Please see below for an announcement of an upcoming lecture at City Tech that should be of interest to members of this class.

– Prof. Gold

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On Friday, October 9, 1 pm, in the Atrium Amphitheater, the Emerging Media Technologies initiative in the Entertainment Technology Department is presenting Joern Loviscach who will speak on Human-Computer Interfaces for Energy Efficiency.

Here is poster containing info about the event (PDF) and below is a longer abstract of the upcoming talk.

Friday, October 9, 1 PM, Atrium Amphitheater

Emerging Media Technologies, Entertainment Technology
Presents

Human-Computer Interfaces for Energy Efficiency

Joern Loviscach, Professor
Fachhochschule Bielefeld (University of Applied Sciences)
Germany

There are manifold ways to apply user interfaces to conserve energy, in particular in the home. This talk aims at giving an overview, at stimulating discussions, and at forming the basis for joint projects.

First, users can receive information and advice on their energy use, such as which means of transportation is optimal for a specific trip or which device in the household consumes how much power. Such information
may for instance be presented on Web pages using sophisticated methods of scientific visualization. It may, however, also be presented using ambient media such as the color of a room’s lighting or the choice of
music, both of which are means close to artistic expression. Based on data gained from sensors such as a mobile phone’s accelerometer chip or data gathered from the Internet such as the local weather conditions,
the computer can provide more informed advice. This will mostly rely on inference methods based on machine-learning.

Second, solutions from persuasive computing can be applied to provide rewards, ranging from blossoms that grow on one’s mobile phone’s screen the more one uses the bus to high score ratings comparing one’s energy
use to the neighbors’. Many Web 2.0 techniques lend themselves well to such applications.

Third, the upcoming smart grid to distributed electric power allows even more sophisticated man-machine interaction models: The user may choose to start the tumble drier when the real-time price of electrical power
has dropped below a given threshold. The user may also accept the electricity provider to remotely switch off the air conditioning for some minutes to cap a momentary peak of power consumption in the grid.
With a growing percentage of wind and solar power, which tend to fluctuate much, these techniques can in principle also applied to create peaks in consumption to cope with peaks in production.

Such applications of a smart power grid require user interfaces that act more sophisticated than the classic on/off power switch: Is it ok if the washing machine starts in five hours at the latest? Would the user opt
to pay more if it is finished in three hours? Does the user offer the batteries of his or her plug-in electric vehicle as a power buffer to the grid? Does the car have to be charged by 8 a.m. to drive 100 miles
or would 10 a.m. and 50 miles suffice? And how would the smart grid know? This may require a highly evolved user interface that hides a wealth of computational intelligence under a seemingly simple hood.

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Joern Loviscach is a professor of technical mathematics and computer engineering at Fachhochschule Bielefeld (University of Applied Sciences). His research interests comprise sustainable
development, human-computer interface techniques, signal and image processing, computer graphics, audio and music computing, embedded and ubiquitous computing, and electronics. From 2000 to early 2009, Joern
had a professorship for computer graphics, animation, and simulation at Hochschule Bremen. Before that, he was deputy editor-in-chief at c’t, a renowned popular German computer magazine. Joern holds a doctoral degree in physics.