J Intell Manuf (2012) 23:1281–1291DOI 10.1007/s10845-010-0411-6

Design and evaluation of virtual home objectswith music interaction in smart homes

Jenq-Muh Hsu

Received: 30 June 2009 / Accepted: 22 April 2010 / Published online: 19 May 2010© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract Well-designed virtual home objects and human-computer interactions (HCIs) can provide convenient waysto easily make use of home services for home inhabitantsin smart homes. This work tries to design the virtual homeobjects with the ability of playing the music and implementa particular HCI interface accomplishing the music interac-tion with virtual home objects for deploying virtual homemusic services in smart homes. Each virtual home object isconnected to a list of songs. When a home inhabitant holds avirtual home object and moves it as operating gestures uponthe implemented HCI interface, the virtual home music ser-vice will be activated and the smart home will automati-cally play the favorite songs for its inhabitant. In this way, ahighly interactive home music service for home inhabitantscan be realized through the convenient operating interactionsbetween the virtual home objects and the implemented HCIinterface in smart homes.

Keywords Smart home · Virtual home object · RFID ·Human-computer interaction

Introduction

Since Weiser (1991) first defined ubiquitous computing,many researchers have worked toward a vision of ubiquitouscomputing. The goal of ubiquitous computing is to distributeand embed computing into the working and living environ-ments of the people. Therefore, the boundary between thereal world and information world will vanish and the envi-ronment will become both intelligent and smart. To build an

J.-M. Hsu (B)Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering,National Chiayi University, Chiayi City 60004, Taiwane-mail: hsujm@mail.ncyu.edu.tw

ideal living context in a smart home, the technology of ubiq-uitous and pervasive computing (UPC) (Meyer and Rakotoni-rainy 2003; Schulzrinne et al. 2003) has been widely appliedto develop various tangible and intangible human-computerinteractions (HCIs). Thus, a well-designed HCI is a signifi-cant tool (Pouznikoff et al. 2006) that provides a convenientmanner to operate home objects, furnishings, appliances, andservices for home inhabitants in smart homes.

It is a common recreation to listen to the music in thehome. Home inhabitants may use an audio CD player to listenthe music in a traditional home. In contrast, a smart homemay automatically play the favorite music via the intelligenthome entertainment system, when home inhabitants do someactions, such as singing a part of a song, saying aloud thesongs name, and making gestures through the home object.That is, home inhabitants can listen to the music through thehigh-tech interaction of music playback control in a smarthome.

This work designs virtual home objects and implementsa particular HCI interface to deploy virtual home music ser-vices in smart homes. There are two types of virtual homeobjects, one is Virtual CD and the other is Music Cup. TheVirtual CD is an artificial article that has the ability to interactwith the implemented HCI interface to play the music andthe Music Cup is a physical tea cup that also has the ability toplay the music through the interaction between the cup andthe implemented HCI interface in smart home.

The main goal of this work is to provide home inhabitantswith a convenient HCI mechanism to interactively controlthe music playback through the virtual home objects. In thismanner, the daily lives of home inhabitants will be comfort-able and interesting when they listen to the music through thevirtual home objects with music interaction in a smart home.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.In Section “Background”, the background of smart home

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and the related virtual home objects are discussed. Section“Design of the virtual home object with music interaction”describes the design of the proposed virtual home objects, theVirtual CD and Music Cup, for music interaction and theirfunctionalities. Section “System implementation” presentssystem implementation of the virtual home objects to con-trol music playback and interaction. Section “Service evalu-ation” shows evaluation results of using the proposed virtualhome objects. Finally, conclusions and directions for futurework are given in Section “Conclusions”.

Background

The smart home (Jiang et al. 2004) is a future home that inte-grates various innovative appliances and technologies. Theprimary goal of a smart home is to provide a comfortable liv-ing space for its inhabitants. A smart home tries to understandthe intention of its inhabitants via home sensor devices, userbehavior detection and recognition, and context-aware tech-nology (Meyer and Rakotonirainy 2003), makes a reasonabledecision, and then autonomously delivers the appropriatehome services according to the demands of its inhabitants.

