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Fast-paced environments require operators who perform in them to use their cognitive abilities such as perception and memory to complete tasks. Individual differences in ability can result in different outcomes. Previous research has shown that common errors in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) can be reduced if individual differences in cognition, such as attentional ability, are addressed. The goal of this research is to understand how cognitive aids in the form of Augmented Reality (AR) can reduce errors and perceived workload, as well as mitigate differences in performance and attentional ability between individuals.

Most smarthome and smartphone technologies are designed with younger adults in mind, even though many older adults can benefit greatly from their use. Through our examination of how to make these technologies more accessible to adults aging in place with mobility impairments, we have found remote troubleshooting to be a possible solution to many problems. However, we have found most current teleconferencing solutions to be lacking in the limited perspectives of a single webcam, as well as from a lack of ability to point out specific items and locations within a camera view. As such, Our team developed a prototype system that used multiple desk space and room space views, as well as on screen annotations, to facilitate remote troubleshooting and social interactions through a teleconferencing service. This prototype was then evaluated with adults aging in place with mobility impairments, as well as accessibility experts, in order to see what parts of the system could be utilized for troubleshooting, as well as to see where the system was lacking. The studies tested the system’s ability to be used for troubleshooting, as well as their uses in games and social interactions. We have gathered positive feedback for these prototypes in the areas of troubleshooting, socialization, games, and for use in other accessibility studies. From these results, we have begun development of a mobile deployment kit for use of our teleconferencing solution in other accessibility studies.

Working or WERKing on a wearable technology project in a transdisciplinary group can be an effective way of learning new skills and collaboration techniques. This paper describes a case study of running a wearable technology group project within an undergraduate course entitled Wearable Technology and Society. The computational media students in the class collaborated with outside performance artists (drag queens and a street dancer) to create interactive performance garments. Design methods such as the use of boundary objects aided in communication of ideas and cooperation across disciplines and cultural barriers. The requirement that the interactive garment function appropriately in a real performance lent urgency and gravity to the experience, motivating cohesive and expedited problem solving in the transdisciplinary group. The use of these methods on a project with real world outcomes and consequences facilitated an authentic learning experience for the students involved.

The rapidly expanding market for wearable computing devices (wearables), driven by advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), wireless access, and public acceptance of a design aesthetic, is indicative of the near limitless potential for changing the relationship of users to information context(s). As the adoption of wearable devices spreads, there are cultural and social impacts that represent both barriers and opportunities, with subsequent policy ramifications. All too often designers, technologists, and policymakers operate independently developing products that are out of sync, lack interoperability, or are hindered by well meaning, but obstructive policy. This paper proposes a futures-based, iterative policy-informed design framework for developing wearable devices that guides interdisciplinary collaborators early in the process of designing a research & development plan. This approach allows for the development of “images of the future” through which various potential implications and effects of device design in social, technological, and regulatory contexts can be explored.

Video games are enjoyed as creative, emotional, and social outlets for many. However, for a growing number of people with disabilities and/or those acquiring disabilities due to age-related decline, this kind of media is becoming inaccessible. The future of accessible game design hinges on teaching the next generation of game developer professionals of best practices and providing them experience to create their own accessible games. Still, little is known for effective pedagogic practices that instill domain knowledge and awareness in students on accessibility design. In this early work, researchers explore the impact of one 60-min accessibility lecture on the way student participants sonified a game for those with visual impairments. Results indicate that students receiving the lecture produced a more accessible product for player with visual impairments, while also intimating higher levels of empathy for those with disabilities. Based on these findings, we present recommendations for how instructors can implement a minimum viable pedagogic intervention for accessible game design, if a longer engagement with this material is not possible.

Video games have great value for collecting rich data that can be used to study fundamental research questions in fields such as psychology and human-computer interaction. There is an increased use of games as scientific tools to assess and train the cognitive, as well as non-cognitive traits and abilities of players. However, games designed as research tools have a unique and challenging set of considerations so that they meet both the requirements of a scientific protocol, while also maintaining an acceptable gaming experience. Additionally, the success of a research game requires extensive planning and co-creation support for trans-disciplinary teams. This paper describes five critical considerations for the design and implementation of custom-built games as scientifically valid and reliable experimental test beds. These findings resulted from several years of work creating game artifacts to study cognitive training and assessment of individual differences. This class of games presents unique design challenges that are often at odds with traditional game design conventions. However, there are many promising applications and use cases for thoughtfully instrumented games that are capable of generating data with comparable accuracy to traditional and previously validated measures.

