(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2) Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501 Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS on duplicating, publishing or distributing the files on KeelyNet except where noted! April 20, 1992 BADGES.ASC -------------------------------------------------------------------- For those of us who are fascinated by some of the REALIZABLE technologies as shown on Star Trek, the following two items are paraphrased from COMPUTERWORLD, April 20, 1992. The first and most interesting is entitled "THE WALK-AND-WEAR OFFICE, Using a multimedia system and devices that track and identify people, Olivetti Research is working on the intelligent office of the future." by Andy Hopper. PP 99-101. The second is from TECH TALK, Page 25 of the same issue. The article is entitled "PICTURE THIS" and relates to a video recognition system for graphic images. It also ties in well with the Olivetti ACTIVE BADGE system. ComputerWorld is primarily for IS (information systems managers) but covers a wide range of subjects relating to computer technology. Current Subscription rates are $38.95 per year for a weekly paper. If you wish to subscribe, their address is COMPUTERWORLD, PO Box 2044, Marion, Ohio 43306-4144. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Pandora and the Active Badge System The Olivetti Research Laboratory is located in Cambridge, England. They are currently developing a most interesting multimedia system called PANDORA in conjunction with devices known as ACTIVE BADGES. ACTIVE BADGES identify and track people within a building. The basic system monitors the movement of people and, to a lesser extent, objects in the building. The badge is currently the size of a typical office security identification badge. An ACTIVE BADGE contains an infrared transmitter that every 15 seconds transmits a 48-bit word, which is the wearer's unique ID. The ID information is held on a central database residing on a server (controller for a network of connected workstations) and includes items such as security clearance, preferred computer interface and applications, right or left-handedness and even how the user takes his coffee. Rooms, passageways and workstations are equipped with sensors with infrared receivers that monitor the presence of a badge. These Page 1 sensors are tied together into a low-frequency network, which is connected to the server on the main PANDORA network. A central monitoring program on the server constantly updates a list of where badge wearers are or where they last came in contact with a sensor. This information includes what telephone or workstations they are closest to. Users can call up this list on their workstation. Users can make an inquiry to locate a badge wearer in order to transfer a phone call or send a video message. Olivetti Research is experimenting with reconfiguring offices on the fly using the badges. For example, receivers in the PANDORA system find out from the database what a user was last working on, enabling a researcher's work to follow him from computer to computer. Walking away from a terminal is the equivalent of logging off; approaching another screen "wakes up" the machine, which configures itself to whatever the user has specified. The computer even alerts a user to the fact that there is a video mail message waiting for him. Sensors can also transmit to badges, and the Olivetti Research Laboratory ACTIVE BADGE system incorporates paging functions, with which a user can page a colleague from a terminal. ACTIVE BADGES have been useful in determining security access. For example, sensors enable a security door to generate a small magnetic field. When an authorized badge wearer enters the field, his badge emits an instant pulse that can be checked for the appropriate entry permission and trigger the door to open. Or the sensor can differentiate among a number of badge wearers in the same room, preventing unnecessary interruptions of meetings. No one is forced to wear these badges at Olivetti Research Laboratory or Cambridge University, but the 130 people on the system do because IT MAKES LIFE EASIER. There is less time wasted tracking someone down and fewer meeting interruptions. And with a built-in photosensitive resistor, it is always possible for a user to turn the badge over and effectively log off. Furthermore, all users have access to informaton on WHO is monitoring their whereabouts because inquiry information is logged and recorded. An example of how the PANDORA system would work in conjuntion with the ACTIVE BADGE ; It is morning, and I walk into the building in which I work and into an office I know is unoccupied, I make sure I'm wearing my identification badge, and as I approach the door, he electronic lock opens, enabling me to enter the darkened room. The lights brighten, and a workstation on the desk flashes to life automatically, displaying a document I recognize as the one I had been working on yesterday. I click onto the screen and my video mail messages. There is a beep, and a colleague's face suddenly appears on the screen in another small window. I click onto that window, and we talk IN REAL TIME about the status of an upcoming project. Page 2 After we're done, I record a video mail message for another staff member to brief him on my recent discussion. I then click on the screen to get a recorded version of the latest television news and finally find a minute to sip my coffee. Science fiction? After 3 weeks of work on and use of a multimedia system called PANDORA and devices known as ACTIVE BADGES that identify and track people, the lab has been piecing together the office of tomorrow. The idea is to create an intelligent, shared office in which a room can instantly adapt to a user's personal preferences (mouse buttons reconfigured for left or right handed use or phone buttons programmed with personal codes) and in which tracking and video capabilities keep staff in constant contact. The PANDORA multimedia system consists of a group of networked, Unix-based workstations that provide real-time and recorded digital audiovisual information for users. Primary applications for the 20 Olivetti Research workstations included desktop videoconferencing and video mail. A PANDORA system contains a video camera, a microphone, a loudspeaker and the PANDORA processor box, which serves as the network interface. The current version of this box contains six processors, which work as embedded controllers with discrete functions. One processor handles video sampling from the camera alongside the computer. A second acts as a digital video mixer to combine workstation-generated video with video coming from other PANDORA boxes. The third processor deals