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Dr. Jörg Baus

	Address: Saarland University FR 6.2 - Computer Science P.O. Box 15 11 50 D-66041 Saarbruecken, Germany Coordinates: Building E 1 1 , Room 1.06 Numbers: Tel: +49 681 302 - 64047 Fax: +49 681 302 - 4136

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Currently, I'm affiliated to the Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) group at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH). Since March 1997, I've been engaged in the Collaborative Research Centre 378 ``Resource-adaptive cognitive processes'' located at Saarland University. Within the CRC 378 I was employed as senior researcher in the project ``User adaptation in instrumented rooms''. Here, I conducted and coordinated research on questions evolving when a user interacts with/in an instrumented environment, such as the Saarland University's AI lab, where computational resources are distributed as well as embedded. Within the Transfer Unit 53 I was involved in the project "Resource-adaptive Navigation", where we developed a research platform for navigation systems including the seamless transition between indoor- and outdoor-navigation. During my Ph.D. studies in the project ``Resource-adaptive navigation aids'' I was responsible for the development of a hybrid pedestrian navigation system. I've studied computer science at Saarland University, where I've been awarded a Diploma (M. Sc.), and a Ph.D.

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Current Projects:

• PeerEnergyCloud

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Past Projects:

• SemProM
• SmartWeb
• EM4 BAIR: User Adaptation in Instrumented Environments (2005 - 2007)
  
• TB2 RENA: Resource-adaptive Navigation (2005 - 2007)
  
• EM4 REAL: Dialogue Interaction in Instrumented Environments (2002 - 2004)
  
• A4 REAL: Resource Adaptive Navigation Aids (1999 - 2001)
  
• A4 REAL: Resource Adaptive Localization (1997 - 1999)
  

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Reviewing and Committees:

• Reviewing for UbiComp 2012
• Reviewing for Intelligent Environments 2012
• Reviewing for IUI 2012
• Reviewing for Intelligent Environments 2011
• Reviewing for Mobile HCI 2011
• Reviewing for CHI 2011
• Reviewing for CHI 2010
• Reviewing for IUI 2010
• Reviewing for it - Information Technology
• Reviewing for Pervasive 2009
• Reviewing for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia
• Reviewing for UbiComp 2008
• Reviewing for UMUAI 2007, 2008
• Reviewing for ISWC 06
  
• Reviewing for IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 2006
  
• Reviewing for Mobile Computing and Communication Review (MC2R) 2006
  
• Reviewing for 2006 IEEE Sarnoff Symposium
  
• Reviewing for IEEE Pervasive Computing 2006
  
• Reviewing for Intelligent User Interfaces 2005
  
• Reviewing for it - Information Technology 2004
  
• Reviewing for the 2nd International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing (UCS 2004)
  
• Reviewing for PERVASIVE 2004
  
• Reviewing for UbiComp 2003
  
• Reviewing for Smart Graphics 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003
  
• Reviewing for AIMS 2002, 2003, 2004



• Member of the program committee IUI 2010
  
• Member of the program committee The Second International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies UBICOMM 08
  
• Member of the program committee International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction – IHCI2008
  
• Member of the program committee International Workshop on User Model Integration (UMI 2008)
• Member of the program committee Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage (PATCH 2008)
• Workshop Chair at INTETAIN 2008
• Member of the program committee DIPSO 2007
• Member of the program committee UBICOMM2007
• Member of the program committee Applications of Spatial Cognition for Intelligent Assistance Systems at KI 2007
• Member of the program committee IADIS International Conference Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2007
• Member of the program committee UbiDeUM'2007: Ubiquitous and Decentralized User Modeling
• Member of the program committee GI-DAYS 2007
• Member of the program committee Data Mining for User Modeling 07
• Member of the program committee Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage 07
• Member of the program committee Design of Smart Products 07
• Member of the program committee IUI 07
  
• Member of the program committee UKDU 06
  
• Member of the program committee UbiqUM 2006,UbiqUM 2008,UbiqUM 2009
  
• Member of the program committee UCS 2006, UCS 2007
  
• Member of the program committee TSI 2006
  
• Member of the program committee ubiPCMM05
  
• Member of the program committee AIMS 2003
  
• Member of the organising committee AIMS 2004, AIMS 2005, AIMS 2007
  
• Member of the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
  
• Member of the Collaborative Research Center 378
  
• Member of the Association for Computing Machinery
  

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Examination Assessor:

