Category Archives: In-Car

Workshop on Entertainment Technology in Transportation against Frustration, Aggression and Irrationality

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DEADLINE EXTENDED: May 20th, 2013

Workshop on “Entertainment Technology in Transportation against Frustration, Aggression and Irrationality”

August 27, 2013, Munich, Germany

Held in conjunction with 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2013)

http://workshops.icts.sbg.ac.at/mobilehci2013

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Call for Papers

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Position Paper Submission Deadline: Monday, May 20th, 2013 (extended) Notification on Position Papers: Monday, June 10th, 2013 Workshop Date: Tuesday, August 27th, 2013

Using transportation technology (e.g., a car, plane, or traveling in public transportation) can be frustrating due to crowded streets, delays, and other travelers. Games & entertainment technology offer potential to resolve these negative user experiences. Frustration may lead to aggression and negative experiences resulting in irrational behaviors.

The workshop on Entertainment in Transportation will be a forum of multi-disciplinary discussion on how to combine research and design in both the entertainment and the transportation domain. The one-day workshop will include break-out sessions including the creation of entertainment and game concepts for future transportation. Contributions are invited from all areas of mobile HCI, games & entertainment, as well as transportation contexts such as cars, planes, buses, trains, or space ships.

Topics

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Submissions are invited on (but not limited to) the following topics:

- Entertainment applications to reduce frustration, aggression and irrationality

- Game and entertainment application concepts, prototypes, and systems that suit a certain transportation context

- Studies on informing transportation entertainment system design

- Social aspects of gaming in the transportation domain, including passengers as well as personnel

- Interaction modalities for transportation entertainment

- Research addressing the social aspects of transportation entertainment

- Usage of transport context data as game input

Submissions

To participate authors please submit by May 20th, 2013 a position paper (no longer than 4 pages in the CHI extended abstract format) about their research containing the following aspects:

- The authors’ research perspective on entertainment and gaming in transportation and how to improve the situation of travelers through gaming and entertainment, including a description of a game and entertainment application (if applicable) or phenomenon they are working on or have studied.

- A reflection on the future challenges concerning entertainment in transportation that should be addressed by mobile HCI research.

- The way the authors aim at communicating their experience to the workshop participants (e.g., demo, interactive talk). Authors are invited to include an URL linking to digital documentation of a game, artifact, tool, service, project or study that offers a particular view on entertainment in transportation.

Submissions can, but do not have to be anonymized. Please submit your work via email to mobilehci2013@hciunit.org

Interactive presentations (such as demos) are highly encouraged and will be favored in the reviewing process.

We look forward to your contribution!

Workshop organizers:

David Wilfinger (University of Salzburg) Alexander Meschtscherjakov (University of Salzburg)

Manfred Tscheligi (University of Salzburg)

Petra Sundström (University of Salzburg)

Dalila Szostak (Intel

Roderick McCall (University of Luxembourg)

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Updated: Vehicular Applications and Gamification Papers

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Here is a list of the main papers from this website that explore using gamification to reduce traffic congestion. The work is drawn from research in how to apply vehicular networking technology to reduce traffic congestion. The first paper explores legal and ethical issues, the second explores the use of gamification to asses game design issues, while the third looks at early ideas to use gamification to reduce traffic congestion. The fourth paper explores a simulator that will be used in the I-GEAR project. Our intention is really to bring together gamification with in-car applications while also exploring novel user interface techniques.

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Paper: Reducing Traffic Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming

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Last year we presented a short position paper at the “Workshop on the Car as An Arena for Gaming” which was held during MobileHCI 2012. It was chosen as the best paper from the workshop and we have subsequently published a full version outlining the results from the study featured here and from MobileHCI itself in the International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (to appear).

Abstract: In this paper we provide an overview of the I-GEAR (incentives and gaming environments for automobile routing) project that is intended to reduce traffic congestion in Luxembourg through the use of persuasive gaming. In order to illustrate some of the issues involved we also present an outline concept of a live game in which we propose to encourage the workshop participants to take part. If a sufficient number of workshop participants take part, this real life game could even be used as a small scale study within the project.

File: Reducing Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming

The journal paper will be available online soon (we have just received the proof to check over).

Citation: McCall, R., Kracheel, M., and V. Koenig. Reducing Traffic Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming. Position Paper from the Workshop on The Car As an Arena for Gaming at MobileHCI 2012. San Francisco, USA.

