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In the interaction between humans and computational systems, many advances have been made in terms of hardware (e.g., smart devices with embedded sensors and multi-touch surfaces) and software (e.g., algorithms for the detection and tracking of touches, gestures and full body movements). Now that we have the computational power and devices to manage interactions between the physical and the digital world, the question is—what should we do? For the Human-Computer Interaction research community answering to this question means to materialize Mark Weiser’s vision of Ubiquitous Computing. In the desktop computing paradigm, the desktop metaphor is implemented by a graphical user interface operated via mouse and keyboard. Users are accustomed to employing artificial control devices whose operation has to be learned and they interact in an environment that inhibits their faculties. For example the mouse is a device that allows movements in a two dimensional space, thus limiting the twenty three degrees of freedom of the human’s hand. The Ubiquitous Computing is an evolution in the history of computation: it aims at making the interface disappear and integrating the information processing into everyday objects with computational capabilities. In this way humans would no more be forced to adapt to machines but, instead, the technology will harmonize with the surrounding environment. Conversely from the desktop case, ubiquitous systems make use of heterogeneous Input/Output devices (e.g., motion sensors, cameras and touch surfaces among others) and interaction techniques such as touchless, multi-touch, and tangible. By reducing the physical constraints in interaction, ubiquitous technologies can enable interfaces that endow more expressive power (e.g., free-hand gestures) and, therefore, such technologies are expected to provide users with better tools to think, create and communicate. It appears clear that approaches based on classical user interfaces from the desktop computing world do not fit with ubiquitous needs, for they were thought for a single user who is interacting with a single computing systems, seated at his workstation and looking at a vertical screen. To overcome the inadequacy of the existing paradigm, new models started to be developed that enable users to employ their skills effortlessly and lower the cognitive burden of interaction with computational machines. Ubiquitous interfaces are pervasive and thus invisible to its users, or they become invisible with successive interactions in which the users feel they are instantly and continuously successful. All the benefits advocated by ubiquitous interaction, like the invisible interface and a more natural interaction, come at a price: the design and development of interactive systems raise new conceptual and practical challenges. Ubiquitous systems communicate with the real world by means of sensors, emitters and actuators. Sensors convert real world inputs into digital data, while emitters and actuators are mostly used to provide digital or physical feedback (e.g., a speaker emitting sounds). Employing such variety of hardware devices in a real application can be difficult because their use requires knowledge of underneath physics and many hours of programming work. Furthermore, data integration can be cumbersome, for any device vendor uses different programming interfaces and communication protocols. All these factors make the rapid prototyping of ubiquitous systems a challenging task. Prototyping is a pivoting activity to foster innovation and creativity through the exploration of a design space. Nevertheless, while there are many prototyping tools and guidelines for traditional user interfaces, very few solutions have been developed for a holistic prototyping of ubiquitous systems. The tremendous amount of different input devices, interaction techniques and physical environments envisioned by researchers produces a severe challenge from the point of view of general and comprehensive development tools. All of this makes it difficult to work in a design and development space where practitioners need to be familiar with different related subjects, involving software and hardware. Moreover, the technological context is further complicated by the fact that many of the ubiquitous technologies have recently grown from an embryonic stage and are still in a process of maturation; thus they lack of stability, reliability and homogeneity. For these reasons, it is compelling to develop tools support to the programming of ubiquitous interaction. In this thesis work this particular topic is addressed. The goal is to develop a general conceptual and software framework that makes use of hardware abstraction to lighten the prototyping process in the design of ubiquitous systems. The thesis is that, by abstracting from low-level details, it is possible to provide unified, coherent and consistent access to interacting devices independently of their implementation or communication protocols. In this dissertation the existing literature is revised and is pointed out that there is a need in the art of frameworks that provide such a comprehensive and integrate support. Moreover, the objectives and the methodology to fulfill them, together with the major contributions of this work are described. Finally, the design of the proposed framework, its development in the form of a set of software libraries, its evaluation with real users and a use case are presented. Through the evaluation and the use case it has been demonstrated that by encompassing heterogeneous devices into a unique design it is possible to reduce user efforts to develop interaction in ubiquitous environments. