Published by the IEEE CS n 1536-1268/17/$33.00 © 2017 IEEE PERVASIVE computing 7

ApplicationsEditors: Anind Dey n Carnegie Mellon University n anind@cs.cmu.edu

Beverly Harrison n Intel Labs Seattle n beverly.harrison@intel.com

Section Title HereEditor: Editor Name Here n Editor affiliation here n editor email here

Section Title HereNotes from the Communityat

Editors: Mary Baker n HP Labs n mary.baker@hp.com Justin Manweiler n IBM T. J. Watson Research Center n jmanweiler@us.ibm.com

Sensing, Privacy, and Things We Don’t DiscussMary Baker, HP LabsJustin Manweiler, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

W riting from the latest ACM Con-ference on Human Factors in

Computing Systems (CHI 2017), we can vouch for the fascinating creativ-ity and industriousness of the pervasive computing community, and we cover here a few of the conference presen-tations. We also discuss many of the privacy-related links contributed to our subreddit. Additionally, the column takes a decidedly earthy turn this quar-ter with links to projects about food, smell, the human side of autonomous vehicles, and a selection of items from the Internet of Things-We-Don’t-Talk-About—except that, because they’re on the Internet, they’re actually talked about a lot.

VERY SENSIBLENew sensors, actuators, and sensing applications abound. Three of four papers in the “Innovative Sensing” session of CHI 2017 covered different aspects and methods of touch sensing, and we include one of them here.1 We

include another paper from that ses-sion on olfactory interfaces.2 The other two papers of the session were also very interesting,3,4 and we recommend you look into them as well. Finally, we include work on a possible future medium for registering the lightest of pressure.

Touch GuitarAt CHI, Yang Zhang presented “Elec-trick: Low-Cost Touch Sensing Using Electric Field Tomography.”1 This work, with coauthors Gierad Laput and Chris Harrison, describes a way to bring touch sensing to objects that don’t currently support such sensing due to their large size or irregular shapes and surfaces. Zhang, Laput, and Harrison use inexpensive electrically conduc-tive materials, selected for appropriate resistivity, nontoxicity, and easy acces-sibility. They’re particularly interested in materials that are either solid, pli-able, or paintable and lend themselves to a variety of common construction

techniques. For example, solid plastics, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and polycarbonate, are available in conductive forms suitable for milling, forming, stamping, molding, extrud-ing, and 3D printing. Pliable conductive materials include Jell-O and Playdoh. Silicone mixed with bulk carbon fiber is also conductive. Perhaps the most interesting conductive materials for this work are paintable. The authors use a carbon conductive spray paint intended for electrostatic discharge and RF shielding purposes.

Using this spray paint, the authors can enable touch sensing via electric tomography on many existing objects (see Figure 1). They then instrument the object with electrodes (copper tape) around the edges of the interactive region and run a wire to their sensing board. The board puts an electric field into the conductive material and senses changes in the distribution of the field as a result of a user’s touch. This works for multitouch as well. The authors demon-strated a variety of objects, delightfully touch-enabled via their methods. Low-cost painted toys can now respond to touch in different places, a coated steer-ing wheel feels normal but responds to hand placement and swipe gestures, and an electric guitar now has available controls for volume, filters, and effects just by touching different places on its surface. For more details of this work,

JOIN OUR SUBREDDIT

This column offers a summary of interesting news and research in pervasive and mo-bile computing, with content drawn from submissions to a shared community on the social news site Reddit, at www.reddit.com/r/pervasivecomputing. We encourage you to join our subreddit and spread the news of this site to others, so that together we can build a sustainable online community for all aspects of pervasive and ubiquitous computing.

— Mary Baker and Justin Manweiler

8 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive

NOTES FROM THE COMMUNITY

NOTES FROM THE COMMUNITY

see http://yang-zhang.me/research/Electrick/Electrick.html.

The Essence of InterfacesCHI authors Judith Amores and Pattie Maes presented their work, “Essence: Olfactory Interfaces for Unconscious Influence of Mood and Cognitive Performance,” about an olfactory necklace that can be controlled by a smartphone using biometric and contextual data to vary the intensity

and frequency of released scent.2 We heartily agree with Amores and Maes that smell is an under-exploited sen-sory interface. Just a few of the pos-sible applications include improving the experience of immersion in virtual or mixed-reality scenarios; triggering memories or emotions associated with scents; and promoting alertness, calm, or feelings of wellbeing.