Virtual home objects, including articles and appliances fordaily use, and home living appliances are tangible and touch-able in conventional homes. Home inhabitants generally usehome objects to perform particular tasks, that is, each homeobject has specific functions. Smart homes integrate varioushardware and software technologies to construct comfortableliving spaces for its inhabitants. Many smart home artifactsand appliances have been proposed and deployed in smarthome (Schmidt et al. 2001).

To achieve the goal of ubiquitous interaction in smarthomes, Gellersen et al. (2004) employed small computingdevices, called Smart-Its, for HCI interfaces between usersand smart environments. Goumopoulos and Kameas (2009)used different sensors such as weight, proximity, pressure,and luminosity sensors, which were attached to conventionalhome objects to design smart desks, smart chairs, and smartbooks. Riekki et al. (2006) utilized Radio Frequency Identi-fication (RFID) tags as a bridge between physical and digitalworlds to generate unambiguous and inexpensive ubiquitousHCI designs.

Virtual home objects are similar to conventional homeobjects in smart homes. Notably, virtual home objects arethe augmented versions of conventional home objects withvarious digital technologies to perform original and novelfunctions of conventional ones. Chi et al. (2007) surveyed andanalyzed various smart and virtual home objects, and classi-fied their designs into different digital enhancements. Theydefined functional and interaction relations to identify the dif-ferences between virtual home objects and their uses. Func-tional relations are divided into enhanced, complementary,

and unrelated relations. Interaction relations are also classi-fied into natural, intuitive, and unrelated relationships. Thus,a well-designed virtual object should enhance and comple-ment its conventional functions and interaction should benatural and intuitive.

As mentioned, this work designed some virtual artifactsbased on conventional music home objects, such as CDs, andintegrated an interactive music function into a physical homeobjects, such as a teacup, to facilitate musical entertainment.The principal idea is very simple. This work adopted an eas-ily installed sensing and identification technology, RFID, todesign a convenient HCI interface. RFID reader was embed-ded into home objects, such that they have the ability to senseand identify which home objects or articles with RFID tagsare near. The RFID-based HCI interface can be achieved eas-ily. Moreover, this work also applied the Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP) networked media player as the home audio sys-tem for playing music. When a virtual home object taken by ahome inhabitant is sensed and identified by home appliancesor house furnishings with an RFID reader, the networkedmedia player mounted near home inhabitant will automat-ically play the desired music. Home inhabitants can gainpleasure from this interactive home music service.

Design of the virtual home object with music interaction

To design virtual home objects with the ability to play themusic, a sensing and identification technology should beapplied to accomplish the basic demand of HCI for a vir-tual home object. The High Frequency (HF) RFID is apassive and non-battery technology with a short sensingrange. It is cheaper than Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID,active RFID, and even sensor networks. Konomi and Rous-sos (2007) indicated that RFID is suitable for integratingubiquitous computing and the real world in many applica-tion domains. Here, this work adopts HF RFID technology(Luse and Townsend 2008; Smith et al. 2005) for HCI withthe proposed virtual home objects.

For instance, an audio CD is a conventional music arti-cle. This audio CD is played on a conventional audio CDplayer. However, music is now typically digitized and storedon computers, flash disks, or the Internet. Specific softwareand hardware are required to play digitized music. To retainthe original properties of an audio CD, such as a CD caseand a brief songbook, this work uses a CD case with an HFRFID tag as a virtual home object with music interaction,called the Virtual CD. Figure 1 shows the proposed VirtualCD and a conventional audio CD. Figure 1a shows the exte-rior of a conventional audio CD and Fig. 1b shows the insideof a conventional audio CD. Figure 1c shows the outsideof the Virtual CD and Fig. 1d shows the inside of the Vir-tual CD. The outside of the Virtual CD and conventional CD

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Fig. 1 Conventional audio CD and the Virtual CD

Fig. 2 Prototype of the Music Cup with an HF RFID tag on its bottom

are similar, but their insides differ. In fact, the Virtual CD isonly a CD case with an HF RFID tag, and contains a briefsongbook, not a physical CD.