• Defence of Dr. Johannes Schöning: "Advanced User Interfaces for Spatial Information"
• Defence of Dr. Christoph Stahl: "Spatial Modeling of Activity and User Assistance in Instrumented Environments"
• Defence of Dr. Aleksej Spenst: "A User-Centric QoS Management System for Wireless Home Networks"
• Defence of Dr. Ralf Jung: "Ambiente Audionotifikation: Ein System zur kontext-sensitiven Integration von nicht-intrusiven Notifikationssignalen in emotionsklassifizierte Soundscapes"
• Defence of Dr. Daniel Sonntag: "Introspective Methods for Adaptable Dialogue-Based Question Answering"
• Defence of Dr. Markus Löckelt: "A Flexible and Reusable Framework for Dialogue and Action management in Multi-Party Discourse"
• Defence of Dr. Patrick Gebhard: "Emotionalisierung interaktiver Virtueller Charaktere"
• Defence of Dr. Martin Rumpler: "Statusbasierte Verhaltensteuerung von virtuellen Charakteren"
• Defence of Dr. Roman Pinchuk: "Efficient Material Characterization by Means of the Doppler Effect in Microwaves"
• Defence of Dr. Jürgen te Vrugt: "A Dynamic Multi-Applicaton Dialog Engine For Task-Oriented Voice User Interfaces"
• Defence of Dr. Marko Lohse: "Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware, Services and Applications"
• Defence of Dr. Christian Müller: "Zweistufige kontextsensitive Sprecherklassifikation am Beispiel von Alter und Geschlecht"
• Defence of Dr. Michael Kruppa: "Migrating Characters: Effective Guidance in Instrumented Environments"
• Defence of Dr. Thorsten Bohnenberger: "Decision-Theoretic Planning for User-Adaptive Systems: Dealing With Multiple Goals and Resource Limitations"
• Defence of Dr. Dominikus Heckmann: "Ubiquitous User Modeling"
• Defence of Dr. Jan Alexandersson: "Hybrid Discourse Modeling and Summarization for a Speech-to-Speech Translation System"

Teaching:

• WS04/05: Semantic Web Ontologies for Mobile Internet Agents
  
• WS01/02: Intelligente Benutzerschnittstellen
  
• WS00/01: WWW-Ontologien
  
• S00: Seminar on mobile and wearable computing
  
• S00: Einführung in die Methoden der Künstlichen Intelligenz
  
• SS99: Expertensysteme und deduktive Datenbanken
  
• WS98/99: Intelligente Multimediapräsentationssysteme
  
• SS98: Einführung in die Methoden der Künstlichen Intelligenz

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Publications

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2010

From Resource-adaptive Navigation Assistance to Augmented Cognition
Hubert D. Zimmer, Stefan Münzer, and Jörg Baus
In: Matthew Crocker and Joerg Siekmann (eds). Resource-Adaptive Cognitive Processes. Cognitive Technologies Series. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2010, pp.35-53

Seamless Resource Adaptive Navigation
Tim Schwartz, Christoph Stahl, Jörg Baus, and Wolfgang Wahlster
In: Matthew Crocker and Joerg Siekmann (eds). Resource-Adaptive Cognitive Processes. Cognitive Technologies Series. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2010, pp. 239-265

2008

The Digital Sommelier: Interacting with Intelligent Products
M. Schmitz, J. Baus and R. Dörr
Internet of Things 2008, March 26-28, 2008, Zurich, Switzerland LNCS, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
show abstract
We present the Digital Sommelier, an interactive wine shopping assistant that provides an intuitive multi-modal interface to general product information as well as to particular attributes of a certain product, such as its current temperature. Wine bottles sense their state via attached wireless sensors and detect user interaction over RFID and acceleration sensors. Visitors can inquire information either through physical interaction with products or a natural language interface. We describe a framework and toolkit for efficient prototyping of sensor based applications as the foundation for the integration of different sensor networks utilized by the sommelier. We further introduce our concept of talking products, an anthropomorphic interaction pattern that allows customers to directly talk to products with personalities.

Sharing Memories of Smart Products and their Consumers in Instrumented Environments
Wolfgang Wahlster, Alexander Kröner, Michael Schneider and Jörg Baus
it - Information Technology 50(1), Special Issue on Ambient Intelligence, pp. 45-50, Oldenbourg.
show abstract
Intelligent assistants need precise knowledge about activity sequences and the habits of their users so as to support them in an adequate manner. The following contribution addresses an approach to user support, which takes advantage of the object centred nature of many day-to-day activities. By means of application examples from the everyday, we illustrate how a combination of smart items and digital memories allows for realizing innovative support mechanisms, which take into account static knowledge about objects as well as situational observations and historical data. Here, we devote special attention to applications originating from the sharing of data gathered this way between users and systems.

