Technologies for value creation: an exploration of remote diagnostics systems in the manufacturing industry

Abstract.  With firms increasingly relying on ubiquitous computing to implement major business initiatives, it is becoming ever more necessary to understand the technological aspects of business developments. This paper analyzes the use of remote diagnostics systems in the manufacturing industry and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the early adopters. It pays specific attention to the impact on business aspects such as the value creation process consisting of relationships, roles, and architecture and the value proposal consisting of a business offer and customer value. The study shows how ubiquitous computing allows manufacturers to become remote service providers while customers can either become co-creators of value or passive receivers of created value. Ubiquitous computing also creates possibilities for the manufacturing industry to design new kinds of business offers based on remote presence. Studying remote diagnostics systems shows that ubiquitous computing creates value when deployed in products, and not just in relation to individuals. Moreover, the design of the value-creation process should not be limited to the single supplier or customer organization, as ubiquitous computing applications take no notice of organizational boundaries.     

Ubiquitous recommender systems

Ubiquitous recommender systems combine characteristics from ubiquitous systems and recommender systems in order to provide personalized recommendations to users in ubiquitous environments. Although not a new research area, ubiquitous recommender systems research has not yet been reviewed and classified in terms of ubiquitous research and recommender systems research, in order to deeply comprehend its nature, characteristics, relevant issues and challenges. It is our belief that ubiquitous recommenders can nowadays take advantage of the progress mobile phone technology has made in identifying items around, as well as utilize the faster wireless connections and the endless capabilities of modern mobile devices in order to provide users with more personalized and context-aware recommendations on location to aid them with their task at hand. This work focuses on ubiquitous recommender systems, while a brief analysis of the two fundamental areas from which they emerged, ubiquitous computing and recommender systems research is also conducted. Related work is provided, followed by a classification schema and a discussion about the correlation of ubiquitous recommenders with classic ubiquitous systems and recommender systems: similarities inevitably exist, however their fundamental differences are crucial. The paper concludes by proposing UbiCARS: a new class of ubiquitous recommender systems that will combine characteristics from ubiquitous systems and context-aware recommender systems in order to utilize multidimensional context modeling techniques not previously met in ubiquitous recommender systems.     

移动政务推动公共管理与服务创新

移动政务在公共管理中的应用,不仅为解决“信息不对称”问题、实现普遍服务另辟新径,还提供了对移动性的支持,推动着公共服务提供范式的转变及公共管理模式的创新。本文通过对国内外公共管理中部分移动政务应用案例的介绍,为政府工作者提供启发和借鉴;并就移动技术在北京城市管理中的应用及其引发的公共管理与服务创新进行了分析,对移动政务项目的实施问题进行了研究。各政府部门应高度重视以移动技术为代表的普适计算技术给公共管理与服务带来的机遇和挑战。     

Convergence agent model for developing u-healthcare systems

Ubiquitous networking, the interlinking of computers, consumer electronics, automobiles, home appliances, medical equipment, transportation systems, animals and plants through an overlapping of electronic spaces and physical spaces, is expected to provide an environment that enhances our lives through improved convenience, efficiency and safety in all areas.Today’s healthcare industry emphasizes safety, efficiency, patient-oriented approach, timeliness and balance. u-healthcare makes it possible to safely deliver appropriate services from any location at any time. To explain the emergence of u-healthcare, one must invoke, first of all, progress in IT and medical technology, and then the desire and willingness on the part of health care institutions to adopt the new service concept and increased health care demand. Digitalization of information, introduction of broadband communication and leaps made in healthcare technology in recent years have provided the technological capacity necessary for the achievement of u-healthcare.Based on recently reached theoretical results, integrating u-healthcare environments in virtual organizations, we proposed a methodology for the design and implementation of u-healthcare, linking the distributed mobile agents with medical entities into a convergence and collaborative environment. Despite the challenges in implementing and deploying u-healthcare, the advantages of ubiquitous healthcare are enabled by our smart model for the soft computing endowed ubiquitous. The strength of our approach is that it relates to u-healthcare a system which consists of its dual character emerging from the synergetic interaction between ubiquitous computing techniques and the mobile devices in convergence manner. We have developed a set of initial healthcare agent services on the mobile collaboration framework. We evaluate the functionality and effectiveness of our convergence mobile agent, whether the platform can manage services based on the model and whether the results of u-healthcare services discovery could satisfy user’s requirements with example cases.     

