Copyright © 2006 Toshiba Corporation. All rights reserved.

Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter

－ Semantic Information Retrieval in UbiComp－

Takahiro Kawamura, Ph. D.Research Scientist, Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corp.Associate Prof., University of Electro-Communicationse-mail: takahiro@eel.rdc.toshiba.co.jpHP: www.maekawa.is.uec.ac.jp/~kawamura/

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Real World

Internet

What’s UbiComp?

Home Network

Digital AV Sevice (UPnP)

White Goods Service(ECHONET)

music (ID3)movie (EPG)

barcode・IC tag (JAN/EAN, UPC ，PML, ucode,)

gadget (CC/PP)blogs

Search ServiceDelivery Service

TV RecodingService

ThermoSettingService

Q Wanna know much about the artist of this CD!

Q This has a good reputation?

Robot Service(RSi, RTMiddleware)

Web Service(WSDL，OWL-S)Map Service

Web Page/blog (RSS, FOAF, PICS, P3P)

A Search for blogs by barcodeinfo., then check the positive/ negative and hot topics.

A Based on the CDDB, find the artist news search service, thenmake the result to speak byrobot.

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Why Semantics in UbiComp!??

• In UbiComp, anyone should be able to easily get the necessary info. related to the current situation from the Internet at the right time and the right place.

• In the conventional Desktop computing, due to big screens, mouse, keyboards, and board bands, users can get a chunk of information at once, then check it again and again.

• However, mobile phones which is a typical ubiquitous (mobile, for now) device have small screens, limited buttons, and narrow band. Therefore, in order to easily get the info. in the Internet, mechanism for more automatic operation and to take the only necessary peace of info. is mandatory.

• So that, UbiComp is really asking the technique to discover the necessary info. and service using Semantics.

Toshiba’ approach・ Developing Japanese ontology with approx 100,000 concept.

・ Unique Ontology APIs

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What’s Ubiquitous Service Finder?

Just by holding up the mobile, user can find as icons objects around him/her, and services in the network, then easily check their metadata, and invoke the services by icon operations.

USF

Robot User Agent UPnP Services RFIDs Web Services

•“Find every metadata around you”: depending on context, AV content and RFID tagged products appear automatically on the USF as icons

•“Drag & Drop icons to compose and execute”: let the USF compose services for you, or do it yourself by drag & dropping icons on services

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Architecture of Ubiquitous Service Finder

Cell Phone or PDA

Web ServicesWeb Services UPnP devicesUPnP devices RFID Reader/Tag

RFID Reader/Tag

•Map•Information Retrieval•Others

•HDD Recorder•MP3 Player•Refrigerator•etc.

UserAgent

•EPC global PML•Ubiquitous ID

•Movie+EPG•Music+ID3•Photo+Exif•Sensors info.

UserAgent

UPnP2WSGateway / Annotator

(Control Point)

UPnP2WSGateway / Annotator

(Control Point)

Metadata DBOntology DB

Metadata DBOntology DB

UbiquitousServiceFinder

UbiquitousServiceFinder

Web App.Web App.

WA2WSGateway / Annotator

WA2WSGateway / Annotator

Misc.Data

Misc.DataRobotsRobots

•H•Gua

ome Robotrd Robot

Home Server

AnnotatorAnnotator

•Yahoo!•Amazon•etc.

Tomcat / AXISCyberLink for Java RFCODE Spider StorageToshiba ApriAlpha

Medadata Matching Engine

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From Ubiquitous Service Finder to Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter

Ubiquitous Service Finder– is a user-oriented computing model to dynamically handle the network

services and appliances under the finger,in the world where IC tags and semantic web services get popular.

Future

Present

Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter– is an application to get word-of-mouth information by searching the related

blogs from target’s object barcodes, in the world where barcodes instead of IC tags and blogs as the first step of semantic web have already prevailed.

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Summarize users’word of mouth

(Positive / Negative determination)

What’s Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter?

Just by snapping barcode of a product with camera on the mobile,user can get the related blogs to its barcode info., as well as the word-of-mouth of the product in the Internet.

After collecting the blogs，analyze the contents of the blogs with ontologySnap the barcode,

Suggest the relevant popular

products (Hot Topic abstraction)

Show a few blogs which are worth

reading (Sort and Filtering)

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Usecase of Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter

When thinking whether buy a product or not at a store…

Snap its barcode with your mobile... …

You can check other’s real voice at the right place

Check the total publicity on the Internet, too

Further, dig up other popular products in the same domain

POSITIVE = 32

NEGATIVE = 12

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Example of the result

Summary of reputation

Suggestion of related popular products

Sorted useful articles without Spams

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Architecture of Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter

mobile application

UserAgentUserAgent

UbiquitousMetadataScouter

UbiquitousMetadataScouter

Internet

Blogs and Metadata (RSS)

ProductMetadataProduct

Metadata

ProductOntologyProduct

Ontology

JapaneseOntologyJapaneseOntology

Toshiba server

Http connectionin cellular network

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Technical Aspect of Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter

• Positive / Negative (p/n) determination– Base on the conventional syntactic analysis, apply the degree of

expressible stress with Japanese Ontology– Put the weight on each blog using the relationship among blogs

calculated by their metadata RSS, then bias the eval

• Hot Topic Abstraction– Get the relevant products with Product Ontology, suggest other popular

products in Blog World with points

• Sort and Filtering– Cut the useless blogs like spams using the blog relationship, them put

the order on blogs like ones with frequent trackbacks

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Japanese Ontology Product Ontology

食品

ダイエット食品

生鮮食品

マイクロダイエット

クッキーダイエット 寒天

乾物

小麦粉砂糖

調味料

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b1

b2

C1C2C3 b3

b4

b5

C4

b6

○○○

b7

C6C7C8C9C10

×○

b8

Date: 2001/mm/dd

Date: 2005/mm/dd

b9

Time: 13:15:11

Time: 13:15:12

a1 a2b10

b11b12

b13

a3b20

b21b22

b23

a4b30

b31b32

b33

Blogs relationship based on metadata RSS

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Related Research / Service

• Amazon Scan Search– By scanning book barcode with camera of the mobile, a corresponding

page in Amazon.com will appear if applicable

• Google Blog Search– Blog search with Google engine, which provides keyword search

function like Google’s web page search

• Microsoft AURA (Advanced User Resource Annotation System)– PDA with barcode reader scans the product barcode, and get the related

information in UPC database，or Google, eBay

• Shopping support site for mobile “kai-commu”– Shopping site to search the product with its word-of-mouth. Users can

put and find their comment on the products.

• Location information search coupled with blog (zenrin)– Get the name and address of restaurants from blogs by natural sentence

analysis with tasty or not, expensive or not, etc.

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Future Plan

• Development of Ubiquitous Metadata Scouter ver. 0 (done)– Press release on asahi.com, and so forth (done)– Public experiment will start on February at the real stores

• Improvement of response time with multiple access• Improvement of accuracy

• Future Plan– Dissemination of Metadata

• SCM by RFID will get popular triggered by admission of UHF-band tag• Annotation to digital data will make rapid progress by iPod or others

– Dissemination of Services• Web Services is growing quietly but constantly• Coordination among home appliances is the next big movement

– We hope to provide a value-added ubiquitous solution featured by semantics