Understanding and Using Context

Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways in which context can be used by context-aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports the building of these context-aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the toolkit that make the task of building applications easier. Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a situation which we believe will provide additional support to application designers.     

A context awareness framework for cross-platform distributed applications

With the introduction of interconnected cross-platform middleware, a new area of opportunities for ubiquitous/pervasive computing has emerged. Context aware applications can be enhanced to practically and realistically incorporate multiple facets of human–machine interactions in everyday life that are not limited to a device-centered model for deducing context. In this paper, we propose that they can rather extend this model to a human-centered, device and platform independent model, based on a personal distributed application and data cloud ecosystem. For this to be achieved, webinos, a set of web runtime extensions that enable web applications and services to be used and shared consistently and securely over a broad spectrum of converged and connected devices, is used to provide this ecosystem. The webinos Context Awareness Framework described here is accessible to each webinos-enabled application. After strict policy enforcement, it can collect contextual information, either via an automatic mechanism that intercepts native calls made by webinos applications through the various webinos APIs, via an automatic polling mechanism to these APIs, or via custom, application-specific context schema extensions. It can then distribute the contextual information from its own personal cloud storage mechanism, in the form of simple, manageable and intuitive Context Objects, to and from all webinos-enabled devices owned by the same user, or even other, authorized users.     

Towards a programming framework for activity-oriented context-aware applications

Context-aware system is an emerging research area in recent years. Context plays an important role in these systems. In most existing work, context is treated as all relative elements in the environment of an application, and the scope of context is predefined by the developers during the development. However, it is difficult to analyze, specify, and organize everything in the environment accurately and completely; and even when it is possible, the developed applications are difficult to extend or modify as the requests for environment may change over time. In this paper, we focus on activity-oriented context-aware (AOCA) applications where the requests for environment are highly dependent on user activities, and propose a programming framework for developing AOCA applications. In particular, we first present a concept model for describing the notions of activity-oriented context. Next, based on the concept model, we describe the details of the programming framework as well as a development tool. Moreover, we provide a platform to support the runtime of AOCA applications, and demonstrate the advantages of our programming framework through experimental evaluations.     

Uncertain inference control in privacy protection

Context management is the key enabler for emerging context-aware applications, and it includes context acquisition, understanding and exchanging. Context exchanging should be made privacy-conscious. We can specify privacy preferences to limit the disclosure of sensitive contexts, but the sensitive contexts could still be derived from those insensitive. To date, there have been very few inference control mechanisms for context management, especially when the environments are uncertain. In this paper, we present an inference control method for private context protection in uncertain environments.     

Sketch-based 3D model retrieval by incorporating 2D-3D alignment

Sketch-based 3D model retrieval is very important for applications such as 3D modeling and recognition. In this paper, a sketch-based retrieval algorithm is proposed based on a 3D model feature named View Context and 2D relative shape context matching. To enhance the accuracy of 2D sketch-3D model correspondence as well as the retrieval performance, we propose to align a 3D model with a query 2D sketch before measuring their distance. First, we efficiently select some candidate views from a set of densely sampled views of the 3D model to align the sketch and the model based on their View Context similarities. Then, we compute the more accurate relative shape context distance between the sketch and every candidate view, and regard the minimum one as the sketch-model distance. To speed up retrieval, we precompute the View Context and relative shape context features of the sample views of all the 3D models in the database. Comparative and evaluative experiments based on hand-drawn and standard line drawing sketches demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our approach and it significantly outperforms several latest sketch-based retrieval algorithms.     

一个基于本体的动态上下文模型(英文)

上下文建模是开发上下文感知系统的核心任务,它是应用理解和使用上下文的关键。按照生命周期的长短,上下文可以分为持久上下文和动态上下文,而后者可以进一步分为状态上下文和转换上下文。许多研究者在持久上下文和状态上下文建模方面做了大量的工作,但涉及到转换上下文的工作却很少。因此提出了一个采用OWL语言描述的基于本体的形式化的动态上下文模型,以及一个上下文融合和消费机制的实现。同时,为应用提供了一些编程原则并以一个自动门禁系统的演示说明了系统如何从这个模型中受益。     

There is more to context than location

Context is a key issue in interaction between human and computer, describing the surrounding facts that add meaning. In mobile computing location is usually used to approximate context and to implement context-aware applications. We propose that ultra-mobile computing, characterized by devices that are operational and operated while on the move (e.g. PDAs, mobile phones, wearable computers), can significantly benefit from a wider notion of context. To structure the field we introduce a working model for context, discuss mechanisms to acquire context beyond location, and application of context-awareness in ultra-mobile computing. We investigate the utility of sensors for context-awareness and present two prototypical implementations — a light-sensitive display and an orientation-aware PDA interface. The concept is then extended to a model for sensor fusion to enable more sophisticated context recognition. Based on an implementation of the model an experiment is described and the feasibility of the approach is demonstrated. Further, we explore fusion of sensors for acquisition of information on more sophisticated contexts.     

