Published papers

Scented Pebbles is a collection of interactive lighting objects to create multisensory ambience of light and smell. When it senses people's movement and touch, the networked objects will generate dynamic ambience. The pebbles emit smells and control the lighting conditions to create your unique ambience such as Hawaiian Sunset or Japanese Onsen. Experience the orchestra of smell and light play and let your mind run free. The paper presented interactive approach to evoke sensorial imagination through multisensory interactions including olfactory sense.

Pileus is the Umbrella type Entertainment Browser to interact photos and videos on web services in urban environment, as a platform of interact with small personal entertainment contents in daily life. It was demonstrated at Ubicomp 2006, but current implementation works only indoor environment. In this paper, we describe upgrading system of Pileus in field-testing at city.

Sound Candy is a device with which anyone in the world can create his/her own playground anywhere of using sounds and movements around him/her. In our daily life, we are surrounded by the "Kings of Entertainment" such as theme parks and home video game machines. However, the entertainment gives us only passively experience without our creation or creativity. In this paper, we suggest Sound Candy designed as the tool with which each user can create a new way of playing actively. In its small body, Sound Candy has two functions as follows. First, it has a recording function. Second, it has a function to integrate recorded sounds and signals from sensors, such as vibration or acceleration caused from variety of movements. Sound Candy can be attached to any part of user's body and almost objects in his/her environments. So users can convert the recorded sound to the one synchronized with various actions by selecting a play mode from four play modes including Angle, Vibration, Speed and Rotation Mode.

Shootball is a goal-based ball game played in a field surrounded by 4 screens linked to each other. The game uses a ball with an embedded wireless sensor. In shootball, players are given the ability to move the location of the goal on will. Various attack patterns for multi-directions can be performed by effectively utilizing this mechanic. In enjoying the gameplay of shootball, players shall be able to experience a creative style of play and team communication not seen in previous goal-based sports.

Quatronome is a stomp box to make user's room change into his/her own stage by connecting his/her instrument or microphone and playing it. There has been much equipment aiming for good sounds. However, we found another need for players to play music of one's taste and enjoy playing with others from some fieldworks. By using Quatronome, users can play music together with three movies, and can also record the sound and movie of their performance. Thus users can play music as if he/she were a member of the band.

HIPMATE is an entertainment system which business persons can play in the office in spare time. Users can enjoy themselves as they feel with touching each other by playing HIPMATE. HIPMATE consists of 3 chairs (we call them "HipBall") and a panel (we call it "HipPannel"). HipBall and HipPannel put in separated areas in the office. When a user sits on a Hipball, his/her buttocks are projected to the panel forming the buttocks. And another user can knead the panel. As a user kneads it, the buttocks of sitting user are appeared. On the other hands, the sitting user can see another user kneading his/her buttocks through a display. And the user can see the kneading user's face by touching the display. Users can enjoy the game using a diplomacy that is produced from emotional two needs. One need is touching other's buttocks, and another is trying to see the kneading person's face. By playing HIPMATE, users can get a feeling which he/she usually must not touch the others' body parts. And users can get on initiate terms through touching body parts. HIPMATE can help people to be in body communication with other people and we would like to make use of a new body communication from HIPMATE in the office.

Z-agon is a multimedia computer with six cubic multi-displays. This device operated by physical movements of the cube to change channels of contents. This device is used as a network-based multimedia player. Users browse many kinds of contents such as Blogs, Web news, Movies, Music Videos and so on. This concept of Z-agon has been envisioned by design studies. Now product design requires knowledge from many fields such as hardware, software, infrastructures, social networks and revenue models. Sometimes technologies have not entered the stage to satisfy user needs. However, envisioning the concept based on design adequacy is an important attitude to break an innovation into a product. In this paper, an integrated design of Z-agon is introduced.

This paper introduces Paravie, an entertainment system that anyone expresses oneself with movement. Paravie consists of a recording studio where a user mimics a role model movie and a mobile movie viewer which shows some people dancing with same music. User can enjoy learning dance skill with original expression as he draws upon various movies which recorded in various place and time.

Shootball is a new sport in ubiquitous computing. This game is playing with tangible ball that could control movies displayed in surrounding screens. This game is team sport played between two teams of 3 players each. The object of the game is to score by displaying movies of own team by throwing the ball at surrounding screens.

