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Context-Aware Computing
... This approach includes the entire environment–including each single physical object–and associates it with human interaction. [1], [4] The option of extended and more intuitive interaction is expected to result in enhanced efficiency, increased creativity and greater personal well-being. Ambient intelligence is the vision of a technology that will become invisibly embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and context-sensitive, and autonomous. ...
Ambient intelligence is a promising emerging discipline which brings intelligence to our everyday environments and makes those environments sensitive to us. Ambient intelligence (AmI) research builds upon advances in sensors and sensor networks, pervasive computing, and artificial intelligence. AmI research has strengthened and stretched in recent years since its contributing fields have experienced tremendous growth. AmI research is growing and the resulting technologies augur well to transform daily human life by making people's surroundings flexible and adaptive. This present paper reviews the technologies that comprise ambient intelligence and of the applications that are dramatically affected by it and making it " intelligent ". A few application case studies have been discussed and innovative suggestions for the future proposed.
... rs. Aarts (2004) states that the interaction of people with electronic devices will change as context awareness, natural interfaces and ubiquitous availability of information come to fruition. It will be necessary to replace wellknown interfaces, like remote control and menu-driven search and control with novel, more intuitive and natural concepts. Abowd et al. (2002a) claims that ubicomp should provide many single activity interactions that together promote a unified and continuous interaction between humans and computational services. The interaction should be akin to our interaction with the rich physical world of people, places and objects in our everyday lives. Fitzmaurice et al. have studied and ...
Interest in ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) has increased dramatically during the past ten years. This trend is driven partly by the availability of enabling technologies and partly by the increased understanding that computers will eventually be everywhere and their use will change accordingly. This thesis present's work with two important subtopics of ubiquitous computing: context awareness and intelligent user interfaces. Methods are developed that firstly will make it easier to increase context awareness especially with personal technology devices and secondly enable the implementation of intelligent user interfaces as part of a smart environment. Context awareness is studied together with hand-held devices. The use of personal technology devices is analysed in order to find out possibilities for obtaining and exploiting context awareness. A sensor-box has been developed that is unobtrusively integrated into a hand-held device the user is carrying continuously with them. In this case context awareness is self-supportive, operating without the support of the surrounding infrastructure. Experiments with this device concentrate on improving the context awareness of a mobile phone used in everyday settings. Intelligent user interfaces are studied as a part of smart environments. By starting from smart environment scenarios a stack-based approach is used for defining more and more detailed requirements for each subsequent level. Finally a general-purpose platform, the SoapBox, that integrates sensors with wireless communications and computing in a small and versatile module that is easy to use in different designs and in various application domains has been defined, designed and implemented. The design examples consist of: a maze, dice, gesture control and responsive displays. Each of these highlights a different characteristic of user interfaces and smart environments and their role in ubiquitous computing. This study shows that it is possible to develop ubiquitous computing applications in a controlled and consistent manner. Methods are created that make it possible to achieve the ubiquitous computing vision with technical implementations. With personal technology devices interaction diagrams are used in revealing the possibilities for obtaining and exploiting context awareness. With smart environments a stack-based approach is used in defining the technology that enables intelligent user interfaces. In both cases the method leads to technical requirements that makes it possible to implement ubiquitous computing applications.
... We identified a great potential for applications exploiting the concepts of 1) Context Awareness and 2) Mobile Ad-hoc Communication. The importance of these issues has been confirmed for instance by the fact that a whole issue of the Pervasive Computing Journal [134] has been dedicated to the issue of context-aware computing. Moreover, an article in that issue showed that pervasive computing applications in ad-hoc network environments usually exhibit the two above-mentioned characteristics, namely context sensitivity and ad-hoc communication [172]. ...
This doctoral thesis takes a critical view on the increasing technology penetration of our everyday life. Often, it is not clear what these technologies are good for and what value they bring to our life. Especially in Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) ― a young research discipline investigating the ubiquity of computing technology in our everyday life ― it is criticized that research and development is too technology-oriented. This work demonstrates that a redefinition of Requirements Engineering by strengthening its close relationship to Product Management and the combination of these disciplines with UbiComp research builds the foundation to create innovations with UbiComp.
... Context awareness, which has been identified as one of the key challenges for the next decade, refers to the capability of an application or a service being aware of its physical environment or situation (i.e., context) and responding proactively and intelligently based on such awareness [1] [4] [5]. With recent developments in computer hardware , software, networking, and sensor technologies, context awareness becomes one of the most important trends in computing today that holds the potential to make our daily lives more productive, convenient, and enjoyable. ...
Context-aware Web services are currently emerging as an important technology for building innovative context- aware applications. Unfortunately, context-aware Web ser - vices are still difficult to build. This paper describes Con- textServ, a platform for rapid development of context-aware Web services. ContextServ adopts model-driven develop- ment where context-aware Web services are specified us- ing ContextUML, a UML based modeling language. The platform also offers a set of automated tools for generating and deploying executable implementations of context-awar e Web services. This paper presents the motivation, system design, implementation, and usage of ContextServ.
