{"219141":{"#nid":"219141","#data":{"type":"news","title":"The Magic Window Into the Home","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe had people say afterwards that it was one of the best demos they had ever seen at one of these conferences.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERussell Clark is clearly pleased, and justifiably so: the Georgia Tech computer scientist is recounting a successful presentation at the March 2013\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.geni.net\/\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EGENI Conference\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;in Salt Lake City, Utah. The subject of the demo, the Magic Window telepresence app, has garnered much interest in the intervening weeks, interest Clark hopes can be translated into collaborations or sponsorships.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFor twenty minutes at the GENI conference, Clark and his collaborators gave a demonstration of what it might feel like to look in on your home from the other side of the country. Standing on the plenary stage in Salt Lake, they used the Magic Window to peer into the AWARE Home in Atlanta, and employed gesture-based commands to turn lights off and on and operate the entertainment system \u2013 all in real-time.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cIt was the first time we tried demonstrating it live with a projector,\u201d says Clark. \u201cSo we had some logistics issues figuring out how to make the demo understandable to a large audience, so they could appreciate what was going on.\u201d He adds that it was Georgia Tech researchers Brian Davidson (\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/rnoc.gatech.edu\/drupal\/AboutUs?destination=node%2F531\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EGT-\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/rnoc.gatech.edu\/drupal\/AboutUs?destination=node%2F531\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003ERNOC\u003C\/a\u003E) and Jeff Wilson (\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.imtc.gatech.edu\/\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EIMTC\u003C\/a\u003E) from the Magic Window team who worked diligently to solve all the complex technical challenges of the presentation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EObviously, the work on the Magic Window has required close integration with the AWARE Home\u0027s systems. Brian Jones, director of the AWARE Home research project, sees this collaboration as a precursor to future home-related systems. Such projects, he believes, help \u201cintegrate the holistic view of the home as an intelligent space,\u201d and will spur development of adaptive systems for different domestic functions.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFor Clark, this is the next stage of Magic Window, as a platform for controlling different systems \u2013 entertainment, security, utility - in the home. \u201cIt would be a home-automation focused interface you might use for your home entertainment, and home theater and control system \u2013 so we have to think of it as using the same technology and skinning it for different uses... it is the management hub for your home automation system.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnother important result from the Magic Window development has been a deeper understanding of the potential of the GENI technology underlying it. It would obviously be useful in other scenarios, as Clark points out:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201c[We use] GENI to address the scaling issues \u2013 how do we do these content augmentations on a large scale, like a conference call with an entire corporate sales team distributed all over the country, or an online course like a MOOC?\u201d GENI, says Clark, is the key for Magic Window, and potentially, for any other application involving a large number of participants distributed over a large space.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWhat\u0027s different about the Magic Window, for a video conferencing technology, is that we\u0027re turning over control of the experience to the viewer \u2013 the person watching has control over what they\u0027re seeing, what content they\u0027re seeing, and what perspective they\u0027re seeing it from.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27197","created_gmt":"2013-06-25 16:29:31","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:14:27","author":"Renata Le Dantec","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2013-06-25T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2013-06-25T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"69599","name":"IPaT"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["renata@ipat.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}