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A prototype of interactive data visualization is proposed for Building Management Systems (BMS). The aim is to enhance traditional data presentation format such as graphs and tables to support expert users in early open-ended exploration of building data. Based on data recorded over 3 years in a real office building in Switzerland, a case study is conducted involving 12 practicing expert users with engineering background. Both exploratory and qualitative in nature, this evaluation allows to : (1) show the ability of expert users to use advanced visualization tools to derive meaningful conclusions in limited time, (2) demonstrate the relevance of visual analytics results for the building physics field.

The lightness and thermal performances of timber has led designers to consider using it for urban densification and to make it the key for a more sustainable and affordable construction industry.This project of a timber-framed high-rise building will become one of the tallest in Switzerland to adopt a wooden construction, using a mix of two types of manufactured wood: cross-laminated timber (CLT) for structural walls and glue-laminated timber (a.k.a. glulam) combined to an upper concrete layer linked with screws for the slabs. The use of timber sourced from local forest is considered by the engineers because its abundance in Switzerland.The concrete layer is needed to reach a high level of acoustic performance and to efficiently create horizontal diaphragms for earthquake resistance. It also enables the reduction of the thickness of the complex. The lower wooden surfaces with warm natural appearance are visible from the rooms, as well as the vertical surfaces of the CLT wall supporting them.The project reveals the complexity for timber structures to simultaneously comply with regulations concerning structural, fire safety, acoustical and earthquake-resistance performances. Building Information Modeling (BIM) allows excellent technical installations coordination to reach a high degree of prefabrication.

Traditionally, design learning in the architecture studio has taken place through a combination of individual work and joint projects. The introduction of code-based design practices in the design studio has altered this balance, introducing new models of joint authorship and new ways for individuals to contribute to co-authored projects. This paper presents a case study describing four design studios in a higher education setting that used code as a tool for generating architectural geometry. The format of the studios encouraged the students to reflect critically on their role as authors and to creatively address the multiple opportunities for shared authorship available with code-based production. The research question addressed in this study involved the role of code-based practices in altering the model of architectural education in the design studio, in particular the role of visual representations of a code-based design process in the production of shared knowledge.

Interaction design is increasingly about embedding interactive technologies in our built environment; architecture is increasingly about the use of interactive technologies to reimagine and dynamically repurpose our built environment. This forum focuses on this intersection of interaction and architecture. --- Mikael Wiberg, Editor

This paper discusses the advantages of using a coding interface both to describe form and run performance simulations in the context of architectural design. It outlines the relevance of combining recent interest in the design community for parametric scripting with available expert-level Building Performance Simulation. This approach enables designers to address performance-related design questions at the early design stage. Pitfalls when considering non-standard solutions and the potential of the approach to circumvent such difficulties are exemplified through a housing building case study, emphasizing the under-evaluated role of the analysis tool in steering design decisions. To circumvent the difficulty for non-expert users to interpret simulation results and transform them into design moves, the use of sensitivity analysis is proposed for its specific interplay with parametric scripting. Its potential for classifying parameters in order of importance is presented in the context of a design problem. The contribution outlines how providing designers with exploratory tools allows to consider sustainable construction in a systemic manner. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Acknowledging the current digitalizing of buildings and their existence as interactive objects, this article sets out to consolidate Human-Building Interaction (HBI) as a new research domain within HCI. It exposes fundamental characteristics of HBI such as user immersion in the “machine” and extensive space and time scales, and proposes an operational definition of the domain. Building upon a comprehensive survey of relevant cross-disciplinary research, HBI is characterized in terms of dimensions representing the interaction space and modalities that can be invoked to enhance interactions. Specific methodological challenges are discussed, and illustrative research projects are presented demonstrating the relevance of the domain. New directions for future research are proposed, pointing out the domain’s potentially significant impact on society.

In 2030, we will have a different interactive experience with our built environments, at home, at work, and even in public urban spaces. This is attributed to advancements in sensing and actuation systems that can integrate into the building infrastructures, in symbiosis with the new environmental concerns that call for new life, work, and mobility styles. This change, whether gradual or sudden, evident or seamless, can have a remarkable impact on our everyday experiences, and thus entails efforts to envision possible scenarios and plan for them. We believe that buildings, as they would embody our digital and physical interactive daily experiences, should be designed and nurtured in a dialogue with their users at the individual as well as social levels. This implies a responsibility of the HCI community to intervene and involve the user in the Human-Building Interaction (HBI) design practice. We propose bringing together expertise from the fields of human-computer interaction, building and urban architecture, and social sciences, and provide them with an occasion for collaboratively creating and sharing ``images' of HBI by 2030. The goal is to uncover research opportunities and challenges that will emerge through discussions and multi-faceted debates about the topics proposed.

