SmartMote: A model-based Architecture for context-sensitive User Interfaces in Future Factories

Ubiquitous information access within intelligent environments – like the SmartFactoryKL – will become more and more important in everyday life. Universal mobile interaction devices will increase the flexibility of the service men during their maintenance task. Although this greater flexibility can improve the maintenance processes it also results in new problems for the users (e.g. information flood, remote function controls) and developers (e.g. multi-platform development) that have to be addressed to guaranty the efficient development of usable, interactive systems for a safe human-machine interaction in such environments. In this article we present a model-based architecture for the design of context-sensitive mobile user interfaces that allow the abstract specification of an run-time adaptive user interface. Based on the model-based architecture, a prototypical implementation of a model interpreter – the SmartMote – and an industrial use case are presented that present the use of a run-time adaptive user interface and the feasibility of the presented approach.