Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Sarah Diefenbach, LMU Munich
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Butz, LMU Munich

The “Smart Home” concept promises an intelligent, helpful environment, in which technology makes life easier, simpler, or safer for its inhabitants. On a technical level, this is currently achieved by many networked devices interacting with each other, working on shared protocols and standards. From the perspective of user experience (UX), however, the configuration of and interaction with such a collection of devices has become so complex that it currently rather stands in the way of widespread adoption and use. Thus, instead of many singular, but interacting intelligent devices, the project “PerforM – Personalities for Machinery in Personal Pervasive Smart Spaces” proposes an overarching interaction concept for the environment as a whole, addressing the mental model of a central, omnipresent “room intelligence”. This room intelligence will control existing UI-less smart home devices, but will also be able to deal with “legacy”, i.e. non-smart machinery or generally any physical object by using a robotic manipulator (for example, a mobile robotic arm). Besides an exploration of an innovative way to address the current challenges of pervasive computing environments (PCEs), our research program also addresses fundamental questions and gaps in previous research about how different design cues are integrated into an overall perception of “system intelligence”, “entity”, and “personality”.