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------, En la interacción entre personas y sistemas de computación se han realizado muchos adelantos por lo que concierne el hardware (p.ej., dispositivos inteligentes con sensores integrados y superficies táctiles) y el software (p.ej., algoritmos para el reconocimiento y rastreo de puntos de contactos, gestos de manos y movimientos corporales). Ahora que se dispone del poder computacional y de los dispositivos para proporcionar una interacción entre el mundo fisico y el mundo digital, la pregunta es—que se debería hacer? Contestar a esta pregunta, para la comunidad de investigación en la Interacción Persona-Ordenador, significa hacer realidad la visión de Mark Weiser sobre la Computación Ubicua. En el paradigma de computación de escritorio, la metáfora del escritorio se implementa a través de la interfaz gráfica de usuario con la que se interactúa a través de teclado y ratón. En este paradigma, los usuarios se adaptan a utilizar dispositivos artificiales, cuyas operaciones deben ser aprendidas, y a interactuar en un entorno que inhibe sus capacidades. Por ejemplo, el ratón es un dispositivo que permite movimientos en dos dimensiones, por tanto limita los veintitrés grados de libertad de una mano. La Computación Ubicua se considera como una evolución en la historia de la computación: su objetivo es hacer que la interfaz desaparezca e integrar el procesamiento de la información en los objetos cotidianos, provistos de capacidad de computo. De esta forma, el usuario no se vería forzado a adaptarse a la maquinas sino que la tecnología se integrarían directamente con el entorno. A diferencia de los sistemas de sobremesa, los sistemas ubicuos utilizan dispositivos de entrada/salida heterogéneos (p.ej., sensores de movimiento, cameras y superficies táctiles entre otros) y técnicas de interacción como la interacción sin tocar, multitáctil o tangible. Reduciendo las limitaciones físicas en la interacción, las tecnologías ubicuas permiten la creación de interfaces con un mayor poder de expresión (p.ej., gestos con las manos) y, por lo tanto, se espera que proporcionen a los usuarios mejores herramientas para pensar, crear y comunicar. Parece claro que las soluciones basadas en las interfaces clásicas no satisfacen las necesidades de la interacción ubicua, porque están pensadas por un único usuario que interactúa con un único sistema de computación, sentado a su mesa de trabajo y mirando una pantalla vertical. Para superar las deficiencias del paradigma de escritorio, se empezaron a desarrollar nuevos modelos de interacción que permitiesen a los usuarios emplear sin esfuerzo sus capacidades innatas y adquiridas y reducir la carga cognitiva de las interfaces clásicas. Las interfaces ubicuas son pervasivas y, por lo tanto, invisibles a sus usuarios, o devienen invisibles a través de interacciones sucesivas en las que los usuarios siempre se sienten que están teniendo éxito. Todos los beneficios propugnados por la interacción ubicua, como la interfaz invisible o una interacción mas natural, tienen un coste: el diseño y el desarrollo de sistemas de interacción ubicua introducen nuevos retos conceptuales y prácticos. Los sistemas ubicuos comunican con el mundo real a través de sensores y emisores. Los sensores convierten las entradas del mundo real en datos digitales, mientras que los emisores se utilizan principalmente para proporcionar una retroalimentación digital o física (p.ej., unos altavoces que emiten un sonido). Emplear una gran variedad de dispositivos hardware en una aplicación real puede ser difícil, porque su uso requiere conocimiento de física y muchas horas de programación. Además, la integración de los datos puede ser complicada, porque cada proveedor de dispositivos utiliza diferentes interfaces de programación y protocolos de comunicación. Todos estos factores hacen que el prototipado rápido de sistemas ubicuos sea una tarea que constituye un difícil reto en la actualidad. El prototipado es una actividad central para promover la innovación y la creatividad a través de la exploración de un espacio de diseño. Sin embargo, a pesar de que existan muchas herramientas y líneas guías para el prototipado de las interfaces de escritorio, a día de hoy han sido desarrolladas muy pocas soluciones para un prototipado holístico de la interacción ubicua. La enorme cantidad de dispositivos de entrada, técnicas de interacción y entornos físicos concebidos por los investigadores supone un gran desafío desde el punto de vista de un entorno general e integral. Todo esto hace que sea difícil trabajar en un espacio de diseño y desarrollo en el que los profesionales necesitan tener conocimiento de diferentes materias relacionadas con temas de software y hardware. Además, el contexto tecnológico se complica por el hecho que muchas de estas tecnologías ubicuas acaban de salir de un estadio embrionario y están todavía en un proceso de desarrollo; por lo tanto faltan de estabilidad, fiabilidad y homogeneidad. Por estos motivos es fundamental desarrollar herramientas que soporten el proceso de prototipado de la interacción ubicua. Este trabajo de tesis doctoral se dedica a este problema. El objetivo es desarrollar una arquitectura conceptual y software que utilice un nivel de abstracción del hardware para hacer mas fácil el proceso de prototipado de sistemas de interacción ubicua. La tesis es que, abstrayendo de los detalles de bajo nivel, es posible proporcionar un acceso unificado, consistente y coherente a los dispositivos de interacción independientemente de su implementación y de los protocolos de comunicación. En esta tesis doctoral se revisa la literatura existente y se pone de manifiesto la necesidad de herramientas y marcos que proporcionen dicho soporte global e integrado. Además, se describen los objetivos propuestos, la metodología para alcanzarlos y las contribuciones principales de este trabajo. Finalmente, se presentan el diseño del marco conceptual, así como su desarrollo en forma de un conjunto de librerías software, su evaluación con usuarios reales y un caso de uso. A través de la evaluación y del caso de uso se ha demostrado que considerando dispositivos heterogéneos en un único diseño es posible reducir los esfuerzos de los usuarios para desarrollar la interacción en entornos ubicuos.

