In September 2016, Dennis Kroll and Christoph Anderson presented their papers "Implicit Positioning Using Compass Sensor Data" and "Assessment of Social Roles for Interruption Managment: A New Concept in the Field of Interruptibility" at the "2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing" (UbiComp 2016).

This year's conference took place in Heidelberg, Germany. Numerous scientists, users in the field of ubiquitous computing and investors took part in order to exchange ideas, present results and make contacts.

The next UbiComp will take place in Maui, Hawaii, US. We expect to be there and are already looking forward to seeing many familiar faces.

Reference: D. Kroll, R. Kusber, and K. David, "Implicit Positioning Using Compass Sensor Data," in Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct, Heidelberg, Germany, 2016, pp. 732-741

Abstract: In this paper, we present Implicit Positioning - an approach to recognize the indoor area where a person is, such as a specific corridor or corner. Implicit Positioning adapts to its user by automatically finding, learning, and recognizing patterns in data from a smartphone's compass sensor. These patterns model characteristics of the areas the person walked through, such as the direction the person headed, and can be understood as Implicit Positions. Implicit Positioning neither relies on user feedback nor on additional infrastructure, digital maps or war-driving. All the person needs to do is carry a smartphone. To evaluate our approach, we collected data from smartphones carried by a test person in different positions. The test person covered a distance of 17.4 km in two different buildings. When taking a path for the second time, patterns were already being correctly recognized with an accuracy of up to 87.8%.

Reference: C. Anderson, C. Heissler, S. Ohly, and K. David, "Assessment of Social Roles for Interruption Managment: A New Concept in the Field of Interruptibility", in Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct, Heidelberg, Germany, 2016, pp. 1530-1535

Abstract: Determining and identifying opportune moments for interruptions is a challenging task in ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction. The current state-of-the-art approaches do this by identifying breakpoints either in user tasks, activities or by processing social relationships and contents of interruptions. However, from a psychological perspective, not all of these breakpoints represent opportune moments for interruptions. In this paper, we propose a new concept in the field of interruptibility. The concept is based on role theory and psychological interruption research. In particular, we argue that social roles which define sets of norms, expectations, rules and behaviors can provide useful information about the user's current context that can be used to enhance interruption management systems. Based on this concept, we propose a prototype system architecture that uses social roles to detect opportune moments for interruptions.