Advanced mobile and wearable systems

The recent spectacular progress in the microelectronic, information, communication, material and sensor technologies created a big stimulus towards development of smart communicating cyber-physical systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT). CPS and IoT are undergoing an explosive growth to a large degree related to advanced mobile systems like smart automotive and avionic systems, mobile robots and wearable devices. The huge and rapidly developing markets of sophisticated mobile cyber-physical systems represent great opportunities, but these opportunities come with a price of unusual system complexity, as well as, stringent and difficult to satisfy requirements of many modern applications. Specifically, smart cars and various wearable systems to a growing degree involve big instant data from multiple complex sensors or other systems, and are required to provide continuous autonomous service in a long time. In consequence, they demand a guaranteed (ultra-)high performance and/or (ultra-)low energy consumption, while requiring a high reliability, safety and security. To adequately address these demands, sophisticated embedded computing and embedded design technologies are needed. After an introduction to modern mobile systems, this paper discusses the huge heterogeneous area of these systems, and considers serious issues and challenges in their design. Subsequently, it discusses the embedded computing and design technologies needed to adequately address the issues and overcome the challenges in order to satisfy the stringent requirements of the modern mobile systems.     

Smart devices and spaces for pervasive computing

Applications and services for pervasive computing have been dramatically grown and have contributed extensively to our daily experiences in recent years. Smart systems, devices, and spaces are proactive for ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Smart information technology (IT) is also an outcome of the state of the art and novel mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies that include highly capable handheld device, pervasive and personal device, etc. This special issue will be a trigger for further related research and technology improvements in pervasive and ubiquitous computing using smart devices and services. This special issue called for original papers describing the latest developments, trends, and solutions of smart devices and spaces for pervasive computing including real-time operating systems (OS), tiny OS and middleware supports, mobile system performance, trustworthy Internet and communications, agents and mobile and pervasive services, among others. In particular, this special issue focuses on a remote control and media-sharing system, flash storage-based smart system, heterogeneous mobile OS, and prediction and auto-execution system for pervasive computing.     

An efficient pricing strategy of sensing tasks for crowdphotographing

The Journal of Supercomputing - The advancement of mobile Internet and ubiquitous computing is facilitating various crowdsourcing services in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and...     

Enabling pervasive computing with smart phones

Mobile telephony's technical and market success in Europe attracted researchers' interest in mobile systems. Some researchers began investigating appropriate architectures for providing information services to cellular mobile telephony users, and the quest for the "killer" third-generation (3G) mobile telephony application dominated the EU Information Society Technology research program. Dozens of projects launched to pursue this aim, and we were intimately involved in several of them. We report here on lessons learned during our involvement in this research and suggest how pervasive computing might benefit from this experience. Although some business and practical challenges exist, mobile phones could serve as information service end points, control devices for ubiquitous systems, network hubs for personal and body area networks, and ID tokens.     

Smart health: Big data enabled health paradigm within smart cities

In the era of “big data”, recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT) are facilitating organizations to innovate and grow. These technological developments and wide adaptation of ubiquitous computing enable numerous opportunities for government and companies to reconsider healthcare prospects. Therefore, big data and smart healthcare systems are independently attracting extensive attention from both academia and industry. The combination of both big data and smart systems can expedite the prospects of the healthcare industry. However, a thorough study of big data and smart systems together in the healthcare context is still absent from the existing literature. The key contributions of this article include an organized evaluation of various big data and smart system technologies and a critical analysis of the state-of-the-art advanced healthcare systems. We describe the three-dimensional structure of a paradigm shift. We also extract three broad technical branches (3T) contributing to the promotion of healthcare systems. More specifically, we propose a big data enabled smart healthcare system framework (BSHSF) that offers theoretical representations of an intra and inter organizational business model in the healthcare context. We also mention some examples reported in the literature, and then we contribute to pinpointing the potential opportunities and challenges of applying BSHSF to healthcare business environments. We also make five recommendations for effectively applying `BSHSF to the healthcare industry. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first in-depth study about state-of-the-art big data and smart healthcare systems in parallel. The managerial implication of this article is that organizations can use the findings of our critical analysis to reinforce their strategic arrangement of smart systems and big data in the healthcare context, and hence better leverage them for sustainable organizational invention.     

