MOBILE LOCALITY-AWARE MULTIMEDIA ON

MOBILE COMPUTING DEVICES

A Bluetooth Wireless Network Infrastructure for a Multimedia Guidebook

Matthew D’Souza, Adam Postula, Neil Bergmann

School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering

The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Montserrat Ros

School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science

The University of New England, Armidale, Australia

Keywords: Multimedia Guide Book, Bluetooth Wireless Network, On Demand Context-Aware Multimedia

Abstract: This paper describes the implementation of a Bluetooth Village Guide Book (VGB) scenario for use in the

Kelvin Grove Urban Village located in Brisbane, Australia. An Information Point Station Network (IPSN)

was developed, along with software for two types of mobile computing devices. The implementation

consists of several Information Point Stations (IPSs) placed at locations of significance, with access to

information items on a centralized server. Once a user is registered on the network, he/she is given the

opportunity to experience context- (and eventually user-) aware information on demand and in various

multimedia formats. These information items are selected by the user, either by way of a menu system

appearing on their mobile computing device or a more intuitive pointer-tag system. Information items are

then ‘beamed’ to the user’s mobile computing device for the user to view. Bluetooth was selected as the

medium of choice due to its prevalence on most modern mobile computing devices such as Personal Digital

Assistants and mobile (cell) phones. This fact, coupled with the nature of Bluetooth communications

lacking the requirement for line-of-sight meant users could retrieve location-aware information at the

“locality” level. The implementation was found to be successful and was tested with multiple users

accessing information items from a given IPS as well as multiple IPSs attached to the centralized server.

Still, there is further work to be done on the VBG software, the user-registration system and on creating an

embedded solution for the individual Information Point Stations.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the development of sophisticated

mobile computing technology has lead to the

widespread usage of mobile computing devices

(MCD) such as mobile phones and personal digital

assistants. This has lead to new ways in which

people can access and share information. The

sophistication of MCDs has also lead to the

development of mobile multimedia services and

communication features. Applications such as web

browsing and game playing are now common

features on mobile phones. The Connected

Communities Project associated with the Australian

Centre for Interactive Design aims to build an

information communications technology

infrastructure that allows residents in a community

to share general information about their environment

using MCDs.

This paper presents an application by the

Connected Communities Project to develop a

Multimedia Guidebook information system for use

in the Kelvin Grove Urban Village (Kelvin Grove

Urban Village Webpage), located in Brisbane

Australia. The Multimedia Guidebook information

system allows the user to access specific information

related to their immediate surroundings. Multimedia

Guidebooks are commonly used in museums and

other tourist facilities. The information accessed can

be images, audio or text. The guidebook also has

148

D’Souza M., Postula A., Bergmann N. and Ros M. (2005).

MOBILE LOCALITY-AWARE MULTIMEDIA ON MOBILE COMPUTING DEVICES - A Bluetooth Wireless Network Infrastr ucture for a Multimedia

Guidebook.

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on e-Business and Telecommunication Networks, pages 150-153

DOI: 10.5220/0001415201500153

 SciTePress

authoring features which allow the user to leave text

comments related to their location. These comments

can be viewed by other users at that location.

The multimedia guidebook system

implementation consists of information point

stations (IPS) placed at specific locations of interest.

A point of interest can be a monument, a building or

any article of significance. Each information point

station contains media information relevant to its

location. The user can use their personal digital

assistant (PDA) or mobile phone to access media

information stored in an information point station.

The transfer of media information between the IPS

and the user’s MCD is facilitated using the

Bluetooth wireless communication protocol.

Bluetooth was chosen as the transfer medium due to

its availability on most MCDs. The type of media

material transferred includes text, images and audio

formats.

Another interactive method of selecting

information from the guidebook was also developed.

It consists of a pointer and tag system that allows the

user to select to view information without using their

mobile computing device. The user selects the

information to be accessed by aiming a pointer at a

tag.

This paper is organized into 6 sections. Section 2

presents a review of related work. Section 3

describes a typical user scenario. Section 4 discusses

the implementation of the multimedia guidebook

network infrastructure. Future areas of investigation

are discussed in section 5 and conclusions are drawn

in section 6.

2 RELATED WORK

Multimedia Guidebooks can be found in museums

and other tourist attractions. Usually guidebooks

support only audio information but there are projects

to develop more sophisticated guidebooks. An

Example is the Exploratorium (Hsi 2002) was

developed for an older PDA platform. No

guidebooks have yet been developed for the latest

smart mobile phones. Existing guidebooks tend to

use older short-range wireless protocols such

infrared communications. Infrared has been

surpassed by Bluetooth (Bluetooth SIG) in many

applications because it does not require line of sight,

supports ad-hoc networking and has more robust

data communications.

