Untitled INTRODUCTION

Technology exists as a means to further empower people, a result that is best achieved by constructing a close synergy between man and machine. The rapid development of technology has led to new fields of research dedicated to developing new and intuitive methods by which humans can interact with machines. Essentially, the problem is no longer just one of how technology can make a task easier for us, but in addition how we can interact with machines to benefit from their functionality to the greatest extent. It is now possible for machines to greatly augment our existing capabilities. Indeed an electronic organiser can be viewed as a method of augmenting our own memory, however laboriously pursuing the required information by prodding at an array of buttons as the interface between our cognitive abilities and the device’s memory capabilities does little to do it justice. Essentially, traditional interfaces underexploit the processing potential of both the user and technology. This is true for both the input and output interaction processes in the traditional interaction paradigm, that is, instructing the machine to perform a task and the machine relaying back to the user new information regarding what it has done or what it is doing.  

Essentially, the interface through which a user must interact with the machine provides a distinct layer of separation between what the user wants the machine to do, and what it actually does. Certainly, this separation imposes a cognitive load upon the user that is directly proportional to the level of difficulty the user experiences [Turk (2000)]. Manual intention through joystick, button or keyboard operation, ‘point & click’ operations via the mouse and recently voice recognition are perhaps the most widely used methods of interaction. Intuitively however, it would seem that these traditional interfaces greatly underexploit the processing capabilities of the user by presenting a bottleneck in the link between thinking what we want to happen, and laboriously pursuing those actions. Indeed, the fundamental issue can be viewed as two powerful information processors (human and machine) attempting to communicate with each other via a narrow bandwidth, highly constrained interface [Tufte (1989)]. Even the seemingly advantageous voice recognition interface has the additional payload of utilising parts of the brain that are employed for general problem solving to formulate sounds into words [Shneiderman (2000)], i.e. the cognitive load is increased when the thought has to be spoken.  

Technological development moves towards exploitation of all sensory modalities to allow humans the ability to receive information from machines to the fullest extent. Currently, by far the most ubiquitous example is that of visual display screen, even though purely visual information alone is not optimum. Wearable computers have been proposed as a possible solution, although the first and still most common implementation is the head mounted display which optically overlays computer generated information on a real world scene [Mann (1997)]. This Augmented Reality (AR) is viewed as a halfway between Virtual Reality (VR) and telepresence since, whereas VR completely immerses the user inside a synthetic environment, AR either superimposes or composites virtual objects visually or audibly [Cohen et al. (1999)] on the real world, allowing virtual and real objects to coexist in the same space. However, AR has yet to supply interactivity rich enough to merge the real and virtual domains seamlessly. This is in part due to a lack of sensory modalities being exploited resulting in a very low level of achievable tangibility.

Ambient Intelligence Environments (AmI) have been presented for many years as the panacea for the human / technology interaction bottleneck. The very essence of AmI is to enrich the user experience by capitalising on the potential that additional computing processing can bring. Part of this enrichment is achieved by augmenting the user in their daily lives through additional services and access to additional information. However, this is achieved whilst actually reducing the focus on the traditional explicit data input / output paradigm - a true shift in our concept of what a computer is, and how we should interact and use it.

“It seems like a paradox but it will soon become reality: The rate at which computers disappear will be matched by the rate at which information technology will increasingly permeate our environment and our lives” [Streitz & Nixon, (2005)].