The Mobile-Stationary Divide in Ubiquitous Computing Environments: Lessons from the Transport Industry

The emergence of ubiquitous computing offers new possibilities and opportunities for organizations attempting to improve their productivity and effectiveness. in particular, the promises of ubiquitous computing are attractive to organizations such as transport firms, in which coordination of diverse sets of mobile units is central to organizational performance. This article analyzes the use of ubiquitous transport systems in Swedish road haulage firms and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the early adopters. It pays specific attention to the mobile-stationary divide; that is, the set of challenges associated with integration of mobile and stationary people and systems into a seamless computing environment.     

Real-World Ubicomp Deployments: Lessons Learned

Among the many branches of computer science, ubiquitous computing enjoys an unusually distinguished history of creating and deploying prototypes. Why is this? A tempting answer is that many ubicomp researchers and practitioners have backgrounds in subjects such as HCI and systems--areas with a strong focus on learning from deploying working prototypes. However, a more compelling answer might be that ubicomp, unlike almost every other subspecialty with the exception of HCI, is about embedding computing into existing human systems. This introduction is part of a special issue on Real-World Deployments.     

Designing Ubiquitous Computing Games – A Report from a Workshop Exploring Ubiquitous Computing Entertainment

We report from a Research Atelier that explored how ubiquitous computing could be applied to fun and entertainment. The Atelier lasted for five days, starting with two days of scenario development and brainstorming activities. This led to three fairly concrete – though very different – game ideas. The background and motivation for the Atelier is described, as well as the method used and the games developed. Correspondence to: Mr S. Bjork, PLAY Studio, Interactive Institute, Box 620, SE 40530 Goteborg, Sweden.     

普适环境中上下文感知的带演算的Bigraphs描述

针对普适环境中上下文感知系统的形式化建模问题,讨论了Bigraphs理论的扩展模型———柏拉图图形模型在此问题中的适用性及不足。在此基础上,利用带演算的Bigraphs反应系统对上下文感知系统进行描述,并给出了与柏拉图图形模型之间的比较。     

Ubiquitous Computing in the Biology Laboratory

Our objective is to eliminate the digital divide that persists between the physical and information spaces of wet-lab based enterprises by embedding computational resources into the shared laboratory environment. Our first challenge is to enable individual lab workers to contribute to a fine-grained formal representation of ongoing lab activities - to build the database by doing the work, without having to stop and write things down in a notebook or to enter information into a computer. By eliminating the redundancy of doing the work and then recording it, accuracy and completeness will be improved. And, by capturing information at a finer detail than is practical for manual entry systems, unanticipated applications can be supported.     

OpenCOPI: middleware integration for Ubiquitous Computing

In this paper, we present OpenCOPI (Open COntext Platform Integration), a Service-Oriented Architecture-based middleware platform that supports the integration of services provided by distinct sources, ranging from services offered by simple systems to more complex services provided by context-provision middleware. OpenCOPI offers selection and composition mechanisms to, respectively, select and compose services provided by different sources, considering applications of both Quality of Service and Quality of Context requirements. It also offers an adaptation mechanism that enables to adapt the application execution due to service failures, service quality fluctuation and user mobility. OpenCOPI allows the definition of applications in a higher abstraction level by the specification of a semantic workflow that contains abstract activities. This paper illustrates the use of OpenCOPI in an application from the Gas & Oil Industry and it also shows the evaluation of the main mechanisms of OpenCOPI: the service selection, composition, adaptation and workflow execution.     

Ubiquitous Computing: Are We There Yet?

The widespread deployment of technologies like mobile phones continues to drive new applications and to open research opportunities.     

Smart Playing Cards: A Ubiquitous Computing Game

We present the ‘Smart Playing Cards’ application, a ubiquitous computing game that augments a classical card game with information technological functionality by attaching RFID tags to the cards. We also mention requirements that such an application makes on a supporting software infrastructure for ubiquitous computing. Correspondence to: Nr K. R?mer or Ms S. Domnitcheva, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Email: roemer@inf.ethz.ch, or domnitch@ inf.ethz.ch     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Rapid Prototyping for Ubiquitous Computing

This issue's articles represent some of the best recent advances in applying rapid prototyping to ubiquitous systems development.     

UbiCloud:一种面向普适终端的云计算系统

针对低性能终端的复杂计算需求,设计了面向普适终端的云计算系统UbiCloud。通过对云中计算资源的描 述、发现、访问、评价等问题进行研究,在前端普适终端与后端云之间构建虚拟计算环境,实现了一个异构终端的云计 算服务发布及访问平台。在对服务质量的评价上结合AHP算法给出了一个有效的服务评价模型,在建立判断矩阵 的过程中提出了两种一致性矩阵构建方法。最后对系统进行了性能测试,结果表明系统在应用响应时间等指标方面 可以达到设计目的。     

UbiCloud:一种面向普适终端的云计算系统

针对低性能终端的复杂计算需求,设计了面向普适终端的云计算系统UbiCloud.通过对云中计算资源的描述、发现、访问、评价等问题进行研究,在前端普适终端与后端云之间构建虚拟计算环境,实现了一个异构终端的云计算服务发布及访问平台.在对服务质量的评价上结合AHP算法给出了一个有效的服务评价模型,在建立判断矩阵的过程中提出了两种一致性矩阵构建方法.最后对系统进行了性能测试,结果表明系统在应用响应时间等指标方面可以达到设计目的.     

Universal Systems Language: Lessons Learned from Apollo

Based on a preventive, development-before-the-fact philosophy that does not allow errors in the first place, the Universal Systems Language has evolved over several decades, offering system engineers and software developers a language they can use to solve problems previously considered next to impossible to solve with traditional approaches.     

WMCSA 2004: 10 Years of Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing

The Sixth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications took place in December 2004 in England’s Lake District. WMCSA 2004 continued the trend of a high-quality interactive workshop focused on mobile and ubiquitous applications, systems, and environments, as well as their underlying state-of-the-art technologies.     

TRIP: A Low-Cost Vision-Based Location System for Ubiquitous Computing

Sentient Computing provides computers with perception so that they can react and provide assistance to user activities. Physical spaces are made sentient when they are wired with networks of sensors capturing context data, which is communicated to computing devices spread through the environment. These devices interpret the information provided and react by performing the actions expected by the user. Among the types of context information provided by sensors, location has proven to be especially useful. Since location is an important context that changes whenever the user moves, a reliable location-tracking system is critical to many sentient applications. However, the sensor technologies used in indoor location tracking are expensive and complex to deploy, configure and maintain. These factors have prevented a wider adoption of Sentient Computing in our living and working spaces. This paper presents TRIP, a low-cost and easily deployable vision-based sensor technology addressing these issues. TRIP employs off-the-shelf hardware (low-cost CCD cameras and PCs) and printable 2-D circular markers for entity identification and location. The usability of TRIP is illustrated through the implementation of several sentient applications.     

Computing for Human Experience: Semantics-Empowered Sensors, Services, and Social Computing on the Ubiquitous Web

Computing for human experience will employ a suite of technologies to nondestructively and unobtrusively complement and enrich normal human activities, with minimal explicit concern or effort on the humans' part.