... Finally, the new workflow model for e-participation will require integrating other technologies with the workflow engine, which provides the basic routing and role resolution functionality to realise the added features in the model. For example, context-aware computing (Abowd et al., 2002) will enable policy making processes to be executed in the middle of citizens' everyday lives. The technology provides a WfMS engine with an opportunity to identify the best time to ensure that citizens are notified with any relevant policy issues in the most relevant context. ...
Purpose
This paper aims to gauge the feasibility of workflow technology as a potential solution to facilitating citizen participation in policy‐making processes. The gaps in and future direction of a current workflow models to be used to automate policy‐making processes are to be discussed.
Design/methodology/approach
A thorough review on the principles and philosophies of policy‐making processes and process models is performed to extract the core constructs of the processes. This follows critical analysis of existing workflow models to identify gaps of the models to be used to support policy‐making processes. An e‐participation perspective is also taken to identify additional modelling constructs that are required when a large number of citizens is involved in a workflow task for opinion gathering.
Findings
While workflow technology has been adopted in the public sector, the use of the technology is mostly limited to supporting administrative business processes, leaving the potential to automate policy‐making processes. There are some studies that take a life‐cycle approach for policy making and they can be the starting‐point of applying workflow technology to policy‐making process automation. The application of workflow technology to policy‐making processes is expected to facilitate the participation of citizens in these processes through the automatic delivery of relevant policy issues into citizens' lives. A new type of workflow model is required to reflect factors specific to the public sector, including rules for role resolution, considering large‐scale citizen participation and modelling constructs to penetrate into citizens' everyday lives for proactive stimulation for e‐participation.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis is based on a literature review, and empirical data collection could complement the analysis results of the paper. This is included in the future research agenda.
Practical implications
The findings provide policy makers with a stimulus for adopting workflow technology in the public sector. Gap analysis and future directions of a workflow model for policy‐making processes are expected to be informative for any practitioners who are intending to develop workflow management systems in the public sector.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the first efforts to gauge the potential of using workflow technology from an e‐participation perspective to engage a wide spectrum of stakeholders, including citizens, in policy‐making processes.
... Decoding this " user context " is a key to improving usability by decreasing the need for user input and reducing perceived complexity [Cheverst et al., 2001]. These developments are, together with ubiquitous long-range and short-range communication capabilities, expected to offer a plethora of new services [Chen, 2000; Abowd, 2002; Baldauf & Dustdar, 2004]. Most applications on currently dominating computing platforms (PCs) have very little understanding of what the users are doing. ...
Smart phones, which combine, e.g., communication and mobile multimedia features, store increasing amount of media content and so they face content management challenges similar to what desktop computers are experiencing. Content management refers to actions performed on content (e.g., capture image, or edit text) although the similar management action may vary depending on content type (e.g., editing audio involves different operations than editing an image). A key enabler for content management is metadata, which describes content with textual attribute–value pairs, and aids the user in, e.g., automatic grouping, sorting, searching, and organizing. Research on mobile personal content management is on its infancy and therefore the dissertation focuses on common enablers which are required for further management of multimedia in smart phones. As a result, we claim that information about the context of use could enrich metadata and improve ease-of-use with the system, e.g., to support later information retrieval and visualizing content. Another prerequisite for enabling the personal content management is to locate the content either by browsing or searching. Finally, after content has been located, it must be visualized to begin the actual content management and defining how to display the content is essential as the user can view it only briefly while moving.
... Context-awareness takes an important role in pervasive computing [1]. As several computers are embedded in the user's surrounding, context-awareness is the key to enable computational system operating autonomously and adaptively without much concern from users. ...
Uncertainty always exists as an unavoidable factor in any pervasive context-aware applications. This is mostly caused by the imperfectness and incompleteness of data. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to model the uncertain context. Our context model is a combination of two modeling methods: probabilistic models for capturing the uncertain information and ontology for facilitating knowledge reuse and sharing. Such combination of probabilistic models and ontology facilitates the sharing and reuse over similar domains of not only the logical knowledge but also the uncertain knowledge. Besides, we also support the uncertain reasoning in context-aware applications in a flexible and adaptive manner.
Uncertainty of result of context awareness always exists in any context-awareness computing. This falling-off in accuracy of context awareness result is mostly caused by the imperfectness and incompleteness of sensed data, because of this reasons, we must improve the accuracy of context awareness. In this article, we propose a novel approach to model the uncertain context by using ontology and context reasoning method based on Bayesian Network. Our context aware processing is divided into two parts: context modeling and context reasoning. The context modeling is based on ontology for facilitating knowledge reuse and sharing. The ontology facilitates the share and reuse of information over similar domains of not only the logical knowledge but also the uncertain knowledge. Also the ontology can be used to structure learning for Bayesian network. The context reasoning is based on Bayesian Network for probabilistic inference to solve the uncertain reasoning in context-aware processing problem in a flexible and adaptive situation.