The pendant containing fragrance includes a cap with a piezoelectric

transducer and a small metal plate that vibrates to release the fragrance absorbed by an attached cotton stick fil-ter (see Figure 2). The piezoelectric top connects via the necklace’s conductive cord to a module with the microcon-troller, wireless network interface, and other electronics. This module lies along the back of the user’s neck. The authors experiment with releasing scents based on heart rate, electrodermal activity, and brain activity. They also investigate the robustness and convenience of the proto-type and users’ opinions about the inten-sity and frequency of the scent release. Scent seems to invoke very personal reactions, and the authors note that pref-erences for intensity and frequency were completely different for each person. For more information, see www.media.mit.edu/publications/essence-ol.

Silly SensingScientists from Trinity College Dub-lin and the University of Manchester have added Graphene (in the form of sheets only a nanometer thick) to Silly Putty (a lightly cross-linked silicone polymer) to create G-putty. Within the putty, the Graphene forms a network of electrical conductors, making it pos-sible to measure very small changes in electrical resistance caused by defor-mation. This results in a sensor for pressure, impact, strain, and so forth. The authors demonstrate the potential of G-putty as a very sensitive impact sensor by capturing a “small spider (mass. ∼20 mg)” and inducing it “to walk over a clingfilm-coated G-putty sensor.” Their paper includes a resis-tance plot showing the individual spi-der footsteps, along with a photo of the spider itself!5 (See www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/12/supercharged-silly-putty-can-detect-spider-footsteps for a short summary of the article and a related video.)

THE HUMAN SIDE OF SELF-DRIVING CARSIn addition to many articles on tech-nological advancements enabling self-driving cars and their new applications,

(a)

(c)

(b)

Figure 2. The Essence necklace: (a) the vial hanging on a conductive cord, (b) the electronics module at the back of the user’s neck, and (c) the vial connected to the electronics module. (Source: Judith Amores; used with permission.)

Figure 1. Creating a touch interface on the surface of an electric guitar: (a) the authors coat the guitar with conductive paint. (b) A demonstration of a swipe gesture on the surface of the guitar. (Source: Yang Zhang; used with permission.)

(a) (b)

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we also see musings on more human-centered questions regarding autono-mous vehicles.

Driven to Do What?Self-driving cars will free up humans to do other things while getting from place to place. But what will humans do during that free time? The Auto Insur-ance Center studied the topic by sur-veying 2,000 drivers from around the world (see www.autoinsurancecenter. com/what-would-you-do-in-a-self-driv-ing-car.htm). On a scale from 1 (least time spent) to 5 (most time spent), “read a book” scored highest with an aver-age of 2.9. “Catch up with friends and family” (2.8) and “get work done” (2.7) came in a close second and third, which seems sensible. On the other hand, some amount of time would apparently also be spent eating, sleeping, having sex, and doing drugs. In North Dakota, eating was the most valued activity; in Alaska, it was having sex. It’s unclear whether those who answered “pray” would engage in that activity merely because the car freed up time to do so, or because they felt it would increase their chances of surviving the trip.

In Japan, 33 percent of respondents would not ride in such a car, while only 3.1 percent of those in China felt the same degree of alarm. Asked what they wanted to see in cars of the future, most respondents wanted cars to stay the same as they are now, although drivers who log more miles are more likely to buy a self-driving car, with 61.9 per-cent of those who drive more than 100 miles a day willing to purchase one. We might want to take some of these numbers with a grain of salt; the article provides no methodological or statisti-cal information—but it’s nonetheless provocative.

The Downside of SafetyA recent article from Slate points out that 20 percent of organ donations in the US come from the more than 35,000 people killed yearly in traffic accidents on American roads.6 If self-driving cars dramatically reduce road deaths,

those waiting for transplant organs will see even less availability than there is now. We can only hope that other strategies will find success, such as growing (www.popsci.com/scientists-grow-transplantable-hearts-with-stem-cells)7 or fabricating (https://3dprint.com/119885/wake-forest-3d-printed-tissue)8 organs.

FOOD PROBLEMSPervasive technology has come to the rescue to address many problems with food, including its availability and safety.