2007

Räumliches Lernen mit Navigationssystemen
Stefan Münzer, Hubert Zimmer, Jörg Baus and Christoph Stahl
magazin forschung, Universität des Saarlandes, 2/2007, S. 2-7

Interaction Patterns for Smart Products
Michael Schmitz, Robert Dörr, Jörg Baus
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on the Design of Smart Products (DoSP 2007), 23rd March 2007, Furtwangen University, Germany

The Role of Visuo-Spatial Working Memory in Incidental Environmental Learning
Stefan Münzer, Hubert Zimmer, Jörg Baus
Submitted to: Spatial Cognition and Computation

Adaptive Mobile Guides
Antonio Krüger, Jörg Baus, Dominik Heckmann, Michael Kruppa, Rainer Wasinger
P. Brusilovsky, A. Kobsa, and W. Nejdl (Eds.): The Adaptive Web, LNCS 4321, pp. 521–549, 2007. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
show abstract
In this chapter we discuss various aspects of adaptive mobile guide applications. After having motivated the need for web based mobile applications, we will discuss technologies that are needed to enable adaptive mobile web applications, including not only positioning technologies but also sensor technologies needed to determine additional information on the context and situation of usage. We will also address issues of modeling context and situations before giving an overview on existing systems coming from three important classes of mobile guides: museum guides, navigation systems and shopping assistants. The chapter closes with an extensive discussion of relevant attributes of web based mobile guides.

Auditory Perceptible Landmarks in Mobile Navigation
Jörg Baus, Rainer Wasinger, Ilhan Aslan, Antonio Krüger, Andreas Maier, Tim Schwartz
Proceedings of IUI 07 (to appear)
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
Normally, mobile pedestrian navigation systems use visually perceptible landmarks to guide their users through the environment. In this article we introduce concepts for the use of auditory perceptible landmarks in route descriptions. Such auditory perceptible landmarks complement their visual counterparts and also stand to be beneficial for certain groups like the visually impaired and the elderly.

Computer Assisted Navigation and the Acquisition of Route and Survey Knowledge
Stefan Münzer, Hubert D. Zimmer, Maximilian Schwalm, Jörg Baus, Ilhan Aslan
Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 26, S. 300-308.
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
It describes an empirical study on spatial learning conducted in a real environment. In the study, incidental spatial learning during wayfinding using navigation assistance on a PDA computer is compared with learning during wayfinding using maps. Computer assisted navigation is varied with respect to additional spatial context information and modality of presentation.

2006

Sharing Sensor Data in Intelligent Environments
Tim Schwartz, Dominik Heckmann, and Jörg Baus
Proceedings of the Workshop on Ubiquitous Knowledge Discovery for Users (UKDU 2006), pages 81 - 88.
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
Instrumented environments are enriched with sensors,senders and computing devices in order to support intelligent applications for the human-computer interaction. Because the sensors and senders in the environment can deliver a large amount of data, these so-called “intelligent environments” form ideal playgrounds to test the novel idea of ubiquitous knowledge discovery. In this paper we will describe the sensor architecture and the management software that is installed in the SUPIE (Saarland University Pervasive Intelligent Environment) for sharing basic sensor data. As an example application for ubiquitous knowledge discovery we describe our positioning system that collects data from different types of senders and that derives the user’s position by fusing all data that can be helpful for this task.

Acquisition of Spatial Knowledge in Location Aware Mobile Pedestrian Navigation Systems
Ilhan Aslan, Maximilian Schwalm, Jörg Baus, Antonio Krüger, Tim Schwartz
Proceedings of the 8th international Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Mobile HCI 2006), pages 105 - 108, ACM Press
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
In this paper we regard the navigation aid provided by mobile navigation systems in a real environment and the effects of these mobile assistants to the development of spatial knowledge. Therefore, we report on a user study concerning the acquisition of spatial knowledge. This study sets up on a former study described by Krüger and colleagues and sheds light on problems concerning the acquisition of survey knowledge while being navigated by a mobile handheld PC.

Anthropomorphized Objects: A Novel Interaction Metaphor for Instrumented Spaces
Michael Schmitz, Jörg Baus, Sarah Schmidt
Thomas Strang, Vinny Cahill, Aaron Quigley (Editors). Pervasive 2006 Workshop Proceedings. Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt. ISBN 978-3-00-018411-6
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
In this position paper we discuss the new interaction paradigm of Anthropomorphized Objects, which involves multimodal interaction with instrumented objects, spanning the modalities of speech, gestures, sound and haptics. This work aims at assisting non-expert users to access complex environments by offering an intuitive interface to services that support users e.g. in shopping malls to accomplish their shopping tasks. We further argue that the notion of affect will not only enrich the user experience but also has the potential to increase the efficiency of interactions and problem solving abilities of the user.

