Published papers

"Yaminabe YAMMY" is an interactive hot pot which provides a new way of cooking and sharing our memories and feelings. The feelings extracted from the contents of an email, associated with a photo will be interpreted into different "spices" which will then be sprinkled into the pot to alter the food's flavor.

CaraClock is an interactive photo viewing device which allows for the sharing of "Collective Memory" among family members. The server-based algorithm uses a Bayesian Network that employs probabilistic computation to model each user's interpersonal relationships. When multiple CaraClock devices are synchronized, they display related photos according the settings. This often results in serendipitous discoveries for the whole family by reminding them of their collective experiences through images of their past.

Space+a is a megaphone that produce interactive cheering method in ubiquitous computing world. This megaphone can show the digital photos that you've taken to the wall, and you can also make an effect to the screen by banging or swinging your megaphone in the performance area. Audiences are able to create the whole space by cheering with this megaphone. The purpose of space+a is to let the audience to be more active, and helps to increase the performer's potential.

This paper introduces the embodied Web, a new design paradigm for mobile devices. The embodied Web aims to provide an interface using real-world embodied interaction to provide a computer-augmented reality that accesses web services. This platform regards embodied interaction at three levels: operational level, activity level and social level; and is implemented with a combination of sensor, actuator and network connectivities. The platform is developed as a complex of hardware, software and network services. The implementation takes an approach of modularization of hardware, software and web services. As a practical prototype of the embodied Web, the Internet Umbrella Pileus was developed and tested. In contrast to the small screens of mobile devices, Pileus has a big screen on the underside of the umbrella, and it is operated by embodied interaction, including motion sensing of the device and location sensing of walking activities. Photo-sharing and 3D map navigation is provided on the umbrella to expand the user's activity area. These services are provided by API hookups with Flickr and Google Earth. Pileus has been iteratively developed from user observations, design observations and intuitions and prototype evaluations. The umbrella was tested in a large urban environment (the city of Tokyo).

Pileus is the Internet umbrella which augments experience in rainy days. It was designed to couple embodied interaction and social function on the web. It has a built-in camera, a GPS and a large screen under surface of an umbrella to cooperate with photo-sharing service on the internet (Flickr) and 3d-map navigation (Google Earth) in a city. In this paper, we describe that; Pileus is a medium with walking activity to interact with information embedded in a city by metadata.

This paper shows how to represent an anesthetic practice using bayesian networks layer model. There are three required points to represent anesthetic practice in operation room: multidimensionality, dynamics, and uncertainty. Normally, some deterministic models, expert system models, are selected for representing knowledge of medical experts. However, the model can not treat uncertainty and dynamics for anesthetic points. Bayesian network and dynamic bayesian network are well known to represent uncertainty and are used in many domains. The bayesian network models, however, do not correspond to multiply dynamics, which is the point for anesthetic practice. In addition, object oriented bayesian network has good points for representing multidimensionality functions, but does not correspond to individual expression for each anesthetist. So, we propose layered bayesian network to challenge the problems for individual expression and multiply dynamics. The layered model integrates three kinds of bayesian network model to represent functions of anesthetic practice.

This paper introduces a new approach for a mobile HCI design with a concept of "Full- Embodied Web". The goal of Full-Embodied Web is that, when user takes natural embodied interactions to a special mobile device, it augments their experiences in real world accessing information on social resources on the web. The growth of the web has been supported by immersive interaction of GUI, and it has been strengthening cyber space separated from our real world experiences. Now Full-Embodied Web tries to use context information and physical abilities of users to provide a natural way to access web services in a mobile situation. Its design consider 1) to use embodied interactions to operate information on the device, 2) to react to user contexts automatically from a combination of sensors, and 3) to synchronize information of user activities with social web services. As one example of Full-embodied Web, The Inetenet-Ready Umbrella named Pileus was designed. Pileus is an umbrella-type mobile web browser enables us to access a social-photo sharing (Flickr) and a 3D Map Navigation (Google Earth) by a natural embodied interaction and contextual activities in a city.

We learn many things in our daily life through experiences by using our bodies. To earn practical knowledge, it is important to actually practice the activity and to interact with people of same interests. In this paper, by introducing our product, we will show the availability of an interacting mediafocused on the user's activity to support him expand his practical experience.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new design approach for development of tangible systems. Tangible systems are defined as devices, computing or media embedding physical interaction. It is required to the development process of tangible systems dealing in both software and hardware. We introduce the new approach based on the robustness analysis to design hardware and software together, and present the method to use the design approach.

Ubiquitous ivy is a small ivy-like tag to receive and transmit a signal. The user can create a pair of tags by combining sensors and actuators and share the tags with other users. The tags send a simple signal to each other according to the use of the object, which the tag is attached. By using the signals emitted from these tags, the users are able to communicate through using their objects ordinarily, without any specific operation.