The rapidly expanding market for wearable computing devices (wearables), driven by the confluence of information and communication technology and public acceptance of a design aesthetic, suggests nearly limitless potential for consumer uses. As adoption of wearables spreads, there are cultural and social impacts that represent both barriers and opportunities, with subsequent public policy ramifications. All too often designers, technologists, and policymakers operate independently; consequently, often products are out of sync, lack interoperability, or are hindered by well-meaning (but obstructive) policy. This article proposes a collaborative policy design framework, based on initial trials undertaken at a multidisciplinary collaborative engineering center, the Wireless Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center. The proposed collaborative policy design process will enhance the development of wearable devices and guide interdisciplinary collaborators as they explore the various implications and effects of device design in social, technological, and regulatory contexts.

Working on a wearable technology interdisciplinary project team can be challenging because of a lack of shared understanding between different fields, and a lack of ability in cross-disciplinary communication. We describe an interdisciplinary collaborative design process used for creating a wearable musical instrument with a musician. Our diverse team used drawing and example artifacts/toolkits to overcome communication and gaps in knowledge. We view this process in the frame of Susan Leigh Star's description of a boundary object, and against a similar process used in another musical / computer science collaboration with the group Duran Duran.

Previous research has examined the effects of cognitive training on cognitive abilities. However, the contribution of cognitive abilities to learning to perform the tasks used as cognitive training, such as complex video games, is not completely understood. Additionally, social interaction while playing a video game may change the relationship between cognitive ability and game success by allowing players to learn from one another instead of solely their own abilities. As part of a larger cognitive intervention designed for older adults, the 50 participants included in our analysis were randomly assigned to either play games alone or take turns with a partner for one hour a day over fifteen days. Those playing with a partner outscored those playing alone. Multiple cognitive abilities predicted game success, but there was also evidence to suggest a moderating effect when playing with a partner on the predictive power of certain cognitive abilities.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine differences in psychological functioning (e.g., well-being, affect, depression, and social functioning) between older adults who play digital games compared to those older adults that do not play digital games. Analysis was conducted on a sample of 140 independently living older adults with an average age of 77.47years (SD=7.31). Participants were divided into three groups (Regular, Occasional Gamers, and Non-gamers) - 60% of the sample was either a Regular or Occasional Gamer. Differences among the groups were found for well-being, negative affect, social functioning, and depression with Regular and Occasional Gamers performing better, on average, than Non-gaming older adults. Findings suggest that playing may serve as a positive activity associated with successful aging.

Over ten years ago, we created a novel dramatic augmented reality (AR) experience exploring bias and point-of-view (PoV) based upon the classic film “Twelve Angry Men,” which allowed a user to experience a dramatic jury room deliberation from the PoV of each of four different characters. Recently, informed by this previous work, we have created a new AR platform for engaging users in different PoVs, exposing forms of biases, and studying cultural conflicts. We are currently using this system for training and assessment in two domains: healthcare and psychological studies of terrorism. In this paper we present the requirements we have identified for this type of user experience, the co-design of both AR environments with domain experts, and the results of an initial user study of technology acceptance that yielded positive feedback from participants.

In this paper, we present the results of a multi-year participatory design process exploring the space of educational AR experiences for STEM education targeted at students of various ages and abilities. Our participants included teachers, students (ages five to fourteen), educational technology experts, game designers, and HCI researchers. The work was informed by state educational curriculum guidelines. The activities included developing a set of design dimensions which guided our ideation process, iteratively designing, building, and evaluating six prototypes with our stakeholders, and collecting our observations regarding the use of AR STEM applications by target students.

Increased age and physical activity both affect motor learning (Colcombe & Kramer, 2003). However, it is unknown how differences in age and changes in daily physical activity affect motor skill acquisition and performance in a virtual world, where feedback on motor actions is offered visually via the software. Using a Nintendo Wii interactive gaming console (IGC), we examined motor skill acquisition in a virtual world for older adults ranging from the young-old (65-79) to the oldest-old (over 80), taking into account their daily reports of physical activity. Multi-level modeling will be used to determine how physical activity and age differences interact to predict success in the motor skill acquisition of a complex movement that results in an object throw in the virtual world. Analysis of results is in progress.

Our observations of players older than 65 suggested that they weighed costs and benefits when deciding whether or not to play video games. Current games can be higher in cost for seniors because of the perceptual and cognitive changes that tend to occur with age. When seniors choose to invest effort in overcoming those costs, it is often because they perceive a high benefit. Creating successful games for seniors will likely require designers to increase the perceived benefits of games, such as engagement, even more than lowering costs such as frustration, time, and money.