The other designed virtual home object with music inter-action is based on the physical home article. A small HFRFID tag is placed on the bottom or outward of a homearticle to achieve the music interaction between the articleand its home environment. For example, Fig. 2 shows a cup,which is called the Music Cup, with a small circular HF RFIDtag attached to its bottom. The Music Cup interacts with thehome environment through the HF RFID-based HCI and thenplays the music. Thus, this home article preserves its originalproperties and has an extended music playback function viathe HF RFID.

As mentioned, the Virtual CD is based on a conventionalaudio CD and the Music Cup is a physical extension ofa real article, they are virtual and physical living objects,respectively, and have RFID-based interaction to play musicin smart homes. To achieve RFID-based HCI between vir-tual home objects and smart home, an HF RFID reader isadopted. The HF RFID reader can be embedded or hidden in

Fig. 3 Table with a hidden Virtual CD service for music playbackcontrol

home furnishings to control music playback. Figure 3 showsan example of an interactive music table with an HF RFIDreader. When a home inhabitant places a Virtual CD or theMusic Cup on a table, the HF RFID reader hidden underthe table identifies which virtual object is on the table andthen notifies the home media gateway to retrieve and play thesongs connected to the virtual home objects from the homemusic database or Internet music database. Home inhabitantscan enjoy music via the Virtual CD or the Music Cup. There-fore, the persons can easily use RFID technology to build ahighly pleasurable home music service in smart homes.

The proposed Virtual CD lacks the music playback func-tions of a conventional audio CD player such as starting thesong playing, proceeding to the next song, backing to theprevious song, and stopping the song playing. To providethese functions, a particular HCI interface will be designedand implemented, that should have the same operating prop-erties of a conventional audio CD player.

An audio CD player has four basic functions such as start,stop, forward, and backward playback functions. To achievethe four basic playback functions of virtual home objectwith music interaction, two adjacent HF RFID readers areadopted. An HF RFID reader can identify the presence andabsence of an HF RFID tag. The reader has two modes, tagpresence and tag absence, to present the sensing status of a HFRFID tag. If two adjacent HF RFID readers are located besideeach other, they can identify the four modes of the presenceand absence of an HF RFID tag moving between them. Fourmodes can represent the four basic music playback func-tions. Thus, this work chose two adjacent HF RFID readersto achieve the four music playback functions of the VirtualCD. Figure 4 shows the four operations and motions of the

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(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 4 Using two adjacent HF RFID readers to represent four musicplayback functions

Virtual CD containing an HF RFID tag and the two adja-cent HF RFID readers that provide the four music playbackfunctions of conventional audio CD players. The proposedMusic Cup can also be treated as a Virtual CD to interactivelycontrol music playback via the type of two adjacent RFIDreaders.

Figure 4a shows the start playback function. When theVirtual CD is on the left HF RFID reader, it starts playing thesong autonomously. Figure 4b shows the stop function. Whenthe Virtual CD is on the right HF RFID reader, it stops playingthe song immediately. Figure 4c shows the forward function.When the Virtual CD is on the left HF RFID reader, and issmoothly moved to the right HF RFID reader, the player pro-ceeds to the next song in the song album. Similarly, when theVirtual CD moves from the right HF RFID reader to the leftHF RFID reader (Fig. 4d), the backward function is activatedto play the previous song. Thus, two adjacent HF RFID read-ers can be used to sense and recognize Virtual CD motion tocontrol music playback.

