Abstract—Ambient Intelligence promotes a shift in computing which involves fitting-out the environments with devices to support context-aware applications. One of main objectives is the reduction to a minimum of the user’s interactive effort, the diversity and quantity of devices with which people are surrounded with, in existing environments; increase the level of difficulty to achieve this goal. The mobile phones and their amazing global penetration, makes it an excellent device for delivering new services to the user, without requiring a learning effort. The environment will have to be able to perceive all of the interaction techniques. In this paper, we present the PICTAC model (Perceiving touch Interaction through TAgging Context), which similarly delivers service to members of a research group. Keywords—Ambient Intelligence, Tagging Context, Touch Interaction, Touching Services. I. INTRODUCTION MBIENT intelligence [1] (and other approaches like ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, proactive computing, ambient computer, etc.) proposes an interaction between user and environment which requires no devices; these devices must "disappear" and the user should not have to make any effort by interacting with applications. There are two dimensions to this "disappearing” and they are physical and mental ones [2]. The physical disappearance of computers or applications is possible by absorbing these devices in the environment, as AmI proposes. One of the first definitions of smart environment arises from Ubiquitous Computing [3]-[5] which “created a new field of computer science, one that speculated on a physical world richly and invisibly interwoven with sensors, actuators, displays and computational elements, embedded seamlessly in the everyday objects of our lives and connected through a continuous network” [6], although Mark Weiser does not define it explicitly. The vision of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) [7], which is an evolution of Ubiquitous Computing, proposes a new way of thinking about computers, which will disappear in the environment, meaning that this perceiving and responding automatically to the presence of people is creating a smart environment. The AmI paradigm visualizes environmental management by applications, which will perceive in a continuous way the characteristics of the entities that comprise it and the natural G. Ch., J. O., S. N., E. A., J. R. and R. P. are with the Faculty of Engineering of Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, Tampico, TAM 89338 MEXICO (phone: 52-833-241-20-50; fax: 52-833-241-20-57; e-mail: gchavira, jorozco, snava, ccalvar, jrolon, rpichardo @ uat.edu.mx). This ICCSIE participation has been partially financed by Fondo Mixto de Fomento a la Investigación Científica y Tecnológica CONACYT – Gobierno del Estado de Tamaulipas, México. interaction between them, thereby enabling applications to offer services either proactively or with the smallest possible interactive effort. Another characteristic of this type of environment is that, even with a strong technology, it is “invisible” to people; this disappearance can be obtained by embedding it in daily objects in the environment. The main goal of Ambient Intelligence and Ubiquitous Computing is the creation of smart environments or environments with Ambient Intelligence. A smart environment is defined as an "environment that is capable of acquiring and applying knowledge about the environment and its inhabitants in order to improve their experience in that environment" [8], [9]. An Ambient Intelligence environment is "where people are surrounded by intelligent interfaces supported by computing and networking technology, which are embedded in everyday objects, which are aware of the specific characteristics and personalities of people and not interfere in interactions" [10]. The final objective of a smart environment is to satisfy user needs by providing services that require minimal interactive effort (i.e., the ideal service is one that the user receives without explicitly demanding it). Our work examines a perception of the touch interaction, which will be used to demand services at the moment of interacting with the environmental elements or entities. To perceive the touch interaction, the “tagging” of the environment’s entities will be necessary. We expect that when perceiving this interaction, the program that manages this environment will obtain information on the entities involved and will enable services to be delivered by properly combined with the information in the program’s data bases In this paper we summarize the PICTAC (perceiving touch interaction through tagging context) model [11], the characteristics of research group environment and describe the SeTITaC system’s programs, developed to serve at research group members II. RELATED WORK Although currently we are focusing our efforts on NFC technology, previously we have developed projects with different sensorial technologies separately [12]-[14] and in combination [15]-[17]. A variety of projects have designed and implemented services through NFC-enabled mobile phones. A common feature of most of these studies is that the tag’s content is only one service or one action, a concept known as “one tag, one service”. This means that tag memory, which could be used to store the context and several services, is wasted. Physical browsing is an “interaction paradigm of touching the tag with the device to activate the hyperlink which Gabriel Chavira, Jorge Orozco, Salvador Nava, Eduardo Álvarez, Julio Rolón, Roberto Pichardo Touch Interaction through Tagging Context A World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Computer and Information Engineering Vol:8, No:5, 2014 1454 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 8(5) 2014 ISNI:0000000091950263 Open Science Index, Computer and Information Engineering Vol:8, No:5, 2014 publications.waset.org/9998276/pdf