2005

Product Associated Displays in a Shopping Scenario
Lübomira Spassova, Rainer Wasinger, Jörg Baus, Antonio Krüger
4th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 05), 2005, pp. 210-211.
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
In this paper, we introduce the concept of Product Associated Displays – PADs – as a way of providing visual feedback to users interacting with physical objects in an instrumented environment. PADs are projected public displays created at locations that can be intuitively associated with the objects they show information about. The concept is illustrated in a shopping scenario.

Navigational- and Shopping Assistance on the Basis of User Interactions in Intelligent Environments
C. Stahl, J. Baus, B. Brandherm, M. Schmitz and T. Schwartz
Proceedings of the IEE International Workshop on Intelligent Environments (IE 2005), University of Essex, Colchester, UK, 2005
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
This paper presents an overview about ongoing work in the project REAL, where we have set up the Saarland University Pervasive Instrumented Environment (SUPIE). In particular we introduce the intelligent environment’s architecture, which serves as the basis for different services and applications running in the environment and supporting their users in different tasks. On the basis of this information we outline our user and location-modeling component needed to establish the navigational– and shopping-assistants developed so far. Both assistants support their users with especially customized presentations. These presentations will be automatically scheduled and presented on public displays in the environment, as explained in the remarks about the presentation manager. Finally, we provide a short outlook on planned future work in the project.

Managing Presentations in an Intelligent Environment
Christoph Stahl, Michael Schmitz, Antonio Krüger, Jörg Baus
MU3I Workshop at IUI 2005, San Diego, USA.
[pdf] show abstract
Intelligent environments enable users to receive information from a variety of sources, i.e. from a range of displays embedded in those environments. From a services perspective delivering presentations to users in such an environment is not a trivial task. While designing a service it is, for example, not clear at all which displays will be present in the specific presentation situation and which of those displays might be locked by other services. It is further unclear if other users are able to see the presentation, which could cause problems for the presentation of private information in a public space. In this paper we propose a solution to this problem by introducing the concept of a presentation service that provides an abstraction of the available displays. The service is able to detect conflicts that arise when several users and services try to access the same display space and provide strategies to solve these conflicts by distributing presentations in space and time. The service also notifies the user by a alarm signal on a personal device each time a presentation is shown on a public display in order to disambiguate content between multiple users.

A Survey of Map-based Mobile Guides
J. Baus, K. Cheverst, and C. Kray
Map-based mobile services - Theories, Methods and Implementations Meng/Zipf (Hrsg.), Springer, S. 197-213
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

Resource-Adaptive Personal Navigation
Jörg Baus, Antonio Krüger, Christoph Stahl
Chapter in: O. Stock and M. Zancanaro (eds.), Multimodal Intelligent Information Presentation, pages 71-93, Springer, 2005, ISBN: 1-4020-3049-5.

2004

Multimodal Interactions with an Instrumented Shelf
Rainer Wasinger, Michael Schneider, Jörg Baus, Antonio Krüger
Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems (AIMS) at UbiComp, 2004, pp. 36-43.
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
In this paper, we describe the initial implementation of our application demonstrator called ‘ShopAssist’. This application will aid users in product queries within a shopping scenario context. We describe the wide range of input modalities that our application supports such as speech, handwriting, intra and extra gestures, and the mixed modality combinations that promote advanced user interaction with real-world and virtual objects.

Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems 2004
Jörg Baus, Christian Kray, and Robert Porzel
Memo Nr. 84 Saarland University ISSN 0944-7822
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

REAL: Situated Dialogues in Instrumented Environments
C. Stahl, J. Baus, A. Krüger, D. Heckmann, R. Wasinger, M. Schneider
Workshop on Invisible and Transparent Interfaces at AVI 2004, Gallipoli, Italy, 2004, pp. 10-15.
[pdf] [BibTeX] show abstract
We give a survey of the research project REAL, where we investigate how a system can proactively assist its user in solving different tasks in an instrumented environment by sensing implicit interaction and utilising distributed presentation media. First we introduce the architecture of our instrumented environment, which uses a blackboard to coordinate the components of the environment, such as the sensing and positioning services and interaction devices. A ubiquitous user model provides contextual information on the users characteristics, actions and locations. The user may access and control their profile via a web interface. In the following, we present two mobile applications to employ the environmental support for situated dialogues, a shopping assistant and a pedestrian navigation system. Both applications allow for multi-modal interaction through a combination of speech, gesture and sensed actions such as motion.

