See what Matt Cookson, Associate Vice Chancellor for External Relations for the University System of New Hampshire, has to say about opportunities for young professionals in NH:

I fully agree with his assertion that NH is a great place to live and raise a family.

Andrew Kun

The call for papers for the Fourth Workshop on Speech in Mobile and Pervasive Environments (SiMPE) is now available. The workshop will focus on speech user interfaces for pervasive (ubiquitous) computing applications. SiMPE will be held in conjuntion with MobileHCI 2009 in Bonn. This is the fourth year SiMPE is being organized and I’m thrilled to be one of three new members of the Organizing Committee, along with Tim Paek and Ivan Tashev.

Some of the topics I hope will get attention at this year’s workshop are those related to leveraging speech for user interaction in cars. We encourage the submission of position papers on the best practices and techniques for facilitating effective interaction through on-board computers or mobile devices such as phones or media players. Topics of interest range from noise robustness technology, to the effects of speech interaction on driving performance, to societal and cultural issues relevant to in-car speech interaction.

For questions or comments please email me at andrew DOT kun AT unh DOT edu.

Andrew Kun

I was visiting family when I was introduced to a coffee maker that uses barcode technology. The Bosch device below uses a barcode reader to decide how to prepare your coffee.

The coffee comes in small cups (similar to the K-cups we use at home), and the cups carry the barcode the coffee maker reads:

I had a latte, which is prepared differently of course than a cappuccino would be, but with the help of the barcode the coffeemaker can make both without user intervention.

Clearly we have moved into the age of having many computers per person - the coffee maker is a computer now!

Andrew Kun

Last Wednesday our Project54 lab was one of the hosts at the High Technology Day here at UNH. Lots of local high school students had a chance to learn first-hand about different areas that various laboratories at UNH’s electrical, computer engineering and computer science departments work on. Oskar, Mark, Erika and me had a chance to introduce students to the work that we do in our lab.
Mark gave presentations about our Project54 system and also showed how the system works when installed in a real police cruiser. The picture below shows Mark demonstrating the system in our “lab car”.

Oskar and I presented our driving simulator and some of the interesting research we perform on it. Almost always when we present our lab, the simulator gets the most attention and this time was no exception. Each group of students had a chance to experience the simulator by driving in the virtual world. As expected, most students couldn’t resist trying what happens in the case of a collision, which is exactly why simulators are preferred in this kind of research. Picture below shows how the demonstration looked like.

More information about this UNH event can be found on the Foster’s Daily Democrat website. I would also like to thank Erika for taking great pictures of this event.

Zeljko Medenica

I was advised to use FolderShare application to share documents with my collaborators. But, in fact, we already have subversion for our code development. This automatically raised a question of why would we use FolderShare if we already have subversion installed on our server and in operation. It is not reasonable to compare subversion with FolderShare, because the purpose of these applications is very different, but it is possible to compare them for the task of collaboration on documents. So here we go:

Setup: there is an article me and my co-author want to write. Let’s call it OurArticle (it does not matter in what format the article is).

FolderShare:

1) I edit OurAricle and copy it into our shared folder (I can not edit it inside the shared folder, because it’s not clear what will happen if both of us edit it at the same time).

2) I email the co-author that changes are done

4) The co-author copies OurArticle somewhere else and edits it.

5) The co-author overwrites OurArticle in the shared folder.

6) The co-author emails me that I can work on the document.

Copying and overwriting is a clearly error-prone process. No version control, no automatic notifications, no error checking (FolderShare does not care if I overwrite the co-author’s change with mine, without even knowing I did it; FolderShare does not prevent me from editing document in the shared folder, saving it and then overwriting it with the old copy of the file that I was supposed to edit and then copy).

Subversion:

1) I commit my edits (this automatically sends notification to my co-author).

2) The co-author updates his copy (subversion will check if merging is required automatically).

3) The co-author commits his modifications (I get automatic email).

This is clearly a better solution. The most important is that subversion prevents us from loosing our modifications, by automatically checking for these modifications. We also get automatic version control for the article, in case we want to revive the paragraph we deleted a few editions ago.

FolderShare is suitable for sharing static data between computers, such as pictures, videos, etc. It’s not designed to handle collaboration. Subversion does require a server running with properly installed software, which is a hassle (luckily we already have it set up, so we get only benefits).

To top it off, subversion does not require a sync application constantly running in the background (better computer performance); subversion gives a third location for the backup; with subversion we have a web interface which allows us to get to the files without installing anything.