Beyond prototypes: challenges in deploying ubiquitous systems

The authors discuss the problems in creating the next generation of widely deployed ubiquitous computing systems and articulate current technical and sociological challenges to inspire researchers in the field. They discuss significant research challenges that have yet to be addressed. Central to documenting these challenges is recognizing the context within which we are operating, so they first describe the technical and social changes of the 1990s that directly affected ubiquitous computing then.     

Telehealth and ubiquitous computing for bandwidth-constrained rural and remote areas

The information and communication technology infrastructure available in rural and remote areas may often not have the bandwidth to support all types of telehealth applications; therefore, for example, some traditionally envisaged videoconferencing-based telehealth applications may not be able to be used or not used in their anticipated form at this time. While the level of broadband services available may impose limitations on these types of telehealth applications, in this review article, we identify applications that allow the maximizing of telehealth benefits in the presence of low-bandwidth connectivity and have potential benefits well-matched to rural and remote area healthcare challenges. In particular, we include consideration of how ubiquitous computing might potentially bring non-traditional approaches to telehealth that can also come into usage more immediately in bandwidth-constrained rural and regional areas. In this article, we review the benefits of ubiquitous computing for rural and remote telehealth including social media-based preventative, peer support and public health communication, mobile phone platforms for the detection and notification of emergencies, wearable and ambient biosensors, the utilization of personal health records including in conjunction with mobile and sensor platforms, chronic condition care and management information systems, and mobile device–enabled video consultation.     

普适环境下的信任管理及其在移动服务中的应用

作为一种新的计算模式,普适计算在逐渐进入我们生活的同时,普适计算下的安全也引起了越来越多的关注.首先分析了现有信任管理存在的缺陷,接着针对普适计算的特点分析了普适环境下的信任管理,最后结合普适环境下的一个典型应用--移动服务,提出了一种基于信任管理的移动安全方案.     

Disseminating data with time constraint based on multichannel over ubiquitous computing environments

Time-constrained service plays an important role in ubiquitous services. However, the resource constraints of ubiquitous computing systems make it difficult to satisfy timing requirements of supported strategies. In this study, we study scheduling strategies for mobile data program with timing constraints in the form of deadlines. Unlike previously proposed scheduling algorithms for mobile systems which aim to minimize the mean access time, our goal is to identify scheduling algorithms for ubiquitous systems that ensure requests meet their deadlines. We present a study of the performance of traditional real-time strategies, and demonstrate that traditional real-time algorithms do not always perform the best in a mobile environment. We propose an efficient scheduling algorithm, called scheduling priority of mobile data with time constraint(SPMT), which is designed for timely delivery of data to mobile clients. The experimental results show that our approach outperforms other approaches over performance criteria.     

Paratyping: A Contextualized Method of Inquiry for Understanding Perceptions of Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Technologies

In this article, we describe the origins, use, and efficacy of a contextualized method for evaluating mobile and ubiquitous computing systems. This technique, which we called paratyping, is based on experience prototyping and event-contingent experience sampling and allows researchers to survey people in real-life situations without the need for costly and sometimes untenable deployment evaluations. We used this tool to probe the perceptions of the conversation partners of users of the Personal Audio Loop, a memory aid with the potential for substantial privacy implications. Based on that experience, we refined and adapted the approach to evaluate SenseCam, a wearable, automatic picture-taking device, across multiple geographic locations. We describe the benefits, challenges, and methodological considerations that emerged during our use of the paratyping method across these two studies. We describe how this method blends some of the benefits of survey-based research with more contextualized methods, focusing on trustworthiness of the method in terms of generating scientific knowledge. In particular, this method is a good fit for studying certain classes of mobile and ubiquitous computing applications but can be applied to many types of applications.     