Music exerts powerful effects on human performance, behavior, and experience, yet very little is understood about how they are affected by game music. This paper describes a works-in-progress study examining the effects of music and music tempo on game play performance, behavior, and experience in a cognitive game. We found that music influenced mouse activity not directly related to game play, and increased players' feelings of flow.

Midtown Buzz is a partnership between Georgia Tech and Midtown Alliance (MA), focusing on engaging urban communities through mobile innovation. Since 2013, we have been collaborating with the Midtown Atlanta community with the goal of transforming the area into an innovation district. This approach provided us with an opportunity to utilize Midtown as a living laboratory for civic computing research. During the two years of this project we have engaged in a participatory design process with diverse stakeholders to explore the needs of people in the Midtown area, and develop new technologies and approaches to address the identified needs. In this paper we discuss the lessons learned regarding the challenges of bridging the gap between concepts and deployable systems that can create positive transformation in a community.

The Argon project was started to explore the creation of Augmented Reality applications with web technology. We have found this approach to be particularly useful for community-based applications. The Argon web browser has gone through two versions, informed by the work of our students and collaborators on these kinds of applications. In this paper, we highlight a number of the applications we and others have created, what we learned from them, and how our experiences creating these applications informed the design of Argon2 and the requirements for the next version, Argon3.

Walter Benjamin is best known for his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, (Benjamin, 1968b) in which he argues that film and other mechanical technologies are destroying the aura that had belonged to traditional art. In this article we apply Benjamin’s concept of aura to new (digital) media, and in particular to ‘mixed reality’, a group of technologies that blend computer-generated visual, aural, and textual information into the user’s physical environment. We argue that mixed reality increases the options for designer-artists and apparently allows the invocation of aura in new ways. Our culture’s pursuit of auratic experience remains problematic in mixed reality as it was for Benjamin in the case of film. New media maintain aura in a permanent state of oscillation or crisis, and this crisis is a key to understanding new media.

The success of therapeutic games has received recent attention in the research literature, particularly for health issues frequently experienced by adults over age sixty-five. However, less is known about the experience of older adults after interaction with these games and what may promote their adoption and use. We measured the development of flow in a study of over 100 older adults who played a video game for 15 hours across three weeks. Findings indicate that flow development was affected by both individual differences between participants, measured prior to any game experience, and to characteristics of the game, particularly those related to usability of the interface and input device. We conclude with discussion of the flow experience in games for older adults and guidelines for the design of engaging and immersive therapeutic games.

The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART) was an augmented (AR) and mixed reality (MR) authoring tool targeted at new media designers. It was released in 2003 and was heavily used by a diverse population of creators for the next several years [28]. Ten years later, we approached a group of users to collect reflections on their use of DART, the artifacts they produced, their subsequent AR/MR authoring, their thoughts on the challenges of AR/MR authoring in general, and the state of modern tools. In this paper we present the findings from in-depth interviews with these DART developers and other AR experts. Their reflections provide insights on how to successfully engage non-technologists with new media and the challenges they face during authoring, the unique requirements of new media authoring, and how modern tools are still not meeting the needs of this type of author, highlighting where additional research is needed.

The importance of usability for older adults in therapeutic games has not been well explored. Aspects of game-related usability that go beyond typical considerations are a need for challenge, complexity, adoption by novices, motivation for extensive use, and enjoyment. Benefits to considering usability as it pertains to this special population may have long-term benefits for personal independence, maintenance of skills, and rehabilitation from injury. We outline areas we deem critical as a first step to utilizing what we know of older adult use of games for training purposes to facilitate a conversation between designers and researchers for creating and improving games for older players.

Panoramas, as a medium, have traditionally provided viewers with an encompassing experience of distant locations. In recent years, this experience has been augmented by combining handheld orientation sensors with digital panoramas to create mixed reality experiences that transform mobile devices into windows to the remote. Less explored, have been the mixed reality opportunities afforded through the viewing of mobile panoramas non-remotely, at or near their real world epicenters. This paper presents two handheld AR web applications, running on publicly available hardware and software, that utilize panoramas to facilitate both remote and on-location AR experiences. It explores how the experience and the utility of a panorama differ depending on the location in which it is viewed.

