in collaboration with Provincia di Firenze

Friday, April 2, 2004
Aula Magna dell'Università, Piazza San Marco 4
Florence, Italy

http://naturalinteraction.org/workshop

Program (pdf)


9.30 OPENING
Alberto Del Bimbo*, Fabio Paternò**
*Media Integration and Communication Center, University of Florence, Italy
** ISTI-CNR Pisa, Italy

INVITED LECTURE
9.45 “Technologies and methods for interactive museum exhibits: from wireless object and body tracking to wearable computers”
Flavia Sparacino
Sensing places, Boston, USA
New high-end interactive technologies offer museums the opportunity to engage and educate visitors by transforming them from mere explorers of artwork in active orchestrators of the very experience at hand. A series of state of the art sensor-enabled, people-driven, interactive narrative spaces.

10.45 COFFEE BREAK

SESSION 1
Chair: Alberto Del Bimbo
Media Integration and Communication Center, University of Florence, Italy

11.15 “3D human posture estimation using geodesic distance maps”
Pedro Correa*, Xavier Marichal*, Benoit Macq*, Ferran Marqués**
* Communications and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
** Image Processing Group, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain
A 3D human posture estimation technique in a controlled scenario using two orthogonal cameras, that detects human features of human gestures (head, hands and feet). Based on the analysis of geodesic distance maps computed on the user’s morphological skeleton and region.

11.40 “Enhanced personal interaction: the virtual bike experience”
Piergiorgio Bosco, Anna Franciscono, Giovanni Martini
Telecom Italia Lab, Italy
A domestic multi-user interactive virtual biking training system, offering a full immersive video communication environment. A personal communication experience with innovative interface, beyond conventional voice and video conferencing.

12.05 “Natural interfaces for cultural heritage and public spaces”
Thomas Alisi, Alberto Del Bimbo, Fabio Pucci, Alessandro Valli
Media Integration and Communication Center, University of Florence, Italy
Research prototypes of natural interfaces based on computer vision, for the interpretation of human motion and gestures. Among them the PointAt system, a permanent installation of Palazzo Medici Riccardi Museum, that allows visitors to explore and understand the Magi’s Chapel.

12.30 “Sensible ambiences for the arts”
Stefano Roveda
Studio Azzurro, Italy
Sensitive environments where technology is married to narration and space. Natural interfaces as part of sensible ambients design integrating group interaction techniques with video, lighting and audio environments and with contents and its languages.

12.55 LUNCH

SESSION 2
Chair: Fabio Paternò
ISTI-CNR Pisa, Italy

14.00 “Supporting museum co-visits through mobile devices”
Yann Laurillau, Fabio Paternò
ISTI-CNR Pisa, Italy
A set of software tools designed to promote social interaction between museum visitors through cooperative and educational games. An example of collaborative learning with application to museum visits using mobile devices.

14.25 “4G Communication, how do we communicate emotional content through gestures over distance?”
Gaurav Chadha, Andrew Davidson, Nathan Shedroff
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy
Enhancing human interpersonal communication by exploiting natural gestures to communicate emotional content of conversations in distance communications. Integration of gestures and human motion in transmitting messages in traditional messaging.

14.50 “No longer a life on a leash”
Ralf Ackermann*, Helma Töpper**, Ralf Steinmetz*
* Multimedia Communications Lab, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany
** Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy
A prototype implementation of a modular system that allows elderly people to monitor their vital functions and ask for help in emergency situations. Based on the analysis of user’s requirements and the state of the art technology.

15.15 “EyeMouse: an interaction device for severely motor-disabled people”
Carlo Colombo, Massimiliano Corsini
Visual Information Processing Lab, University of Florence, Italy
The EyeMouse system, enables people with severe mobility difficulties that are not able to interact with computers through traditional input devices, to perform interaction through eye movements. Eye tracking is performed using computer vision.

15.40 COFFEE BREAK

SESSION 3
Chair: Alessandro Valli
Media Integration and Communication Center, University of Florence, Italy

16.00 “Audio d-touch”
Enrico Costanza*, John Robinson**, Simon Shelley**
* Liminal Devices, Media Lab Europe, Ireland
** Media Engineering Group, University of York, UK
An interactive tangible interface for a variety of time based musical tasks such as sequencing, drum editing and collaborative composition. The interface is implemented using only a consumer grade personal computer and a low cost web cam.

16.25 "The reacTable*: a tangible table-based music instrument with dynamic patching audio synthesis"
Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Guenter Geiger
Music Technology Group, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Electronic music instrument with a tangible table-based interface. Combines the construction and playing of the instrument in a unique way, by allowing direct manipulation control over a tangible interface: building blocks that physically represent the synthesizer function.

16.50 “Improving intuitive interaction through everyday sonic feedback: a tangible-audio-visual interface”
Matthias Rath, Davide Rocchesso
Vision Image Processing and Sound Lab, University of Verona, Italy
A tangible-audio-visual device, the "Ballancer", based on the simple control metaphor of “balancing a ball on a track”. The continuous sonic feedback via a model of rolling improves performance in control tasks.

17.15 “Expressive interfaces for naturally interacting systems”
Antonio Camurri, Gualtiero Volpe
InfoMus Lab, University of Genova, Italy
The process of designing natural interactive systems can strongly benefit by adding a new channel: expressiveness. Development of expressive interfaces in the framework of multimodal environments for music, theatre and art installations.

17.40 OPEN DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Workshop Announcement

Humans communicate with each other using natural skills such as speaking, gesturing, glancing, walking around. Research in natural interaction is aimed at the creation of systems that understand these human activities, and provide appropriate feedback, while allowing people to interact naturally with each other and the environment. Users thus experience context awareness, exploiting dialog modalities and behaviours that are commonly used in ordinary activities in everyday life.

The workshop is intended to provide an informal forum in which researchers and practitioners from different fields can examine the newest achievements and the open issues on these subjects, with particular reference to:

• multimodal and perceptual interfaces
• interactive spaces and context aware computing
• ubiquitous systems and ambient intelligence
• tangible interfaces

Co-Chairs
Alberto Del Bimbo, University of Florence
Fabio Paternò, ISTI-CNR (fabio.paterno@isti.cnr.it)

Associate Chair
Alessandro Valli, University of Florence (av@naturalinteraction.org)

Program Committee
Tiziana Catarci, University of Rome “La Sapienza”
Luigi Cinque, University of Rome “La Sapienza”
Carlo Colombo, University of Florence
Marco Combetto, Microsoft Research
Maria Francesca Costabile, University of Bari
Carmen Santoro, ISTI-CNR
Stan Sclaroff, Boston University