Context-Aware Platform with User Availability Estimation and Light-Based Announcements

As the number of computer-based systems and consumer gadgets is growing, users are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the requests for attention coming from this variety of devices. In addition, technology has quickened the pace of life and work to the extent that interaction between people has become more frequent. Dealing with both social and device-driven interruptions has become one of the important goals of context-aware systems of today. This paper proposes a context-aware platform that can help mitigate the negative effects of interruptions in human work and living. The platform uses a scalable set of sensors to estimate user availability in the home or office environment. This information is announced to possible interrupters (e.g., household members and software application) by using a web portal, lighting effects, or interfaces to a home automation system or any other interested entity in the local network. This paper presents several contributions to the field. Platform architecture is considered scalable enough to fit to a variety of today´s consumer devices and smart home systems. The experiments were conducted to show the effectiveness of the platform usage within a living room area, as opposed to the traditional office contexts where the availability tends to be easier to determine. The last contribution is related to the novel method and the evaluation of the use of lighting announcements of availability instead of the traditional inefficient busy flags.