with audio, which is handled at telephone-quality 8 KHZ and is picked up by a microphone. Data stream switching is performed by the fourth processor, with two final devices serving as the I/O processors to the network. In this way, users can run video applications (controlled by the processor box) as well as other applications, such as word processing, from windows on their desktops. The simplest use of PANDORA is just observation. The staff at Olivetti Research can view remote offices through video cameras mounted over each PANDORA station. Although it's perfectly permissible to peek at the scene surveyed by another PANDORA station, a user can't listen to that station until somebody at that end lets him - i.e., accepts the call. In addition, if a staff member surveys another office, the user in that office will always get an image of the surveryor on his screen. In this way, no one can observe without being observed. In a two-way videoconference, PANDORA handles four streams of digital video and audio; two incoming and two outgoing. Add one or two extra people to make a conference call, and the load increases exponentially. The system has no built-in limits, but as the processing demand increases, the visual quality drops. Sound is recorded separately from the video, but it is synchronized on playback. Because it's better to hear the conversation clearly than to see it, the video is always sacrificed in favor of audio Page 3 when data traffic reaches its limits. Typically, any user can have a four-way videoconferencing displaying five windows and mixing five audio streams on his terminal without overloading the system. This load is one reason why PANDORA utilizes an asychronous transfer mode (ATM) network. ATM allows real-time performance to drop off gradually (we call this "graceful degradation") as the system becomes congested without losing the video or audio completely. ATM networks can chop up data streams very finely and preserve their real-time attribute. By far the most successful PANDORA application has been video mail. This involves recording short messages and sending them to other PANDORA users - a kind of video fax. Not only is it a lot faster to record a video message as opposed to composing and typing a written memo, but video mail is also a very personal form of communication that can convey expression and body language. A message from the boss to drop by his office at the end of the day may cause panic - but if you see that he has a smile on his face when he says it, you will probably be less worried. Video mail is quick and easy to record and play back. Videocassette recorder-style buttons are provided on the computer window, and the user can start, pause, stop, rewind and play back the recording at any time. A cursor or slider control lets him move immediately to a position in the recorded sequence by using the mouse, rather like scrolling text up and down in a word processor. There are cut-and-paste facilities for editing recordings and creating composite ones in which text and video is mixed. Video does not have to include only internal video. For instance, the laboratory has a directory of the latest recorded TV news that can be brought onto the screen at any time and viewed or recorded. This broadcast data resides on a server that we receives live TV relays and automatically records the news for users who want to view it later. Video mail digital recording is stored remotely on a bank of Winchester disk drives, which currently provide about 2.5 Gbytes, or 6.4 hours, or recording. Because typing a file name and dialogue text detracts from the simplicity of video mail, Olivetti Research is starting to work on voice pattern recognition for filing and retrieving video mail. In this way, a user would simply state the name of the person whose video mail he'd like to see, and the system would search for and play back the messages sent by that person. As for filing, a powerful voice recognition system may eventually enable the system to produce an automatic transcript of a conversation as it takes place. The video mail application is being isolated to run on standard platforms with a minimum of additional hardware and software. Researchers can already send and receive videomail from an Intel Corp. 80386-based personal computer running Microsoft Corp.'s Page 4 Windows across a standard network. They can also send video mail to colleagues at Ing. C. Olivetti & Co. in Italy and Digital Equipment Corp. in the U.S. over standard public networks. Future advances for PANDORA will include features such as high- definition color and faster networking. -------------------------------------------------------------------- PICTURE THIS There has been plenty of work done on teaching computers to "see" in such areas as robotics and on storing photographic images electronically. Now, researchers hope to teach computers to see and understand digitized images so that users can search database of photos and other images based on the actual content of the image. MIT's Media Laboratories and UK-based BT (formerly British Telecom) have launched a five-year project to develop a method to search image databases using analysis tools that do not require textual descriptions of the images. Alex Pentland, co-director of MIT's Vision and Modeling Group, said of the project's goal. "For example, a user could show a computer a person's picture and ask it to find all the images with this person in them. The computer would then retrieve all the pictures, images and video files which contain this same face." -------------------------------------------------------------------- Vangard Notes... SHADES of 1984!! No doubt such technology offers up tremendous potential for the invasion of privacy. However, note that one can step away from the network by removing the badge or covering up the emitter so that it will not respond. Ron and I discussed this article and both agree that it would greatly ease communications in our respective work environments. Paging over a system wide intercom would be eliminated since the user would be directly targeted. We have long marvelled at some of the technologies as shown in daily use on Star Trek with their personal communicators and long for the day a commercial system would be available. Well, it looks like it is getting close to becoming a reality in everyday life. -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have comments or other information relating to such topics as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page. Thank you for your consideration, interest and support. Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we can be of service, you may contact Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 5