An Intelligent Hotel Room

Transcription

1 An Intelligent Hotel Room Asterios Leonidis 1, Maria Korozi 1, George Margetis 1, Dimitris Grammenos 1, Constantine Stephanidis 1,2 1 Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) - Institute of Computer Science N. Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, GR Heraklion, Crete, Greece 2 University of Crete, Department of Computer Science {leonidis, korozi, gmarget, gramenos, cs}@ics.forth.gr Abstract. This paper presents an innovative application of ambient technology in the domain of tourism and leisure that aims to improve the quality of services offered by the hospitality industry. The main objective is to formulate an ambient ecosystem that observes its surroundings using non-invasive technology and adapts its behavior, in real-time, to deliver intelligent and personalized services to the occupants of a guest room. Towards that direction, the proposed system aims to leverage the disadvantages of being away from home and offer a unique user experience. Keywords. smart hotel, ubiquitous environment, natural interaction, ambient intelligence 1 INTRODUCTION The rapid advancements in the domain of ICT and the emergence of mobile networks have broadened technology s reach to extend beyond the scope of working environments. The concept of The Disappearing Computer [24] is gaining wider attention, as major manufacturers continuously introduce innovative home appliances that blur the line between fantasy and reality. These are the same appliances that people have been using for decades, however, today they integrate smart features that aim to simplify and automate daily activities. Every appliance is no longer a simple device that performs certain tasks, but rather an interconnected, technologically-enhanced peer, that can interact, share information or control other appliances to satisfy users needs. The list of the currently available smart features is limited, yet indicative of those to come: smart ovens and refrigerators, sophisticated surveillance systems, etc. It is apparent that the era of technological convergence is approaching through a wealth of commercially available smart appliances and holds great potentials, including new ways to improve the quality of life of various user groups (e.g., the elderly, people with disabilities, etc.). Home automation is only the tip of the iceberg though; smart technologies can enhance virtually every domain of human activities. This paper presents an innovative application of ambient technology in the domain of tourism and leisure that aims to improve the quality of services offered by the hospitality industry. adfa, p. 1, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

2 When travelling, people must cope with unfamiliar environments, where they must learn how to get around and do simple things that are taken for granted at home (e.g., buy a bus ticket) [8, 9, 22]. The proposed system leverages the disadvantages of being away from home and offers a unique user experience by redefining the way people stay and interact with a guest room [10]. A technologically augmented guest room observes its surroundings and adapts its behavior, in real-time, to deliver intelligent and personalized services without compromising the privacy of its guests. In order to support privacy, non-invasive observation methods are applied to collect the contextual data that drive the decision making process. 2 RELATED WORK The tremendous evolution of the computer technology (e.g., microprocessors, mobile networks and devices, social media, etc.) has inevitably brought much attention from the research community to the domain of Ambient Intelligence. These technological advancements made available the necessary tools to materialize the concept of Disappearing Computing and improve the quality of people s life by introducing novel applications, ranging from simple technologically-augmented artifacts to pervasive and ubiquitous environments where the technology disappears in the surroundings and seamlessly supports daily activities. In the past few years numerous studies and novel applications have outlined the potentials of ambient intelligent across various domains, including education and edutainment [2, 15], cultural heritage [12], products promotion and marketing [11], and as expected home automation. In particular, in the domain of home automation the available systems share a common objective: monitor the environment (directly or indirectly) and assist users to perform their daily activities. Monitoring relies either solely on computer-vision technologies through wall- or ceiling- mounted cameras [4], or on a combination of cameras with additional sensors (e.g., microphone arrays, motion detectors, etc.) [6, 16] for improved efficiency. But monitoring is not sufficient; the purpose of smart environments is use the collected data to infer which actions should be taken [5] to facilitate user activities. To that objective, every system includes a proprietary context model for representing the environment, the actors and the activities, which is used by the appropriate inference engine to determine the actions to be executed. All approaches have in common that they build their models using ontologies to benefit from their expressive power and the available inferencing engines [7, 21]. However, the field of smart home research is still in its infancy and the relevant literature is sparse [1]. The majority of the aforementioned approaches are mainly applicable in closed environments where the users have enough time to configure and get used to these new interaction schemes. On the other hand, the hospitality industry, despite being an excellent application domain for Ambient Intelligence technologies, has not received the same level of attention. Numerous studies have shown that sooner or later it will have to increase the adoption rate of new technologies to satisfy the new generations of techsavvy tourists of the 21st century, who will have different requirements than their predecessors [14] and will demand innovative services [25].

