Ubiquitous computing: connecting Pervasive computing through Semantic Web

Ubiquitous computing refers to building a global computing environment where seamless and invisible access to computing resources is provided to the user. Pervasive computing deals with acquiring context knowledge from the environment and providing dynamic, proactive and context-aware services to the user. A Ubiquitous computing environment is created by sharing knowledge and information between Pervasive computing environments. In this paper we propose a framework that uses the potential of the Semantic Web to weave Pervasive computing environments into a Ubiquitous computing environment. We discuss how the collaboration of these Pervasive environments can create an effective Ubiquitous computing environment referred herein as the Integrated Global Pervasive Computing Framework (IGPF). We test the effectiveness of the Ubiquitous environment through a small scenario from a prototype system that we have implemented over this framework to handle medical emergency scenario.     

Pervasive computing: a paradigm for the 21st century

Pervasive computing promises to make life simpler via digital environments that sense, adapt, and respond to human needs. Yet we still view computers as machines that run programs in a virtual environment. Pervasive computing presumes a different vision. A device can be a portal into an application-data space, not just a repository of custom software a user must manage. An application is a means by which a user performs a task, not software written to exploit a device's capabilities. And a computing environment is an information-enhanced physical space, not a virtual environment that exists to store and run software. Pervasive computing is close to technical and economic viability.     

基于图像认证的个性化用户认证方法研究

普适计算是未来的计算模式，人们可以随时、随地获得满意的服务。结合未来普适计算环境下设备的多样性和用户的个性化需求，对图像认证方法进行了扩展进而提出个性化认证方案，图像认证方法利用用户对图片的识别能力验证登录者是否为用户本人，从而可以抵抗重放攻击。该认证方案使用一种组合办法既减少每次认证暴露给第三方的信息，又提高了安全性，同时可提供多种媒体形式供用户识别，实验结果与分析表明该方法是可行的，用户可以接受这种认证方式。     

Context-aware pervasive service composition and its implementation

Incorporating service composition and pervasive computing into managing users’ complex everyday activities calls for the Pervasive Service Composition paradigm for everyday life. In this paper, we propose the concept of Context-Aware Pervasive Service Composition (CAPSC), which aims at enabling a pervasive system to provide user service compositions that are relevant to the situation at hand. We investigate CAPSC requirements and design a CAPSC architecture by taking into account context-aware peer coordination, context-aware process service adaptation, and context-aware utility service adaptation. We present a proof of concept application prototype as well.     

Privacy and consent in pervasive networks

Pervasive networks and location based systems have the potential to provide many new services. However the user of these services often has to provide personal information to allow the service to operate effectively. This article considers the problem of protecting personal information in this environment, and reports on the legislative and technical efforts being made to protect user privacy.     

Context-driven personalized service discovery in pervasive environments

Pervasive environments are characterized by a large number of embedded devices offering their services to the user. Which of the available services are of most interest to the user considerably depends on the user’s current context. User context is often rich and very dynamic; making an explicit, user-driven discovery of services impractical. Users in such environments would instead like to be continuously informed about services relevant to them. Implicit discovery requests triggered by changes in the context are therefore prevalent. This paper proposes a proactive service discovery approach for pervasive environments addressing these implicit requests. Services and user preferences are described by a formal context model called Hyperspace Analogue to Context, which effectively captures the dynamics of context and the relationship between services and context. Based on the model, we propose a set of algorithms that can continuously present the most relevant services to the user in response to changes of context, services or user preferences. Numeric coding methods are applied to improve the algorithms’ performance. The algorithms are grounded in a context-driven service discovery system that automatically reacts to changes in the environment. New context sources and services can be dynamically integrated into the system. A client for smart phones continuously informs users about the discovery results. Experiments show, that the system can efficiently provide the user with continuous, up-to-date information about the most useful services in real time.     

普适计算中基于上下文触发的事务模型

详细分析了 Stanford大学提出的 ROME上下文事务触发模型 ,指出了其运用于普适计算中的不足 .针对其不足 ,提出了新的触发模型 - CTMPC,并对其结构和功能进行了阐述 ,新的模型可以支持更多种类的上下文、异构的上下文感知器 ,同时为用户提供了方便易行的定制方法     

基于用户视觉能力的交互设备筛选方法

普适计算为智能环境通过多个交互设备向用户提供信息服务奠定了基础,但如何选择恰当的设备向用户提供服务仍是一项待解决的问题。论文基于用户视觉交互能力参数筛选出最优的交互设备提供服务。根据用户的视野范围和面部朝向,结合所在位置,计算显示设备相对于用户的双向可达性;根据用户的视力水平,结合显示界面字符大小,计算显示设备所显示信息对用户的可读性;综合以上两方面信息计算设备推荐率。利用具有不同视觉能力的用户对论文所提出方法进行了验证,实验结果表明所提出方法能选择出最与用户交互能力匹配的交互设备。     

