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.     

Experimenting with IDA* search algorithm in heterogeneous pervasive environments

Today, mobile and smart phones are often viewed as enablers of pervasive computing systems because they provide anytime and anywhere access to information services and computational resources. However, mobile devices are inherently constrained in their computational power and battery capacity making them mere “dumb terminals” connected to a resource-rich pervasive environment. If they are ever to play a more prominent role as true elements of a pervasive environment, mobile devices must be able to embed more application logic and delegate processing requests to pervasive infrastructure. In this paper we discuss distribution and offloading of computationally intensive tasks in pervasive environments populated by mobile devices. This approach is illustrated by experimenting with a distributed version of iterative deepening A* search algorithm. In our approach, the solution space of a problem being solved is partitioned and distributed among heterogeneous mobile devices, which yields a significant increase in the time of finding an optimal solution. Distributed IDA* search algorithm does not require any coordination or communication between mobile devices, but added inter-processor communication through shared memory further increases the efficiency of the algorithm. This paper presents the results of our experiments with the algorithm and discusses a number of issues related to its implementation.     

面向普适计算环境的Android平台服务编排框架

普适计算环境下的智能移动设备是面向终端用户的服务资源聚集和编排的主要载体。普适计算环境中的服务资源具有多种不同的形态,包括基于互联网提供的Web服务、终端设备自身服务和资源(例如本地应用、自带传感器)以及所处环境中可访问的服务(例如环境传感器)。此外,不断变化的上下文环境对软件本身的自适应能力提出了新的要求,而移动设备上的服务编排受设备计算能力和资源的限制。为了解决上述问题,提出了一个面向普适计算环境的Android平台服务编排框架ASOF。通过ASOF,移动终端可在运行时获取所需业务流程的服务模板,并对该模板中的抽象服务进行服务绑定,实现轻量级的混合服务编排,使终端能够动态获得调用普适计算环境中各种类型的服务的能力。随后,基于OSGi Felix框架给出了一套ASOF的标准实现,并以一个具体案例验证其有效性。     

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.     

Philosophy, privacy, and pervasive computing

Philosophers and others concerned with the moral good of personal privacy most often see threats to privacy raised by the development of pervasive computing as primarily being threats to the loss of control over personal information. Two reasons in particular lend this approach plausibility. One reason is that the parallels between pervasive computing and ordinary networked computing, where everyday transactions over the Internet raise concerns about personal information privacy, appear stronger than their differences. Another reason is that the individual devices which can become linked in a pervasive computing environment: PDAs, GPS sensors, RFID chips/readers, publicly-located video surveillance cameras, Internet-enabled mobile phones, and the like, each raise threats to individual privacy. Without discounting the value of this approach, this paper aims to propose an alternative; and, as a result of recasting the threat to individual privacy from pervasive computing, to identify other, and deeper, moral goods that pervasive computing puts at risk that otherwise might remain concealed. In particular, I argue that pervasive computing threatens to compromise what I call existential autonomy: the right to decide for ourselves at least some of the existential conditions under which we form and develop our ways of life, including our relations to information technology. From this perspective, some moral goods at stake in protecting privacy in an environment of pervasive computing emerge that have less to do with furthering human well-being through the promotion of self-identity and subjectivity, than with stimulating curiosity, receptivity to difference, and, most broadly, openness to the world.     

Pervasive computing at scale: Transforming the state of the art

The remarkable recent progress in computing power, sensors and embedded devices, smart phones, wireless communications and networking technologies, combined with emerging data mining techniques, cloud computing and social networking paradigms has enabled us to create pervasive computing systems and services with diverse applications and global accessibility. In this paper, we assess the current state of the art of pervasive computing at scale (PeCS) and look ahead to future directions the field can pursue together with challenges it will need to overcome.     

A multiplatform methodology: developing mobile device applications

When the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the American University of Beirut decided to launch a computing course on mobile computing devices, the author designed a course to meet industry requirements and to introduce students to the major platforms used to build practical applications. He dedicated much of Pervasive Computing Systems and Applications, EECE 679, to teaching mobile device application programming through code demonstrations and in-class application building. The course also covered front-end mobile device technologies and back-end infrastructures. Today, many pervasive computing courses focus on research and theory. Those that do deal with developing mobile applications often limit their coverage to a specific platform. This course covers practical and theoretical pervasive computing, lets students acquire hands-on application-building experience in multiple platforms, and acquaints students with recent developments in related technologies and research. The course includes a mix of lectures, code demonstrations, and student presentations.     

Moving Out of the Lab: Deploying Pervasive Technologies in a Hospital

The authors deployed a distributed system containing a location-tracking system, a context-awareness system, wall-sized displays, and mobile phones in a Danish hospital's operating ward. This article presents the lessons they learned from deploying these pervasive computing technologies and a checklist of questions for researchers to consider relating to hardware, software, and organizational issues when moving pervasive systems out of the laboratory. This article is part of a special issue on Real-World Deployments.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Energy Harvesting and Conservation

Pervasive computing aims to integrate computation into our daily work practice to enhance our activities without being noticed. In other words, computing becomes truly invisible. Yet at the heart of every pervasive computing system are electronic components that consume energy. Managing the energy needs of mobile systems, or systems for which reliable power isn’t guaranteed, can be a significant distraction for users. How can we minimize user involvement in the energy management process to make pervasive computing devices more pervasive?     

基于移动代理的普适计算模型研究与设计

针对普适环境下移动IP协议的局限性,将集智能性、移动性,安全性等诸多特性于一身的移动代理引入普适计算,详细地阐述了实现过程并进行性能分析与仿真实验.结果表明,普适移动设备在引入移动代理后,能够快速平滑地实现切换,从而大大减少了切换延迟和传输过程中的状态信息量,降低了移动设备在切换期间的丢包率,有效地改善了网络的性能.     

