Situated spatial interaction
Description
Semester hours: 2
ECTS: 4 (+2 with optional paper)
Module: M-102
Sessions:
- Thursday, 12:00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m., MZH 5300
Lecturers:
- Thora Tenbrink, Robert Porzel
Abstract
The advent of mobile, pervasive and ubiquitous computing has been facilitated by the development of increasingly small and powerful computational devices. Former interactions between humans and computers were restricted to the exchange of information according to strictly constrained interfaces or – at best – prestructured dialogues. Increasingly, they now involve a complex interplay of various sources of information, including the current spatial surroundings within the field of vision and beyond. The mobility, flexibility, and adaptivity required of modern devices poses a challenge for traditional interaction paradigms [Johnson, 1998]. Particularly with respect to spatial interaction, additional problems emerge due to the conceptual differences between the qualitative categories and associated verbalizations involved in human spatial cognition, and the quantitative representations and data formats typically available in computers.
For situated spatial interaction to work naturally and efficiently between different agents such as humans and mobile devices, at least the following areas need to be addressed, which will be covered in this seminar:
a) Pragmatics of situated interaction: Which factors in the real world affect the interaction situation and need to be accounted for by a flexible and adaptive device?
b) Spatial cognition and computation: To what extent can computational models represent human spatial thought? How can language be used to mediate between different types of conceptions?
c) Spatial language and other representations: How do humans represent spatial situations linguistically, graphically, or using other media to convey relevant elements and relationships?
d) Dialogue system development: Which aspects of natural human-human dialogue about spatial settings need to be covered by a language-based dialogue system?
The goal of this seminar is to explore these challenges both from a linguistic as well as a computational perspective and discuss viable solutions and approaches.
Literature:
Dourish, P. (2001). Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. MIT Press.
Johnson, P. (1998). Usability and Mobility; Interactions on the Move. In Proceedings of the FirstWorkshop on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices. Technical Report G98-1., Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Fischer, K. (2006). How people really talk to computers. In Fischer, K., editor, Proccedings of the Workshop on How People Talk to Computers, Robots and other Artificial Agents, pages 47–73. SFB-TR8, Bremen.
Moratz, Reinhard and Thora Tenbrink. 2006. Spatial reference in linguistic human-robot interaction: Iterative, empirically supported development of a model of projective relations. Spatial Cognition and Computation, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 63-106.
Coventry, Kenny R. & Patrick Olivier (eds.), Spatial Language: Cognitive and Computational Perspectives. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Landau, B. & R. Jackendoff. 1993. „What” and “where” in spatial language and spatial cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, 217-265.
Gorniak, Peter and Deb Roy. (2004). Grounded Semantic Composition for Visual Scenes. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Volume 21, pages 429-470.