Fighting Food InsecurityCHI Extended Abstracts authors Sahar Aseeri, Kyle Condiff, Maximil-ian Klein, and Baris Unver from the University of Minnesota created the “freedge” smart fridge network to help address food insecurity.9 Roughly

13 percent of US households suffered from food insecurity in 2015,10 and the problem is even worse in many other countries. Working with local hunger organizations and deploying a cultural probe in Minneapolis in the form of a blank coupon booklet that partici-pants filled out, the researchers gath-ered impetus for their design concepts. For example, they determined that any solution must be close to people’s homes and could neither require a high obligation from volunteers nor a set routine from those using the service.

They based their design on the “Little Free Library,” which has proven to be an intuitive way for people to donate books locally. They constructed a fridge with separate compartments with inde-pendent doors, and those donating a meal simply place it into an empty compartment. The “freedge” senses

when the door closes and sends a signal to a Raspberry Pi that uploads a photo of the meal to the associated web app. Users can browse freedge locations and contents via their smartphones or a tab-let mounted on a freedge (for users who don’t have phones). Users can reserve the meal via the app, so that only they can unlock the compartment, or they can directly take an unreserved meal from a compartment.

Don’t Eat That FishThe company C2Sense is developing chemiresistive sensors that can detect specific gases, currently those associ-ated with food safety. The sensor’s small chip detects trace amounts of ethylene and amine, released from fruit and meat, respectively, as they grow old. The chips are small enough, and they hope to make them cheap enough, to embed them in food packaging. As a consumer, an app on your smart-phone could use data from the sensor to tell you whether the food is fresh enough, but the chips will also be useful throughout the supply chain, helping distributors plan when they need to ship food items. For more information, see www.takepart.com/article/2015/11/06/c2sense.11

Safer Food PackagingOn the topic of food packaging, there’s more to safety than the food itself. The contents of a Tostitos bag might not be considered the healthiest food choice, but a limited-edition Tostitos Party Bag came outfitted in time for the Super Bowl with a sensor to detect alcohol on a person’s breath. If it detects any alcohol, the bag turns red with the message, “Don’t drink and drive,” and would display a discount for a rideshare home from the party. Given that many people at Super Bowl parties have at least a little alcohol, this bag’s utility might be more around aware-ness, discussion, and making it socially acceptable to take a safe ride home. Anything that might reduce drunk driving seems worth trying, even if increased safety places a greater strain

If self-driving cars dramatically reduce

road deaths, those waiting for transplant organs will see even less availability

than there is now.

10 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive

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on the availability of our aforemen-tioned transplant organs! See www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14383618/tostitos-super-bowl-bag-alcohol- sensor-drunk-driving-prevention for more information.12

THE INTERNET OF THINGS-WE-DON’T-TALK-ABOUTAs well as lofty goals, smart devices can also take on “unmentionable” tasks. We include here a standardization effort for a smart device that has long been a wonder for visitors to Japan, and a much more recent smart device that, for some readers, might raise questions about just how smart various objects should be.

A Different IoT Standardization EffortThe 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo have many in Japan working on how to make it easier to welcome an influx of tourists from around the globe. Since most of the tourists will not be able to read Japanese, icon design and stan-dardization for signs and instructions is part of the solution. The Japan Sani-tary Equipment Industry Association is a group of companies, including Toto, Panasonic, and Toshiba, that produce plumbing products, such as the smart toilets that many tourists have found confusing. To address this problem, the consortium has agreed to standardize the iconography on these toilets across their brands. The hope is that this will become an international standard as smart toilets become more prevalent in other countries as well. For more information, as well as a photo of the new iconography, see www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14306464/japanese-toilet-control-icons-meaning-standard.13

Smart TamponAs Christina Warren of Mashable writes (http://mashable.com/2016/05/17/my-flow-smart-tampon),14 menstrua-tion is a reality that 50 percent of the population experiences but not many discuss—until this much discussed project founded by “Team Taboo”

(Amanda Brief, Drake Myers, Katie Chen, “madCode,” and Tomas Vega) at UC Berkeley. my.Flow is a Blue-tooth-enabled sensor that connects to a special tampon and communicates to a smartphone app to tell users when it is time to change the tampon. This helps avoid embarrassing disasters but also reduces health risks from toxic shock syndrome. However, it requires tampons with long, insulated strings that connect to a sensor device that must be attached to your waistband. The research team asked women what improvements they most wanted for menstrual cycle care, and this proj-ect addresses those wants. The app includes a countdown timer for when to change the tampon, as well as a cycle-flow chart and a cycle calendar. For more information, see www. hackster.io/team-taboo/my-f low-b24c41 and www.trackmyflow.com.

