Sumi Helal

Lancaster University | LU · School of Computing and Communications

Participant selection is a fundamental research issue in Mobile Crowdsensing (MCS). Previous approaches commonly assume that adequately long periods of candidate participants' historical mobility trajectories are available to model their patterns before the selection process, which is not realistic for some new MCS applications or platforms. The sp...

Pattern lock has been widely used in smartphones as a simple and effective authentication mechanism, which however is shown to be vulnerable to various attacks. In this paper, we design a novel authentication system for more secure pattern unlocking on smartphones. The basic idea is to utilize various behavior information of the user during pattern...

Population health data are becoming more and more publicly available on the Internet than ever before. Such datasets offer a great potential for enabling a better understanding of the health of populations, and inform health professionals and policy makers for better resource planning, disease management and prevention across different regions. How...

Because of its important role in health policy-shaping, population health monitoring (PHM) is considered a fundamental block for public health services. However, traditional public health data collection approaches, such as clinic-visit-based data integration or health surveys, could be very costly and time-consuming. To address this challenge, thi...

Participant selection is a major research challenge in Mobile Crowdsensing (MCS). Previous approaches commonly assume that adequately long and fixed periods of candidate participants’ historical mobility trajectories are available before the selection process, so that the proposed frameworks can accurately model mobility which enables the optimizat...

Cloud applications provides users with services that can be accessed on demand through the Internet. Fertile service frameworks are considered as one of the most critical ingredients for the envisaged benefits so as to further interactions among cloud computing resources and application components. Such foundations should lead to the proliferation...

A smart space simulation is cost-effective means to analyze human activities and design and test human-centered intelligence in real smart spaces. A powerful smart space simulator not only synthesizes sensor data, but also generates highly realistic activity visualizations that serve as immediate visual feedback for the simulation user to validate...

The orchestration of application components across heterogeneous cloud providers is a problem that has been tackled using various approaches, some of which led to the creation of cloud orchestration and management standards such as TOSCA and CAMP. Standardization is a definitive method of providing an end-to-end solution capable of defining, deploy...

Recently, cloud computing has drawn significant attention from both industry and academia, bringing unprecedented changes to computing and information technology. The infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model offers new abilities such as the elastic provisioning and relinquishing of computing resources in response to workload fluctuations. However,...

Source code of the proposed algorithm. (RAR)

Raw results from simulation runs. (XLSX)

In order to evaluate the quality of Internet of Things (IoT) environments in smart houses, large datasets containing interactions between people and ubiquitous environments are essential for hardware and software testing. Both testing and simulation require a substantial amount of time and volunteer resources. Consequently, the ability to simulate...

We present Cicero – a middleware solution to support developers design and implement persuasive mobile apps. Based on the Action-Behavior Model (ABM), Cicero provides developers with powerful class libraries and collaboration methodology to streamline the development of mobile persuasive apps without requiring a steep knowledge of behavior science...

Worker selection for many crowd-sensing tasks must consider various complex contexts to ensure high quality of data. Existing platforms and frameworks take only specific contexts into account to demonstrate motivating scenarios but do not provide general context models or frameworks in support of crowd-sensing at large. This paper proposes a novel...

Computer's digital offerings will change in 2016, and this Outlook issue offers a glimpse into the future of computing technologies. Some of the brightest spots are ubiquitous computing, human-centered software engineering, cyber-physical systems, OS design changes, and advances that will revolutionize personal medical device development.

Computer's editor in chief, Sumi Helal, describes changes to the digital version of Computer and a new premium print option price adjustment.

In spite of the importance of activity recognition (AR) for intelligent human-computer interaction in emerging smart space applications, state-of-the-art AR technology is not ready or adequate for real-world deployments due to its insufficient accuracy. The accuracy limitation is directly attributed to uncertainties stemming from multiple sources i...

This paper presents an architectural design of elastic service frameworks based on OSGi service platforms. Load-balancing and auto-scaling features, among others, are considered as the most essential to enabling the elasticity of cloud services. Our proposal extends OSGi Remote Service Admin Specification to add load balancing capability, so that s...