This paper analyzes the features of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification ) technique with elevator as controlled object. After type selection of RFID system, the whole structural model of elevator intelligent control system could be constructed. The elevator intelligent control system designed by this model solves the problems of intelligent lock, floor control, base station set and the communication jamming between interrogator and tag, and it is widely used in the intelligent buildings. Centering on the users, this system combines the advanced concept of pervasive computing to realize the intelligent control of elevator. Besides, it upgrades the safety management level of office buildings, reduces the spinning times of the elevator and realizes the goal of intelligence, safety and energy conservation.
Context awareness is a necessary feature for mobile collocated collaborative learning. In this paper we describe how requirements
for context-aware cooperative learning activities are derived from the jigsaw technique augmented with the use of mobile devices,
applications to support the activities of groups, and tools to provide context-awareness to detect group formation. The emergence
of groups is detected based on the location of the students within the classroom, but this information has to be careful filtered
to evaluate the degree of uncertainty and protect from erroneous estimations. A three-phase strategy to manage uncertainty
by identifying possible sources of uncertainty, representing uncertain information, and determining how to proceed under the
presence of uncertainty is used for this propose. These requirements are validated and confirmed in experiments with students
working together in the classroom, measuring neutral or positive effects on learning and the usefulness of introducing mobile
devices, group support applications, and context awareness. The ratio of unwanted interruptions to users made by the system
is used to evaluate the utility of the system. Results show that by managing uncertainty, location estimation becomes more
reliable, thus increasing the usefulness of the learning application.
Ubiquitous Computing" bezeichnet eine Zukunftsvision: Mit Mikroelek- tronik angereicherte Gegenstande sollen so allt¨ aglich werden, dass die enthaltenen Rechner als solche nicht mehr wahrgenommen werden. Damit sich ein ubiquit¨ ares System in hohem Maße auf den Menschen einstellen kann, ben¨ otigt es Information ¨ uber seine Umgebung. Diese Information wird als Kontext bezeichnet und muss auch in kleinen, tragbaren Ger¨ aten darstellbar und zugreifbar sein. Diese Arbeit stellt eine Methode vor, wie Kontextinformation f¨ ur ubiquitare Systeme mit XML dargestellt und manipuliert werden kann.
In this paper, we explore an architecture, called K-Trek, that enables mobile users to travel across knowledge distributed over a large geographical area (ranging from large public buildings to a national park). Our aim is providing, dis- tributing, and enriching the environment with location-sensitive information for use by agents on board of mobile and static devices. Local interactions among K- Trek devices and the distribution of information in the larger environment adopt some typical peer-to-peer patterns and techniques. We introduce the architecture, discuss some of its potential knowledge management applications, and present a few experimental results obtained with simulation.
Uncertainty always exists as an unavoidable factor when developing context-aware applications for pervasive computing environments. In this paper, we propose a unified context model to support representation and reasoning about uncertain context. Our unified context model extends the existing, de-facto ontology-based context models with probabilistic models to support probabilistic reasoning. Especially, our context model can be easily integrated with existing ontology-based context-aware systems. Given the unified context model, unified context ontology can be built and used as frameworks in developing context aware applications. Besides, our recipe of supporting the probabilistic reasoning is flexible and adaptive to the highly variable features of pervasive computing environments.
Context awareness is emphasized in order to provide automatic services in smart home. This paper uses case based reasoning as the reasoning method which solves the problem "in the first phase, we don't know exactly about the key processes and their interdependencies in smart home's context". The context's contents in smart home are described in this paper. Also, case representation, case storage and similarity calculation are discussed in smart home's context awareness. We propose a framework of context aware based on CBR, and discuss the case adaptation in detail.
Recent advances in both portable devices and wireless networks make mobile computing a reality. Embedded and invisible computing resources are paving the way to a new paradigm known as pervasive computing. More attention needs to be paid to the development of intelligent services in such a highly dynamic environment. We aim to present a conceptual model for context awareness based service adaptation methodology. We describe context in context space and represent it with 4-tuple. We then discuss context awareness in terms of both context organization and utilization. Finally, we introduce the notion of adaptation and present the framework for context-aware adaptive services.
The Essex intelligent dormitory, iDorm, uses embedded agents to create an ambient-intelligence environment. In a five-and-a-half-day experiment, a user occupied the iDorm, testing its ability to learn user behavior and adapt to user needs. The embedded agent discreetly controls the iDorm according to user preferences. Our work focuses on developing learning and adaptation techniques for embedded agents. We seek to provide online, lifelong, personalized learning of anticipatory adaptive control to realize the ambient-intelligence vision in ubiquitous-computing environments. We developed the Essex intelligent dormitory, or iDorm, as a test bed for this work and an exemplar of this approach.
Ph.D. Gregory D. Abowd