Intelligent Implicit Interface for Wearable Items ... - Springer Link

Intelligent Implicit Interface for Wearable Items Suggestion Khan Aasim1, Aslam Muhammad1, and A.M. Martinez-Enriquez2 1 Department of CS & E., U.E.T., Lahore, Pakistan [email protected], [email protected] 2 Department of Computer Science, CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico [email protected]

Abstract. In daily routine life, people frequently perform computer aided physical activities explicitly shifting from real to virtual world and conversely. In this shift and in order to get some recommendations, people are inquired about personal information. Normally, people do not know how to organize ideas to answer to an automatic inquiry or sometimes, they are reluctant to disclose their own particulars. These issues slow down computer usage to get assistance concerning suggestions about wearable items. We tackle the problem by developing an intelligent interface for helping customers to choose entities like dresses, shoes, and hair style. The system is based on implicit Human Computer Interaction concept and Artificial Intelligence heuristics particularly on knowledge based systems. The developed system gathers customer information like height, weight, waist, skin color, in order to facilitate the selection of daily life commodities. The performance of the system is very encouraging applied for getting suggestions of dress selection for a business man, shoes for professional players, and party hair style for men. Keywords: Implicit HCI, Knowledge based systems, Ubiquitous computing.

1 Introduction In order to escape from stress or unpleasant situations, humans perform certain physical activities, like getting aid from computer resources to perform better and comfortable lives. Nevertheless, there is a gap between the real world and the computer environment. Main reason behind is that to perform automatic assistance for activity recommender system, people have to shift explicitly from visible to virtual computer environment. This shifting not only slows down human’s performance but also reasonably decreases the real usage in performing physical activities. Nowadays, computer applications are provided by limited Human Computer Interface (HCI) which is unaware of physical real environment. Normally, to get some computer assistance, it is required that users provide information by explicit input. The huge gap between physical and virtual environment increases the work load on people in performing computer assisted activities. These issues cover different research areas like context aware computing [3], tangible interaction [4], multi-modal interaction [2]. Moreover, in our society, not many people are aware of using A. An et al. (Eds.): AMT 2010, LNCS 6335, pp. 26–33, 2010. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

Intelligent Implicit Interface for Wearable Items Suggestion

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computers, they might hesitate to give confidential information or to be marked by tedious repetition. In order to address this problem, we propose an implicit HCI interface that gathers customer’s information seamlessly and then suggests or advises him regarding his getup. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: related work is presented in Section 2. Section 3 describes proposed system in detail. A case study is described in Section 4. In Section 5, conclusions and some future perspectives are given.

2 Related Work When we read an article on British Broadcasting Company (http://www.bbc.com) regarding adjustable undergarments, we had the impression that normally, people feel uncomfortable when their undergarments are not well fitted to them. To overcome it, an “adjustable undergarments” concept is presented, according to which a microcontroller can be used to adjust wearable item to attain customer comfort. Meng, et al [1] introduced a shoe-integrated system for human gait detection: normal gait, toe in, toe out, over supination, and heel walking gait. The inertial measurement unit (IMU) concept is introduced which consists of three-dimensional gyroscopes. To measure angular velocity and acceleration of foot, an accelerometer is used. During the research work on wearable computer and sensor interfaces Yangsheng et al [9] argue that the major benefit provided by wearable intelligent devices is the close proximity that maintain with users. Therefore, the development of an intelligent shoes system consisting of a micro controller, a suite of sensors for acquiring physiological, motion, and force information, as well as a wireless transmitterreceiver set are proposed. The data gathered from this intelligent shoe-integrated platform is used to further analyze real-time health and gait monitoring, real-time motion (activity) identification and real-time user localization. Development about new sensing cloths [7] allowing the simultaneous record of physiological signals, it is used the concept in textile industry by means of sensors integrated into fabrics. The sensing devices gathers user information used for health monitoring providing a direct feedback to user acting on awareness level and allowing better control for user conditions. Availability of sensor technology, ranging from temperature sensor to complex acceleration sensor, for instance Hendrik,, HolgeR, et al [5] present the concept of wearable comfortable clothes, to continually worn supporting users during the work. Touch interaction on mobile phone is a natural HCI. But, occlusion problem is presented, i.e. a “big finger” may lose high percentage of information presented on a small screen [6]. Up to the best of our knowledge, no such system exists which facilitates customer to select wearable items.