Physical spaces are packed with opportunities, complexities, and of course, people. Many business and social opportunities are missed, and complexities can highly degrade people's experiences in these spaces. Pervasive computing has yet to be widely exploited in physical spaces in the same way that the ubiquitous Web and smartphones have been explo...

Many first-generation pervasive computing systems lack the ability to evolve as new technologies emerge or as an application domain matures. Integrating numerous heterogeneous elements is mostly a manual, ad hoc process. Inserting a new element requires researching its characteristics and operation, determining how to configure and integrate it, an...

Imminent massive-scale IoT deployments require a Cloud-Sensor architecture to facilitate an ecosystem of friction-free integration and programmability. In addition to these two functional requirements, challenging performance and scalability requirements must be addressed by any such architecture. We have introduced the Cloud-Edge-Beneath (CEB) arc...

Computer's 2015-2016 Editor in Chief, Sumi Helal, describes plans to sustain Computer's momentum, audience engagement, and ability to adapt to changes.

Recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and pervasive and ubiquitous computing provide a glimpse into the future of our planet and reveal exciting visions of many smart things: smart cities, smart homes, smart cars, and other smart spaces such as malls, workplaces, hotels, schools, and much more. Driven by a technological revolution offerin...

The accuracy of training-based activity recognition depends on the training procedure and the extent to which the training dataset comprehensively represents the activity and its varieties. Additionally, training incurs substantial cost and effort in the process of collecting training data. To address these limitations, we have developed a training...

Driven by critical and pressing smart city applications, accessing massive numbers of sensors by cloud-hosted services is becoming an emerging and inevitable situation. Naïvely connecting massive numbers of sensors to the cloud raises major scalability and energy challenges. An architecture embodying distributed optimization is needed to manage the...

In spite of the obvious importance of activity recognition technology for human centric applications, stateof-the-art activity recognition technology is not practical enough for real world deployments because of the insufficient accuracy and lack of support for programmability. The authors introduce a generic activity framework to address these iss...

This paper addresses the problem of task scheduling and resource provisioning for workloads submitted on IaaS clouds. It presents a novel algorithm capable of executing workloads with deadline constraints, while efficiently utilizing given budgets. Our simulation study demonstrates a substantial performance gain by the proposal.

This paper introduces a formal description about a new exception detection framework for context-aware systems. This framework aims to encourage application programmers in context-aware systems to write exception description and handling codes by providing a systematic way to do it. In this framework some portions of the formal modeling are applied...

Human activities in smart spaces are traced by sensors and logged, as sensor events, in the form of sensory values, when the sensors detect elements of the activities. The event-driven approach that models the combination of the sensor events is one of the most common human activity simulation approaches. However, this approach is scalewise challen...

This paper is about an optimization method to detect "semantic exceptions" in context aware systems, which means the kind of exceptions considering application semantics. To provide user-friendliness and expressiveness for program developers, in addition to efficiency in detection, intuitive descriptions like "too near()," and "too fast()" are supp...

Spaceify is a novel edge architecture and an ecosystem for smart spaces --- a technology that extends the mobile user view of today's common space services (e.g., WiFi) to a richer portfolio of space-centric, localized services and space-interactive applications.

Context-aware applications should consider the devices and networks engaged in the systems, as well as the complex control and data structures in the applications. This makes it not so straightforward to understand applications and to achieve the quality of applications, without well-defined formal model adequate to the intended goals. In this pape...

Activity recognition is important to many critical human-centric applications. Despite success in activity recognition research, there seems to be a quest for a richer sentience that is more expressive than human activity. In particular, situation has received intense attention lately with a multitude of overlapping definitions motivated by a varie...

Existing telehealth systems do not perform as effectively as would be expected due to their asymmetric focus on sensing and monitoring with little support or assurance to affecting or altering behaviors. Many people, especially the elderly, are resistant to change. Such resistance diminishes the efficacy of telehealth systems. Research and supporti...

