This page contains a list of project suggestions for student to work with in the PIT lab. All projects are somehow related to our Research and you will hence be working together with a range of other researchers and programmers. Most of our research is centered within the following research areas:

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
• Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) - also known as Pervasive Computing
• Pervasive Healthcare - including application for home care, monitoring, community building, medication management, communication and awareness, and pervasive computing support in hospitals.
• Interaction Design - including tangible computing, multi-touch interfaces, augmented reality, embedded interaction, etc.

Project Themes

Below is a list of ideas for projects within each Research Theme:

Pervasive Healthcare

Contact Person: Jakob Bardram

• Improving Patient Safety in the Operating Room - This project aims at improving patient safety in the OR by using context-aware technologies. The goal is to help clinicians to pro-actively spot mistakes in the OR, like mistaken patient identity, mistaken surgical procedures, and providing automatic status updates. More detailed information is available here.
• Personal Medical Unit [PMU] - This project aims at designing a personal device and supporting infrastructure which would allow patients to carry around their own medical data. This PMU can be used for easy access to critical medical data in emergency situations as well as for data synchronization between different systems used in the different clinics that the patient visits. An initial sketch of the PMU and its design can be found in this paper.
  • A more detailed Project Description is available.
• Multi-Modal Interaction in the Operating Room - This project aims at building new interaction techniques for hands-free interaction during surgery. The project would integrate with research on gaze-interaction as well as voice and sound.

Activity-Based Computing

Contact Person: Jakob Bardram

• User Interfaces for ABC Workflows - In the TrustCare project we are working with combining ABC and workflow technologies. This project would look specifically into how workflows should be visualized and used as part of the ABC Framework.
• Activity-Based File System - based on the activity-based computing model and exiting distributed file management systems like WebDAV, you should create a distributed file system which is able to maintain, store, distributed, and forward files to different computers based on how they are used in different activities. This project is related to distributed computing, pervasive computing, and operating systems.
• Activity-Based Ad-hoc Collaboration - the current version of the ABC framework has basic technological handles for supporting ad-hoc collaboration. The aim of this project is to extend this basic support into the 'user-realm' and make user interface technologies for supporting ad-hoc collaboration, including session initiation, maintenance, and closing. An important part of this project is to make user-oriented evaluations of the proposed design.
• Activity-Based Integration - This project aims at using the ABC infrastructure to integrate a number of different clinical and non-clinical applications. This includes creating a inter-application protocol and data transmission mecahnisms. The project will be tied to the ABC and TrustCare research projects running at ITU.
• Activty-based Mashups - This project aims at making ABC-based web-mashups. I.e. instead of having services and data represented as applications and file (like in the Windows XP version of the ABC infrastructure), services and data is presented as a mashups in a browser. This includes creating an AJAX (or similar) programming model for ABC programming and building CSS and ATOM to connect to the infrastructure.
• Activity Browser - This project aims at making an Activity Browser running on a large interactive multi-touch surface like a wall-based display or a tabletop display - as well as mobile displays. This browser constantly reveals relevant activities, resources, and context within the displays proximity. Based on events from the infrastructure, the browser constantly provides access to relevant resources, like activities, persons, patients, medical records, x-ray images, web cams, displays, etc. This project is related to research within user-interface technology for Ubiquitous Computing and Smart Spaces.
• Context-aware Computing for Activity Management - This project aims at extending the current support for context-awareness in the ABC framework. Focus is on real-world context modeling, activity-aware computing, context-event management, and reasoning. Real-world sensing technology like RFID, location-tracking, and activity monitoring will be applied.
• Activity-based computing support in an OR - This project aims at moving ABC into the Operating Room of the Future. Several design proposals exists and your job would be to create more, and synthesize these into one design, which is implemented and evaluated together with surgeons and nurses in an OR.

