No abstract

The latest smartphones with GPS, electronic compasses, directional audio, touch screens, and so forth, hold a potential for location-based services that are easier to use and that let users focus on their activities and the environment around them. Rather than interpreting maps, users can search for information by pointing in a direction and database queries can be created from GPS location and compass data. Users can also get guidance to locations through point and sweep gestures, spatial sound, and simple graphics. This paper describes two studies testing two applications with multimodal user interfaces for navigation and information retrieval. The applications allow users to search for information and get navigation support using combinations of point and sweep gestures, nonspeech audio, graphics, and text. Tests show that users appreciated both applications for their ease of use and for allowing users to interact directly with the surrounding environment.

This article presents Collect&Drop application, a pervasive system which utilizes RFID technology to store and pick digital content with mobile phones and play it with smart space's displays and speakers. Collect&Drop is implemented with the support of three reasoning engines, based on CLIPS, Jess and Win-Prolog. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of integrating a reasoning engine into the system, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Also comparison of the three engines implementations is made with respect to performance and resource consumption.

In this paper, we present a navigation application, PING!, with a unique combination of characteristics. First, a user can study her/his environment by probing, or sweeping the phone horizontally, upon which points of interest in the pointed directions are indicated with audio feedback. Second, PING! utilizes fuzzy routing. Turn-by-turn instructions are not given and maps are not shown. Instead, the direction of the target is indicated with a simple arrow and binaural audio and the user is free to decide the exact path to take based on this direction information and the environment surrounding her/him. The application, realized in Android devices, was tested in field tests that verified the feasibility of the application concept and revealed directions for further improvement.