Marvin J. Dainoff (Ed.) Proceedings of Posters at HCI International: Part X
(LNCS CD-Rom [ISBN 978-3-540-73332-4], pp. 1249-1254)
© Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2007
Context-aware In-flight Entertainment System
Hao Liu, Matthias Rauterberg
Departement of Industrial Design,
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, NL
{hao.liu, g.w.m.Rauterberg}@tue.nl
Abstract. Air travel, especially long distance, expose passengers a number of
factors that may cause them both physiological and psychological discomfort
and even stress. In-flight entertainment system is commonly installed on the
long-haul aircraft to improve the passenger’s satisfaction level. However, the
current installed and commercially available in-flight entertainment systems do
not fully explore how the entertainment services can be used to improve the
passenger’s comfort level physically and psychologically. Also these systems
are user adaptive systems where the user is supposed to initiate the system ad-
aptation to get personalized entertainment services. In this paper we present a
new context-aware system for personalized stress free in-flight entertainment
service provision. It can intelligently provide the passenger preferred stress re-
duction entertainment services based on his/her personal demographic informa-
tion, activity, physical and psychological states if the passenger was in stress.
1 Introduction
Travel by air, especially long distance, is not a natural activity for humans. Many
people experience some degree of physiological and psychological discomfort and
even stress when flying. Excessive stresses may cause the passenger to become ag-
gressive, over-reactive and even endanger the passenger’s health (Kalogeropoulos
1998; WHO 2005). Many airlines have realized the potential of using on-board enter-
tainments in improving the passenger’s comfort level. However, the current installed
and commercially available in-flight entertainment systems do not fully explore how
the entertainment services could be used to improve the passenger’s comfort level
physically and psychologically. Also, they are implemented based on pre-set concept
of what customer likes and requires as a homogeneous passenger group that has simi-
lar tastes and desires (Liu 2006). However, since the passengers come from highly
heterogeneous pools (such as age, gender, ethnicity, etc.), have different individual
entertainment preferences and experience different fly situations, one will find that
contextually selected entertainment services could bring better physical and psycho-
logical comfort to the passenger. Moreover, from control system point of view, the
current in-flight entertainment systems are designed and implemented as user adaptive
systems (Liu 2006). If the user wants to get personalized entertainment services,
he/she needs to use the interactive controller to browser and select the desired enter-
tainment services from the provided options. Regularly if the available choices are