2003

Exploiting Speech for Recognizing Elderly Users to Respond to their Special Needs
Müller, C., Wittig, F., and Baus, J.
In Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 2003). Geneva, Switzerland
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] [BibTeX] show abstract
In this paper we show how to exploit raw speech data to gain higher level information about the user in a mobile context. In particular we introduce an approach for the estimation of age and gender using well known machine learning techniques. On the basis of this information, systems like for example a mobile pedestrian navigation system, can be made adaptive to the special needs of a specific user group (here the elderly). First we provide a motivation why we consider such an adaptation as necessary, then we outline some adaptation strategies that are adequate for mobile assistants. The major part of the paper is about (a) identifying and extracting features of speech that are relevant for age and gender estimation and (b) classifying a particular speaker, treating uncertainty, and updating the user model over time. Finally we provide a short outlook on current work.

A survey of mobile guides
Jörg Baus, Christian Kray
Workshop on Mobile Guides at: Mobile Human Computer Interaction '03

Ressourcenadaptierende hybride Personennavigation
Jörg Baus
Dissertationen zur Künstlichen Intelligenz (DISKI), Band 268, ISBN 3-89838-268-0

2002

Location Dependent Generation of Sketches for Mobile Indoor Route Descriptions
Christoph Stahl, Antonio Krüger, Jörg Baus
ECAI 2002 Workshop notes on Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems (AIMS).

Positionsabhängige Kartengenerierung für mobile Fußgängernavigationssyteme
A. Krüger, C. Stahl, J. Baus
Simulation und Visualisierung, Magdeburg 28.Feb.-1. März 2002. SCS-Verlag, ISBN 1-56555-234-2, ISBN 3-936150-15-x.
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
Navigationssysteme werden in Zukunft den Sprung vom Auto in die Westentasche schaffen und so auch Fußgänger in den Genuß der personalisierten Wegbeschreibung kommen lassen. Dabei wird neben der verbalen Beschreibung der Route insbesondere geeignete Graphiken zum Einsatz kommen. Diese Graphiken müssen in Abhängigkeit einer Vielzahl von Parametern erstellt werden, so daß eine dynamische Generierung der Graphiken an dieser Stelle sehr sinnvoll ist. Der vorliegende Artikel befaßt sich daher mit der Frage wie inkrementelle 2D-Wegbeschreibungen aus einem 3D-Modell, auf den jeweilgen Beutzerkontext zugeschnitten, generiert werden können.

A ResourceAdaptive Mobile Navigation System
Jörg Baus, Antonio Krüger, Wolfgang Wahlster
Proceedings of IUI2002: International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces 2002, ACM Press, New York
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
The design of mobile navigation systems adapting to limited resources will be an important future challenge. Since typically several different means of transportation have to be combined in order to reach a destination, the user interface of such a system has to adapt to the user’s changing situation. This applies especially to the alternating use of different technologies to detect the user’s position, which should be as seamless as possible. This article presents a hybrid navigation system that relies on different technologies to determine the user’s location and that adapts the presentation of route directions to the limited technical resources of the output device and the limited cognitive resources of the user.

Positionsinformation und Navigationsaufgaben
Christian Kray, Jörg Baus und Antonio Krüger
Geoinformation mobil Zipf/Strobl (Hrsg.), Herbert Wichmann Verlag, Heidelberg
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

Frames of Reference, Positional Information and Navigational Assistance
Jörg Baus, Christian Kray
Proceedings of Flairs 2002, Menlo Park: AAAI Press
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
We present an analysis of different types of frames of reference and what they are needed for in a setting of a system providing navigational assistance. Since the position of a user of such a system is a main factor in the establishment of different frames of reference, we review different technologies for measuring positional information, and present a qualitative classification for this information. Based on this and on the previous analysis, we then examine the influence of positional information and frames of reference on typical tasks that arise in the context of navigational assistance.

