Challenges of the Internet of Things

6 Ambient Atoms: a Device for Ambient Information Visualization

Recent decades have seen an explosion of available information. This explosion concerns public as well as private information. From an individual perspective, this phenomenon is largely materialized by the computer system that we constantly carry with us, namely the smartphone. The smartphone provides immediate access to a wealth of information and a multitude of data. All these various data are often delivered to the user by means of the same single output module, that is, the screen (and, episodically, sound or vibrations) of the smartphone. In addition, while the smartphone is an easy way to get access to various different data, it is not always the most practical solution for each category of information, nor in all circumstances. Ambient devices may offer a complementary output useful in certain situations for which the smartphone is not convenient enough to access the required information. Ambient displays deliver effortless, instant access to information at a glance. This paper introduces Ambient Atoms, a new ambient visualization device. Ambient Atoms is a simple and flexible connected object that looks like a frame on which information is symbolically visualized. An application for the visualization of data in the context of an apartment is proposed as a sample application.

6.1. Introduction

In recent years, the amount of both public and private information has tremendously increased. Weather forecasts ...