Scott Hudson: Another Leader in the UbiComp Space
Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) is this vision where a world will have computers everywhere and embedded into most everyday objects. It’s a concept where we are able to access computing from anywhere at any time. We already see UbiComp technology in our world today in our homes, buildings, vehicles, cities, and so forth. With UbiComp technology already having a presence in our everyday lives, this trend is bound to continue. To turn possibilities into realities, we have UbiComp pioneers who are leading us into the next era of computing everywhere. One UbiComp leader that has come to my mind is Scott Hudson.
In 1986, Scott Hudson earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Colorado. From there, Hudson became an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Arizona and associate professor in the College of Computer at Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently, Hudson is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of how people interact with technology interfaces involving components of psychology and how to improve the interactions. The goal of HCI is to figure out how to design technology that is simple, accessible, and useful.
Hudson has been at CMU for many years since July 2005 where he served as the first and founding director of the HCII Ph.D. program, ushering the first class in 2000. The HCII Ph.D. program is the first program in the United States devoted exclusively to HCI to train world-class interdisciplinary HCI researchers skillful in transforming the field. Hudson not only supervises and co-supervises several Ph.D. students, but he also teaches the HCI courses at the undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. levels. He has over 200 publications extensively on technology-oriented HCI topics.
Research
With over 200 publications extensively on HCI topics, Hudson focuses more on the technical aspects of HCI. His publications generally involved the invention and building of things, which leads to a better user experience or provides new functionalities for new groups of people.
Recently, much of Hudson’s work focuses on computational fabrication topics like the creation of new types of 3D printers, the use of weaving and knitting machines as fabrication devices, and the use of advanced fabrication for assistive devices. His older work has explored areas such as handling inputs with uncertainty, interactive devices, sensing, and physical interaction, managing human attention, and tools and toolkits for user interface implementation.
Lumitrack
While at CMU in 2013, Hudson and his colleagues created Lumitrack. Lumitrack is a motion capture technology that combines projectors and sensors to provide high-fidelity motion tracking. It is used in video game controllers, like Microsoft’s Kinect, and in motion capture for movies and TV production.
The projectors cover the tracked areas, and the structured models are called binary m-sequences, which look like bar codes. Without repeating any combination of seven adjacent line types in the projected image, the sequence of bars programs a series of vertical lines. For motion prediction, the sensors read the lines. The sensors are simple to create, use little electricity, and have a reaction time of 2.5 milliseconds, making them ideal for use in other decentralized systems. The sensing approach can be configured and scaled for use with a range of interactive systems including tangible games, drawing applications, and augmented reality.
Upcycling Everyday Home Objects
Let’s define the Internet of Things (IoT) before we get into Hudson’s IoT Upcycle Home Objects research. IoT describes the growing number of appliances that aren’t traditional computing devices that can be connected to the internet and monitored remotely. It is a system of interrelated devices connected to the internet to transfer and receive data from one to the other. A smart home is a good example of IoT. Home appliances like the AC, doorbell, smoke detectors, and security alarms can be interconnected to share data with the user over a mobile application. The user can now get detailed insights into the working of the devices around them. Today, IoT is being used extensively to lessen the burden on humans. IoT can increase efficiency, convenience, and monitoring.
In April 2020, Hudson and other CMU members published a study in the 2020 CHI Conference, and it’s available in the ACM DL, on identifying ways for families to more easily imagine a smart home where IoT can be embedded into their current house possessions through upcycling. Upcycling is when you take a product that would typically be thrown away and turn it into something useful. Hudson and colleagues executed a field study with 10 American families where they explored the three patterns on how families collaborate with each other around home responsibilities, explored their mental models of homes with existing IoT systems, and find upcycling opportunities for families to incorporate their belongings into a smart home.
Having to upgrade to a new smart home involves making importation decisions about which devices can enter the home. Families work to incorporate IoT into their daily lives, which is vital to the performance of these products. According to previous studies, the adoption process is disruptive to the family. Having to upgrade to a new smart home involves making importation decisions about which devices can enter the home. Families work to incorporate IoT into their daily lives, which is vital to the performance of these products. According to previous studies, the adoption process can be disruptive to the family. Some families, on the other hand, are more positioned to repurpose existing objects in their habits than newly acquired machines. Smart home adoption processes that rely on piecemeal incorporation and promote lightweight home modifications are more tailored to the household environment than processes that need new device upgrades.
From the research, Hudson and colleagues identified household niches where IoT could assist lightweight modification of existing objects and social relationships. Patterns from the 10 families portrayed how societal constraints are exemplified in the home life and predict potential IoT costs. These insights can aid families to create an upcycled approach to IoT that supports them in reconfiguring objects in a way that is considerable of what would be replaced, discarded, or rendered obsolete.
Recognition in the CHI Community
From 200+ publications, Scott Hudson is the 17th most prolific author in the HCI field. He was elected to The CHI Academy, which is a group of researchers honored by SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Hudson has regularly served on the program committees for SIGCHI conferences, which is the world’s largest association of professionals who work in the research and practice of HCI, and ACM Symposiums on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST). At CMU, Hudson, for nearly 30 years, has been a leading researcher in the HCII program. As a result, he was awarded the 2015 Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence. It recognizes an outstanding body of work that epitomizes Allen Newell’s research style as expressed in his words:
“Good science responds to real phenomena or real problems.”
“Good science is in the details.”
“Good science makes a difference.”
As Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) is here to stay and will continue to shape our everyday lives, Scott Hudson’s research with his colleagues and students will further enhance our perception of pervasive technology. Only time can tell when everything we see and use will be smart.