We describe a new class of decentralised control algorithms that link local wireless connectivity to low-level robot motion control in order to maintain both swarm aggregation and connectivity, which we term “coherence”, in unbounded space. We investigate the potential of first-order and second-order connectivity information to maintain swarm coherence. For the second-order algorithm we show that a single \(\beta \) parameter—the number of shared neighbours that each robot tries to maintain—acts as an “adhesion” parameter. Control of \(\beta \) alone affects the global area coverage of the swarm. We then add a simple beacon sensor to each robot and show that, by creating a \(\beta \) differential between illuminated and occluded robots, the swarm displays emergent global taxis towards the beacon; it also displays interesting global obstacle avoidance properties. The chapter then extends the idea of \(\beta \) heterogeneity within the swarm to demonstrate variants of the algorithm that exhibit emergent concentric or linear segregation of subgroups within the swarm, or—in the presence of an external beacon—the formation of horizontal or vertical axial configurations. This emergent swarm morphology control is remarkable because apparently simple variations generate very different global properties. These emergent properties are interesting both because they appear to have parallels in biology, and because they could have value to a wide range of future applications in swarm robotics.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) allow the monitoring of activity or environmental conditions over a large area, from homes to industrial plants, from agriculture fields to forests and glaciers. They can support a variety of applications, from assisted living to natural disaster prevention. WSNs can, however, be challenging to setup and maintain, reducing the potential for real-world adoption. To address this limitation, this paper introduces SensorTune, a novel mobile interface to support non-expert users in iteratively setting up a WSN. SensorTune uses non-speech audio to present to its users information regarding the connectivity of the network they are setting up, allowing them to decide how to extend it. To simplify the interpretation of the data presented, the system adopts the metaphor of tuning a consumer analog radio, a very common and well known operation. A user study was conducted in which 20 subjects setup real multi-hop networks inside a large building using a limited number of wireless nodes. Subjects repeated the task with SensorTune and with a comparable mobile GUI interface. Experimental results show a statistically significant difference in the task completion time and a clear preference of users for the auditory interface.

It is a characteristic of swarm robotics that modelling the overall swarm behaviour in terms of the low-level behaviours of individual robots is very difficult. Yet if swarm robotics is to make the transition from the laboratory to real-world engineering realisation such models would be critical for both overall validation of algorithm correctness and detailed parameter optimisation. We seek models with predictive power: models that allow us to determine the effect of modifying parameters in individual robots on the overall swarm behaviour. This paper presents results from a study to apply the probabilistic modelling approach to a class of wireless connected swarms operating in unbounded environments. The paper proposes a probabilistic finite state machine (PFSM) that describes the network connectivity and overall macroscopic behaviour of the swarm, then develops a novel robot-centric approach to the estimation of the state transition probabilities within the PFSM. Using measured data from simulation the paper then carefully validates the PFSM model step by step, allowing us to assess the accuracy and hence the utility of the model.

Swarm Intelligence provides us with a powerful new paradigm for building fully distributed decentralised systems in which overall system functionality emerges from the interaction of individual agents with each other and with their environment. Such systems are intrinsically highly parallel and can exhibit high levels of robustness and scalability; qualities desirable in high-integrity distributed systems. Making use of a laboratory based swarm robotic system as a case study, this review paper explores dependability, robustness and reliability modelling in swarm based systems, and argues that there is considerable merit in further investigating their application to distributed safety-critical systems.

Initiated by N. Reeves, the Mascarillons project stands at a crossroad between Art and Science. It aims to bring together researchers in both artistic and scientific domains to collaborate towards the production of a robotic environment dedicated to architectural research, with a major potential for multi-media performance. Because of the tight constraints of the project, a multi-level design methodology is proposed, consisting of the parallel development of real robots and increasingly abstract modeling tools. The interaction of these experimental levels is expected to hasten the progress towards an efficient solution by taking every technological and physical constraint into account.

This review paper sets out to explore the question of how future complex engineered systems based upon the swarm intelligence paradigm could be assured for dependability. The paper introduces the new concept of ‘swarm engineering': a fusion of dependable systems engineering and swarm intelligence. The paper reviews the disciplines and processes conventionally employed to assure the dependability of conventional complex (and safety critical) systems in the light of swarm intelligence research and in so doing tries to map processes of analysis, design and test for safety-critical systems against relevant research in swarm intelligence. A case study of a swarm robotic system is used to illustrate this mapping. The paper concludes that while some of the tools needed to assure a swarm for dependability exist, many do not, and hence much work needs to be done before dependable swarms become a reality.

The swarm intelligence literature frequently asserts that swarms exhibit high levels of robustness. That claim is, however, rather less frequently supported by empirical or theoretical analysis. But what do we mean by a 'robust' swarm? How would we measure the robustness or – to put it another way – fault-tolerance of a robotic swarm? These questions are not just of academic interest. If swarm robotics is to make the transition from the laboratory to real-world engineering implementation, we would need to be able to address these questions in a way that would satisfy the needs of the world of safety certification. This paper explores fault-tolerance in robot swarms through Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and reliability modelling. The work of this paper is illustrated by a case study of a wireless connected robot swarm, employing both simulation and real-robot laboratory experiments.

Recognized as a powerful methodology for the evaluation of environmental burdens, life cycle assessment (LCA) must be performed with close-to-reality inputs to be robust and accurate. However, the necessary real-world data is hardly available at the design stage, resulting in current LCA practice being mainly based on standards and norms as hypothesis of building contexts, therefore inducing uncertainties in results. The current paper presents a methodology to collect a subset of such input data in a function of the context more accurately than the standards. It then studies the impact of such uncertainties in the LCA results. Through an academic building case study that measured data concerning the building occupancy (A), i.e. the hourly occupancy rate and density, the hourly appliance consumption rate (B), and the hourly conversion factors of environmental impact of the electricity mix (C), the LCA results for the GHG emissions and primary energy consumption are compared between normative- and measurements-based input parameters. The measured occupancy rate (A) is shown to impact the LCA results the most, especially the embedded impacts, by implying a new occupancy density: the building population increase of +32% leads to a significant increase of the embedded impacts related to furniture. The variability in appliance usage (B) is marginal between measures and standards and therefore does not lead to a significant change in LCA results. The use of hourly conversion factors (C) indicates an underestimation of the GHG emissions and, at the same time, an overestimation of the primary energy when assessed with mean annual values. The combined effect of simultaneously using the three reality-based input parameters (A, B, C) mostly affects the non-renewable part of the cumulative energy demand indicator (-9% reduction of the operational part), followed by the cumulative energy demand (-7%) and GHG emissions indicators (-3%). The research findings affect not only LCA research but also practitioners such as architects or building contractors who need to respect ambitious environmental targets.