Context-Aware Web Service Composition based on AI Planning

A web service is an application that is published on the web and can be discovered and used automatically. In many cases, a web service cannot provide the capability that the user has requested. Therefore, according to the user request, it should be possible to combine various services and produce a new composite service for the user request. Context is the information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. In this paper, we present our context model for web service composition and implement the newly proposed framework for context-aware web service composition and show how the newly proposed framework reduces the number of failures and composition time.     

A cloud resource management model for the creation and orchestration of social communities

Managing resources, context and data in mobile clouds is a challenging task. Specific aspects of spontaneity, large interaction space and dynamic interaction share a metaphorical resemblance to chemistry, chemical reactions and solutions. In this paper, it is argued that by adopting a nature-inspired chemical computing model, a mobile cloud resource management model can be evolved to serve as the basis for novel service modelling and social computing in mobile clouds. To support the argument, a chemistry inspired computation model, Chemistry for Context Awareness (C₂A), is extended with Higher Order Chemical Language (HOCL) and High Level Petri-net Graph (HLPNG) formalisms. A scenario and simulation-based evaluation of the proposed model, focusing on two applications dynamic service composition and social communities identification, is also presented in this paper. The formal encoding of C₂A validates its assumptions, enabling formal execution and analysis of context-based interactions that are derived using C₂A principles.     

Ontology-based approach for context modeling in enterprise applications

Today, enterprise applications provide large amounts of data and finding the right information on time for a given purpose is often a challenge. In these environments, users do not know what information is important, why it is important and finally, how to find this important information. Therefore, an enterprise application has to decide which information is relevant in certain a situation for certain a user. In order to accomplish that, the context of the information must be taken to account. Moreover, this application must be able to capture the context of the application user as well as the overall business context which describes the situation in which information is relevant. In this paper we propose an ontology-based context model which captures the general concepts about user and business context. Also, we discuss the challenges for context reasoning and interpreting and we present a case study to demonstrate the benefits of the developed concepts.     

CODEWEAVE: Exploring Fine-Grained Mobility of Code

This paper is concerned with an abstract exploration of code mobility constructs designed for use in settings where the level of granularity associated with the mobile units exhibits significant variability. Units of mobility that are both finer and coarser grained than the unit of execution are examined. To accomplish this, we take the extreme view that every line of code and every variable declaration are potentially mobile, i.e., it may be duplicated or moved from one program context to another on the same host or across the network. We also assume that complex code assemblies may move with equal ease. The result is CODEWEAVE, a model that shows how to develop new forms of code mobility, assign them precise meaning, and facilitate formal verification of programs employing them. The design of CODEWEAVE relies greatly on Mobile UNITY, a notation and proof logic for mobile computing. Mobile UNITY offers a computational milieu for examining a wide range of constructs and semantic alternatives in a clean abstract setting, i.e., unconstrained by compilation and performance considerations traditionally associated with programming language design. Ultimately, the notation offered by CODEWEAVE is given exact semantic definition by means of a direct mapping to the underlying Mobile UNITY model. The abstract and formal treatment of code mobility offered by CODEWEAVE establishes a technical foundation for examining competing proposals and for subsequent integration of some of the mobility constructs both at the language level and within middleware for mobility.     

A portable toolkit for supporting end-user personalization and control in context-aware applications

A context-aware application in the pervasive computing environment provides intuitive user centric services using implicit context cues. Personalization and control are important issues for this class of application as they enable end-users to understand and configure the behavior of an application. However most development efforts for building context-aware applications focus on the sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms to generate and distribute context cues that drive the application with little emphasis on user-centric issues. We argue that, to elevate user experiences with context-aware applications, it is very important to address these personalization and control issues at the system interface level in parallel to context centric design. Towards this direction, we present Persona, a toolkit that provides support for extending context-aware applications with end-user personalization and control features. Specifically, Persona exposes a few application programming interfaces that abstract end-user customization and control mechanisms and enables developers to integrate these user-centric aspects with rest of the application seamlessly. There are two primary advantages of Persona. First, it can be used with various existing middlewares as a ready-to-use plug-in to build customizable and controllable context-aware applications. Second, existing context-aware applications can easily be augmented to provide end-user personalization and control support. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of Persona and demonstrate its usefulness through the development and augmentation of a range of common context-aware applications.     

