Speaker: Alois Ferscha, University of Linz

Title: Spontaneous Interaction

Abstract

The growing availability of wireless communication technologies in the wide, local and personal area, 
and the maturing of miniaturized web technologies has fertilized the emergence of "smart appliances": 
wirelessly ad-hoc networked, mobile, autonomous special purpose computing devices, providing largely 
invisible support and services to users. Such smart appliances, usually operated under intuitive, rather 
implicit user interaction have started to populate the real world, demanding for new styles of interactions 
with the user and among each other.

We have proposed a "spontaneous interaction" thought model, in which things start to interact once they 
reach physical proximity to each other: Explained using the metaphor of an "aura", which like a subtle invisible 
emanation or exhalation radiates from the center of an object into its surrounding, a "digital aura" is built on 
technologies like Bluetooth radio, RFID or IrDA together with an XML based profile description, such that if an 
object detects the proximity (e.g. radio signal strength) of another object, it starts exchanging and comparing 
profile data, and, upon sufficient "similarity" of the two profiles, starts to interact with that object. 
A "digital aura"  depending on the implementation technology, is dense in the center of the object, 
and thins out towards its surrounding until it is no longer sensible by others. Profiles described as 
semistructured data and attached to the object, can be matched by a structural and semantic analysis. 
Peer-to-peer concepts can then be used to implement applications on top of the digital aura model for 
spontanous interaction.