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The Storage and Sharing of Personal Data using Mixed Reality Devices and Solid Pods
This thesis explores the integration of Personal Datastores (Solid Pods) and Mixed Reality using an HL2. Concretely, this thesis implements an application for the HL2 that provides an MR UI for interacting with a Solid Pod. The implemented app furthermore provides an intuitive way to share (personal) data from the HL2 in real-time with others via Solid. This may include, e.g, one's current gaze data, current activity or detected objects in the user's environment.
Keywords: mixed reality, augmented reality, personal data, privacy, privacy preferences, personal datastores, gaze data
Solid (Social Linked Data) is a specification to create a decentralized data platform for Web applications; its objective is to allow the management of users’ data independently of the applications that create and consume such data: Applications are decoupled from the data they use.
To realize Solid, users' data is stored in a Web-accessible personal online datastore: a Pod. Developers can use the Solid protocol based on existing W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendations for reading, writing, and controlling (e.g., access control) the contents of users’ Pods. Users are able to grant access to their data, and have the option to stop sharing their data or switch between applications at any time [1].
Mixed Reality (MR) devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens 2 (HL2) are often equipped with capabilities that can track personal data such as eye trackers that allow to record a user's gaze behavior.
Such data is personal and highly sensitive, since it can be used to not only estimate the activity that a user currently performs, but also to estimate other personal information of the user, from drug consumption to cultural background [2].
Thus, to avoid creating several copies of the data and sharing them with others through traditional means (e.g., a Data Controller that runs a gaze-sharing platform), the use of Solid enables a user to retain control about where their data is and who accesses it.
We developed the Solid Interaction Library for C# which includes all basic functions to interact with Solid Pods directly from a HL2. However, this library does not include any user interface elements.
With this thesis, we explore the integration of Solid and MR using an HL2. Concretely, this thesis implements an application for the HL2 that provides an MR UI for interacting with a Solid Pod. The implemented app furthermore provides an intuitive way to share data from the HL2 in real-time with others via Solid. This may include, e.g, one's current gaze data, current activity or detected objects in the user's environment.
[1] Sambra, Essam Mansour, Sandro Hawke, Maged Zereba, Nicola Greco, Abdurrahman Ghanem, D. Zagidulin, Ashraf Aboulnaga, and T. Berners-Lee. Solid : A Platform for Decentralized Social Applications Based on Linked Data. 2016.
[2] Jacob Leon Kröger, Otto Hans-Martin Lutz, and Florian Müller. What Does Your Gaze Reveal About You? On the Privacy Implications of Eye Tracking. In Michael Friedewald, Melek ¨Onen, Eva Lievens, Stephan Krenn, and Samuel Fricker, editors, Privacy and Identity Management. Data for Better Living: AI and Privacy, volume 576, pages 226–241. Springer International
Publishing, Cham, 2020.
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This project is great for you, if you are:
- Strongly interested or familiar in designing Mixed Reality interfaces
- Interested in Privacy, Decentralized data storage & Technology
- Interested in participating in state of the art research
- Interested in publishing your research work in academic venues
- An excellent communicator in English
Reach out if you are interested!
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Solid (Social Linked Data) is a specification to create a decentralized data platform for Web applications; its objective is to allow the management of users’ data independently of the applications that create and consume such data: Applications are decoupled from the data they use.
To realize Solid, users' data is stored in a Web-accessible personal online datastore: a Pod. Developers can use the Solid protocol based on existing W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendations for reading, writing, and controlling (e.g., access control) the contents of users’ Pods. Users are able to grant access to their data, and have the option to stop sharing their data or switch between applications at any time [1].
Mixed Reality (MR) devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens 2 (HL2) are often equipped with capabilities that can track personal data such as eye trackers that allow to record a user's gaze behavior. Such data is personal and highly sensitive, since it can be used to not only estimate the activity that a user currently performs, but also to estimate other personal information of the user, from drug consumption to cultural background [2]. Thus, to avoid creating several copies of the data and sharing them with others through traditional means (e.g., a Data Controller that runs a gaze-sharing platform), the use of Solid enables a user to retain control about where their data is and who accesses it.
We developed the Solid Interaction Library for C# which includes all basic functions to interact with Solid Pods directly from a HL2. However, this library does not include any user interface elements.
With this thesis, we explore the integration of Solid and MR using an HL2. Concretely, this thesis implements an application for the HL2 that provides an MR UI for interacting with a Solid Pod. The implemented app furthermore provides an intuitive way to share data from the HL2 in real-time with others via Solid. This may include, e.g, one's current gaze data, current activity or detected objects in the user's environment.
[1] Sambra, Essam Mansour, Sandro Hawke, Maged Zereba, Nicola Greco, Abdurrahman Ghanem, D. Zagidulin, Ashraf Aboulnaga, and T. Berners-Lee. Solid : A Platform for Decentralized Social Applications Based on Linked Data. 2016.
[2] Jacob Leon Kröger, Otto Hans-Martin Lutz, and Florian Müller. What Does Your Gaze Reveal About You? On the Privacy Implications of Eye Tracking. In Michael Friedewald, Melek ¨Onen, Eva Lievens, Stephan Krenn, and Samuel Fricker, editors, Privacy and Identity Management. Data for Better Living: AI and Privacy, volume 576, pages 226–241. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2020.
---
This project is great for you, if you are:
- Strongly interested or familiar in designing Mixed Reality interfaces - Interested in Privacy, Decentralized data storage & Technology - Interested in participating in state of the art research - Interested in publishing your research work in academic venues - An excellent communicator in English
Reach out if you are interested!
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The goal of this thesis is to create an MR UI for interacting intuitively with a Solid Pod.
The goal of this thesis is to create an MR UI for interacting intuitively with a Solid Pod.
Jannis Strecker: jannisrene.strecker@unisg.ch
Dr. Kimberly Garcia: kimberly.garcia@unisg.ch
https://interactions.ics.unisg.ch
