Figure 1: Browser Toolbar
The services of Cybcérone were originally intended for visitors to the University campus. These services can be accessed by means of kiosks equipped with touchscreens (without keyboard or mouse) and equipped with a WWW browser specially designed for people who are not used to using a computer. These kiosks are connected to the University's TCP/IP network.
The choice of the WWW and Java makes Cybcérone accessible to all the members of the University community: students, teachers, and administrative and technical staff. Its services can, in theory, be accessed by all the 3500 or so computers of the University network as well as any other computer in the world with access to Internet.
In the context of this project, a sub-system has also been developed to handle (by sorting, searches, etc.) a database of information on events taking place at the University. Access to this news bank is one of the services that Cybcérone offers.
This project has been developed for a French-speaking public. Consequently all the information in the screen shots reproduced here is in French.
The name Cybcérone is derived from the French noun "cicerone" (1753; itself derived from Cicero; an allusion to the proverbial loquacity of Italian guides), which means "a guide appointed to tell tourists about the sights of a town, museum or monument" [from the Petit Robert dictionary of the French language].
In April 1995, the Rectors of the University of Lausanne decided to equip the campus with interactive kiosks providing a computerized information system for visitors.
To remain in the forefront of kiosk technology, they put the project in the hands of a teaching and research unit (the Computer Science Institute of the Faculty of Sciences) which at once proposed a WWW-based architecture.
The initial requirements included creating a series of services intended primarily for visitors to the campus, so that they could:
Many authoring tools are available for creating interactive kiosks. In general these tools offer a user-friendly environment, accessible to the non-programmer, and make good use of the resources of the host machine. With them it is possible to combine texts, images, video and sound in a truly multimedia environment.
There are many specialized companies that can produce kiosk systems with these tools. So for us there was never any question of developing a kiosk system of this kind, that did not correspond to our objectives, since these tools:
The WWW is the only solution that enabled us to create an information system for electronic publishing and the provision of information services that can be accessed and used by everyone. It would be absurd to create a kiosk system based on anything but the structure provided by the WWW.
We believe that a kiosk should be a window onto a distributed and generalized information system. Our concept is therefore very close to the "Internet Toasters" and "Internet Terminals" which are being talked of so much these days.
All kinds of difficulties are encountered in dialogues with a kiosk with only a touchscreen as the user interface:
Compared with classic multimedia tools, there is a considerable handicap to be overcome: the main aims of these tools is to obtain highly-sophisticated, even flashy, presentations. It is difficult to explain to a majority of users why, with the Web, everything is so much more ugly than on conventional kiosks, why everything is so static; why there is no video or sound.
Displaying "WWW" in large letters on the Kiosk enclosure, and proclaiming that it's "client-server" architecture, does nothing to excuse any of these drawbacks!
Java is an object-oriented programming language from Sun Microsystems which aims to run programs on any computer. Among other things, it makes it possible to add some life to WWW pages by running Java programs (called Applets) inside a Web browser. In this way, it overcomes many of the limitations of the Web that we have just listed.
Development of this project began in July 1995, using an alpha version of Java. At this point in time, Java and its associated WWW browser, HotJava [2], were available on Sun SPARC/Solaris and Intel/Windows platforms only.
One of the major challenges of this project was to offer the user a WWW browser that could be:
The source code of the HotJava browser (alpha version) being available, we were able to modify it to obtain a browser with these very functions.
Figure 1: Browser Toolbar
Perl [3] is an interpreted language that runs on practically every platform; with Perl, it is easy to manipulate text-based data. For this project, we used Perl to create a management system for a database of events taking place on the University campus.
This system is used by several of the University's administrative services that compile this database and in this way supply Cybcérone with information. It is designed to be run entirely with any WWW browser using HTML 2.0.
Figure 2: Events database
Members of the University community can submit their notice of a forthcoming event (such as a lecture that is open to the public, or a talk by a visitor that will be of interest to other departments) to the press department of the University by means of a WWW form. The press department can then publish the announcement, edit it, or discard it. It has the means to place the announcement on the Web and on the kiosks quite simply by shifting it into the "live" or "on-line" zones.
Figure 3:The kiosk home page
The kiosk home page is a good example of what can be achieved under Java. In the upper half of the screen, we find the buttons giving access to all the services described below; in the lower part, real-time information is displayed:
All the information on persons working at the University is stored in a separate database not accessible to the public. The Java programs (called Applets) do not access this database directly; instead they read a own sub-file of information which is refreshed each night from the main database.
Figure 4:The directory of staff
On the left of the screen is a list of some 3,000 persons; on the right, a simplified alphabetical keyboard enables the user to enter the name of the person they are looking for. When found, information on that person can be obtained by touching the name; their office is situated by a flashing light on the map.