The Exploratorium guidebook provides the user

with information about exhibits in a museum. The

Exploratorium guidebook deploys Radio Frequency

ID (RFID) beacons, 802.11b wireless LAN and HP

Jornada PDAs. When a user with a PDA comes

within range of an exhibit that has a RFID beacon,

the beacon’s ID is sent to the PDA via infrared.

Information about the exhibit is requested by the

PDA and the result is returned via the 802.11b LAN.

Pointers more commonly known as remote

controls are used in everyday life to control devices

such as television sets. Pointers can be classified in

terms on the communication medium used. Most

commonly used pointers use infrared. There are

projects to develop pointers that use laser light. One

such project described in (Ringwald 2002)

developed a laser pointer linked to a PDA so that it

can control devices remotely. So far pointers have

not been used with guidebooks or other applications

that require the user to select information.

3 USER SCENARIO

The scenario of a Multimedia Guidebook gives the

user the opportunity to experience context-aware

information on demand in various multimedia

formats. Typical interaction between a user’s

mobile computing device and the Information Point

Station Network (IPSN) involves 3 major processes:

a registration process; a connection and requesting

process; and an online-authoring process.

Before being given access to the IPSN, a user is

required to register and download the Village Guide

Book (VGB) software onto their mobile computing

device (MCD). The user is assigned a unique User

Identifier (UID) which is used to authenticate the

user when access to the IPSN is attempted. It is

envisaged that this registering process could also

involve the setting of personal viewing preferences

to further adapt the user’s experience of the

information available from Information Point

Stations (IPS).

As the user roams around the Kelvin Grove

Urban Village site, he/she may choose to access the

IPSN when approaching a point of interest near an

IPS, at which point, the user will run the VGB

software on their MCD. Once the software has

established a connection to the IPS, the user is able

to browse a menu of information items related to

that point of interest. An example of this menu

system is shown in Figure 1a). When the user selects

a menu item, the corresponding information is

downloaded wirelessly from the IPS and seamlessly

executed by the MCD. Information items can be

audio, text or image files. Once the user has finished

using the IPS, the VGB software will disconnect

from the IPSN.

MOBILE LOCALITY-AWARE MULTIMEDIA ON MOBILE COMPUTING DEVICES-A Bluetooth Wireless Network

Infrastructure for a Multimedia Guidebook

149

The other method that a user may employ to

access information from the IPSN is by way of a

pointer (Figure 1b) and tag (Figure 1c) system also

developed for the purposes of this scenario. This

pointer-and-tag system allows the user to point to

the specific information they require, without the

need of connecting to a particular IPS and searching

through a menu for the information they require.

The pointer is attached to the MCD, and the user

intuitively points this to the tag associated with the

information they would like to view. The user’s

experience of an information item once it is

downloaded via Bluetooth is the same regardless of

how the user selected it.

The final process in the user’s interaction with

the IPSN, is the process of online-authoring. This is

the process whereby a registered user can request

and view a piece of information and comment on it

for the benefit of the rest of the community for the

purpose of establishing a dynamic repository of

personal annotations and recommendations.

Currently, the VGB software offers the possibility

for the user to upload a textual comment for any

viewable item. This notion of online authoring

could be extended to accept photos or other

multimedia information from MCDs.

The goal of offering context-aware information

is achieved by ensuring that information retrievable

from a given IPS pertains to local sights, important

nearby artefacts, or tagged items located physically

near the IPS.

4 IPSN INFRASTRUCTURE

The Multimedia Guidebook system implementation

consists of information point stations (IPS) placed at

specific locations of interest. Each IPS forms part of

an Information Point Station Network (IPSN). The

IPSN is shown in Figure 2. The IPSN consists of a

central server, information point stations, mobile

computing devices and pointer-tag system.

The Bluetooth serial port and Object Exchange

File transfer (OBEX-FTP) profiles are used to

connect the MCD and the IPS. The serial port profile

(SPP) functions as a control channel. A specialized

control protocol was used to request information

from the IPS. The OBEX-FTP profile is used to

transfer files from the IPS to the MCD. An Ethernet

connection is used to connect the IPS to the Server.

The tag system is connected via conventional RS232

to the IPS.

The server controls the IPSN. It communicates

to each information point station (IPS) via Ethernet.