Proceedings of: IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence 2010 (WCCI 2010): IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2010). Barcelona, Spain, 18-23 July 2010., Soft computing methods, and Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) in particular, lack a general convergence criterion which prevents these algorithms from detecting the generation where further evolution will provide little improvements (or none at all) over the current solution, making them waste computational resources. This paper presents the Least Squares Stopping Criterion (LSSC), an easily configurable and implementable, robust and efficient stopping criterion, based on simple statistical parameters and residue analysis, which tries to introduce as few setup parameters as possible, being them always related to the MOEAs research field rather than the techniques applied by the criterion., This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC- 1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02, Publicado

Amar en tiempos revueltos, serie producida por Diagonal TV y que emite Televisión Española desde hace cuatro años, es una de las series más vistas de la cadena estatal española, llegando a unos shares del 29,9 por ciento. Ente otras distinciones, obtuvo la Medalla de Plata a la mejor serie dramática en el Festival Internacional de Programas de Televisión y Promociones de Nueva York en 2007 y fue finalista en el TVFest de Monte Carlo en 2008. Próximamente, Amar en tiempos revueltos podrá verse en su versión original en Estados Unidos y América Latina gracias al acuerdo alcanzado entre Diagonal TV y Telemundo (propiedad de NBC Universal). En apariencia, el éxito de esta serie radica en causas perceptibles, manifiestas, como el trabajo artístico de los actores y su dirección, la escenografía, el vestuario, o unos guiones bien tramados y con buenos diálogos. Sin embargo, para que todos estos elementos puedan unirse para crear un producto de éxito, es necesaria una gestión que va más allá de lo empresarial y que está basada en la comunicación interna., Amar en tiempos revueltos, produced by Diagonal TV and shown by the Spanish Public Service Broadcasting Corporation, is one of Televisión Española's most popular series with a 20.8 per cent share. Its success can be put down to the skill a nd expertise of both actors and directors and the care given to both sets and wardrobe, together with the well constructed plots and the quality of the dialogue. However, a successful product of this kind requires a management style which goes beyond straightforward business considerations and is also based on excellent in-house communication., Publicado