In this poster, we examine gender differences in older adults playing an off-the-shelf puzzle game (Boom Blox, EA 2008). Game design research for the elderly is an under-developed area, even though one-fifth of adults over the age of sixty-five reported playing video games and those that do so play more often that their younger counterparts. Gender differences in older adult gamers are even less understood. We use quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify gender differences in older adult game players and we discuss ramifications for cognitive game design.

A common vision of Augmented Reality (AR) is that of a person immersed in a diverse collection of virtual information, superimposed on their view of the world around them. If such a vision is to become reality, an ecosystem for AR must be created that satisfies at least these properties: multiple sources (or channels of interactive information) must be able to be simultaneously displayed and interacted with, channels must be isolated from each other (for security and stability), channel authors must have the flexibility to design the content and interactivity of their channel, and the application must fluidly integrate with the ever-growing cloud of systems and services that define our digital lives. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the Argon AR Web Browser and describe our vision of an AR application environment that leverages the WWW ecosystem. We also describe KARML, our extension to KML (the spatial markup language for Google Earth and Maps), that supports the functionality required for mobile AR. We combine KARML with the full range of standard web technologies to create a standards-based web browser for mobile AR. KARML lets users develop 2D and 3D content using existing web technologies and facilitates easy deployment from standard web servers. We highlight a number of projects that have used Argon and point out the ways in which our web-based architecture has made previously impractical AR concepts possible.

The game industry and related research communities have shown a surge of interest in reality-based interfaces that create “embodied” game play experiences. Handheld AR (HAR) is a reality-based interface that renders digital objects onto a player's perception of the physical world. HAR creates a hybrid space in which players can leverage their existing physical and social skills to interact with the game system and with each other. Although HAR has received some attention in the world of handheld gaming, there is little research that summarizes and communicates design principles and implications across multiple examples. In this paper, we analyze and generate design lessons from dozens of HAR games, drawn from academic and commercial AR games, and also our years of experience designing and teaching HAR game design. We summarize our experience in this new field into a set of design “pre-patterns” as a means of formalizing significant design lessons derived from these existing practices into repeatable principles and solutions. We contribute to both the game and interaction design communities with pre-patterns that support embodied game play.

In this poster, we present the idea of “virtual transparency” for video see-through AR. In fully synthetic 3D graphics, head-tracked motion parallax has been shown to be a powerful depth cue for understanding the structure of the virtual world. To leverage head-tracked motion parallax in video see-through AR, the view of the virtual and physical world must change together in response to head motion. We present a system for accomplishing this, and discuss the benefits and limitations of our approach.

Until recently, most content on the Internet has not been explicitly tied to specific people, places or things. However, content is increasingly being geo-coded and semantically labeled, making explicit connections between the physical world around us and the virtual world in cyberspace. Most augmented reality systems simulate a portion of the physical world, for the purposes of rendering a hybrid scene around the user. We have been experimenting with approaches to terra-scale, heterogeneous augmented reality mirror worlds, to unify these two worlds. Our focus has been on the authoring and user-experience, for example allowing ad-hoc transition between augmented and virtual reality interactions for multiple co-present users. This form of ubiquitous virtual reality raises several research questions involving the functional requirements, user affordances and relevant system architectures for these mirror worlds. In this paper, we describe our experiments with two mirror world systems and some lessons learned about the limitations of deploying these systems using massively multiplayer and dedicated game engine technologies.

The IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) is the leading venue for publishing the latest Mixed and Augmented Reality research, applications, and technologies. This special section presents significantly extended versions of the five best papers from the IEEE ISMAR 2014 proceedings. Within the past few years, Augmented Reality (AR) has reached a critical mass in both research and commercial applications. It is now becoming truly feasible to use augmented reality to place graphics anywhere at any time. However, although the basic capabilities exist, many open research problems continue. This collection of papers considers underlying issues and technologies. IEEE ISMAR 2014 had 89 paper submissions; each paper was reviewed by at least four experts in the field. An international programcommittee of 15 ARexperts invited reviewers, led discussions, invited a rebuttal by the paper authors and prepared a consensus review. To select the final papers for publication, an online two-day PC meeting was held connecting three continents, where each paper was discussed. Thirty-five papers were accepted either as long or short publications, giving an overall acceptance rate of 40%. An independent Award Committee reviewed the highest- ranked submissions again to determine the awards for Best Paper and Honorable Mention. For this special section, the authors of the award papers were invited to submit an extended version of their conference papers, with a clear focus on additional content that expands the scientific contribution of the original conference paper. A standard TVCG reviewing cycle was initiated in which all papers were reviewed, feedback was provided, and papers were revised to suit. Out of all submitted papers, less than 6% appear in this TVCG Special Section.