3 A Wearable Items Recommender System The developed infrastructure is composed of hardware like screen immiscible environment and pointing devices, functionalities for satisfying requirements like friendly interface, control mechanisms for providing information request from the interface,

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K. Aasim, A. Muhammad, and A.M. Martinez-Enriquez

relationships of several tools and work process. Our system consists of five subsystems (see Fig. 1): 3.1 Information Gathering (IG) This system gets user information for the first time, before passing through the magical room. There are different ways to accomplish this step: 1) An operator inquires and records user's preference in order to promote implicit HCI, 2) Dedicated functionality for information gathering where user answers questions related with his preferences, interacting with speaker and mike, 3) Multi-mode information (manual and plus HCI). The automatic mode system is especially for technical users who have IT knowledge and who can access Internet. User information is retrieved from Internet rather than inquired him, for each available website source, when user has a web site or may have a Facebook account / any public profile application. This information can be gathered from based on tags.

Fig. 1. System Information Flow

IG saves users attributes like gender, age, address, facebook name, height, and some other. Website or Facebook username can be used to implicitly capture user’s data and some fields like favorite celebrity and profession. Some of these attributes are explicitly asked and others are implicitly captured by the system like user’s skin color, height. Implicit captured information come from camera and is updated by the “Information Refinement & Profile Update” component. 3.2 Event Category Selection (ECS) Users select the event category for which getup is chosen. The category can be business meeting, wedding dresses, sportswear, casual, etc. as shown in Figure 2. For each type of category a button appears aligned horizontally. User selects event category so that system can show him information according to his occasional match when he reaches the Magical Selection. In order to go to the magical room user has to pass through this door button. By default door is closed and is opened when user presses on. After pressing, the door is opened like automatic doors, i.e. from inside to outside horizontally. The category that user has selected is shown as a default category while he is in magical room.


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Fig. 2. Category Selection

3.3 Information Refinement and Profile Update (IR&PU) This is one of implicit process of the system, because user information is gathered without involving him physically to feed the data to update the user’s profile. When user walks toward the category selection door, a revolving camera takes users information. The camera is mounted on a reeling to move back and forth. The camera is mounted via circular surface which helps the camera to revolve 360 degrees. When user is walking towards the door this camera revolves around user and gathers facial's user characteristics. This information is used for getup selection purposes, in magical room. This step is very important as have to process on user’s latest information. The system uses Trace transform [8] which is a generalization of the Radon transform. The technique helps to recognize objects under transformations. 3.4 Magical Selection System (MS) MS is composed by the following modules: a) Gait detection The walking styles are deduced by our walking device since different walking styles exist due to kind of work performed, place, status, a particular used freestyle walking, etc. While walking people, they place their feet on different angles. In addition, they have different physical characteristics like large or flat footed. The walking device contains pressure sensors which are laid on a metallic surface. Customer walks on this device bare footed, giving the force of different part of his feet to sensor that detect and get user gait information. The walking devise is provided by different lights beneath: green color when nobody is walking on the device, blue when someone is walking on it and the system is getting information without any error, and red color when someone is walking and the system is not getting the correctly input. Red color conveys the message to person to again walk on the device. A voice message is also sent through speakers saying “Repeat again”. b) Camera system Although, we have gathered user’s facial information during Information Refinement step. So this is an optional system. The camera is placed in a magical room that can rotate 360 degrees. Camera is used when user is not satisfied with quality of earlier taken pictures or when he wants to view this getup in a new style. We place this system again in the magical room/cabin, such that user does not need to go back and new photographs can be captured for information refinement.