Analytical, computational and conceptual modeling in service science and systems

While the service economy is growing very fast, more organizations are reorienting their processes, tools, and products towards service-oriented applications. This service-oriented paradigm is creating new challenges and opportunities for organizations. In this article, we discuss service science and systems, and provide a conceptual view of the service ecosystem in the context of analytical, computational and conceptual modeling. As service scientists, our ultimate goal should be to develop and provide a science-based approach to the dynamic, scalable, secure, and knowledge-driven design and development of service ecosystems, while in the process fostering the development of academic researchers and industry professionals to work in diverse, interdisciplinary teams for engineering adaptable solutions to distributed computing problems.     

Recent Advances in Mobile Grid and Cloud Computing

Grid and cloud computing systems have been extensively used to solve large and complex problems in science and engineering fields. These systems include powerful computing resources that are connected through high-speed networks. Due to the recent advances in mobile computing and networking technologies, it has become feasible to integrate various mobile devices, such as robots, aerial vehicles, sensors, and smart phones, with grid and cloud computing systems. This integration enables the design and development of the next generation of applications by sharing of resources in mobile environments and introduces several challenges due to a dynamic and unpredictable network. This paper discusses applications, research challenges involved in the design and development of mobile grid and cloud computing systems, and recent advances in the field.     

A survey of mobile and wireless technologies for augmented reality systems

Recent advances in hardware and software for mobile computing have enabled a new breed of mobile augmented reality (AR) systems and applications. A new breed of computing called ‘augmented ubiquitous computing’ has resulted from the convergence of wearable computing, wireless networking, and mobile AR interfaces. In this paper, we provide a survey of different mobile and wireless technologies and how they have impact AR. Our goal is to place them into different categories so that it becomes easier to understand the state of art and to help identify new directions of research. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The FUSE Platform: Supporting Ubiquitous Collaboration Within Diverse Mobile Environments

The recent proliferation of heterogeneous computing devices and wireless network technology presents new opportunities for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). One emergent paradigm is that of ubiquitous collaboration, which provides widespread access to shared services through a variety of interactive devices, irrespective of whether individuals are mobile or deskbound. However, developing groupware that is interoperable across diverse, often mobile, environments can be difficult and costly. The fundamental issue is that current support infrastructures, which will meet the requirements for multi-user application development, are not operable within emerging ubiquitous settings. This paper explores this problem and presents a generic platform that promotes new forms of collaboration through mobility and ever-present computing services. The developed platform seeks to provide a wide range of collaborative services to a very diverse set of devices by adapting and extending existing middleware technologies.     

Exploring context-awareness for ubiquitous computing in the healthcare domain

Ubiquitous technologies have potentials to play major roles in different real world organizational settings. One of the areas where applying ubiquitous technologies has been given a lot of attention is in the healthcare domain. Here, users are frequently on the move while at the same time relying increasingly on centralized computerized information. In this paper, we explore ubiquitous technologies in the real world through two studies in the healthcare domain. First, we look at the use and usability of a ubiquitous electronic patient record (EPR) system distributed on desktop and laptop computers throughout a large hospital. Secondly, we present an extension to this ubiquitous computing environment in the form of a context-aware mobile computer terminal prototype. The usability of the mobile EPR prototype was evaluated in both laboratory and field settings. Our results indicate that the usefulness of a ubiquitous computing environment supporting work activities in healthcare can benefit from context-aware mobile information access. However, interaction design for such systems must be carefully thought out and thoroughly evaluated. Also, while the use of mobile and stationary computers complement each other very well, we found that the usefulness of ubiquitous computing environments in healthcare may benefit from additional elements such as situated displays at key locations and on key objects, and from seamless integration between the different devices comprising the system as a whole.     

From research to classroom a course in pervasive computing

In a nutshell, the course is basically about emerging, visible and invisible computing systems and devices. Pervasive computing has many names, including ubiquitous computing, and its key element is the omnipresence of information devices. These devices can be embedded into cars, airplanes, ships, bikes, posters, signboards, walls, and even clothes. The course therefore focuses on independent information devices, including wearable computers, mobile phones, screen phones, and PDAs, and the services made available by them. It includes the study of computer and network architectures for pervasive computing, mobile computing, human-computer interaction using speech and vision, pervasive software systems, and experimental pervasive computing systems.