Human activity has a life cycle that could be tracked to provide crucial information that increases activity recognition performance. Life cycle tracking also enables powerful and more versatile programming models over the sentience of human activities. This paper introduces a new activity recognition approach that is based on fuzzy logic and activ...

Dramatic and rapid advances in mobile communication and networking technologies have presented challenges and opportunities not previously thinkable. One such development is the emergence of small-scale mobile networks that require support for "whole-network" mobility. This paper describes a first service discovery protocol and framework specifical...

Semantic exceptions mean undesirable contexts with respect to application semantics in context aware systems. Description of such semantic exceptions is based on regular expressions, which entails high complexity to detect exceptions. In this paper we devise a high level language with light-weight exception description features specific to context-...

The first cohort of “baby boomers” are now 65 years or older, presaging a massive wave of aging “boomers” that could degrade health care and elder care over the next quarter-century. Cost-effective, high-impact technologies for aging, disabilities and independent living are urgently needed. In this paper, we present our experience in building “assi...

Semantic exceptions mean undesirable contexts with respect to application semantics in context aware systems. Description of such semantic exceptions is based on regular expressions, which entails high complexity to detect exceptions. In this paper we devise an intermediate language for semantic exceptions of context aware applications. By bridging...

Uncertainty and dynamism surrounding pervasive systems require new and sophisticated approaches to defining, detecting, and handling complex exceptions. This is because the possible erroneous conditions in pervasive systems are more complicated than conditions found in traditional applications. We devised a novel exception description and detection...

Developing and deploying a pervasive space is a multi-disciplined process where knowledge from various domains intersects. How can individual roles efficiently contribute their expertise and smoothly integrate their work to create a pervasive space? How does system design and architecture enable effective decoupling of these roles? Based on our own...

Mobile platform development has lately become a technological war zone with extremely dynamic and fluid movement, especially in the smart phone and tablet market space. This Synthesis lecture is a guide to the latest developments of the key mobile platforms that are shaping the mobile platform industry. The book covers the three currently dominant...

Unlike traditional distributed systems, where the resources/needs of computation and communication dominate the performance equation, sensor-based systems (SBS) raise new metrics and requirements for sensors as well as for computing and communication. This includes sensing latency and energy consumption. In this paper, we present a performance mode...

Adaptive Push-Pull Protocols for P2P-Based Video Streaming

STEPSTONE is a joint industry-university project to create open source technology that would enable the scalable, "friction-free" integration of device-based healthcare solutions into enterprise systems using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Specifically, STEPSTONE defines a first proposal to a Service Oriented Device Architecture (SODA) fram...

Activity recognition (AR) research promises to enable a multitude of human-centric applications in smart environments. Nevertheless, application developers will require assurance mechanisms before they can confidently use and apply AR in real-world pervasive systems. In this work we propose an extension of an existing AR approach in which richer re...

The Internet of Things is a promising implementation approach to the vision of ubiquitous computing. However, "things" in the IoT are not always collaborative, cooperative or predictable. Things may interfere with each other or may be programmed erroneously. They may fail or cause other things to fail. This paper addresses issues of safety in the I...

Activity recognition performance is significantly dependent on the accuracy of the underlying activity model. Therefore, it is essential to examine and develop an activity model that can capture and represent the complex nature of human activities precisely. To address this issue, we introduce a new activity modeling technique, which utilizes simpl...

Technological advances in telehealth systems are primarily focused on sensing and monitoring. However, these systems are limited in that they only rely on sensors and medical devices to obtain vital signs. New research and development are urgently needed to offer more effective and meaningful interactions between patients, medical professionals and...

Activity recognition research relies heavily on test data to verify the modeling technique and the performance of the activity recognition algorithm. But data from real deployments are expensive and time consuming to obtain. And even if cost is not an issue, regulatory limitations on the use of human subjects prohibit the collection of extensive da...

