Multi-purpose user awareness kit for consumer electronic devices

Abstract

Making systems user-aware can be a daunting task. Problems that should be attended range from sensing a complex environment and recognizing user activity, to prediction and personalization of system services. This paper proposes a User Awareness Kit (UAK) that can be used as a slave system with a variety of consumer electronic devices. UAK combines sensor inputs (passive infrared sensor, microphone array, time of flight camera) with behavior models based on system attentiveness and user-system interference concepts, to provide information of the ecosystem of users to its host. UAK is designed as a system on chip (SoC) that shares that information by using a simple interprocessor protocol. As a result, host device would be able to anticipate user actions and adapt accordingly. We argue that equipping consumer electronic devices with UAK can mitigate risks of device rejection by users. Due to the all-growing number of electronic products that people use, carry around and even depend on reducing the impact on their attention and time should be an ultimate goal. ©2010 IEEE.