RadioSpace: physical and virtual presence

Natalia Marmasse, John Holmes, Nitin Sawhney, Chris Schmandt

Speech Interface Group

We inhabit a physical world yet must participate within an electronic and distributed community. RadioSpace is an attempt to provide awareness of people and their presence in physical space and time. Throughout the day as people move in their physical space, others can sense their location and state in the virtual environment, using a combination of visual and auditory cues. IR-based position tracking allows location-awareness of nomadic users with wearable computers (see related project Nomadic Radio). A position-server maintains a history of user interaction and movement in space and time. Dynamic Web-based maps allow users to view the location of others and passively listen to cues indicating their activity. Users can let people know about their activity, state of interruption and level of privacy. Users can also set their own position if they are not using location-aware wearable devices. Microphones in the environment allow awareness of activity and asynchronous communication between the inhabitants of RadioSpace. Audio may be processed to enhance privacy such that it provides only an awareness of people and their level of activity in the remote environments, but not the actual content of their conversations (see GarblePhone - a related project). RadioSpace provides a medium to augment our awareness of others and enhance timely communication in an increasingly distributed workplace.