Usable Security and Privacy

Contact Person: Jakob Bardram

• Context-Aware User Authentication - The goal of this project is to implement the technology of Context-Aware User Authentication (CAUA) in version 5 of the ABC Framework. CAUA is described in this paper.
• Collective User Authentication - The goal of this project is to implement the concept of Collective or Shared User Authentication e.g. as part of the ABC project. Initial description of the ideas and concepts can be found in this paper.
• User Authentication for Multi-touch Surfaces - As more and more multitouch surfaces emerge (table-tops and wall-based interactive displays) we have difficulties in figuring out who is actually using the display at any given moment. This project aims at creating a new user authentication mechanism for multi-touch / multi-person interfaces.
• Privacy in Awareness Technology - Awareness technologies fundamentally require that you reveal information about yourself. This entail privacy concerns. For example, if you for the sake of awareness reveal to others where you are (location information) and what you're doing (activity/video information), this information can potentially be recorded, stored, and later used for other purposes. For example, to make some statistics about what people are doing over time, and where they spend their time. The main idea of this project is to design and implement technologies for a privacy protocol, which allow users to specify their privacy concerns in awareness technologies.

Multi-Touch Interaction as part of Multimodal surface computing

Taking the existing multitouch screen as point of departure we would like you to help us identify and explore the many exciting possibilities for new types of applications and interaction that we believe will emerge when combining the gesture based multitouch interaction already in place with other means of interaction such as for example: Pen , Mouse, Keyboard, Gaze, everyday physical artifacts, etc... To read more on this and other master thesis project proposals see this PDF document.

Contact Person: Tomas Sokoler or Jakob Bardram

SocialTV - turning Tv watching of the future into a resource for social interaction

Using the internet as backbone, IPTV not only enables the exchange of data between a TV content provider and a TV viewer but even allows for interaction and exchange of data between individual TV viewers. IPTV thereby readily relates to the notion of interconnected homes/living rooms, the virtual sharing of experiences within a community of TV viewers, and in general the notion of interaction across geographical distance. But what kind of openings for social interaction can IPTV enable? To read more on this and other master thesis project proposals see this PDF document.

Contact Person: Tomas Sokoler

NearFieldCommunication (NFC) technology - interacting across the digital and physical with your cell phone

NearFieldCommunication (NFC) is often talked about as the next generation Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology covering the short range (<5 cm) of communication. It is expected that NFC will be a standard component in cell phones in the very near future. In general, NFC opens up the whole area of human interaction with digital technology where spatial proximity is used as the driving mechanism – that is, interaction relevant to occur when two artifacts/devices are within 5 cm of each other. But what should this interaction look and feel like? Where it is relevant? And how is it implemented? Within this project theme you will get a chance to work hands-on with NFC technology and be part of the trailblazers exploring ,through actual design, implementation and evaluation , what the future may hold in terms of proximity based cell phone / PDA interaction across the digital and physical. To read more on this and other master thesis project proposals see this PDF document.

Contact Person: Tomas Sokoler

Getting serious with the Wii platform - using the Wii as part of physical rehabilitation

Taking a closer look, bowling using the handheld Wii controller or snowboarding with the Wii fit Balanceboard takes what has been on the research agenda for years – the inclusion of more bodily ways to interact with computers – from the lab to the living rooms of the general public.This provides us with a tremendous opportunity to pursue our overall exploration of new ways for humans to interact with digital technology - not in secluded lab settings but ‘out there in the wild‘ as part of everyday life. The overall goal of this theme is to explore how the Wii platform may play a role as part of physical rehabilitation in the near future. Projects within this theme will be carried out in close collaboration with members of staff and patients at the rehabilitation center in nearby Tårnby. To read more on this and other master thesis project proposals see this PDF document.

Contact Persons: Tomas Sokoler and Dan W. Hansen

Interaction design for the experience economy

Would you like to know more about GPS, Bluetooth, QRCodes and mobile cameras? and would you like to influence the developments of future tourist information systems? ITU is involved in a national research project (DANVIFO.dk) in which we are investigating the use of IT in the experience economy. To read more on this and other master thesis project proposals see this PDF document.

Contact Person: Dan W. Hansen

Context-Aware Computing

Contact Person: Jakob Bardram