Development of Half-Mirror Interface System and Its Application for Ubiquitous Environment

In the era of ubiquitous computing, human-friendly man-machine interface is getting more attention due to its possibility to offer convenient services. For this, in this paper, we introduce a `Half-Mirror Interface System (HMIS)` as a novel type of human-friendly man-machine interfaces. Basically, HMIS consists of half-mirror, USB-Webcam, microphone, 2ch-speaker, and high-speed processing unit. In our HMIS, two principal operation modes are selected by the existence of the user in front of it. The first one, `mirror-mode`, is activated when the user`s face is detected via USB-Webcam. In this mode, HMIS provides three basic functions such as 1) make-up assistance by magnifying an interested facial component and TTS (Text-To-Speech) guide for appropriate make-up, 2) Daily weather information provider via WWW service, 3) Health monitoring/diagnosis service using Chinese medicine knowledge. The second one, `display-mode` is designed to show decorative pictures, family photos, art paintings and so on. This mode is activated when the user`s face is not detected for a time being. In display-mode, we also added a `healing-window` function and `healing-music player` function for user`s psychological comfort and/or relaxation. All these functions are accessible by commercially available voice synthesis/recognition package.