A virtual home music object editor is needed to arrangeand manage the music associated with corresponding virtualhome object. The editor is responsible for authoring a VirtualCD or Music Cup with album information (e.g., song tracks,singers, song names, and lyrics). Figure 5 shows a series ofprocedures for producing a Virtual CD or Music Cup via a vir-tual home music object editor. The virtual home music objecteditor is software that accompanies an HF RFID reader. Forexample, home inhabitants can collect a number of songs tobuild a song list, and compress the songs and correspondingsong list into a compressed music file. They will put a newblank virtual home object or a used virtual home object onthe HF RFID reader connected to the virtual home music

Fig. 5 Producing a Virtual CD or Music Cup through virtual homemusic object editor

object editor to link the HF RFID tag and compressed songfile for building virtual home objects with music interaction.Through the virtual home music object editor, home inhab-itants can build their own virtual home objects with musicinteraction.

To manage the songs associated with the virtual homeobject with music interaction (e.g., a Virtual CD or MusicCup), an interchangeable format of a song list is needed. Thatis, a song list and a set of song files associated with a specificvirtual home object with music interaction are stored in dig-ital form. This work adopts the features of extended markuplanguage (XML) to describe the song list. Figure 6 shows anexample of the designed interchangeable XML-based songlist.

Additionally, a home multimedia gateway is also neededto store the song lists and song files related to the virtualhome objects with music interaction. The gateway consistsof a music database and a virtual home object database tomanage the relationships between virtual home objects andtheir corresponding music. The gateway can deliver thesong in streaming fashion to the home entertainment sys-tem according to the music demands of home inhabitants.The entertainment system then plays the received music andhome inhabitants enjoy music via a particular HCI interfacefor music interaction in smart homes.

System implementation

This section addresses the technical issues related to hard-ware integration and software implementation for deployingvirtual home objects and the corresponding music interac-tion services in smart homes. Figure 7 shows an implementedexample of the main HCI interface module, called the MusicInteraction Interface (MII) module. A MII module consists

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Fig. 6 Song list described in XML that is associated with a Virtual CDor the Music Cup

of two adjacent HF RFID readers to achieve four playbackfunctions of music interaction between the proposed virtualhome object with an HF RFID tag and the home furnish-ing with an MII module. To set up the proposed MII mod-ule, this work also used the RS232-to-Ethernet connectorsto extend communicating abilities between HF RFID read-ers in MII module and their corresponding hardware con-trollers and software modules via a wired or wireless homenetwork. The MII module is easily installed and hidden insmart homes. Similarly, if this module is mounted under atable or desk, the table or desk becomes an interactive musicplayback device.

Two software modules have been implemented. One is thevirtual music object editor, called the Virtual CD editor, andthe other is the multimedia home gateway, called the Vir-tual Jukebox. The detailed functions of the Virtual CD editorhave been described in Section “Design of the virtual homeobject with music interaction”. Figure 8 shows a screen shotof the virtual home music object editor. The editor can assist

Fig. 7 Implemented example of the MII module

Fig. 8 Screen shot of the Virtual CD editor

the persons producing the virtual home object (Virtual CDor Music Cup) and setting the musical relations between thevirtual home music object and the arranged songs.

The Virtual Jukebox is a software-based multimedia homegateway. The main components and music delivering serviceof the multimedia home gateway are also described in Sec-tion “Design of the virtual home object with music interac-tion”. The Virtual Jukebox manages and delivers the musicplayback service to home inhabitants of a smart home. The

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Fig. 9 Screen shot of the Virtual Jukebox

Fig. 10 UPnP networked media player acting as an audio system forthe virtual home music service

Virtual Jukebox extracts compressed music files and playsthe songs after HCI interaction between virtual home objectsand the smart home with the MII modules. Figure 9 showsa software screen shot of the Virtual Jukebox. The informa-tion of the corresponding virtual home objects includes thenumber of music playback services enabled and informationof the current song playing. This information is displayed onthe information panel of the Virtual Jukebox.