2001

REAL: Ein ressourcenadaptierendes mobiles Navigationssystem
Wolfgang Wahlster, J. Baus, Ch. Kray, A. Krüger
Forschung und Entwicklung, November 2001, Vol. 16, 4
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

A Resource-Adaptive Mobile Navigation System
Wolfgang Wahlster, J. Baus, Ch. Kray, A. Krüger
Proceedings of the International Workshop on Information Presentation and Natural Multimodal Dialogue (IPNMD-2001), Verona, Italy, 14-15 December 2001, ITC-IRST, pp. 5 - 9
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
The design of mobile navigation systems adapting to limited resources will be an important future challenge. Since several different means of transportation typically have to be combined in order to reach a destination, it must be ensured that the user interface reacts to the user’s changing situation. In addition, the necessary change between different positioning techniques should remain unnoticed to the user of such a navigation system. This article presents a hybrid navigation system that adapts the presentation of route directions to different output devices and modalities. The system also takes into account the varying accuracy of positional information according to the technical resources available in the current situation.

A Hybrid Indoor Navigation System
Andreas Butz, Jörg Baus, Antonio Krüger, and M. Lohse
Proceedings of IUI2001: International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces 2001, ACM Press, New York
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
We describe a hybrid building navigation system consisting of stationary information booths and a mobile communication infrastructure feeding small portable devices. The graphical presentations for both the booths and the mobile devices are generated from a common source and for the common task of way finding, but they use different techniques to convey possibly different subsets of the relevant information. The form of the presentations is depending on technical limitations of the output media, accuracy of location information, and cognitive restrictions of the user. We analyze what information needs to be conveyed, how limited resources influence the presentation of this information, and argue, that by generating all different presentations in a common framework, a consistent appearance across devices can be achieved and that the different device classes can complement each other in facilitating the navigation task.

Towards adaptive location-aware mobile assistants
Jörg Baus, Y. Ding, Christian Kray, and U. Walther
Workshop notes of the IJCAI 2001 workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
In this paper we first look at a scenario to illustrate what services a truly adaptive mobile personal digital assistant should provid and how these should be offered to an untrained user. We identify relevant factors to be taken into account by a mobile assistance system and shortly review the current state of the art in mobile systems. We then propose an agent-based resource-adaptive framework to cope with the inherent complexity and dynamics of such systems. This framework does not only address important technical problems ( such as networking issues, location detection, and resource constraints) but also provides a mobile assistant with several strategies to adapt its services to the current situation.

Two path relations: Along and past
Christinan Kray, Jörg Baus, H.D. Zimmer, H. Speiser,and Antonio Krüger
Proceedings of COSIT 2001
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
We present results from a series of experiments, where relevant factors for the use of path prepositions were examined. We were especially interested in the concepts behind the German prepositions ``entlang'' and ``vorbei'' (similar to ``along'' and ``past''). After exploring the basic properties people attribute to these prepositions, we systematically varied those properties to investigate their impact on the selection process and the corresponding speech production latency. The results indicate that parallelism and distance between the outline of a reference object and a trajectory are key concepts in this context.

Some Remarks on Automated Sketch Generation for Mobile Route Descriptions
Jörg Baus, Andreas Butz, Antonio Krüger, and M. Lohse
Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Smart Graphics, ACM Press, New York , 2001
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
The next generation of route description systems will not only give way information at the beginning, but also during the way-finding task. The information will be brought to the user by stationary and mobile displays (e.g. info kiosk or PDA). Especially graphics play an important role to convey way finding information. In this paper we explain an approach, to generate such graphics that are tailored to the use on mobile devices.

Critical Features for the Selection of Verbal Descriptions for Path Relations
Hubert D. Zimmer, H. Speiser, Jörg Baus, and Antonio Krüger
Cognitive Processing , 2001
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

Visualization of route descriptions in a resource-adaptive navigation aid
Jörg Baus, Christian Kray, and Antonio Krüger
Cognitive Processing , 2001
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

Die Selektion dimensionaler räumlicher Präpositionen automatisch und nicht ressourcenadatierend
H.D. Zimmer, H. Spieser, and J. Baus
Kognitionswissenschaft, Band 9, Heft 3, Oktober 2001, S. 115-121
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ]

2000

Some Aspects of Scouting Smart Environments
Jörg Baus, C. Breihof, Andreas Butz, M. Lohse, Antonio Krüger
Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on "Smart Graphics", March 20th-22nd 2000, Stanford, CA, USA .
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
We discuss a virtual presenter in the form of a 3D avatar whose task it is to show people a way through a (3D model of a) public building. Our thesis is that when looking for way descriptions, seeing such a walkthrough guided by a virtual scout is easier to remember than a purely textual description of the way or the kind of annotated floor plans used widely in today's public buildings. Furthermore, we discuss some technical aspects of how such a scout can be constructed and what underlying data and processes are needed for the automated generation of guided way descriptions. One of our main goals is to give the avatar the possibility to react to her spatial environment in an appropriate matter, e.g. pointing to relevant objects and following a path that can be easily memorized by the viewer. The walkthroughs described here will be used within a building navigation system that also includes navigation via a handheld device, (such as a PDA,) once the user has left the information booth. Both the 3D visualization at the info booth and the more sketch-like presentation on the PDA are generated from the same data and by the same system, and thus can refer to each other for a much more consistent overall appearance. Last modified: Wed Dec 15 15:46:32 MET 1999