The "calendar of events" Applet is supplied with data by the system described above. The Applet loads into memory everything that has been published. As soon as the press department adds, modifies, or removes an announcement, the system is automatically updated.
Figure 5: The events calendar
On the left of the screen is the list of events. With the buttons on the right, the user can select the period (today, this week, next week, all) and the field (by Faculty or organization) which (s)he would like to know about. When the user touches on the title of the event, all the information about it is displayed and a flashing light on the map shows where it is taking place.
The first prototype kiosk that we have installed is in the largest building of the campus. A Java program serves to situate rooms in the building. The search routine is the same as that for finding a person.
Figure 6: Finding a room
On the left of the screen, a list of rooms is displayed; on the right, a keyboard enables the user to enter the number of the room. When it has been found, the user can press on that number to display information about it; at the same time, a flashing light shows where it is on a plan of the building.
The organization of the University can be expressed in the form of a tree diagram. A routine enables the user to navigate within this diagram and find a faculty, institute or service without having to change page, for the screen is automatically updated.
Figure 7: The organizational chart of faculties and services
On the left of the screen is a list of the branches of a tree whose roots (for example a Faculty) can be selected by buttons on the right. The user navigates within the list and, when (s)he touches the desired department, information about it is shown; a flashing light situates the department on a map of the campus.
This module displays maps and plans of the campus and its immediate neighbourhood on various scales. It also shows each floor of the building in which the prototype kiosk is installed. This module is used by all the other routines for situating a person, an event, a room or a department within the University.
Figure 8: The mapping module
Most of the screen is used to display a map or plan on various scales. Touching on a building triggers a display of photographs of the building and a text describing it. A floating palette explains the symbols (for roads, rivers,restaurants, car parks, etc) used on the maps. Two buttons enable the user to zoom in on, or out of, the selected area.
At the time when we had to choose the hardware for this project, the Java environment and the HotJava browser were available on Sun SPARC/Solaris and Intel/Windows platforms only. In fact, we did not really have any choice since we wanted to use a machine running UNIX. So the first prototype interactive kiosk that we have built was developed on a Sun computer.
A console was specially designed for this project. We wanted to evoke the idea of a desk (rather than the conventional pillar) in order to convey the more studious and friendly atmosphere of the academic world.
Figure 7: The Kiosk
Here are some of the specifications of the prototype:
We completed the first phase of the project as described above at the end of November, 1995. The next stage consists in making the services of Cybcérone available to all the Java-compatible WWW browsers that become available in 1996.
The system for handling the events calendar permits distributed access to the data, which is normal since it is based on the Web. On the other hand, it is innovative in that it has been specially-designed to feed into the information system by networking.
Members of the University community are all networked, on both the structural and geographical levels. In view of this specific type of organization, the system we developed for the calendar is very close to our operational mode.
Consequently, we envisage the development of other services, on this model, such as, for example:
The development of an interactive kiosk based on the Web and Java is by its very nature a pluri-disciplinary enterprise. Thus we have worked with some thirty different people specializing in such fields as software engineering, user-interface design, object-oriented techniques, industrial design, computer graphics, and so on.
One of our fears concerned the reliability of the alpha version of Java that we were using. In the event, we were agreeably surprised by its qualities, since our system is stable and efficient.
As the Java machine code is interpreted on a virtual Java machine, the initialization of the Java programmes can take a very long time, especially when it's a matter of loading a great many pictures. This obliged us to load all the system applets into memory. This initialization process takes about 6 minutes and is carried out every day at 4 o'clock in the morning. Of course, this situation will improve considerably when we have Java compilers for the specific processors used. On the other hand, there is no problem whatsoever with the speed of execution.
This project has highlighted the following points:
Mehdi Aminian [http://www-iis.unil.ch/~aminian/]
Singularis Communication
aminian@iisnext.unil.ch
Mehdi Aminian is the Cybcérone project manager
François Grize [http://www-iis.unil.ch/Personnes/FGrize.html]
University of Lausanne
Francois.Grize@iis.unil.ch
François Grize is The Computer Science Institute of the Faculty of Sciences director
Cybcérone has been sponsored by Sun Microsystems (Switzerland) [ http://www.sun.ch]
and realized through close collaboration between the Computer Science Institute of the University of Lausanne [ http://www-iis.unil.ch], Singularis Communication [ http://www-iis.unil.ch/~aminian/singularis.html], and the Federal School of Engineering at Lausanne [ http://www.epfl.ch]
Java and other Java-based names are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc., and refer to Sun's family of Java- branded technologies.
Translated from the French by GPW.