To deploy the interactive music playback service of thevirtual home object in smart homes, this work adopted theUPnP networked multimedia player, called the Squeezebox,manufactured by Logitech, Inc., as an audio system to eas-ily embed and hide the music service in the surroundinghome environment. Although Squeezebox supports UPnP,this work also follows the basic operations of the Squeeze-box via the SLIMP client and SlimProto protocols to controlmusic playback in a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)-based streaming fashion and displays corresponding songinformation on the liquid crystal panel of the Squeezebox.Figure 10 shows the Squeezebox, which is used as the audio

Fig. 11 Prototype demonstrating use of the virtual home music service

system of the proposed virtual home object with music inter-action in smart homes.

After hardware integration and software implementation,a prototype service of the virtual home object with musicinteraction is achieved. This service is also called the virtualhome music service. Figure 11 shows a Virtual CD is on thetop of the MII module. In Fig. 11, the Virtual Jukebox inter-acts with the Virtual CD and delivers streaming songs to theUPnP multimedia player after RFID sensing and identifica-tion.

To build a well-operated virtual home music service, thiswork follows the steps describing operational and informa-tion flows among various components of the virtual homeobject with music playback. Figure 12 uses the Virtual CDas an example to describe the operating flow control of thevirtual home music service. To start the music, a home inhab-itant takes the Virtual CD and moves it toward the left HFRFID reader of the MII module. The MII module senses theRFID tag hidden in the Virtual CD and sends the RFID ID tothe Virtual Jukebox. The Virtual Jukebox retrieves the cor-responding audio CD related to the RFID ID in the musicdatabase and then delivers the first song on correspondingaudio CD to the networked multimedia player and plays thesong in a streaming fashion. If a home inhabitant wants tostop the music playback, she/he will take the Virtual CDand place it on the right HF RFID reader of the MII mod-ule. The stop playback function is then triggered to stop theplayback of music. The operational flow of stop playbackfunction is similar to the start playback function interactingwith the right HF RFID reader on the MII module. If a homeinhabitant wants to proceed to the next song, she/he will takethe Virtual CD and move it from the left HF RFID reader tothe right HF RFID reader on the top of the MII module. Theforward function of music playback is triggered. The MIImodule senses continuously the same RFID ID via two adja-cent RFID readers and then sends the information of RFIDID and sensing orders to the Virtual Jukebox. The Virtual

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Fig. 12 Operational andinformation flows in the virtualhome music service

Jukebox identifies the RFID ID from its music database andstreams the next song to the networked multimedia player.The player then changes to play next song. Moreover, if ahome inhabitant takes the Virtual CD and moves it in theopposite direction, from the right HF RFID reader to the leftHF RFID reader on the top of the MII module, the back-ward function of music playback is triggered. The MII mod-ule senses continuously the same RFID ID via two adjacentRFID readers and then sends the information of RFID IDand sensing orders to the Virtual Jukebox. The Virtual Juke-box identifies the ID from its music database and streamsthe previous song to the networked multimedia player. Theplayer then plays previous song. Following these operationalflows, a smart home can easily deploy the music interac-tion service of the Virtual home object and home inhabitants

can conveniently enjoy the music via the service in a smarthome.

Previous work (Hsu and Chang 2009) had evaluated thetypes of home inhabitants that would use this prototype of vir-tual home music service. Ten participants were invited to usethe Virtual CD. After the experimental evaluation, the partic-ipants suggested that this service should have a convenientremote controller to control music playback and interaction.

A smart phone is a personalized mobile phone withadvanced capabilities. In ubiquitous and pervasive com-puting, smart phones have been applied as a user-centricintelligent agent providing some working and daily assis-tance for users. That is, a smart phone is both a mobile phoneand a personal mobile assistant. In smart homes, the smartphone can be a universal personalized remote controller to

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Fig. 13 Screen shot of remote virtual home music object controller onsmart phone

control home appliances (Corcoran et al. 2002; Kim and Lee2006). Thus, this work also designed a portable personalizedmusic playback controller, called the Virtual CD controller,on smart phone to provide a user-friendly and convenientoperational environment for virtual home object with musicinteraction. Figure 13 shows a software screen shot of theVirtual CD controller.