This paper discusses an experiment carried out in an AR test bed called “the pit”. Inspired by the well-known VR acrophobia study of Meehan et al. [18], the experimental goals were to explore whether VR presence instruments were useful in AR (and to modify them where appropriate), to compare additional measures to these well-researched techniques, and to determine if findings from VR evaluations can be transferred to AR. An experimental protocol appropriate for AR was developed. The initial experimental findings concern varying immersion factors (frame rate) and their effect on feelings of presence, user performance and behavior. Unlike the VR study, which found differing frame rates to affect presence measures, there were few differences in the five frame rate modes in our study as measured by the qualitative and quantitative instruments, which included physiological responses, a custom presence questionnaire, task performance, and user behavior. The AR presence questionnaire indicated users experienced a high feeling of presence in all frame rate modes. Behavior, performance, and interview results indicated the participants felt anxiety in the pit environment. However, the physiological data did not reflect this anxiety due to factors of user experience and experiment design. Efforts to develop a useful AR test bed and to identify results from a large data set has produced a body of knowledge related to AR evaluation that can inform others seeking to create AR experiments.

Widespread future adoption of augmented reality technology will rely on a broadly accessible standard for authoring and distributing content with, at a minimum, the flexibility and interactivity provided by current web authoring technologies. We introduce KHARMA, an open architecture based on KML for geospatial and relative referencing combined with HTML, JavaScript and CSS technologies for content development and delivery. This architecture uses lightweight representations that decouple infrastructure and tracking sources from authoring and content delivery. Our main contribution is a re-conceptualization of KML that turns HTML content formerly confined to balloons into first-class elements in the scene. We introduce the KARML extension that gives authors increase control over the presentation of HTML content and its spatial relationship to other content.

We have developed and deployed a multimedia museum installation that enables one or several users to interact with and collaboratively explore a 3D virtual environment while simultaneously providing an engaging and educational, theater-like experience for a larger crowd of passive viewers. This interactive theater experience consists of a large, immersive projection display, a touch screen display for gross navigation and three wireless, motion-sensing, hand-held controllers which allow multiple users to collaboratively explore a photorealistic virtual environment of Atlanta, Georgia and learn about Atlanta's history and the philanthropic legacy of many of Atlanta's prominent citizens.

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) can create engaging and useful interactive systems. However, along with the power of these interfaces comes challenges; they are often so specialized and novel that building a TUI system involves working at a low level with custom hardware and software. As a result the community of people that are capable of creating TUIs is limited. With this project we aim to make a particular class of TUIs accessible to a broader range of designers and HCI researchers by exposing TUI specific tools in a mixed-reality rapid prototyping environment know as DART (The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit). In this paper we discuss the creation of a system for rapidly prototyping marker based tangible user interfaces. These prototyping tools were then used to create a set of TUI-based applications with the goal of raising students' interest in science via an exploration of fine art concepts.

In this chapter, we describe DART: The Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit an authoring environment for rapidly prototyping augmented reality experiences. We summarize the most significant problems faced by designers working with AR in the real world, and use DART as the example to guide a discussion of the AR design process which we have broken down into four stages (idea exploration, population of the virtual world, application development, and evaluation). The focus of our work with DART has been on supporting early design activities, especially a rapid transition from storyboards to working experience, so that the experiential part of a design can be tested early and often.

The Historic Oakland Cemetery in downtown Atlanta provides a unique setting for exploring the challenges of location-based mixed-reality experience design. Our objective is to entertain and educate visitors about historically and culturally significant events related to the deceased inhabitants of the cemetery. We worked with the constraints and affordances of the physical environment of the cemetery to design an audio-based dramatic experience. The dramatic narrative is realized through voice actors who play the parts of cemetery residents and tell stories about the time periods in which they lived. The experience provides navigation and linearity through a main narrator who guides visitors to various gravesites. While at each grave, the visitor can choose from several categories of content using a handheld controller. Formative evaluations conducted with users in the cemetery indicate strengths of the current experience and suggest ideas for continued development.

In this paper we present an approach for exposing tracking technology in an accessible and flexible way to users of a rapid prototyping system for mixed (MR) and augmented reality (AR). Our system provides a tracking framework that alleviates the need for a high level of expertise while also presenting a model of the technology that allows for flexible modification of tracking configurations, the ability to quickly change an application from one type of tracking technology to another, and the creation of synthetic trackers for playback of prerecorded data, data fusion from multiple trackers, and wizard-of-oz applications.

