Smart City

I am currently a member of Professor Jin Nakasawa's lab, where I conduct research on using information technology to make life more efficient and prosperous for people living in smart cities.

In particular, I am working on a technology called "participatory sensing," an initiative to collect and feed back information from people who live and work in an area. By leveraging "participatory sensing," I develop various applications and conduct demonstration experiments to study how they affect people's lives and behaviors.

"Participatory sensing" is a sensing method that acquires information from mobile devices people carry and from sensors attached to cars and public property. By having people with devices input information about their location, it is said that we can obtain not only information like that from physical sensors, such as existing air pollution or acceleration sensors, but also qualitative information that only a person can know.

There are various ways to use this technology to improve the lives of city dwellers. Among them, I am focusing my research on applications designed to grasp the state of the city by acquiring information about what is currently happening, what residents are feeling, and what they want to see done.

So far, I have mainly developed two applications and conducted demonstration experiments.

The first is a participatory sensing application that anyone can enjoy, called "

", a smartphone app. "Lokemon" is short for Location Monster. It involves placing virtual monsters in various places where people gather and having visitors post various information about that location. Monsters are placed in various spots such as train stations, bus stops, commercial facilities, and restaurants, and there are now more than 200 of them throughout Japan.

A distinctive feature is that it has users who visit a place post information by role-playing as the monster placed there. Conventional information-gathering systems often adopted methods that used the poster's username. However, in this case, there are privacy concerns, as it would reveal who is where. Another challenge with this kind of participatory sensing is the need to motivate participation to collect posts from a larger number of users.

In the case of "Lokemon," we propose a posting method that is a bit out of the ordinary and entertaining, having users role-play as the monster living in that location. We believed this could simultaneously protect privacy and solve the issue of motivation for posting.

This has already been released as an application on app stores for the iPhone and Android, so it is available for anyone to use. In 2017, we also conducted a demonstration experiment in collaboration with Fujisawa City on its large-scale use at an event.

In the first demonstration experiment, we held a pseudo-stamp rally during a large-scale festival for citizens called the "Fujisawa Citizen's Festival." We placed monsters in various locations within the venue and had visitors collect them. Many people, from children to adults, participated, and we could see them enjoying themselves.

The second experiment was conducted at a pub-hopping event called the "Choi-nomi Festival." Since this was an evening event targeted at adults, participants used "Lokemon" to exchange information on recommended restaurants and congestion levels, using a mix of text and photos.

It was great that everyone from children to adults, regardless of gender, enjoyed using the same platform. Initially, I was worried about whether people would accept the rather unique method of "role-playing as a monster." Once we tried it, I found that everyone, regardless of age or gender, was having fun posting as their monster. Currently, all of the over 200 monsters have a different design for each spot. There are all kinds of monsters, some cute and some funny, but I think users saw the merit in "a monster you can only post as if you are at that specific location." It was also interesting that at spots with a female monster, many male users would post in a feminine tone of voice, and the content of users' posts would change to match the monster's appearance.

About 10 monsters are also lurking on the SFC campus, used for information exchange among students, faculty, and staff.

For example, with the monster placed at the bus stop, information on bus congestion and the weather, which changes in 10-minute intervals, is exchanged. With the monsters placed in each classroom, information about lectures and the conditions around the classroom is acquired. In the campus cafeteria and co-op, in addition to congestion status, people were seen exchanging information on recommended products and other topics.

Additionally, there is a popular spot on campus called Gulliver Pond (Kamoike), where we have also placed a duck monster. At Gulliver Pond (Kamoike) in particular, we have acquired information about the emotions and feelings of the people there, such as "lonely" or "chilly"—a type of information that was rarely collected with conventional posting methods. I believe that by role-playing as a monster, people could easily post information as an entity other than themselves, making it easier to express emotions.

The conventional posting method was a format where an unspecified number of people asked questions to an unspecified number of strangers. With "Lokemon," the question is directed to the monster at that location. I think there is a sense of security in being able to see the monster's face. The interactions and language used also became very casual, and overall communication was invigorated.

The research for "Lokemon"began with the concept in 2015, and it won the Dream Award at the 2015 Sensor Application Idea Contest.It also won the mobile application contest at MobiCom, a top computer science conference held in the United States.

At that contest, in addition to the novelty of the research, the potential for business application was heavily weighted. The judges commented that it was "an interesting and novel study that contains all the necessary elements for that."

The other is a "participatory sensing" application called "Mina-Repo," which can be used by local government employees. We are currently advancing this research with various local governments, including Fujisawa City, and we also plan to implement it in European municipalities in the future.

"Mina-Repo" is short for "Minna no Report" (Everyone's Report). It allows municipal employees to input various information collected during their duties, share it with other staff, and smoothly coordinate tasks that require a response.