An analytical model for delivery evaluation of multimodal contents in pervasive computing

Recent advance of mobile and interactive devices, such as smart phones, PDAs, and handheld computers, enables to deliver multimodal contents based on users and their environments. In pervasive computing, multimodal contents are mainly composed of multiple components which are often delivered from distributed multiple sources. Therefore, how appropriate contents can be provided to users and how computing resources can be effectively exploited are critical issues. In this paper, an analytical model for multimodal contents is developed based on a queueing theory for the purpose of delivery evaluation of the contents. The model can be applied to estimate how delivery parameters of multimodal contents, such as arrival rates, drop rates, and the number of packets, can impact overall the quality of services in terms of temporal aspects. A numerical example of weather information delivery is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.     

Embedded security in a pervasive world

Embedded systems have become an integral part of our everyday life. Devices like vehicles, household appliances, and cell phones are already equipped with embedded microcontrollers. The networking of the myriads of embedded devices gives rise to the brave new world of pervasive computing. Pervasive computing offers enormous advantages and opportunities for users and businesses through new applications, increased comfort, and cost reduction. One often overlooked aspect of pervasive computing, however, are new security threats.This article describes security issues in current and future pervasive security scenarios, ranging from privacy threats and unreliable products to loss of revenue. We also highlight the opportunities, such as new business models, which are enabled through strong embedded security solutions. Current research issues are also summarized. As case studies, we introduce security aspects in future automotive systems and in ad-hoc networks.     

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.     

The smart phone: a ubiquitous input device

We show how modern mobile phones (Weiser's tabs) can interact with their environment, especially large situated displays (Weiser's boards). Smart phones' emerging capabilities are fueling a rise in the use of mobile phones as input devices to such resources as situated displays, vending machines, and home appliances. Mobile phones' prevalence gives them great potential to be the default physical interface for ubiquitous computing applications. We survey interaction techniques that use mobile phones as input devices to ubiquitous computing environments. We use smart phone to describe an enhanced mobile phone. Our analysis blurs the line between smart phones and PDAs such as the Palm Pilot because the feature sets continue to converge.     

Supporting social interaction with smart phones

The smart phone offers communication, connectivity, content consumption, and content creativity. Seven different systems exemplify its ability to support a wide range of social interactions, helping make pervasive computing a reality. For smart phones to become successful pervasive system components, they must support and enhance various user activities and offer useful, effective functionality. The systems the author have built focuses on augmenting and enhancing communication; they're communication devices first and computers second. The system supports social interaction between people n particular, interaction that would be difficult if not impossible to achieve without the smart phone technology. This dependency on the system endows them with a degree of utility that drives their effectiveness, which is key to increasing the use of pervasive systems.     

Multipurpose prototypes for assessing user interfaces in pervasive computing systems

In pervasive computing systems, prototypes serve several uses and have different requirements related to those uses. We've developed CogTool to enable low-cost, rapid construction of interactive prototypes that serve all three UI purposes. CogTools core prototyping technique is storyboarding -specifically, interactive storyboarding using HTML. Rather than covering all possible pervasive systems, CogTool focuses on systems involving deliberate commands that the user invokes by some motor action. Such systems include PDAs, cell phones, handheld terminals (such as those used by rental car return personnel), in-vehicle driver information systems, and certain wearable computers that run desktop- or PDA-like applications.     

面向情境的移动应用研发

移动网络的出现极大推进普适计算发展,智能设备成为生活、工作不可缺少的部分,形成个体随时、随地在线状态,显具身和情境性,形成应用研发新环境,为软件设计理论、方法、技术等层面创新提供条件。基于被誉为认知科学二次革命的具身、分布认知等新思想,情境、认知将成为移动应用创新切入点,为情境矢量化,认知大数据处理提供理论;移动情境是Agent生存数字空间,其设计思想、方法、矢量化技术直接关系到服务品质。以物流行业移动应用为例,阐述物流情境矢量化架构,认知动力系统结构。     

基于普适计算的虚拟场景自适应网络发布研究

针对移动设备访问三维虚拟场景受到网络带宽和终端计算能力的制约,使得在线利用虚拟现实进行移动学习效率不高,基于此提出了基于普适计算的自适应优化选择技术.对三维实体进行本体语义描述,建立相应的优化模型.在此基础上通过WURFL对手持移动设备进行采样获取设备参数,对参数进行分析从而建立普适规则,利用普适计算进行自适应优化选择.测试结果表明,经过自适应选择后手持移动设备荻取三维虚拟场景资源的速度和效率得到明显提高.     

Integrating User-Generated Content and Pervasive Communications

This month's Works in Progress features eight projects that support the integration of user-generated content (UGC) in a world of pervasive communications. The projects range from AI-based UGC service discovery in the first essay to a semantically enriched information model that communication systems can use to deploy UGC in pervasive applications in the last essay. Other projects leverage the growing ubiquity of camera-equipped mobile phones, a global architecture that enriches hosted service-layer applications with user-generated contextual information, a mobile tourist-service application supporting tourism as a social activity, a prototype interactive digital TV application, and an access-control framework that captures information dynamically generated by customers of multiservice business areas.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Smarter Phones

Mobile phones tend to be very personal devices. It's this property, as much as anything, that makes them so interesting to pervasive computing and offers the potential to enable whole new classes of adaptive, context-aware applications. This special issue's articles offer new architectures, tools, and applications that point the way to this exciting future of smarter phones.