 

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Paper: Driving Simulator

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Title: Towards a Simple City Driving Simulator Based on Speed Dreams and OSM

Tigran Avanesov, Nicolas Louveton, Roderick McCall, Vincent Koenig, Martin Kracheel

A short work-in-progress paper which we recently presented at Auto UI 2012.

Abstract: This paper presents an architecture and partially built simulation platform which is designed to offer a flexible open ended approach for conducting laboratory experiments. The emphasis is on supporting multiple drivers and the ability to swap in and out different software components and devices.

Paper: Towards a Simple Driving Simulator

Driving Simulator Poster

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SnT Researchers to Present Work in San Francisco

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Rod McCall and Martin Kracheel are to attend a workshop on “The Car As An Arena for Gaming” at this year’s ACM MobileHCI conference. They will present their work and conduct a live “mobility game” at the workshop which will illustrate the role of incentives in even small mobility challenges. The work comes from their paper “Reducing Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming” (McCall, Kracheel & Koenig) which won best paper at the workshop. MobileHCI is one of the leading conferences on the human-computer interaction with mobile technology and the team from Luxembourg are delighted to be joining other leading researchers at the workshop who have a special interest in in-car gaming.

The paper forms some of the early work within the recently started I-GEAR project; which is funded by the National Research Fund of Luxembourg.

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I-GEAR Gears Up in Luxembourg

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For those of you who are interested, Luxembourg has one of the worst traffic problems in Europe, being rated at number 10 in the congestion league table according to a survey by TomTom a few years ago. Right now we are working on new ways to subtly alter the mobility behaviour of people through the use of location-aware persuasive games. The argument basically goes that states cannot pick up the bill for roadside information systems so we need to find ways to use what is already out there (e.g. your mobile phone) to persuade you to alter your behaviour in small ways each week. In return we’ll give you some benefits for doing so.

Right now we are building the driver simulator, which will eventually support many drivers and shortly will be conducting some studies on mobility behaviour and motivations within Luxembourg.

We aren’t trying to get you completely out of your car, we are just trying to get you to think a little different! I will put more of our publications on here soon, including the one that recently won an award.

If you are in Luxembourg and interested in taking part just contact me. This is a real project, serving a real problem so any help from real people is welcome!

I-GEAR (Incentives and Gaming Environments for Automobile Routing) is funded by FNR and hosted at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust. 

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Paper: Gaming Concepts and Incentives to Change Driver Behaviour

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For those interested on using gamification to change commuter mobility behaviour check out our paper  Gaming Concepts and Incentives to Change Driver Behaviour which is available for download you can also find the presentation online as well. This paper is from the I-GEAR project which started in 2012.

Title: Gaming Concepts and Incentives to Change Driver Behaviour

Authors: R McCall and V Koenig

Abstract— In this paper we present a novel concept that deals specifically with changing driver behaviour in order to reduce traffic congestion. The project I-GEAR (incentives and gaming environments for automobile routing) aims to understand the motivations that drivers have while undertaking the daily commute and then to provide them with a range of incentives to change their behaviour. A key focus within the project is on ways in which the
problem could potentially be solved without recourse to an expensive infrastructure project. Our solution to this problem was to move the problem of traffic management onto everyday mobile devices. In the following paper we outline the background to the
problem, concepts relating to pervasive gaming, existing explorations of incentives and gaming approaches as well as our basic concept and project methodology.

 

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Today’s Augmented Reality “Thing” No.4 : AR to Prevent Driver Distraction

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Right now we are doing quite a lot of research on in-car user interfaces, in particular how to introduce new devices or information services into the car that minimise driver distraction. The demo below from InfoVision , although a little rough claims to do just that. Basically people are given augmented reality information in response to voice commands. I have two real questions about this. The first is using voice commands while driving is probably in itself quite demanding and no doubt at times may distract the driver. The interface looks quite basic with arrows and basic written information being provided.  On the face of it this looks ok, however it would be good to see some more user tests of this technology as it looks a little basic right now. One main concern I do have is whether people will actually start focusing more on reading the augmented reality information rather than watching the road. This could be especially true if the symbols become difficult to read. Also the additional information about music that is displayed may also be distracting and non-essential to the driving task. Anyway I look forward to seeing some proper usability studies of this system.

Anyway please check out the video below, it’s a little rough but illustrates a concept. There are other perhaps more advanced augmented reality driving systems around and I will post more about the others shortly. Anyway good luck to the developers as it looks promising.

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