In Fujisawa City, it is mainly used by the department in charge of garbage collection. During collection, staff members patrol the entire city in pairs, and in the process, they gather information that requires subsequent action, such as illegal dumping or incorrect disposal of garbage. Previously, this information was communicated to other staff and the collection companies via phone or fax, which was inefficient in some respects. By using the "Mina-Repo" system, all information sharing and response status updates can be done on a single application, which has made the process much more efficient.

Furthermore, it can collect not only information related to garbage but also other information found during city patrols, such as graffiti or animal carcasses. This provides the advantage of being able to grasp various types of city information, regardless of category.

Although some users were a bit perplexed at first about how to use the application, once they started using it, they were pleased that it was clearly more efficient and easier than the previous method. This allowed them to perform other tasks in their spare time. We also heard feedback that their attitude toward their work improved because it became easier to collect information that had previously been overlooked, such as graffiti, and proper information sharing among staff was now possible.

For now, its use within Fujisawa City is still limited to certain departments, but as the scope of use expands, citizens themselves may be able to experience various benefits. I also believe that analyzing and visualizing the information collected with this system—for example, graffiti patterns and information on high-frequency areas—and conveying it to the staff will lead to the realization of a cleaner city.

The biggest advantage of conducting research with the local government is being able to conduct experiments on a scale that I could not manage on my own. It is a huge opportunity to be able to conduct experiments with a large number of people at once or over a long period.

It is often said that Japanese municipalities take a long time to introduce new systems or that there are few people willing to embrace them. However, Fujisawa City, with whom we are currently conducting experiments, is very receptive to the introduction of new technologies like these and embraces them with a positive attitude.

The close relationship between such a progressive municipality and the university also has the advantage of allowing us to consult with them at an early stage about what we want to do. They are willing to introduce a system as an experiment even if it is not yet in its final stage. Conversely, I believe we have built a very good relationship where we collaborate to solve problems that Fujisawa City is facing.

I think that being able to undertake advanced initiatives together with the government in this way is one of the charms of SFC.

Thanks to my father's influence, I had many opportunities to engage with information technology from a young age. Since I was in elementary school, I have strongly felt that "using computers and technology makes people's lives more fun and convenient." I wanted to do that kind of research myself, which is why I entered SFC's Faculty of Environment and Information Studies for my undergraduate degree.

I wanted to delve deeper into the research I had been working on since my undergraduate days, so I had little hesitation about going on to graduate school.

One of the charms of the lab is that everyone is very kind and caring. There is a culture where senior students always look after their juniors.

Partly due to SFC's location, we spend a lot of time with everyone in the lab, so we become close friends, like a family. And we can conduct our research while motivating each other. It's not just the current students; even when I talk to alumni, I find that many of them are very engaging people. I feel it's a lab that brings together people who have both a sincere attitude toward research and a sense of humor for enjoying life to the fullest.

One of my favorite things about the SFC campus is probably the environment that is set up for conducting research freely. Depending on your own initiative, you can collaborate with labs in different fields or pursue the academic discipline you want to learn. Also, the distance between faculty and students, and among students themselves, is very close, and I think there is an atmosphere where you can enjoy your research in a relaxed state.

Although it's a bit far from the city center, it's surrounded by nature, so I feel it's an environment where you can take a break and refresh when you get a little tired from research.

In my research so far, I have focused on the "information gathering in the city" aspect—how to efficiently collect a large amount of information from people. Through experiments in various places, including this campus, I have come to see that a new system changes not only the "quantity" of information but also people's "behavior" and "awareness." It was fascinating how "Mina-Repo" changed the staff's awareness of their duties and how "Lokemon" changed people's behavior by having them role-play as monsters.

One of my future goals is to advance my research by also focusing on these changes in people's "behavior" and "awareness." It's not just about collecting information from the people there, but also about how to motivate them to act. I also want to work on how to give back the collected information in the form of a service. I want to research both information collection and feedback.

Another goal is to engage in more global research activities by interacting with overseas research labs and companies, not just those in Japan. By conducting research abroad, I hope to be able to perform experiments that cannot be done in Japan and gain diverse experiences.

SFC offers opportunities for research activities abroad, including programs like GESL (Global Environmental System Leaders) for graduate students, which aims to provide research guidance through international industry-academia-NPO collaboration. There are also scholarships to support study abroad costs, so I think there are quite a few paths from SFC to overseas.

It's a free and enjoyable place where you can grow as much as you want, depending on your own efforts.

Keywords: Ubiquitous Computing

Research: Research on the fundamental technologies necessary to realize a ubiquitous environment and on new applications that will be effective in future environments.