THE PRIVACY WE DON’T HAVEGiven the personal nature of the data transmitted by devices such as those just described, the overwhelmingly frequent reports of IoT privacy breaches warrant more awareness. Many links contrib-uted to our subreddit cover these top-ics. We include a few of these, as well as information about a new invention that reduces the privacy concerns involved in throwing away electronic devices.

Privacy HorrorsSusan Scutti’s thoughtful article, “The Psychology of Privacy in the Era of the Internet of Things,” discusses “the unraveling of cherished ideas of pri-vacy at home as we enter the era of the Internet of Things” (www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/health/psychology-privacy-wikileaks-internet-of-things/index.html).15 Scutti covers several disturbing privacy failures, the many benign experiences we have had when giving up privacy, and also the results from the Helsinki Privacy Experiment that placed cameras in the homes of participants to explore their long-term behavior in the face of such surveil-lance. Participants said that the lack

of privacy disrupted their lives, and they’d be most unhappy if private foot-age were leaked to friends, authorities, or employers. They also changed their behaviors to hide from sensors. How-ever, after 12 months, 10 of 12 partici-pants said they’d become accustomed to a lack of privacy. The question remains, though, should we need to?

Some governments are tackling this issue on behalf of their citizens, focusing in particular on devices that target children. In Germany, for example, the “My Friend Cayla” doll has been removed from the market, and authorities recommend that pur-chasers destroy the toy. The doll uses embedded speakers and microphones to ask children questions about themselves and their parents, and it records their answers. Read more about this at www.cnet.com/news/parents-told-to-destroy-connected-dolls-over-hacking-fears.16

Children’s privacy also arises in Gen-nie Gebhart’s article for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on how school-issued laptops are tracking students, collecting information about them (far more than would seem necessary), and storing that information indefinitely.17 The information can include browsing history, search terms, contacts, and even behavioral information, and the data collection often occurs without paren-tal consent or knowledge. Furthermore, because these laptops are typically offered at a much reduced price—or even for free—many families have no choice but to use them and accept the corresponding loss of their children’s privacy. See www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-privacy for the full article.17

There is always a tension between personal privacy and data collected for law enforcement purposes. Ms. Smith writes for Network World about how police used a man’s pacemaker data to charge him with arson and insurance fraud. There were many inconsisten-cies in Ross Compton’s statements to the police, but one of the most interest-ing was that data from his pacemaker

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did not correspond with the physical activities Compton claimed he had per-formed during the fire and his supposed escape. Arson is a terrifying crime, but many people wonder whether per-sonal medical devices should be able to incriminate their owners. Read more about this at www.networkworld.com/article/3162740/security/cops-use- pacemaker-data-as-evidence-to-charge-homeowner-with-arson-insurance-fraud.html.18

Please see our subreddit for many other links to privacy articles (www.reddit.com/r/pervasivecomputing).

Material ProgressTo end on a lighter note, we also peri-odically see interesting new privacy solutions. Researchers at Stanford have invented a wearable electronic device that can dissolve in vinegar over the course of 30 days. Although one of the biggest advantages of this invention is the opportunity to reduce electronic waste, it also has privacy advantages. It has become a huge burden on con-sumers to remove their private informa-tion from every device they abandon or throw out, and often it’s difficult to ensure you really have removed all the information. Instead, this decomposing polymer makes it easy—you just soak the entire device until it melts away. To make this exceptionally thin and light gadget, the inventors use a molecule from tattoo ink, a base woven from plant fibers, and electronics embedded in that structure. For more information, see http://readwrite.com/2017/05/13/stanford-unveils-a-new-wearable-marvel-dl1/.19

REFERENCES

1. Y. Zhang, G. Laput, and C. Harrison, “Electrick: Low-Cost Touch Sensing Using Electric Field Tomography,” Proc. 2017 CHI Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017, pp. 1–14.