Incorporating a Virtual Presenter in a Resource Adaptive Navigational Help System.
Jörg Baus,, Andreas Butz, Antonio Krüger
Workshop - Guiding Users through Interactive Experiences: Usability Centred Design and Evaluation of Virtual 3D Environments Paderborn, Germany, April 13-14, 2000
[ DOWNLOAD NOTE ] show abstract
We discuss a virtual presenter in the form of a 3D avatar whose task it is to show users their way through a (3D model of a) public building. Our thesis is that when looking for way descriptions, seeing such a walkthrough guided by a virtual scout is easier to remember than a purely textual description or the kind of annotated floor plans used widely in today's public buildings. Furthermore, we discuss some technical aspects of how such a scout can be constructed and what underlying data and processes are needed for the automated generation of guided route descriptions. One of our main goals is to give the avatar the ability to react to the spatial environment in an appropriate manner, e.g., by pointing to relevant objects and following a path that can be easily memorized by the viewer. We introduce the concept of bounds objects useful for the computation of spatial relations and behavior activation of the virtual presenter. The final presentation is then performed by the virtual presenter moving along a path scouting the surroundings. The presenter is made sensitive to the objects in the environment, thus getting only the relevant information depending on its task and position. It will perform the task alone without system intervention, by querying the environment using the bounds concept to trigger behaviors and to establish an egocentric frame of reference.

Augmenting Buildings with Infrared Information
Andreas Butz., Jörg Baus, and Antonio Krüger
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Augmented Reality ISAR 2000, IEEE Computer Society Press, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, P.O. Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA 9020-1264 (to appear)
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We describe a building information and navigation system based on Palm Pilot PDAs and a set of strong infrared transmitters, located throughout a building. The infrared senders stream localized data, thus effectively augmenting areas of space with localized information. This information can be perceived by just entering those areas with the PDA in your hand. We show that this form of augmentation of an environment can serve a multitude of purposes and requires neither the employment of classic 3D augmented reality nor to carry around wearable computers nor to wear head mounted displays.

Different Views on Location Awareness
Andreas Butz, Jörg Baus, and Antonio Krüger
Workshop notes of the ECAI 2000 workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Mobile Systems August 22, 2000, Berlin, Germany
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Location awareness is a key ingredient to many applications of mobile devices. Devices with the ability to determine their own position can retrieve, filter or present information depending on this position in space. There are, however two different ways to view this situation resulting in different distributions of computational resources. We argue that in many cases it will be better and easier to put some computational effort and design wits into the environment and infrastructure than into the actual mobile device. In this sense we claim that there should be more artificial intelligence around mobile devices than in them.

Smart Graphics in Adaptive Way Descriptions.
Antonio Krüger, Jörg Baus, Andreas Butz
Proceedings of: Advanced Visual Interfaces 2000 (AVI2000), Italy.
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While car navigation systems are widely commercialized already today, pedestrian information systems are still in the early research stage. However, recent progress in mobile computing has opened perspectives for pedestrian navigation systems. In this context, graphics is and will still be an important modality to convey all types of route information. This paper will address the question how to generate graphics for navigation systems that help pedestrians, e.g., airport passengers, city tourists or conference attendees, to find their way in complex environments. We will discuss how the presentation of graphics can be tailored to various technical and cognitive constraints, and we will demonstrate our ideas within a scenario where a passenger of an airport gets navigational help from a stationary info booth and afterwards on her way via a handheld device (PDA). Both the 3D visualization at the info booth and the sketch-like presentation on the PDA are generated from the same data and by the same system, yet are adapted to the specific situation, output medium and user as far as possible