El vertiginoso avance tecnológico experimentado en los últimos años ha contribuido al desarrollo de la domótica o “Tecnología aplicada al hogar”, con la finalidad de mejorar la comodidad, la seguridad y, en definitiva, el bienestar dentro de los hogares. Este proyecto tiene como objetivo el estudio de soluciones y tecnologías domóticas para su aplicación en entornos de enfermos de Alzheimer y cuidadores. Así mismo se diseñará una web para que los cuidadores puedan buscar soluciones e información. Este proyecto sirve de guía tanto para los familiares como para cuidadores no profesionales sobre las tecnologías actuales y las que están en desarrollo, para hacer llegar y hacer más accesible la tecnología domótica a los hogares de las familias que conviven con la enfermedad de Alzheimer para que los familiares sepan que la innovación, aquella que aumenta la calidad de nuestra vida cotidiana, está al servicio tanto para los cuidadores como para los pacientes., The rapid technological advancement in recent years has contributed to the development of home automation or "technology applied to home", in order to improve the comfort, safety and ultimately, wall-being within households. This project aims at studying home automation solutions and technologies for application in environments Alzheimer patients and caregivers. It also will design a website for caregivers to seek solutions and information. This project serves as a guide for both families and for carers on current technologies and those under development, to bring and make technology more accessible home automation to homes of families living with Alzheimer's disease to family members know that innovation, one that enhances the quality of our daily lives, it serves for both caregivers and patients., Ingeniería Técnica en Sistemas de Comunicación

Este proyecto nace de la propuesta de realización de un despliegue de una red LTE en un entorno rural. Se basa en la planificación de una red LTE en un entorno rural. El estudio de los parámetros que relacionan la potencia transmitida por elementos de la red y los efectos del ruido y la distancia, determinan el despliegue de la red. Se aplicarán estrategias de cancelación de interferencias, reutilización de frecuencias y se emplearán distintas modulaciones. La herramienta clave para poder desarrollar este proyecto es el software Radio Mobile, que permite realizar simulaciones de la red diseñada para comprobar si es el diseño es adecuado. El modelo de pérdidas que esta herramienta implementa, considera varios factores como causantes de que la señal se atenúe., This project is a proposal made as an extension of planning conducted in a no urban environment. It is based on the LTE network planning in an no urban environment. The study of parameters that relate the power transmitted by the network elements and the effects of noise and distance determines the network deployment. Apply interference cancellation strategies, frequency reuse and employ different modulations. The key tool for this project is to develop software Radio Mobile, which allows network simulations designed to check if the design is adequate. The loss model that implements this tool considers various factors to cause the signal is attenuated., Ingeniería Técnica en Sistemas de Comunicación

En el pasado otoño, poco antes de cumplir su quincuagésimo aniversario, Televisión Española estrenó una nueva identidad visual corporativa. Este cambio estético coincidió con uno de los episodios más polémicos en la historia del Ente Público: la ejecución de un drástico expediente de regulación de empleo que, según la dirección del Ente, saneará las cuentas de la Institución y evitará posibles intentos de privatización en el futuro. La metamorfosis de TVE no será sólo financiera. A partir de 2007 adoptará una forma de Corporación, más independiente del Gobierno de turno. En la práctica, una institución modifica su identidad visual cuando se producen cambios profundos en su filosofía. Este artículo trata de demostrar hasta qué punto TVE sigue esta tendencia de cambios estéticos y qué papel juegan conceptos como servicio público en la identidad visual corporativa., Latest autumn, just before its fiftieth anniversary, the Spanish Television -TVE- released a new visual corporate identity. The change coincided with one of the most controversial episodes in the history of the Public Entity: the execution of a drastic dismissal that, according to the direction of the Entity, will provide financial strength at the same time that avoids any potential attempts of privatization in the near future. But TVE’s metamor- phosis will not be only a financier. Since 2007 it will adopt a legal form of Corporation, which means being more independent of coming Governments. Usually, an institution modifies its visual identity when a deep change happens on its philosophy. This article aims at showing that TVE is following this strategy along with showing the role of concepts such as public service as far as visual corporate identity is concern., Publicado

