Article,
Special Issue on Multimodal Systems, Services and Interfaces for Ubiquitous Computing
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 14 (8): 681-683 (2009)
DOI: 10.1007/s00779-010-0297-5
Abstract
Activity recognition and implicit interaction are central themes in ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous environments usually encompass a variety of modalities, such as speech, gesture, and handwriting, collecting rich and complex information by integrating multiple devices and different kinds of sensors. In these cases, multimodal recognition achieves robust and reliable results by leveraging on different recognition mechanisms and making the most out of the characteristics of each individual channel. Multimodal interaction, in turn, enables natural and implicit interaction in ubiquitous computing contexts by making available various and flexible interfaces that adapts to the environment. In the end, multimodal approaches are keys to accomplish all these tasks, by overcoming single modality limitations and difficulties in recognition and interaction. Hence, multimodal systems, services and interfaces are crucial ingredients for ubiquitous computing, and have attracted much interest in both industry and academia over the last decade.