一种面向普适计算的适应性软件体系结构风格

普适计算软件需要适应用户需求和运行环境的动态变化.这一特点使得软件复杂度空前增加,迫切需要以软件体系结构为代表的架构/设计层面重用手段来支持其高效开发.在以适应性为中心的普适计算空间抽象模型基础上,提出了一种面向普适计算的软件体系结构风格UbiArch,并从概念视图、运行视图和开发视图这3个维度对该软件体系结构风格进行了阐述.UbiArch支持软件实体按需加入应用、主动适应环境的行为模式,实现了软件适应能力的高层次重用,同时与构件等成熟软件技术的紧密结合也保证了其可实践性.支撑该体系结构风格的软件平台原型系统及其上的应用验证了UbiArch的有效性和通用性.     

Exploring ambient and artistic visualization for residential energy use feedback

Providing effective feedback on resource consumption in the home is a key challenge of environmental conservation efforts. One promising approach for providing feedback about residential energy consumption is the use of ambient and artistic visualizations. Pervasive computing technologies enable the integration of such feedback into the home in the form of distributed point-of-consumption feedback devices to support decision-making in everyday activities. However, introducing these devices into the home requires sensitivity to the domestic context. In this paper we describe three abstract visualizations and suggest four design requirements that this type of device must meet to be effective: pragmatic, aesthetic, ambient, and ecological. We report on the findings from a mixed methods user study that explores the viability of using ambient and artistic feedback in the home based on these requirements. Our findings suggest that this approach is a viable way to provide resource use feedback and that both the aesthetics of the representation and the context of use are important elements that must be considered in this design space.     

A framework for comparing perspectives on privacy and pervasive technologies

Pervasive computing research has evolved, investigating mechanisms for supporting some predefined notion of privacy, typically favoring individual rights over the rights of the community. We offer a framework to consider individual and group rights so that technology developers can more effectively reason about concerns for existing technology as well as generate new technologies that respect a well-defined set of social norms. We outline a framework designed to help developers understand the conflict between privacy and pervasive computing technologies, particularly those technologies that deal with sensing and storage. Pervasive computing technologies, especially those that can automate perception of human activity and then store that information, can provide tremendous benefits. We offer an analytic method to assist developers in asking questions about the systems and applications they are creating. We believe this framework will help developers minimize the gap between design goals and actual effects on privacy.     

An Empirical Study on Voice-Enabled Web Applications

Although most users access Web applications using Web browser interfaces, pervasive computing offers new ways of accessing Internet applications from any device at any location. Pervasive computing technology impacts consumer attitudes, and the authors studied consumers' acceptance rate toward new pervasive interfaces using various attributes and factors. The study was undertaken in Taiwan, with the cellular phone chosen as the pervasive device for accessing an Internet application prototype--a voice-enabled Web system--through voice user interface technology. The study result showed that Handling was the most important factor in using a voice-enabled Web system. The article's findings can help with the design and     

A lightweight conditional privacy-preserving authentication and access control scheme for pervasive computing environments

In pervasive computing environments, the users can get access to the services from the service providers in a highly desirable way. But the security of the user's authentication is a challenging field. Pervasive computing environments must provide the service to only legitimate users. On the other hand, some users attempt to keep their anonymity without revealing their identities while using some privacy-related services such as location information, printing, buying shares, etc. In this paper, we propose a conditional privacy-preserving authentication and access control scheme for pervasive computing environments, called CPriauac. Compared with the previous schemes in the literature, registration servers and authentication servers in the proposed scheme need not maintain any sensitive verification tables. The management of public keys is easier. Furthermore, the anonymity of the user can be removed efficiently once the dispute happens. The proposed scheme provides user anonymity against outside and inside parties, mutual authentication, accountability and differentiated access control.     

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?     

