalities will be explored in our quest to cretate a new driving exology that manages drivers' attention rather than controls it.
    This project is a collaborative effort between Mohan Trivedi (Electrical and Computer Engineering) PI, Bhaskar Rao (Electrical and Computer Engineering), James Hollan (Cognitive Science), Harold Pashler (Psychology) and Dr. Erwin Boer (Project Coordinator).

Dynapad 
Dynapad is the third generation of our multiscale interface and visualization software. It makes scale a first-class parameter of objects, supports navigation in multiscale workspaces, and provides special mechanisms to maintain interactivity while rendering large numbers of graphical items. Dynapad employs Scheme to provide a high-level programming interface to the multiscale graphical and interaction facilities in the C++ rendering substrate.

Diver
Diver is a tool for authoring and sharing Dives. A Dive is an annotated perspective on any video record. Content can be captured by equipment ranging from basic consumer video cameras to specially built, high-resolution 360-degree panoramic cameras with a multi-microphone array. Diver allows for infinite points-of-view and commentary from a single video recording. The key concept behind Diver is Guided Noticing. DeskTop Diver allows users to import source movies and create new annotated "paths" through the video source. The new annotated movie is the user's own personal DIVE. WebDiver allows Divers to upload a Dive and share it with others who, in turn, can comment on the Dive.

The Diver project is being developed by a team led by Dr. Roy Pea, co-director of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (SCIL) and Professor of Education and Learning Sciences. We have recently initiated a collaboration with the Diver project and are investigating integrating Diver and Dynapad.

Go to: Previous Projects
For information on projects the lab has worked on in the past.