Natural and intuitive interaction between users and complex systems is a crucial research topic in human-computer interaction. A major direction is the definition and implementation of systems with natural language understanding capabilities. The interaction in natural language is often performed by means of systems called chatbots. A chatbot is a conversational agent with a proper knowledge base able to interact with users. Chatbots appearance can be very sophisticated with 3D avatars and speech processing modules. However the interaction between the system and the user is only performed through textual areas for inputs and replies. An interaction able to add to natural language also graphical widgets could be more effective. On the other side, a graphical interaction involving also the natural language can increase the comfort of the user instead of using only graphical widgets. In many applications multi-modal communication must be preferred when the user and the system have a tight and complex interaction. Typical examples are cultural heritages applications (intelligent museum guides, picture browsing) or systems providing the user with integrated information taken from different and heterogenous sources as in the case of the iGoogle&#x2122; interface. We propose to mix the two modalities (verbal and graphical) to build systems with a reconfigurable interface, which is able to change with respect to the particular application context. The result of this proposal is the Graphical Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (GAIML) an extension of AIML allowing merging both interaction modalities. In this context a suitable chatbot system called Graphbot is presented to support this language. With this language is possible to define personalized interface patterns that are the most suitable ones in relation to the data types exchanged between the user and the system according to the context of the dialogue.

Roberto Pirrone

Giuseppe Russo

Vincenzo Cannella

Daniele Peri

GAIML: A New Language for Verbal and Graphical Interaction in Chatbots

Simulation is a common approach for designing ad hoc network applications, due to the slow deployment of these networks. The main building blocks of ad hoc network applications are the routing protocols, mobility, and traffic models. Several studies, which use synthetic models, show that mobility and traffic have a significant effect on protocol performance. Synthetic models do not realistically reflect the environment where the ad hoc networks will be deployed. In addition, mobility and traffic tools are designed independently of each other, however real trace data challenge that assumption. Indeed, recent protocol performance evaluation using real testbeds show that performance evaluations under real testbeds and simulations that use synthetic models differ significantly. In this paper we consider jointly both real mobility and traffic for protocol performance evaluation. The contributions of this work are as follows: (1) demonstrates that real mobility and traffic are interconnected; (2) announces the design and implementation of WIT &#x2013;Wireless Integrated Traffic&#x2013;, which includes the design of a real traffic generator; (3) shows that under real mobility and integrated traffic the performance metrics need to be re-thought, thus we propose availability as a new ad hoc network protocol performance metric; and, finally, (4) evaluates protocol performance under synthetic and real mobility models with integrated traffic. We believe that the results of our work constitute a step forward toward benchmarking of ad hoc network performance evaluations.

Arta Doci

Fatos Xhafa

WIT: A Wireless Integrated Traffic Model

This article is devoted to tangible interfaces for steering and control of interactive multimedia presentations. Various methods for digital encoding of physical objects are considered and their applicability in surface encoding for tangible interface components is discussed. Experiments with presentation controls, based on direct interaction with digitally encoded printed handouts are reported. An innovative approach for transferring presentation controls from printed handouts to surfaces of real physical objects is introduced. Consequently labels, digitally enhanced with CLUSPI codes are created and presentation control trials involving real products with digitally encoded surfaces are conducted. USB and wireless cameras are employed as CLUSPI readers for implementing surface based interactions and a portable communication device with an embedded camera is considered as a possible truly mobile solution.

Kamen Kanev

Tangible Interfaces for Interactive Multimedia Presentations

A wireless sensor-actuator network (WSAN) is composed of sensor modes and actuator modes which are interconnected in wireless networks. A sensor node collects information on the physical world and sends a sensed value in a wireless network. Another sensor node forwards the sensed value to deliver to an actuator node. A sensor node can deliver messages with sensed values to only nearby nodes due to weak radio. Messages are forwarded by sensor nodes to an actuator node by a type of flooding protocol. A sensor mode senses an event and sends a message with the sensed value. In addition, on receipt of a message with a sensed value from another sensor mode, a sensor node forwards the sensed value. Messages transmitted by sensor nodes might be lost due to noise and collisions. In this paper, we discuss a redundant data transmission (RT) protocol to reliably and efficiently deliver sensed values sensed by sensor nodes to an actuator node. Here, a sensor node sends a message with not only its sensed value but also sensed values received from other sensor nodes. The more number of sensed values are included in a message, the more frequently the message is lost. Each message carries so many number of sensed values that the message loss ratio is not increased. Even if a message with a sensed value v is lost in the wireless network, an actuator node can receive the sensed value v from a message sent by another sensor node. Thus, each sensed value is redundantly carried in multiple messages. The redundancy of a sensed value is in nature increased since the sensed value is broadcast. In order to reduce the redundancy of sensed value, we take a strategy that the farther sensor nodes from an actuator node forward the fewer number of sensed values. We evaluate the RT protocol in terms of loss ratio, redundancy, and delay time of a sensed value. We show that about 80&#x25; of sensed values can be delivered to an actuator node even if 95&#x25; of messages are lost due to noise and collision.

Ailixier Aikebaier

Tomoya Enokido

Makoto Takizawa

Design and Evaluation of Reliable Data Transmission Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

A conversational agent, capable to have a &#x22;sense of humor&#x22; is presented. The agent can both generate humorous sentences and recognize humoristic expressions introduced by the user during the dialogue. EHeBby is an entertainment oriented conversational agent implemented using the ALICE framework embedded into an Yahoo! Messenger client. It is characterized by two areas: a rational, rule-based area and an evocative area. The first one is based on well founded techniques of computational humor and a standard AIML KB. The second one is based on a conceptual space, automatically induced by a corpus of funny documents, where KB items and user sentences are mapped. This area emulates an associative/evocative behavior of the conversational agent, making her more attractive. EHeBby includes also an avatar that changes the face expression according to humoristic content of the dialogue.

Giovanni Pilato

Agnese Augello

Giorgio Vassallo

Salvatore Gaglio

EHeBby: An Evocative Humorist Chat-Bot

We propose a distributed system that enables global and ubiquitous health monitoring of patients. The biomedical data will be collected by wearable health diagnostic devices, which will include various types of sensors and will be transmitted towards the corresponding Health Monitoring Centers. The permanent medical data of patients will be kept in the corresponding Home Data Bases, while the measured biomedical data will be sent to the Visitor Health Monitor Center and Visitor Data Base that serves the area of present location of the patient. By combining the measured biomedical data and the permanent medical data, Health Medical Centers will be able to coordinate the needed actions and help the local medical teams to make quickly the best decisions that could be crucial for the patient health, and that can reduce the cost of health service.

Arjan Durresi

Mimoza Durresi

Arben Merkoci

Leonard Barolli

Networked Biomedical System for Ubiquitous Health Monitoring

About this journal

Mobile Information Systems publishes original research articles as well as review articles that report the theory and/or application of new ideas and concepts in the field of mobile information systems.

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Chief Editor&nbsp;Dr Alessandro Bazzi&nbsp;is based at the University of Bologna, Italy. His current research is focused on wireless technologies applied to automated and connected vehicles.

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Mobile Information Systems

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