1999

One Way Interaction: interactivity over unidirectional links
Jörg Baus, Andreas Butz, Antonio Krüger
Proceedings of the I3 workshop on Adaptive Design of Interactive Multimedia Presentations for Mobile Users, Sunday, March 7, 1999, http://www.i3net.org/
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In this paper we describe a strategy to achieve limited interactivity in situations where part of the communication is restricted to one direction. We illustrate this strategy in a scenario in which a stationary presentation system generates adapted interactive graphical way descriptions for mobile users in the form of hypergraphics. These descriptions are shown on a mobile display unit with very limited computing capacity. For technical reasons the communication between the presentation system and the mobile display system is restricted to one direction (i.e. the broadcasting of information by the presentation system) and to a relatively low bandwidth. A limited form of interactivity of the generated graphical presentations can be achieved without sending back information from the mobile unit to the server. By anticipating all possible interactions with a generated hypergraphical presentation the necessary variations can be generated and broadcast. If the transmission of the different levels of this presentation tree follows a certain scheme, the available level of interactivity of a presentation increases over time (as its exploration consumes time), while a very fast availability of the first and most simplistic presentation can still be guaranteed. Furthermore, any delay that could be caused by communicating back and forth with the presentation system over the low bandwidth connection is avoided, since all the necessary presentation parts are cached on the display device after one broadcasting cycle.

1998

The Use of Locative Expressions in Dependence of the Spatial Relation between Target and Reference Object in Two-Dimensional Layouts
H.D. Zimmer, H.R. Speiser, Jörg Baus, A. Blocher, E. Stopp
SFB 378 (REAL, VEVIAG), Bericht Nr. 142, April 1998. In: Freksa, C., Habel, C., Wender, K.F. (eds.): Spatial cognition - An interdisciplinary approach to representation and processing of spatial knowledge, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 1998, 223-240
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In two experiments we investigated the use of German locative expressions as a function of the spatial relation between a reference object (RO) and a to-be-located object (LO). In the experiments, a speaker described to another participant, by locative expressions, where LO can be found in relation to RO. LO (a blue dot) was presented at different positions around RO (a red dot). The listener saw RO only, and her or his task was to find LO by moving a small window over the screen using the computer mouse. The positions of LO were circularly arranged around RO and their angular relations were varied in steps of 15 degrees. In Experiment 1, only the four canonical expressions (left/right, above/below) and their single composites were allowed. In Experi-ment 2, no constraints were made. Both experiments yielded comparable results. The canonical expressions were used nearly exclusively for prototypical relations, and their production latencies were the shortest. Composites were used for all non-prototypical relations. There was only a small spatial area next to the canonical directions in which two different locative expressions were used, and in these areas of competition the longest production times were observed. Thus, canonical expressions were used in a much smaller area around the prototypical axes than predicted by selection rules based on applicability ratings obtained in meta-linguistic judgments.

Ressourcenadaptierende Objektlokalisation: Sprachliche Raumbeschreibung unter Zeitdruck
Wolfgang Wahlster, A. Blocher, Jörg Baus, E. Stopp, H. Speiser
Kognitionswissenschaft, Sonderheft zum Sonderforschungsbereich 378, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 1998.
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Es wird ein algorithmisches Modell der Beantwortung von Wo-Fragen unter Zeitdruck beschrieben. Das implementierte System beruht auf einer ressourcenadaptierenden Kombination von Anytime-Algorithmen, wobei sich die Qualitaet der resultierenden raeumlichen Beschreibungen mit steigender Verarbeitungszeit graduell verbessert. Es wird gezeigt, dass das System empirische Resultate von Experimenten reproduzieren kann, welche die Produktions- und Verstehenslatenz fuer raeumliche Referenzen untersuchen.

1996

Moses-View: Objektauswahl in 3D-Umgebungen basierend auf visueller Salienz am Beispiel des Wegbeschreibungsagenten MOSES
Jörg Baus
Diplomarbeit , Fachbereich Informatik, Universität des Saarlandes, 1996

1995

Visual Grounding of Route Descriptions in Dynamic Environments. SFB 314 (VITRA), Bericht Nr. 117, Juli 1995
W. Maaß, J. Baus, J. Paul
To appear in Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on "Computational Models for Integrating Language and Vision", MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1995
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A software agent who gives incremental, i.e. step-by-step, route descriptions while moving through an environment is an interesting starting-point for an integrated view on visual perception and natural language generation. We present a computational model, called MOSES. In particular we show how visual data is transformed into visuo-spatial representations. An object selection process based on visual features starts at a high-level description of objects in a synthetic three-dimensional environment. We found by experiments that incremental route descriptions can be classified by a small set of syntactic and semantic structures. By consideration of temporal constraints, visuo-spatial structures, path-related intentions, as well as rhetorical abilities of the speaker, a selection process extracts description schemata as input for the language generation process. These schemata are modeled by a modified subset of Jackendoff's conceptual semantics formalism.