In pervasive systems, exceptions are likely occurrences, and not rare events as is usually the case in less dynamic and more predictable systems. The uncertainty and dynamism surrounding pervasive systems require new and sophisticated approaches to defining, detecting and handling complex exceptions. In this paper, we propose exception definition s...

In principle, the entire world can exploit smart spaces to great societal benefits. In practice, however, there is as yet little fundamental basis or widely accepted programming models for such systems. There are also very few established standards for interoperability and for promoting a much needed ecosystem. In this talk, I will present our ongo...

The goals for developing smart cities are clear and convincing, and the technology is promising and exciting, but achieving these goals requires a massive IT footprinting process.

This paper addresses issues of safety in pervasive spaces. We show how pervasive systems are different from traditional computer systems, and how their cyber-physical nature ties intimately with the users. Errors and conflicts in such space could have detrimental, dangerous or undesired effects on the user, the space, or the devices. There are no s...

We describe a navigation and location determination system for the blind using an RFID tag grid. Each RFID tag is programmed upon installation with spatial coordinates and information describing the surroundings. This allows for a self-describing, localized information system with no dependency on a centralized database or wireless infrastructure f...

This paper addresses issues of safety in pervasive spaces. We show how pervasive systems are different from traditional computer systems, and how their cyber-physical nature ties intimately with the users. Errors and conflicts in such space could have detrimental, dangerous or undesired effects on the user, the space, or the devices. There are no s...

Purpose – A decade and a half after the debut of pervasive computing, a large number of prototypes, applications, and interaction interfaces have emerged. However, there is a lack of consensus about the best approaches to create such systems or how to evaluate them. To address these issues, this paper aims to develop a performance evaluation framew...

In this paper we propose a two-phase methodology for designing datasets that can be used to test and evaluate activity recognition algorithms. The trade offs between time, cost and recognition performance is one challenge. The effectiveness of a dataset, which contrasts the incremental performance gain with the increase in time, efforts, and numbe...

In principle, the entire world can exploit ubiquitous and pervasive systems to great societal benefits. In practice, however, there is as yet no fundamental basis or widely accepted programming models for such systems. There is also no established curriculum for teaching pervasive and sensor-based computing. In this talk, I will present our ongoing...

In this paper we propose a two-phase methodology for designing datasets that can be used to test and evaluate activity recognition algorithms. The trade offs between time, cost and recognition performance is one challenge. The effectiveness of a dataset, which contrasts the incremental performance gain with the increase in time, efforts, and number...

In principle, the entire world can earnestly exploit sensors and pervasive systems to great societal benefits. In practice, however, there are no widely known models or tools for evaluating, simulating or benchmarking their performance. Unlike traditional distributed systems, where the resource/needs of computation and communication dominate the pe...

The generation of useful sensory data from real-world deployments of Ambient Intelligent Environments (AIEs) is challenging because of the high cost, significant groundwork and lack of access to human subjects. This situation can be improved by providing efficient simulators that can produce realistic simulation of the data collection from AIEs. On...

Pervasive computing systems are begging for programming models and methodologies specifically suited to the particular cyber-physical nature of these systems. Reactive (rule-based) programming is an attractive model to use due to its built-in safety features and intuitive application development style. Without careful optimization however, reactive...

Technological advances in telehealth systems are primarily focused on sensing, monitoring and analysis. Intervention, behavior alternation and in general affecting change could use additional research and technology development. Many people, especially the elderly, are resistant to change. Such resistance diminishes the impact factor of telehealth...

This lecture presents a first compendium of established and emerging standards in pervasive computing systems. The lecture explains the role of each of the covered standards and explains the relationship and interplay among them. Hopefully, the lecture will help piece together the various standards into a sensible and clear landscape. The lecture i...

A classical activity theory has for long been established as a de-facto framework on which many human activity models and recognition algorithms are based. We observed several limitations to the classical activity theory, mostly attributed to its inability to discern among seemingly similar concepts and artifacts. We discuss these limitations and i...