One important tool for developing complex interactive applications is "Wizard of Oz "(WOz)simulation.WOz simulation allows design concepts,content and partially completed applications to be tested on users without the need to first create a completely working system.In this paper we discuss the integration of wizard interface tools into a Mixed Reality (MR)design environment and show how easier creation and evolution of wizard interfaces can lead to an expanded role for WOz-based testing during the design evolution of MR experiences.We share our experiences designing an audio experience in an historic site,and illustrate the evolution of the wizard interfaces alongside the user experience

Augmented reality (AR) applications pose unique challenges to the experience designer. The creation of 3D content for AR is time consuming. Working AR experiences are difficult to develop and require technology such as trackers and cameras. Therefore, traditionally, AR designers have been limited in the number of design iterations that can be explored. To support rapid prototyping, design exploration, and testing of the “participant experience” early and often we have developed the Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART) [MacIntyre et al. 2004]. DART consists of additions to the Macromedia Director environment that support the prototyping of AR applications. DART that addresses the problems associated with in situ applications via components that allow for the capture and replay of camera and tracker data. These components allow a designer to easily record synchronized sensor, tracker (e.g. GPS, inertial sensing), and camera data needed for an application at the actual site. This recorded data can then be used in a DART application just as live data would be; allowing the designer to develop working AR applications without having to be located at the site and without all the technology present.

In this paper we present a concept for augmented reality entertainment, called AR Karaoke, where users perform their favorite dramatic scenes with virtual actors. AR Karaoke is the acting equivalent of traditional karaoke, where the goal is to facilitate an acting experience for the user that is entertaining for both the user and audience. Prototype implementations were created to evaluate various user interfaces and design approach reveal guidelines that are relevant to the design of mixed reality applications in the domains of gaming, performance, and entertainment.

In this paper [MacIntyre et al 2004]. we describe The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART). DART is built on top of Macromedia Director, a widely used multimedia development environment. We summarize the most significant problems faced by designers working with AR in the real world, and discuss how DART addresses them. Most of DART is implemented in an interpreted scripting language, and can be modified by designers to suit their needs. Our work focuses on supporting early design activities, especially a rapid transition from storyboards to working experience, so that the experiential part of a design can be tested early and often. DART allows designers to specify complex relationships between the physical and virtual worlds, and supports 3D animatic actors (informal, sketch-based content) in addition to more polished content. Designers can capture and replay synchronized video and sensor data, allowing them to work off-site and to test specific parts of their experience more effectively.

In this paper we present 2D and 3D visualization techniques that are part of our ongoing effort to improve the accuracy of neurosurgical procedures such as 'Pallidotomy' and 'Deep Brain Stimulation' (DBS), which are performed to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. The precise targeting and mapping of structures in the Basal Ganglia particularly the internal Globus Pallidus (GPi) using a combination of stereotactic frame- registered Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and intraoperative microelectrode recording (IMR) is key to the success of these procedures. We have designed a set of software components, including a knowledge-based system (KBS), a digital signal processing module and a 2D/3D imaging system with automated mapping paradigm, which will work in combination to improve upon the standards currently in use. The imaging system will be the focus of this publication.

The draft standard on a Universal Remote Console (URC) framework is on its way to be reviewed and released by ANSI in 2004. This standard will contribute to the goal of Ambient Intelligence by allowing users to interact with networked devices and services in their environments in universal and natural ways, utilizing technologies such as natural language interaction and wearable computing. This SIG will follow up on last year's successful SIG, whose contributions helped to shape the URC draft standard.Participants in this SIG will present and discuss the impact of the URC draft standard on the field of Ambient Intelligence. The goal of this SIG is to build a network of people from industry and academia who are interested in moving the Universal Remote Console standard forward, and in pursuing its wide-spread adoption in order to implement adaptable and usable user interfaces for networked devices and services.

In this paper we present a wearable device for control of home automation systems via hand gestures. This solution has many advantages over traditional home automation interfaces in that it can be used by those with loss of vision, motor skills, and mobility. By combining other sources of context with the pendant we can reduce the number and complexity of gestures while maintaining functionality. As users input gestures, the system can also analyze their movements for pathological tremors. This information can then be used for medical diagnosis, therapy, and emergency services. Currently, the Gesture Pendant can recognize control gestures with an accuracy of 95% and user-defined gestures with an accuracy of 97%. It can detect tremors above 2 HZ within /spl plusmn/.1 Hz.