MobiByte: An Application Development Model for Mobile Cloud Computing

Mobile cloud computing presents an effective solution to overcome smartphone constraints, such as limited computational power, storage, and energy. As the traditional mobile application development models do not support computation offloading, mobile cloud computing requires novel application development models that can facilitate the development of cloud enabled mobile applications. This paper presents a mobile cloud application development model, named MobiByte, to enhance mobile device applications’ performance, energy efficiency, and execution support. MobiByte is a context-aware application model that uses multiple data offloading techniques to support a wide range of applications. The proposed model is validated using prototype applications and detailed results are presented. Moreover, MobiByte is compared with the most recent application models with a conclusion that it outperforms the existing application models in many aspects like energy efficiency, performance, generality, context awareness, and privacy.     

支持上下文感知应用程序的动态自适应中间件框架

上下文感知计算是当前开发和部署智能应用不可或缺的关键技术之一。上下文能否在计算中真正发挥其作用,主要取决于两方面：一是如何连续稳定地从动态交互环境中获取高质量上下文,二是如何推理上下文并制定适应决策。为了实现上述目标,设计了一个分层的中间件框架,该中间件能够根据上下文质量参数,动态地选择能提供高质量上下文的信息源,并对这些原始上下文进行预处理和推理,进而自动地制定适应决策为用户提供合适的服务。实验测试了平台的性能,并与同类系统进行了比较,结果表明该中间件能够快速有效地支持上下文感知应用的开发部署,并且在计算性能方面有显著提高。     

普适计算环境下基于中间件的上下文质量管理框架研究

随着信息技术的快速发展,分布式计算技术逐渐向普适计算技术演化,从而达到信息空间和物理空间融合的最终目标,为用户提供普适的智能化服务。为了达到这个目标,一个主要的困难就是如何有效地连续监测、才甫获与解释环境相关的上下文信息来确保精确的上下文感知性。很多研究者已先后投身于上下文感知的普适应用的研究工作中,但大多数往往直接针对原始上下文进行处理,没有考虑上下文质量(QoC)的影响。因此,提出了一种基于中间件的上下文质量管理框架,即通过上下文的质量门阂管理、重复与不一致的上下文丢弃等不同层次的控制机制,为上下文感知服务和应用用户提供有效而可靠的上下文服务。     

Data refinement of mixed specifications

Using predicate transformers as a basis, we give semantics and refinement rules for mixed specifications that allow UNITY style specifications to be written as a combination of abstract program and temporal properties. From the point of view of the programmer, mixed specifications may be considered a generalization of the UNITY specification notation to allow safety properties to be specified by abstract programs in addition to temporal properties. Alternatively, mixed specifications may be viewed as a generalization of the UNITY programming notation to allow arbitrary safety and progress properties in a generalized ‘always section’. The UNITY substitution axiom is handled in a novel way by replacing it with a refinement rule. The predicate transformers foundation allows known techniques for algorithmic and data-refinement for weakest precondition based programming to be applied to both safety and progress properties. In this paper, we define the predicate transformer based specifications, specialize the refinement techniques to them, demonstrate soundness, and illustrate the approach with a substantial example. Received: 1 April 1996 / 6 March 1997     

Focus+Context Exploration of Hierarchical Embeddings

Hierarchical embeddings, such as HSNE, address critical visual and computational scalability issues of traditional techniques for dimensionality reduction. The improved scalability comes at the cost of the need for increased user interaction for exploration. In this paper, we provide a solution for the interactive visual Focus+Context exploration of such embeddings. We explain how to integrate embedding parts from different levels of detail, corresponding to focus and context groups, in a joint visualization. We devise an according interaction model that relates typical semantic operations on a Focus+Context visualization with the according changes in the level‐of‐detail‐hierarchy of the embedding, including also a mode for comparative Focus+Context exploration and extend HSNE to incorporate the presented interaction model. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we present a use case based on the visual exploration of multi‐dimensional images.