2. J. Amores and P. Maes, “Essence: Olfactory Interfaces for Unconscious Influence of Mood and Cognitive Performance,” Proc. 2017 CHI Conf.

Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017, pp. 28–34.

3. S. Sahdev et al., “GhostID: Enabling Non-Persistent User Differentiation in Frequency-Division Capacitive Multi-Touch Sensors,” Proc. 2017 CHI Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017, pp. 15–27.

4. A.C. Evans et al., “Group Touch: Dis-tinguishing Tabletop Users in Group Settings via Statistical Modeling of Touch Pairs,” Proc. 2017 CHI Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017, pp. 35–47.

5. C.S. Conor et al., “Sensitive Electro-mechanical Sensors Using Viscoelastic Graphene-Polymer Nanocomposites,” Science, vol. 354, no. 6317, 2016, pp. 1257–1260; doi: 10.1126/science.aag2879.

6. I. Adams and A. Hobson, “Self-Driving Cars Will Make Organ Shortages Even Worse,” Slate, 30 Dec. 2016; www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/12/self_driving_cars_will_exacerbate_organ_ shortages.html.

7. A. Ossola, “Scientists Grow Full-Sized, Beating Human Hearts From Stem Cells,” Popular Science, 16 Mar. 2016; www.popsci.com/scientists-grow- transplantable-hearts-with-stem- cells.

8. C. Scott, “Wake Forest Researchers Successfully Implant Living, Func-tional 3D Printed Human Tissue into Animals,” 3DPrint.com, 16 Feb. 2016; https://3dprint.com/119885/wake-forest-3d-printed-tissue.

9. S. Aseeri et al., “Freedge: Fighting Food Insecurity with Connected Infrastruc-ture,” Proc. 2017 CHI Conf. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Com-puting Systems (CHI EA), 2017, pp. 33–38.

10. A. Coleman-Jensen et al., Household Food Security in the US in 2015, US Dept. Agriculture, Economic Research Service report ERR-215, Sept. 2016; www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ pub-details/?pubid579760.

11. S. Cowan, “This Tiny Sensor Could Stop You from Eating Rotten Food,” TakePart, 6 Nov. 2015; www.takepart.com/article/2015/11/06/c2sense.

12. N. Garun, “Tostitos Made a Bag that Can Tell You’ve Been Drink-ing and Call You an Uber,” The Verge, 25 Jan. 2017; www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14383618/tostitos-super-bowl-bag-alcohol-sensor-drunk-driving-prevention.

13. S. Byford, “Japanese Toilet Industry Agrees to Standardize Complex Bidet Controls,” The Verge, 17 Jan. 2017; www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14306464/japanese-toilet-control-icons-meaning-standard.

14. C. Warren, “Smart Tampon Reminds You When It’s Time to Tug,” Mash-able, 17 May 2016; http://mashable.com/2016/05/17/my-flow-smart- tampon.

15. S. Scutti, “The Psychology of Privacy in the Era of the Internet of Things,” CNN, 22 Mar. 2017; www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/health/psychology-privacy-wikileaks-internet-of-things/index.html.

16. C. Collins, “That Smart Doll Could Be a Spy. Parents, Smash!” CNET, 17 Feb. 2017; www.cnet.com/news/parents-told-to-destroy-connected-dolls-over-hacking-fears.

17. G. Gebhart, “Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Pri-vacy,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 13 Apr. 2017; www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-privacy.

18. M. Smith, “Cops Use Pacemaker Data to Charge Homeowner with Arson, Insurance Fraud,” Network World, 30 Jan. 2017; www.networkworld.com/article/3162740/security/cops-use-pacemaker-data-as-evidence-to-charge-homeowner-with-arson-insurance-fraud.html.

19. A. Razani, “New Stanford Biodegrad-able Wearable Takes Your Data to its Grave,” ReadWrite, 13 May 2017; http://readwrite.com/2017/05/13/ stanford-unveils-a-new-wearable-marvel-dl1.

Mary Baker is a senior research scientist at HP

Labs. Contact her at mgbaker@hp.com.

Justin Manweiler is a researcher at the IBM

T.J. Watson Research Center. Contact him at

jmanweiler@us.ibm.com.

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