Alternative Reality on Screen: Applying Iconic Programming to Home Security Systems

Atsuo Yoshitaka, Hiroshi Nakata, Masahito Hirakawa, and Tadao Ichikawa

WISS'96 発表予定. 日本ソフトウェア科学会, December 1996.

概要

In recent years, even the people who are not familiar with computer manipulat ion have got more chances to use computers. In order to assist such users for the better usability with more natural interaction facilities, quite a few GUIs have been proposed. Icon-based interface is one of the most popular ways to achieve easier and better interaction. In this paper, we propose an iconic interface for manipulating or interacting with equipments such as a TV, air-conditioners, and censors exiting in the real world through a portable computer. A `carbon copy' of the real world is projected on the display. A user manipulates icons by a pen, resulting in the operation of actual devices associated with the pen. We have applied this interaction scheme to building a home security system and has implemented a prototype. This approach looks similar to the so-called desktop on computer screen, where operations such as sending e-mail or copying files are invoked by icon manipulation. The interaction attainable in the virtual desktop environment, however, is almost uni-directional since it has essentially been provided for easy representation of jobs to be performed by a computer. In contrast to this, our approach enables a bi-directional interaction with the real world by providing a `carbon copied real world' on the computer display.