Children’s Privacy Protection Engine for Smart Anthropomorphic Toys

Abstract

A toy is an item or product intended for learning or play, which can have various benefits to childhood development. Children’s toys have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, with a growing shift from simple physical products to toys that engage the digital world. Toy makers are seizing this opportunity to develop products that combine the characteristics of traditional toys such as dolls and stuffed toys with computing software and hardware. A smart anthropomorphism toy is defined as a device consisting of a physical toy component in the humanoid form that connects to a computing system through networking and sensory technologies to enhance the functionality of a traditional toy. Many studies found out that anthropomorphic designs resulted in greater user engagement. Children trusted such designs serve a good purpose and felt less anxious about privacy. While there have been many efforts by governments and international organizations such as UNICEF to encourage the protection of children’s data online, there is currently no standard privacy-preserving framework for mobile toy computing applications. Children’s privacy is becoming a major concern for parents who wish to protect their children from potential harms related to the collection or misuse of their private data, particularly their location. This talk presents the related research issues with a video demo. The same talk has been delivered before to McGill University, Canada, 江苏省网络监控工程中心, 南京信息工程大学, and a well known game company called minecrafts.org.

Speaker

Prof. Patrick HUNG
Associate Professor
Faculty of Business and Information Technology
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada

Date & Time

28 Jan 2016 (Thursday) 12:00 - 13:00

Venue

E11-4045 (University of Macau)

Organized by

Department of Computer and Information Science

Biography

Patrick Hung, PhD
Associate Professor, Information Security
Business and Information Technology Building, Room 3026
905.721.8668 ext. 2835
patrick.hung@uoit.ca

Education:

  • Bachelor of Science (Computer Science), University of New South Wales, Australia
  • Master of Applied Science (Management Sciences), University of Waterloo, Canada
  • Master of Philosophy Science (Computer Science), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
  • PhD (Computer Science), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

Dr. Hung has been working with Boeing Research and Technology in Seattle, Washington on aviation services-related research projects. He has two U.S. patents on the Mobile Network Dynamic Workflow Exception Handling System and a continuation-in-part pending patent application with Boeing.

He published a peer-reviewed Springer book, entitled Mobile Services for Toy Computing, in October 2015. This is the first book dedicated to toy computing, a new discipline that explores how technology influences and enhances the development of smart toys.

He is an Honorary International Chair Professor at National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan and an Adjunct Professor at Wuhan University, China. In addition, he is a Visiting Researcher at the Shizuoka University and University of Aizu, Japan, and a Guest Professor in University of Innsbruck, Austria, University of Trento and University of Milan, Italy.

His other positions have included:

  • Adjunct Faculty Member at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in University of Waterloo, Ontario.
  • Guest Research Professor at Kingdee International Software Group Co. at ShenZhen in China.
  • Guest Professor at Institute of Computer Science in University of Innsbruck, Austria and Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Trento, Italy.
  • Visiting Faculty Member at Department of Computer Science and Engineering at both Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before that, he was a Research Scientist with Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia. He also has prior industrial experience in e-business projects in North America and Hong Kong. He is a founding committee member of:

  • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference of Web Services
  • IEEE International Conference on Services Computing
  • IEEE Congress on Services
  • IEEE Congress on BigData

He is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, International Journal of Web Services Research and International Journal of Business Process and Integration Management, as well as an Executive Group Member and Co-ordinating Editor of the Information Systems Frontiers by Springer.

From 2000 to 2004, he served as a panelist for the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the U.S.

He has studied at CLC Japanese Language Institute at Tokyo in Japan and completed Level 2, 3 and 4 Certificates of Japanese-Language Proficiency (administered by the Japan Foundation and Association of International Education Japan). He has also been a visiting PhD student at the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan and RSA Laboratories West in San Mateo, California.