The server monitors each IPS and controls its user

database. Each user database contains the user

Identifiers (UID) and preferences of all registered

users. The server consists of a Linux computer with

an Ethernet hub.

Each IPS contains a wireless Bluetooth

transceiver and may also connect to tag devices. The

Bluetooth transceiver is used to communicate to the

mobile computing devices. The IPS will authenticate

the user and supply the requested information items

via Bluetooth. The current implementation of the

IPS is a Linux computer with a wireless Bluetooth

USB Adapter. The open source Linux Bluez

Bluetooth stack (Bluetooth Z Webpage) is used to

facilitate the Bluetooth connectivity to the mobile

computing device.

The mobile computing device can be a PDA or a

mobile phone. The MCD software allows the user to

browse for information items and initiates the

connection to the IPSN. The user’s experience of

media information such as images, text or audio is

achieved by using the corresponding viewers or

audio players on the MCD. For example, if an image

Figure 1: a) Menu Browser on the IPAQ – b) Pointer

prototype – c) Tag prototype

Figure 2: IP Station Network. (M = Mobile Device,

P = Pointer, T = Tag, IPS = IP Station)

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was to be viewed, it would be opened using the

onboard software image viewer. All viewers were

either integral to the MCD, or freely downloadable.

The MCD software was implemented on a HP

IPAQ 5550 PDA running Pocket PC 2003 and a

SonyEricsson P910i SmartPhone running Java 2

Microedition (J2ME) (MicroSystems). The IPAQ

MCD software was also integrated with the pointer-

tag system by connecting the pointer to the MCD

through an RS232 serial port in order to set the UID

used by the pointer to request tagged items.

The pointer was implemented as an embedded

solution using a microcontroller and a custom laser

transmitter. The pointer was designed to a have a

low physical profile in order to make it less

obtrusive to the user. The tag was also implemented

in a similar manner to the pointer except that it

employed a laser detector to determine when the

user had selected the tag. The pointer transmits the

user’s Identifier (UID) to the tag. Once the UID has

been received, the tag transmits a request for

information instruction using a specialized control

protocol, to the IPS via RS232.

5 FUTURE WORK

Although functional prototypes were created of all

components of the IPSN system, some areas were

highlighted for further work. Registration (both on-

line and on-location) needs to be implemented,

taking note of security and privacy issues. Further

capabilities for public commenting, like adding

photos and other multimedia as comments, are yet to

be implemented.

Other areas where further work can be

concentrated are with the user preferences and thus

user-aware information. For the hardware, the

information point stations (IPS) are yet to be

converted to an embedded processor platform. An

embedded IPS platform could be housed in a special

casing that makes it less susceptible to

environmental conditions.

6 CONCLUSION

A Multimedia Guidebook information system was

created to allow users to access specific information

related to their immediate surroundings using their

mobile computing devices. The guidebook was

designed to provide information about the Kelvin

Grove Urban Village in Brisbane Australia. This

village guidebook (VGB) allowed the user to view

images, listen to audio and read textual information

at a specific location. The VGB also allowed the

user comment on a specific piece of information.

Commentary could be viewed by other users that are

in specific location. Another interactive method of

selecting information from the guidebook was

developed. It consists of a pointer-tag system that

allows the user to select to view information aiming

a pointer at a tag. The requested information is then

viewed on their mobile computing device.

The infrastructure created consisted of

information point stations (IPS) placed at locations

of significance. A network of IPS units was created.

Each IPS communicated to the user’s mobile

computing device using Bluetooth communications.

The types of mobile computing devices that could be

used are PDA and mobile phone platforms. The

future work of this project includes developing user

registration, creating embedded information point

platform and improving the VGB software.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is supported by the ACID CRC

Connected Communities Project and is also a part of

the EU Project RUNES.

REFERENCES

Bluetooth Z - Official Linux Bluetooth Protocol Stack

http://www.bluez.org

Kelvin Grove Urban Village

http://www.kgurbanvillage.com.au/

Bluetooth SIG - Bluetooth Specification Documents

https://www.bluetooth.org/spec

Hsi, S. (2002). The Electronic Guidebook: A study of user

experiences using mobile web content in a museum

setting. IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and

Mobile Technologies in Education.

MicroSystems, S. Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition

http://java.sun.com/j2me/

Ringwald, M. (2002). Spontaneous Interaction with

Everyday Devices Using a PDA. Workshop on

Supporting Spontaneous Interaction in Ubiquitous

Computing Settings at Ubicomp 2002, Gothenburg, ,

Sweden.

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Infrastructure for a Multimedia Guidebook

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