普适环境下基于生物加密的认证机制

普适计算的出现对网络通信中的安全和隐私提出了新的挑战,传统的认证技术已经不能满足普适环境的安全需求。提出了一种普适环境中用于完成服务使用者与提供者之间双向认证及密钥建立的机制。该机制高度融合了生物加密技术和Diffie-Hellman密钥交换技术,在不泄露用户隐私的情况完成双向认证。该机制提供了安全的建立密钥的算法,并且通过使用生物加密技术实现了访问控制策略的区别对待。经分析证明,该协议能很好地抵抗各种攻击,尤其是拒绝服务（DoS）攻击。     

COCOA: COnversation-based service COmposition in pervAsive computing environments with QoS support

Pervasive computing environments are populated with networked services, i.e., autonomous software entities, providing a number of functionalities. One of the most challenging objectives to be achieved within these environments is to assist users in realizing tasks that integrate on the fly functionalities of the networked services opportunely according to the current pervasive environment. Towards this purpose, we present COCOA, a solution for COnversation-based service COmposition in pervAsive computing environments with QoS support. COCOA provides COCOA-L, an OWL-S based language for the semantic, QoS-aware specification of services and tasks, which further allows the specification of services and tasks conversations. Moreover, COCOA provides two mechanisms: COCOA-SD for the QoS-aware semantic service discovery and COCOA-CI for the QoS-aware integration of service conversations towards the realization of the user task’s conversation. The distinctive feature of COCOA is the ability of integrating on the fly the conversations of networked services to realize the conversation of the user task, by further meeting the QoS requirements of user tasks. Thereby, COCOA allows the dynamic realization of user tasks according to the specifics of the pervasive computing environment in terms of available services and by enforcing valid service consumption.     

基于虚拟现实的互动普适计算研究

普适计算与虚拟现实技术的融合是今天普适计算的一个新领域,是对虚拟空间计算力的提升,更是普适计算中"普适"的体现。本文讨论并给出了基于虚拟现实技术的互动普适计算的概念、特性和关键技术,为其实现提供理论探索和论证。     

Efficient RNTS system for privacy of banking off-line customer

With the development in IT technology and with growing demands of users, a ubiquitous environment is being made. Because individual identification is important in ubiquitous environment, RFID technology would be used frequently. RFID is a radio frequency identification technology to replace bar code. The reader transmits query (request of user information) and tag-provides user information. RFID has various advantages, such as high speed identification rates, mass memory storages. However, eavesdropping is possible as well as a problem that user information is exposed (Juels et al. in Conference on Computer and Communications Security—ACM CCS, pp. 103–111, 2003; Ohkubo et al. in RFID Privacy Workshop 2003; Weis et al. in International Conference on Security in Pervasive Computing, pp. 201–212, 2003; Weis et al. in Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems—CHES, pp. 454–469, 2002). Therefore, when off-line customer had visited bank for banking service, RNTS (RFID number ticket service) system provides both anonymity in customer identification and efficiency of banking service. In addition, RNTS system protects privacy of an off-line user visiting the bank and it is an efficient method offering service in order of arriving in the bank.     

PERSONAF: framework for personalised ontological reasoning in pervasive computing

Pervasive computing creates possibilities for presenting highly personalised information about the people, places and things in a building. One of the challenges for such personalisation is the creation of the system that can support ontological reasoning for several key tasks: reasoning about location; personalisation of information about location at the right level of detail; and personalisation to match each person’s conceptions of the building based on their own use of it and their relationship to other people in the building. From pragmatic perspectives, it should be inexpensive to create the ontology for each new building. It is also critical that users should be able to understand and control pervasive applications. We created the PERSONAF (personalised pervasive scrutable ontological framework) to address these challenges. PERSONAF is a new abstract framework for pervasive ontological reasoning. We report its evaluation at three levels. First, we assessed the power of the ontology for reasoning about noisy and uncertain location information, showing that PERSONAF can improve location modelling. Notably, the best ontological reasoner varies across users. Second, we demonstrate the use of the PERSONAF framework in Adaptive Locator, an application built upon it, using our low cost mechanisms for non-generic layers of the ontology. Finally, we report a user study, which evaluated the PERSONAF approach as seen by users in the Adaptive Locator. We assessed both the personalisation performance and the understandability of explanations of the system reasoning. Together, these three evaluations show that the PERSONAF approach supports building of low cost ontologies, that can achieve flexible ontological reasoning about smart buildings and the people in them, and that this can be used to build applications which give personalised information that can provide understandable explanations of the reasoning underlying the personalisation.     

A Framework and an Environment for Collaborative Analysis of User Experience

Pervasive technologies, such as shared interactive surfaces and mobile devices, are beginning to be used to support a diversity of collaborative user experiences. Compared with fixed PC applications, however, they are more difficult to evaluate. Of importance, it requires understanding the context of use through capturing and analyzing different types of data (e.g., conversations, gestures, movements) and re‐representing them at different levels of abstraction. This can make the analysis complex and unwieldy, requiring teams of analysts to manage it. A new approach to managing the complexity of collaborative analysis is presented, where an integrated physical and conceptual space have been co-designed to allow design teams to readily share and transfer their interpretations of data through preserving the contextual information. A case study is described showing how a collaborative analysis approach enabled small groups of designers to work together to interpret and further analyze a variety of data.