This special panel session provides an opportunity to discuss how entertainment computing designers create interactive media/contents on Buddhism and also other religious practices In this year, we have launched an exciting project designing interactive contents to be used in Todaiji temple, one of the world heritages located in Nara, Japan In this project, we are actually collaborating with monks of the Todaiji temple, learning Buddhist rituals in this temple from the monks, and creating Augmented Reality contents working on high performance network infrastructure This session consists of a presentation introducing our Todaiji temple project and a set of short key notes from specialists; researchers on Augmented Reality, Entertainment Computing, and Anthropology

"panavi," a recipe medium, supports cooking experience for domestic users to master professional culinary arts in their kitchens by managing temperature and pan movement properly. Utilizing a sensors-embedded frying pan-providing projected images, LED indications, and vibration-wirelessly connected with a computer system that shows text messages with sounds, the panavi system analyzes sensors' data, recognizes users' conditions, and provides the users with situated instructions. Describing our vision, design process, implementation, and user study that outlines experience of challenging professional cooking, this paper introduces a design framework model of this recipe medium for domestic usage. Throughout revealing the design process- from ideation to the finished research artifact as a whole cooking support system-this research suggests how to design interactive systems responding to human situated actions, for use as daily commodities enriching domestic user experience.

Many online advertising and web-based recommendation systems have been developed, however not so many services consider individual's real activities in the real world for real time recommendation, regarding the experience of particular person. Environmental sensing from mobile devices has become capable of understanding the environment by sensing from mobile devices; though they do not necessary interact with the people directly. We present Experience-based Curiosity Model, a model indicating individual's real time curiosity within the city regarding how well the individual knows the city. It aims to understand individual's real time interests by not relying on information the people input intentionally but by understanding behavior data. This paper evaluates the model with this sensor device prototype, and elaborates possibilities when understanding individuals in detail by extracting the curiosity predicted from current behaviors using sensors.

Osusowake means to share food or other things with neighbors and is a traditional communication style in the Japanese culture. People often osusowake(share) dishes they have cooked or things they have received from others with a kind message such as "Okimochi desuga (I am happy to give you this)." Osusowake has functioned as a means of developing community. However, the tradition of Osusowake or even simple neighborhood bonding no longer exists among people living in urban areas. Sharebee is an attachment to encourage people to osusowake and help organize urban residential community.

Recommendation systems have become widespread, however these systems only determine information inputted from the customers through a browser, and cannot be used when actually moving around outside. This paper presents TTI Model, a model extracting individual's curiosity level in urban spaces on their spare time by collecting behavior data from sensors. It calculates person's real time curiosity level by analyzing behavior depending on the walking speed within the city, such as window shopping or just hanging around by themselves. This paper evaluates this model with a sensor device prototype, and elaborates possibilities when understanding individuals in detail, by extracting the curiosity predicted from current behaviors using sensors.

"ThanatoFenestra" is a family altar designed for people to remember the deceased and pray for them, which displays the images of the deceased depending on a candlelight's movement by burning aroma oil for cleansing their spirits like using incense sticks. In this paper, we define why we made the ThanatoFenestra deriving from Japanese traditional Buddhist rituals, describe how it works technically, suppose how to use it by two scenarios, and discuss how it will be able to make a new Japanese ritual surrounding death.

Myglobe is a user generated navigation service that enables users to share each cognitive map with one another. Cognitive map is a personalized map, shape of which is emphasized according to user's preference and activity in the city. It facilitates users to look back on their own city and have a new understanding by using an application in smart phones and physically interacting with a globe shaped device. In this paper, we present Myglobe service for users to achieve a new city experience with cognitive maps.

Photographic technology that appeared in the early 19th century has been integrated into many aspects of our lives with many technical innovations such as snapshots of 35 mm films, digital photography and snapshots, and online photo sharing service. As a result, today many people can enjoy expressiveness of photography compared to the fact that only limited people were allowed to use photography when it was emerged.

MYGLOBE is an interactive map media which allows us to share our cognitive maps. This map grows up with our own activities and shows our subjective view of the city by emphasizing roads or landmarks frequently used. Users can bring up their own city in the device by actually walking in the city, and also share their own maps with each other and discover unknown places. Present map services such as Google maps and Google Earth, provide mash-up tools which allow us to create our own favorite place on the map easily. We can use hand held GPS devices to make our own travel route and navigate to destination places. MYGLOBE allows us to not only tag their favorite places on the map but also change the shape of the map itself. Instead of an accurate geographic map, MYGLOBE provides maps reflecting the user's individual experiments and the view of the city. It can also be used as a communication tool to share the life history with your friends. MYGLOBE will enhance your city experience.