Prototype and proof of concept for a display system in retail stores

Selling devices on retail stores comes with the big challenge of grabbing the customer’s attention. Nowadays people have a lot of offers at their disposal and new marketing techniques must emerge to differentiate the products. When it comes to smartphones and tablets, those devices can make the difference by themselves, if we use their computing power and capabilities to create something unique and interactive. With that in mind, three prototypes were developed during an internship: a face recognition based Customer Detection, a face tracking solution with an Avatar and interactive cross-app Guides. All three revealed to have potential to be differentiating solutions in a retail store, not only raising the chance of a customer taking notice of the device but also of interacting with them to learn more about their features. The results were meant to be only proof of concepts and therefore were not tested in the real world.

Fysisk aktivitet och teknologins påverkan på barn : - en fallstudie av två lågstadieklasser

Fysisk inaktivitet och stillasittande är stora hälsorisker då samhället idag blir allt mer beroende av teknologin både under fritid, inom arbetslivet och i skolan. Vårt syfte med denna studie är att undersöka om teknologin på något sätt påverkar barnens fysiska aktivitet negativt. Detta är en kvalitativ fallstudie med intervjuer och observationer som genomförts i två lågstadieklasser på två olika skolor med olika regler gällande användandet av teknologi. Ena skolan använder sig av surfplattor från och med förskoleklass medan den andra skolan inte börjar med teknologi, i form av datorer, förrän i sjundeklass. Undersökningens resultat visar att barnens fysiska aktivitet i skolmiljö inte påverkas nämnvärt av att skolorna har regler angående användandet av tekniska resurser. Utifrån våra observationer kan vi också se att det behövs mer fokus och riktlinjer på hur man kan förminska förslitningsskador från barnens dåliga hållning vid användandet av surfplatta i framtiden. Intervjuerna visar också att lärare tycker att mer ansvar bör läggas på föräldrarna än på skolorna för att få barnen mer aktiva och intresserade av en fortsatt aktiv livsstil.

Efficient and precise interactive hand tracking through joint, continuous optimization of pose and correspondences

Fully articulated hand tracking promises to enable fundamentally new interactions with virtual and augmented worlds, but the limited accuracy and efficiency of current systems has prevented widespread adoption. Today's dominant paradigm uses machine learning for initialization and recovery followed by iterative model-fitting optimization to achieve a detailed pose fit. We follow this paradigm, but make several changes to the model-fitting, namely using: (1) a more discriminative objective function; (2) a smooth-surface model that provides gradients for non-linear optimization; and (3) joint optimization over both the model pose and the correspondences between observed data points and the model surface. While each of these changes may actually increase the cost per fitting iteration, we find a compensating decrease in the number of iterations. Further, the wide basin of convergence means that fewer starting points are needed for successful model fitting. Our system runs in real-time on CPU only, which frees up the commonly over-burdened GPU for experience designers. The hand tracker is efficient enough to run on low-power devices such as tablets. We can track up to several meters from the camera to provide a large working volume for interaction, even using the noisy data from current-generation depth cameras. Quantitative assessments on standard datasets show that the new approach exceeds the state of the art in accuracy. Qualitative results take the form of live recordings of a range of interactive experiences enabled by this new approach.

Aplicativos Android para agricultura: benefícios do desenvolvimento em parceria com o usuário.

RESUMO - Com a popularização de tablets e smartphones e as peculiaridades do desenvolvimento de aplicativos para esses dispositivos, surge a necessidade de adaptar os métodos de avaliação de usabilidade para resultados mais precisos. Este trabalho propõe o método Coldemob para validação de interfaces de aplicativos móveis com a participação de representantes do usuário final, com uma etapa presencial e uma etapa remota após o lançamento do aplicativo, detalhando a aplicação da segunda etapa. O método foi testado com um aplicativo do domínio agrícola e os resultados mostraram que ao incluir o usuário no processo de construção do aplicativo, a compreensão dos desenvolvedores acerca do domínio aumentou. A etapa remota se mostrou complementar à presencial, possibilitando um maior número de problemas identificados.

Integrating mobile devices into a scalable Grid Computing architecture designed to perform distributed computations

The idea of Grid Computing originated in the nineties and found its concrete applications in contexts like the SETI@home project where a lot of computers (offered by volunteers) cooperated, performing distributed computations, inside the Grid environment analyzing radio signals trying to find extraterrestrial life. The Grid was composed of traditional personal computers but, with the emergence of the first mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), researchers started theorizing the inclusion of mobile devices into Grid Computing; although impressive theoretical work was done, the idea was discarded due to the limitations (mainly technological) of mobile devices available at the time. Decades have passed, and now mobile devices are extremely more performant and numerous than before, leaving a great amount of resources available on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, untapped. Here we propose a solution for performing distributed computations over a Grid Computing environment that utilizes both desktop and mobile devices, exploiting the resources from day-to-day mobile users that alternatively would end up unused. The work starts with an introduction on what Grid Computing is, the evolution of mobile devices, the idea of integrating such devices into the Grid and how to convince device owners to participate in the Grid. Then, the tone becomes more technical, starting with an explanation on how Grid Computing actually works, followed by the technical challenges of integrating mobile devices into the Grid. Next, the model, which constitutes the solution offered by this study, is explained, followed by a chapter regarding the realization of a prototype that proves the feasibility of distributed computations over a Grid composed by both mobile and desktop devices. To conclude future developments and ideas to improve this project are presented.