Context-awareness is a critical aspect of safe navigation especially for the blind and visually impaired in unfamiliar environments. Existing mobile devices for context-aware navigation fall short in many cases due to their dependence on specific infrastructure requirements as well as having limited access to resources that could provide a wealth o...

In principle, activity recognition can be exploited to great societal benefits, especially in real-life, human centric applications such as elder care and healthcare. This article focused on recognizing simple human activities. Recognizing complex activities remains a challenging and active area of research and the nature of human activities poses...

The Industry Perspective column will address many of the hot issues that cross industry-academia boundaries and interests.

In this paper, design of framework architecture of pervasive computing system providing seamless inter space interactions between private and public smart spaces is presented. The seamless inter space interaction issues are related to establishing user's service environment by allocating relevant resources in a new location where there are no prior...

Advancements in telehealth technologies offer health care providers and medical practitioners ever expanding solutions to improve the quality and timeliness of care. As the use of technology increases, corresponding attention needs to be given to bringing care providers closer to their patients. Extended networks of family, friends and healthcare p...

In this piece we take a brief peek at the possible world of robotic companions. In such a world, robots are adopted as butlers in our homes, as baby watchers, as friends and in general as life companions. For example, Helen lives with a robotic companion named Schpuffy. In the morning, Schpuffy checks Helen's schedule and finds out she has an appoi...

A smart home environment based on pervasive networked-sensors enables us to measure and analyze various vital signals related to personal health care. For example, the vital signals on footstep, gait pattern, and posture can be used for assessing the health state among the elderly and disabled people. In this manuscript, we use footstep vibration s...

The domain of sensors is still a wild jungle in which nothing is quite standardized. To fix this, we need a device standard to characterize physical and electrical features and constraints, describe necessary data processing and message parsing procedures, and, more importantly, enable automatic device integration into the world of computers we alr...

In this paper, we describe the Gator Tech Smart House (GTSH), an assistive environment for independence and wellbeing, with focus on the elderly population. We give a quick overview of the GTSH and its services before presenting our experience and some of the lessons we learnt in this real world deployment project. We present the Atlas architecture...

We introduce new type of networked robot, Ubiquitous Robotic Companion (URC), embedded with ATLAS Service-oriented architecture for enhancing the space sensing capability. URC is a network-based robotic system developed by ETRI. For years of experience in deploying service with ATLAS sensor platform for elder and people with special needs in smart...

Wireless hotspots and broadband coverage are permeating the globe, giving rise to interesting spontaneous networking scenarios. The discovery and delivery of the most relevant and suitable services in a spontaneous network is a problem of great importance. In this paper we present an architecture that can support context-aware service discovery and...

In this paper, we describe how we enhance the space sensing capabilities of the Ubiquitous Robotic Companion (URC) developed by ETRI Korea, by utilizing the plug-and-play service-oriented architecture provided by University of Florida’s Atlas Platform. Based on our experience in deploying services using the Atlas Platform in smart houses, for the e...

Gainesville, Florida, 10 March 2012. Today, the Mobile Location-Based Services Summit hosted a panel entitled “What Was Wrong with First-Generation Location-Based Services?” The panel chair, Sumi Helal of the University of Florida, invited two world-class experts in LBS history and technology to discuss the topic: Paolo Bellavista of the University...

We believe that smart spaces, offering pervasive services, will proliferate. However, at present, those islands of smart spaces should be joined seamlessly with each other. As users move about, they will have to roam from one autonomous smart space to another. When they move into the new island of smart space, they should setup their devices and se...

Introduction A New vision of Telecare Scenarios Characteristics Conclusion References

The Population The Demographics Assistive Technologies (AT) Conclusion References

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) promises an elegant model that can easily handle dynamic and heterogeneous environments such as pervasive computing systems. However, in reality, frequent failures of resource-poor and low-cost sensors greatly diminish the guarantees on reliability and availability offered and expected by SOA. To provide a framew...