Purpose: Taking into account the importance of e-commerce and the current applications of AI techniques in this area, this research aims to adequate the design of a multi-agent system for the provisioning of e-services in u-commerce environments. This proposal is centred on the methods of evaluation in a u-e-commerce environment. Design/methodology/approach: The multi-agent systems (MAS) approach is based on an MAS model developed for AmI that has been redesigned to support u-commerce. The use of a recommendation system, previously developed by the research group, is suggested for this MAS. The methodological proposal centres on the evaluation of this type of system. Findings: The evaluation of this type of system is the principal problem of current research. Therefore, this is the main contribution of the paper. Research limitations/implications: The different evaluation methods that are proposed, whether qualitative or quantitative, offer the possibility of measuring the added value that the context can give to the use of e-services in different domains of application. Qualitative evaluation should consider the customer as a central piece in the system. In addition, quantitative methods should objectively evaluate the contribution of context to the application. Practical implications: At present, there is no single method for evaluating the benefits of different u-commerce systems, so a new method needs to be found based on these techniques. Originality/value: The research proposes an MAS designed for u-commerce domains, analyzes the capacity of trust management techniques in this environment, and proposes several evaluation methods to show the benefits of context information in the use of e-services. Several real developments are described to show the different applications of MAS in u-commerce and how evaluation is carried out., This work has been partially supported by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM CONTEXT and DPS2008-07029-C02-02., Publicado

Proceedings of: 4th International Workshop on Sensor Networks and Ambient Intelligence, 19-23 March 2012, Lugano ( Switzerland), Recent advances in technologies for capturing video data have opened a vast amount of new application areas. Among them, the incorporation of Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras on Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments. Although theperformance of tracking algorithms have quickly improved, symbolic models used to represent the resulting knowledge have not yet been adapted for smart environments. This paper presents an extension of a previous system in the area of videobased AmI to incorporate ToF information to enhance sceneinterpretation. The framework is founded on an ontologybased model of the scene, which is extended to incorporate ToF data. The advantages and new features of the model are demonstrated in a Social Signal Processing (SSP) application., This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2011-28620-C02-01, CICYT TEC2011-28626-C02-02, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029- C02-02., Publicado

Proceedings of: 23rd International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Other Applications of Applied intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2010, Cordoba, Spain, June 1-4, 2010, Our proposal is to apply a Game Theoretic approach to the games played in Agent Reputation and Trust Final Competitions. Using such testbed, three international competitions were successfully carried out jointly with the last AAMAS international Conferences. The corresponding way to define the winner of such competitions was to run a game with all the participants (16). Our point is that such game does not represent a complete way to determine the best trust/reputation strategy, since it is not proved that such strategy is evolutionarily stable. Specifically we prove that when the strategy of the winner of the two first international competitions (2006 and 2007) becomes dominant, it is defeated by other participant trust strategies. Then we found out (through a repeated game definition) the right equilibrium of trust strategies that is evolutionarily stable. This kind of repeated game has to be taken into account in the evaluation of trust strategies, and this conclusion would improve the way trust strategies have to be compared., This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/ TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM MADRINET S-0505/TIC/0255 and DPS2008-07029-C02-02., Publicado

Proceedings of: 7th International Conference, HAIS 2012, Salamanca, Spain, March 28-30th, 2012., The web has become the largest repository of multimedia information and its convergence with telecommunications is now bringing the benefits of web technology and hybrid artificial intelligence systems to hand-held devices. However, maximizing accessibility is not always the main objective in the design of web applications, specially if it is concerned with facilitating access for disabled people. This way, natural spoken conversation and multimodal conversational agents have been proposed as a solution to facilitate a more natural interaction with these kind of devices. In this paper, we describe a proposal to provide spoken access to Internet information that is valid not only to generate basic applications (e.g., web search engines), but also to develop dialog-based speech interfaces that facilitate a user-adapted access that enhances web services. We describe our proposal and detail several applications developed to provide evidences about the benefits of introducing speech to make the enormous web content accessible to all mobile phone users., Research funded by projects CICYT TIN2011-28620- C02-01, CICYT TEC2011-28626-C02-02,CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485), and DPS2008-07029-C02-02., Publicado