If we have to share some videos that do not require modifications, then FolderShare is a go. I also found out that there is a different alternative DropBox, which allows version control of the files, as well as the web access. It looks like if we would not have subversion already installed on our server, DropBox might have been a better solution for collaboration on the documents.

Any comments?

Alexander Shyrokov

Check out the video below in which Ivan Tashev, Mike Seltzer and Y.C. Ju discuss the Commute UX project at TechFest 2009. 

Last summer Oszkar and I visited the MSR driving simulator lab and it’s great to see how quickly Ivan and co. are making progress with the simulator. And it’s pretty cool that the video features ABBA!

UPDATE: The video above doesn’t feature the MSR driving simulator, but in the video below Ivan Tashev introduces Commute UX using the simulator - thanks for the comment Oszkar.

Andrew Kun

On Monday UNH Civil Engineering Professor Paul Ossenbruggen gave a talk in a joint ECE-Math seminar on the topic of traffic. His talk was inspired by Tom Vanderbilt’s book which is also entitled Traffic. Paul introduced a number of interesting topics, such as the Braess’ paradox, system optimization issues and the use of intelligent transportation systems.

Paul also had a guest at the talk: Denise Markow, Project Manager at the Traffic Management Center operated by the New Hampshire Department of Transportation. Denise, a UNH alumna, discussed some aspects of the work that goes on at the NHDOT TMC, and invited us for a visit to this impressive facility. I for one have already signed up ;).

Both Paul and Denise stressed the interdisciplinary nature of the work that goes into managing traffic. This is an important message for all of us, students and faculty alike. Paul and Denise, thanks for the informative and enjoyable presentations!

Andrew Kun

So, I wonder how much user data was gathered for the system shown in this video:

Ride.Link - Scenario from MIT Mobile Experience Lab on Vimeo.

My guess would be that, the more drunk the user is, the less likely he/she is to use the nifty breathalizer.

Andrew Kun

On April 2nd, 2009 our lab will host Paul Green, a distinguished Research Professor at UMTRI and the President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Dr. Green will give a lecture on Human Factors Engineering as a part of the CEPS Frontiers Lecture Series.
The lecture will also be an integral part of the ECE900 Seminar Course. Dr. Green has many years of experience in conducting research using driving simulators. He has more than 200 publications and he was the lead author of SAE recommended practices concerning in-car navigation systems design.

After the lecture, Project54 will host a Driving Simulator Open House, during which Dr. Green will be available for questions and everyone will have a chance to try our high fidelity driving simulator.

Also, visitors will be able to get informed about new Project54 applications, updates, experiments. The schedule for April 2nd, will be as follows:

12:30 Light lunch at Kingsbury Hall N101, Durham, NH
1:00 Lecture: Human Factors Engineering by Paul Green at Kingsbury N101
2:00 Driving Simulator Open House with Paul Green at Morse Hall 229 (refreshments and snack)

Everyone is welcome! Come, visit us and learn more about ergonomics and Project54!

Oszkar

Hi all,

Last Wednesday on February 27th, 2009, I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking about Applications of Microsoft Embedded Systems to some ECE and CS students here at UNH. Specifically, I gave a brief overview regarding embedded systems (they aren’t just your HCS12 Motorola Controller with one or two sensors!) and how Microsoft fits into it. I also showed the work done at Project54 regarding handheld devices and KLAS, the senior project I have been involved in. Lastly, I discussed an opportunity for students to compete in the Embedded Category of the Imagine Cup. While it was not a presentation that described the specifics to coding applications for Windows Embedded CE, I hope that students were 1) able to get ideas that will help develop their project for their upcoming Senior Project, 2) know that there are plenty of applications that can be done in a Microsoft Embedded environment, and 3) know that you can do some fun and interesting stuff with all this knowledge garnered from all those hours spent for the ECE and CS classes! To view the slides used in the presentation, take a look here.

One interesting question I received was from my colleague Oszkar. I had mentioned that Windows Embedded CE is a real-time operating system earlier in my presentation, and he wondered if there were varying levels of “real-time”. For instance, something like a washing machine’s embedded system strictly has one task and will guarantee the results within a given amount of time than a device such as a Windows Mobile cell-phone. After consultation of my operating systems book, it is important to note that operating systems such as Windows Embedded CE fall under the category of a soft real-time OS as opposed to a hard real-time OS. A soft real-time OS allow priority between threads, but it does not guarantee when a critical process will be scheduled. Meanwhile, a hard real-time OS ensures that critical processes finish their task within a given deadline. So while yes, both a cell-phone and a washing machine are real-time systems, there is in fact a distinction between the two.

Mark Taipan