Luigi De Russis' third year evaluation summarizes his work on several projects related to interfaces, interaction and usability in smart environments. These include Applus.energie and Applus.climatique systems for monitoring energy consumption in buildings; the dWatch wearable notification device; and the GrAAL project to assist healthcare workers through ambient assisted living technologies. He also contributed to the open source Dog gateway platform and conducted user studies on visualizing energy data and controlling smart home devices through gaze interaction.

1. Third Year Evaluation (XXVI cycle)
Luigi De Russis
Living in Smart Environments:
Interfaces, Interaction and
Usability

2. HCI in the Ambient Intelligence field
2

Ambient Intelligence (AmI)
vision of a future information society
 in which people are empowered through a digital
environment

aware of their presence and context
 sensitive, adaptive and responsive to their needs, habits, gestures
and emotions


must be
user-friendly
 secure
 controllable
 almost invisible

Pervasive
computing
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
Pervasive
communication
Intelligent
User-friendly
Interface
29/11/2013

3. Overview
3
Exploring different interactions with the environment…
WIMP
Touch
Wearable
Natural Language
Mobile
Gaze
… in different topics and areas
School and
university
Energy
saving
Residential
appliances control
Industrial sensors monitoring
Universal Access
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
Activity delegation
29/11/2013

4. Overview
4
LOWERING ACCESS
BARRIERS
DOGeye (IwC)
Speak2Home
dWatch (ANT, HomeSys)
GrAAL
IMPROVING
SMART ENVIRONMENT
INTERACTION
MAKING PEOPLE
“SMARTER”
WattsUp and survey (E&B)
Applus.enérgie
Applus.climatique
KEEPING THE HUMAN
IN THE LOOP
FOUNDING
TECHNOLOGY
Dog
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
MAKING PLACES
“SMARTER”
RulesBook (ISAmI)
29/11/2013

5. “Energy efficient” behavior (I)
5

Creation of a smart
and shared
management system for
energy consumption in
public buildings
intended for technical
training




Applus.enérgie focuses on electrical energy consumptions
Applus.climatique focuses on thermal energy consumptions
The system has been deployed at the ISITP of Verrès and at the
Politecnico (Mirafiori and Verrès campuses)
Website: http://www.applus-energie.org
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

6. “Energy efficient” behavior (II)
6

Design and co-conduct




3 focus groups involving 36
people (mainly students)
1 usability test involving 7
students
Results confirms previous works,
and gives some hints for more
effective visualization of
energy-related information
Related publications


D. Bonino, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “Home Energy Consumption
Feedback: A User Survey”, Energy and Building, Elsevier
D. Bonino, F. Corno, L. De Russis, G. Ferrero, “JEERP: Energy-aware
Enterprise Resource Planning”, IT Professional, IEEE
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

7. dWatch
7

Wearable notification and command
system prototype





low-cost and off-the-shelf
handle messages coming from the
environment
quick access command
Preliminary user testing shows interest
in real-world use
Publications


D. Bonino, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “dWatch: a Personal Wrist Watch
for Smart Environments”, 3rd International Conference on Ambient
Systems, Networks and Technologies, 2012
L. De Russis, D. Bonino, F. Corno, “The Smart Home on Your Wrist”,
HomeSys: a Ubicomp workshop, 2013
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

8. GrAAL
8

Gestione di residenze assistenziali
tramite sistemi di Ambient Assisted
Living
 AAL-ready
environment
 the project will start on January,
2014

Goal: help some health workers in
their daily task with patients,
possibly by using some end-user
device
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

9. GrAAL
9

First step: Need Finding
design of two focus groups to be
administered in December
 involves all the health workers, all the
educators, and a nurse of a similar structure



Preliminary discussions seems to
discourage the usage of mobile devices
and points toward hands-free interaction
Related publications


D. Bonino, E. Castellina, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “DOGeye:
Controlling your Home with Eye Interaction”, Interacting with
Computers, Elsevier
L. De Russis, D. Bonino, F. Corno, “The Smart Home on Your Wrist”,
at HomeSys: a Ubicomp workshop
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

10. Founding tech: the Dog gateway
10


Collaboration in the design and development of the
Dog (Domotic OSGi Gateway) open source project
Involved in Dog design improvements and code
refactoring
responsible for the “core” and “communication” bundles
 improved overall performances
 provided a better compliance with the OSGi specification
 design, development (and documentation) of a RESTful Web
API
 improved the support for scenarios involving wearable
devices like the dWatch


Refactoring led to Dog 3.0
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

11. Other projects…
11

Other projects I’m (was) involved

SMILE-O
 framework
for the optimization of electrical consumption
and production, based on a provisional model
 Energy@Home
(TILab)
 collaboration
for the integration of different domotic
systems (ZigBee and Konnex) in a software platform based
on Dog
 Smart
Gamer
 design
and development of smart gaming system to emulate
the behavior of an “average” trading card game player
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

12. Scientific activities
12
Department editor for XRDS, The ACM
Magazine for Students
 Reviewer

 Interact
2011 - 2013 (conference)
 ACM CHI 2013 - 2014 (conference)
 ACM MobileHCI 2013 (conference)
 Interacting with Computer (Elsevier journal)
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013

13. Thanks!
Luigi De Russis
luigi.derussis@polito.it
http://elite.polito.it
Living in Intelligent Environments: Interfaces, Interaction and Usability
29/11/2013