3 As the hospitality industry becomes more competitive and industry professionals are strengthening their efforts to find competitive advantages in order to gain and retain guests [3], this work aims to bridge the identified technological gap by proposing a solid infrastructure that delivers time-using services [1] that not only facilitate daily activities [13], but also improve the quality of the services already offered by hotels to their guests [23] and the society in general [17]. 3 SYSTEM OVERVIEW The Intelligent Hotel Room (ihr) provides a ubiquitous attentive environment [1] that constantly monitors the activity and location of people and objects within it, and uses this information to control technology in anticipation of the guests needs. To this end, various technological devices and software agents are incorporated in the physical environment to form an ambient ecosystem, that observes its surroundings and adapts its behavior in real-time to deliver intelligent and personalized services to its guests. The main ihr components (Figure 1: The major components of the intelligent Hotel R are presented in the following sections. 3.1 INTELLIGENT HOTEL ROOM INFRASTRUCTURE The ihr Infrastructure includes the Room Automation Facility and the Multi- Sensorial Network. The Room Automation Facility is the core electrical and mechanical infrastructure that feeds the Room Manager (section 3.2) controls and monitors the available devices and facilities (i.e., lights, blinds, door, HVAC, etc.) The X10 1 standard was selected, as it constitutes a retrofitting solution that can easily support existing installations with minimal changes. The Multi Sensorial Network, on the other hand, is a collection of pervasive wireless analog and digital sensors that monitor various environmental aspects (e.g., temperature, luminance, etc.), track user location, log user actions and exchange data using the XBee 2 protocol. In the context of the hospitality domain, binary sensors were the only viable solution for monitoring, since guests privacy would be severely compromised if vision-based tracking methods were used. Moreover, to minimize network traffic, the Multi Sensorial Network constantly monitors the environment, but only notifies the Room Manager when an interesting event occurs (e.g., a person enters the room). 3.2 INTELLIGENT ROOM CONTROL Room Manager. It is the core component of the ihr that monitors the environment and user actions in order to extrapolate potential habits and adapt room s behavior accordingly. The collected data are stored in a custom-built ontology, whereas a 1 X10: Industry standard protocol for communication among electronic devices 2 XBee: A family of form factor compatible radio modules

4 backward-chaining inference engine is used to evaluate heuristic rules and determine which actions should be taken. The developed ontologies include data that represent both contextual information and interaction history. The contextual information store data regarding: (i) the current state of the room (e.g., number of guests, pending requests for room services, etc.), (ii) the state of each space (e.g., occupancy of the bathroom), (iii) description and state of every electronic appliance (e.g., lights, TV, etc.), and constitute the conditionals that determine the next actions. The interaction history stores the events that are exchanged between the software agents and the hardware components due to user activity (e.g., motion was detected, a device has been switched off, etc.) and constitute the triggers that initiate the decision making process. Figure 1: The major components of the intelligent Hotel Room Intelligent Devices. Various smart devices integrated in the environment ease interaction with the room facilities and the request of the available hotel services. A Universal Remote can control every electronic appliance in the ihr (e.g., lights, blinds, etc.) using a limited amount of input buttons to reduce complexity. Its realization requires the installation of infrared receivers near the supported devices, which can be embedded within decorative elements to leave the hotel s aesthetics unaffected. On the other hand, hotel service request or cancellation is simplified through natural and seamless interaction. In particular, an intelligent laundry hanger automatically requests the laundry service when a laundry bag is detected, while an intelligent touch panel mounted next to the room s entrance knob lets the guests easily request for the cleaning service before leaving their room by touching the respective area. Whenever a service is requested, the respective notification is propagated to (i) the Hotel Monitor application to facilitate the supervision and administration by the hotel stuff and (ii) the DoorMate device to inform the cleaning service accordingly. The DoorMate is technologically-enhanced room label with a twofold role: on the one hand it presents the current state of a room (e.g., occupied, Do-not-Disturb, etc.) and the pending room service requests, and on the other hand it controls room access. In terms of access control, three alternatives are supported: (i) it interoperates with the

5 existing card-based access systems, (ii) it incorporates a fingerprint reader that can recognize registered fingerprints of either clients or hotel employees, and (iii) it uses a camera to scan virtual keys (e.g., QR Codes). Finally, as an alternative to the aforementioned ambient controls, guests can use the Portable Room Controller application to manipulate and configure room facilities and services through intuitive touch-based graphical user interfaces. Room Butler. It is a 3D character, deployed on a TV, who welcomes the guest upon arrival and provides a mini tutorial about the features of the room. Besides the introductory presentation, the butler communicates with the guests to (i) assist them when necessary, (ii) inform them about any requests completed during their absence (e.g., the laundry was picked up), (iii) provide feedback for several user actions (e.g., when the client places the laundry on the hanger the Butler acknowledges that), (iv) alert them in case of an emergency, (v) advise them before leaving the room (e.g., remind the guest to carry an umbrella) and (vi) entertain them during special occasions. Hotel Explorer. It is is an in-house navigator that localizes the user through 2D Barcodes (QR Codes) and calculates the shortest path between two given locations. 4 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK The main objective of this work was to highlight the promising potentials of ambient technology in the hospitality industry, to improve the quality of the offered services and deliver unique travelling experiences. To this end, this paper has presented an intelligent hotel room which incorporates various technologically-augmented artifacts, devices and software agents and forms an ambient ecosystem that carefully observes its surroundings and adapts its behavior in real-time to deliver intelligent and personalized services to its guests. Currently, the intelligent hotel room is installed in-vitro, in a fully-featured simulation laboratory. In the next few months, a pilot in-vivo installation is planned in a hotel where a full-scale user-based evaluation will be conducted. The evaluation is planned to include dozens of guests of different ages and technological backgrounds, where typical daily activities will be observed to: (i) assess the efficacy of the reasoning methodology, and (ii) determine how guests use the system in real-life situations. The evaluations findings are foreseen to extend the currently implemented rule set and improve the usability of the various applications. Additionally, relevant topics are being investigated for future upgrades, such as speech and gesture interaction, and the provision of a personalized system that recommends local events and activities. References 1. Aldrich, F. K.:Smart homes: past, present and future. Inside the smart home, 1, (2003)

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