Most smart phones have touch panels. A touch panel pro-vides an intuitive HCI interface to operate the smart phone.Therefore, this work also applies the features of touch panelsto design a sliding-based music playback interface area tocontrol music playback. If a home inhabitant slides a fingerfrom left to right, the next song will be played immediately; ifthe finger slides from right to left, the previous song is playedagain. Therefore, an intuitive and remote HCI interface forthe virtual home music service can be easily realized via thistouch-control feature of smart phones.

An ideal smart home service should have service mobility.When a home inhabitant moves from one room to another,the smart home should autonomously deliver the music ser-vice to the room in which the inhabitant is located. Therefore,the virtual home music service also has service mobility formusic playback while a home inhabitant is moving in theirhome. Although a smart phone can use various indoor devicesand positioning methods to find a users location (e.g., Wi-Fi,infrared, ultrasound, and sensor networks), this work usesthe same HF RFID technology to determine user positionand reduce too many technologies used in a smart home. Abutton-shaped HF RFID tag is enveloped in a mobile phoneornamental (Fig. 14). When a home inhabitant enters a roomand places a smart phone on the room table with the MIImodule for the virtual home music service, the MII modulesenses the RFID tag in the mobile phone and immediately

Fig. 14 Remote control of virtual home object with music interactionvia a smart phone

sends the RFID ID to the Virtual Jukebox. The Virtual Juke-box will transfer the music playback control of the virtualhome music service to the smart phone on the table. Thatis, a home inhabitant can use her/his smart phone to controlmusic playback by the virtual home music service.

Figure 15 shows the flow control for an example of ser-vice mobility using the smart phone. A home inhabitant takesher/his smart phone and leaves the current room (e.g., liv-ing room) and enters another room (e.g., study room) thathas the virtual home music service. If she/he places thesmart phone on the table with the MII module, the ser-vice will transfer music playback to the new room througha series of interactive controls. Notably, the virtual homemusic service has service mobility providing a user-friendlymusic playback service depending on the location of homeinhabitant.

Many home inhabitants want to use and control the virtualhome music service via their own smart phones in the sameroom. Two services may be used concurrently; however,when too many music sources are used together, music willbecome noise. To prevent unnecessary disturbances whileenjoying music, the system only allows one smart phone tointeract with the MII module of the virtual home music ser-vice and use the remote playback control interface in thesmart phone to control music in a given room at a time.

Service evaluation

To determine the level of acceptance for using the proposedvirtual home music service, this work utilized the technol-

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Fig. 15 Flow control ofmobility service via a smartphone for Virtual CD interaction

ogy acceptance model (TAM) (Davis 1989) to evaluate theusability of the proposed virtual home music service. TheTAM is an information system theory that models how usersaccept and use a technology. It can specify the causal relation-ships between system design features, perceived usefulness,perceived ease of use, attitude toward using, and actual usagebehavior. Therefore, many studies have applied the TAM toevaluate user acceptance of using new information technol-ogy (Lederer et al. 2000; Prybutok 2008; Shin et al. 2009).

Figure 16 shows an evaluation study of using the MusicCup installed in a fellowship lounge of an apartment com-munity. Sixty community residents belonging to 14 fami-lies have resided in this apartment community. Resident agerange is 12–68 years old. Residents were invited to use thevirtual home music service to investigate how they wouldperceive and use the Music Cup. Community residents canuse the Music Cup to drink beverages. Different Music Cupsare associated with different music styles. When a residentin the fellowship lounge drinks tea and puts the Music Cupon the table with a hidden MII module, the table will inter-actively play the corresponding music.

