Input Multimodal Interactions for IoT Environments: smartphones instead of intermediate equipment

In smart/connected environments, multimodality aims at making services intuitive and user life easier. However, despite the advantages and benefits of multimodal interactions in connected environments, their democratization remains an unaccomplished process. They are generally only found in environments with a large number of equipment and technologies (cameras, Kinect, smart-watches, etc.). Intermediate equipment (between the user and connected devices) that represent an additional cost and a long learning process for end users.In this article, we define our approach which seeks to prove that the smartphone can properly replace the different intermediate equipment used to ensure multimodal interactions with connected objects. The smartphone contains already important embedded sensors, exists in most people’s homes and represents a confidential and comfortable device compared with other equipment. Therefore, we are using smartphones instead of different equipment in the literature studies that use intermediate equipment to ensure multimodality in connected environments. We are starting by extending the solution proposed by Smart Pockets that consists to access/send digital content from/toward the body’s pockets, by replacing the intermediate device used (armband) by the smartphone. Then, we will follow the same process with other studies (other modalities/connected objects) and we will evaluate the users’ feedback. We believe that this will prove the feasibility and allow the multimodality democratization in connected environments.