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c)

K. Aasim, A. Muhammad, and A.M. Martinez-Enriquez

Screen

Other used hardware is a computer screen on which information is being displayed, whose main advantage is a touch screen which enables users to have a more natural interaction with the device. But sometimes occlusion of information may be presented, becoming a disadvantage. In order to provide usable interaction with the touch systems, we introduce a new concept of “Grip able Needle”, similar as a pen but with a feature that it can grip user’s finger. When user puts his finger inside this needle and the finger reaches a certain depth and touches the inner side of the needle, the two grips move and hold users finger. Thus, “Grip able Needle” sticks together user’s finger and acts as unique. Now user does not need to use three fingers to hold the needle. User can now easily interact with touch systems. More over different sizes needles are placed at the side of touch screen, so user can choose a needle according to his finger thickness. Other interesting part of “Computer Screen” is that user appearance is viewed on. Thus, he has the possibility to provide feedback and all controls are also placed. In addition, a big screen can be used, on which these filters are done, showing users view. In this way, users view themselves live during the selection of particular things. Thus, he does not need to go to a mirror or someone who makes comments whether he is all right. User can view himself on the big screen and decides what follow is on. d) Dedicated Functionality The dedicate functionality works on the top of knowledge base which consists of rules written in first order logic. The user information constitutes the premise part of a rule and system for suggestion/recommendation forms the action part. 3.5 Order Placement System (OP) When user presses “Place Order” button either from the touch screen or from keyboard, this process is launched. First the system gathers all the items that the user has added to the cart during this trip. When all selected items are available, the bill is generated. When an item is not available, a searching is triggered within the store or in other outlets. When an item is available at later time, the system generates the bill, marking the booked time and fixes the user’s address to be delivered.

4 Case Study Let’s consider as a case study, the business man, who comes to getup for a meeting. A customer has gone all previous steps and now he is going to use our currently software process. We consider that dress is the most important article. Thus, dresses are shown at first by default. This sequence can also be changed. Note that filters are already populated with specific values. Gender, age and height are populated from businessman’s profile information. The category drop down is populated from businessman information selected during event category selection step. When businessman’s mind changes, he can also select items from different category, providing flexibility since, at same time, users can shop items from multiple categories. Items, stuff, and brand information is populated based on user’s history.


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Fig. 3. Dress Selection

For instance, if user has selected suits most of times and cotton stuff, then these values are automatically populated. Anyhow, user can change this information to have different items and stuffs, at any time. The screen also contains a navigation pane which contains several types of links. Businessman has the possibility to organize views by clicking on the appropriate link: - Newly arrived stuff, - Particular style like plain, check, and lining, - Most ordered, - Most viewed, -Preferred color. When user has selected it, the system only displays items contained selected color. Let’s consider that the businessman has selected particular brand cotton as stuff and newly arrived as selected category (see Figure 3) to the businessman. Customer can try different suits and view himself on the big screen. Now after viewing different suits, he can select a particular color; now suits with that particular color are shown to user. He can add the selected suit to the compare cart by clicking “Compare” button. Now, let’s suppose that user has changed the color option and want to view suits in different color in same variety. After viewing a couple of suits he has finalized a particular suit. Now, he wants to compare it with the previously selected suit. He can click the “Comparison Mode” option. All the selected suits are shown to user; user can select all or some of them for comparison. He can select one and leave them on comparison cart or can delete them from comparison cart to minimize the selection options. If user has selected a particular suit he can click buy button to add it in the final cart. When user wants a recommendation from system, he clicks on “suggest suit” link. Our system uses a knowledge based system to recommend customers suitable clothing according with a selected social client's event. An example of rule is as follows: StartRule "Winter Dress Suit Suggestion" If nature (x) = customer /* ‘x’ is a customer */ color (x) = "fair" /* customer color is fair */ favoriteColor(x) = “black” /* customer favorite is black */ newFashionColor(selected_item) = “brown” Then Suggest(x)