This work applied the TAM questionnaire and evalua-tion criteria described by (Lucero et al. 2006). The TAMquestionnaire consists of ten items. The first six items

Fig. 16 Evaluation example of using the Music Cup installed in thefellowship lounge of an apartment community

addressed the perceived ease-of-use dimension and the lastfour items focused on perceived usefulness. A usability goalwas reached and accepted when the mean rating of partic-ipants was ≤2.5, with a standard deviation of <1.4. Itemresponses were on a 7-point Likert scale, where 1 is stronglyagree, 7 is strongly disagree, and 4 is neutral.

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Table 1 Statistical results forthe TAM questionnaire N Questions of the TAM questionnaire M SD

Perceived ease-of-use

Q1 I find learning to use the system easy 1.97 1.16

Q2 I find it easy to get the system to do what I want to do 2.40 1.16

Q3 My interaction with the system is clear and understandable 2.03 0.85

Q4 This system is flexible to interact with 2.5 1.074

Q5 I find it easy to become skilful at using the system 1.83 0.79

Q6 I find it easy to use 2.03 1.07

Perceived usefulness

Q7 I find that by using the system I am able to control music 2.50 0.90

playback

Q8 I find that by using the system I can enjoy controlling the 2.47 1.28

music playback

Q9 I find that by using the system it is easy to control music 2.50 1.25

playback

Q10 I find this system useful at home 2.5 1.33

At the start of the evaluation experiment, an explanationof how to operate the Music Cup was given by the facilitator.Each participant had two weeks to use the Music Cup serviceto listen to music while in the fellowship lounge. Finally, allparticipants filled out a TAM questionnaire. An open-endedquestion was used to gain user experiences. Table 1 lists theten TAM items and statistical results.

For the set of tasks, ten TAM items fulfilled the successcriteria for all goals, meaning that the Music Cup is easy touse, easy to learn how to use, easy to control, and pleasurableto use. That is, all participants agreed that the Music Cup pro-vided a good HCI interface for music interaction in a smarthome environment. Although all ten items of the TAM ques-tionnaire met evaluation criteria, most item scores were veryclose to the lower bound of evaluation criteria. Responsesin the open-ended question indicate that some participantsfelt that response time should be decreased and the sensingprecision of the RFID should be increased. Some participantssuggested that the Music Cup may be integrated with socialinteraction to maintain and create human relationships. Someparticipants also indicated that the Music Cup was funny, andbecame boring during long-time use.

To summarize the evaluation suggestions of open-endedquestion, the Music Cup can adopt alternative HCI inter-faces, such as multiple touch screens and augmented virtualreality, to integrate virtual and physical worlds seamlessly.Identification time can be accelerated and the precision ofRFID tag identification can be increased using superior HFRFID devices too. Chung et al. (2006) designed lover’s cupsthat interact with other cups to make social connections.Thus, the Music Cup can integrate the similar design toenable much social interaction for the users in the future.

Conclusions

When a home has a high degree of automation, the home isa smart home. Smart homes may deliver appropriate homeservices to inhabitants without complex operating actionsof using home articles, furnishings, and appliances. How-ever, with excessive home automation, home inhabitantsmay be afraid of losing their sense of reality when usinghome objects. A virtual home object is an augmented ver-sion of a conventional home object. That is, a virtual homeobject retains its original property and extends functions dig-itally compared with conventional home objects. Thus, smarthomes have adopted various virtual home objects that retainthe same conventional operating actions when using physicalhome objects or virtual artificial home objects.

This work follows the concept of a virtual home objectin designing and implementing two types of virtual homeobjects, the Virtual CD and Music Cup, for music interac-tion. Home inhabitants can use these objects to play music.This work uses the TAM to evaluate the user acceptance ofusing the virtual home objects. The result shows that virtualhome objects are useful to control the interactive music play-back in smart homes. In future work, virtual home objectscan integrate the concept of social interaction to make a highcoupled social connection between home inhabitants in smarthomes. Although the idea of virtual home object with musicinteraction is simple, it is very useful for home inhabitants toefficiently reduce the anxiety of using high-tech home musicservices in smart homes.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the NationalScience Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan, for financially

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supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 97-2219-E-415-001and 98-2219-E-415-001.

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