Software reference architecture for smart environments: Perception

With the increase of intelligent devices, ubiquitous computing is spreading to all scopes of people life. Smart home (or industrial) environments include automation and control devices to save energy, perform tasks, assist and give comfort in order to satisfy specific preferences.This paper focuses on the proposal for Software Reference Architecture for the development of smart applications and their deployment in smart environments. The motivation for this Reference Architecture and its benefits are also explained. The proposal considers three main processes in the software architecture of these applications: perception, reasoning and acting.This paper centres attention on the definition of the Perception process and provides an example for its implementation and subsequent validation of the proposal.The software presented implements the Perception process of a smart environment for a standard office, by retrieving data from the real world and storing it for further reasoning and acting processes. The objectives of this solution include the provision of comfort for the users and the saving of energy in lighting. Through this verification, it is also shown that developments under this proposal produce major benefits within the software life cycle.     

A soft computing based location-aware access control for smart buildings

The evolution of wireless communications and pervasive computing is transforming current physical spaces into real smart environments. These emerging scenarios are expected to be composed by a potentially huge amount of heterogeneous smart objects which can be remotely accessed by users via their mobile devices anytime, anywhere. In this paper, we propose a distributed location-aware access control mechanism and its application in the smart building context. Our approach is based on an access control engine embedded into smart objects, which are responsible to make authorization decisions by considering both user location data and access credentials. User location data are estimated using a novel indoor localization system based on magnetic field data sent by user through her personal phone. This localization system implements a combination of soft computing techniques over the data collected by smartphones. Therefore, our location-aware access control mechanism does not require any intermediate entity, providing the benefits of a decentralized approach for smart environments. From the results obtained, we can consider our proposal as a promising approach to tackle the challenging security requirements of typical pervasive environments.     

Better Living Through Geometry

Mark Weiser described ubiquitous computing as “invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere”[1]. The EasyLiving project is concerned with development of an architecture and technologies for ubiquitous computing environments that allow the dynamic aggregation of diverse I/O devices into a single coherent user experience. Though the need for research in distributed computing, perception and interfaces is widely recognised, the importance of an explicit geometric world model for enhancing the user’s experience of a ubiquitous computing system has not been well-articulated. This paper describes three scenarios that benefit from geometric context and introduces the EasyLiving Geometric Model.     

Draw on the wall [display technologies for untethered computing]

Today, the most exciting development in interactive technology is the untethering of users from their desktops. We can imagine scientific, engineering and business users surrounded by their data as they wander through their offices and hallways, talking to their applications, listening to the results and drawing on the walls. This represents a popular picture of smart environments and ubiquitous computing. In this article, I discuss the display technologies that will make this picture real. The component devices of these technologies have no magic; they obey the same laws of physics as the rest of the world. Of course, transforming these ideas into reality faces some unsolved problems. While the untethered computing world is inevitable, its details lack clarity, and the path to its realization looks rocky     

An energy-efficient object discovery protocol for context-sensitive middleware for ubiquitous computing

Many ubiquitous computing applications may be context-sensitive due to the ambient environments, mobile devices, and other detectable factors. A context-sensitive middleware provides the necessary support to context-sensitive application objects to participate in spontaneous and ad hoc communications with other applications in remote devices whenever suitable contexts exist. A context-sensitive middleware can provide this support effectively if its communication subsystem, such as an Object Request Broker (ORB), can properly discover other objects in devices. This capability is usually known as object discovery protocol. An energy-efficient object discovery protocol is needed to help prolong a device's battery life because many devices in ubiquitous computing environments are battery-powered and, thus, have limited energy sources. An energy-efficient object discovery protocol, RKS, for context-sensitive middleware for ubiquitous computing is presented. RKS reduces energy consumption by reducing the amount of information that needs to be sent to remote devices to discover objects. A novel feature of RKS is that it advertises its server-objects' availability only when it detects that these servers can be activated in the current context and when it finds that the neighbor devices have some potential clients that are willing to discover objects. Analytical comparisons of the energy-consumptions are given between RKS and two other protocols for object discovery in context-sensitive middleware. Furthermore, our experimental results, based on the implementations of these protocols and RKS on a context-sensitive middleware test bed, confirm our analytical results in that the RKS conserves more energy than the other two.     

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.     

Active Environments: Sensing and Responding to Groups of People

Most environments are passive– deaf, dumb and blind, unaware of their inhabitants and unable to assist them in a meaningful way. However, with the advent of ubiquitous computing – ever smaller, cheaper and faster computational devices embedded in a growing variety of “smart” objects – it is becoming increasingly possible to create active environments: physical spaces that can sense and respond appropriately to the people and activities taking place within them. Most of the early ubiquitous computing applications focus on how individuals interact with their environments as they work on foreground tasks. In contrast, this paper focuses on how groups of people affect and are affected by background aspects of their environments.     

An evidential fusion approach for activity recognition in ambient intelligence environments

With the growing emergence of ambient intelligence, ubiquitous computing, sensor networks and wireless networking technologies, “ubiquitous networked robotics” is becoming an active research domain of intelligent autonomous systems. It targets new innovative applications in which robotic systems will become part of these networks of artifacts to provide novel capabilities and various assistive services anywhere and anytime, such as healthcare and monitoring services for elderly in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environments. Situation recognition, in general, and activity recognition, in particular, provide an added value on the contextual information that can help the ubiquitous networked robot to autonomously provide the best service that meet the needs of the elderly. Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence and its derivatives are an efficient tool to handle uncertainty and incompleteness in smart homes and ubiquitous computing environments. However, their combination rules yield counter-intuitive results in high conflicting activities. In this paper, we propose a new approach to support conflict resolution in activity recognition in AAL environments. This approach is based on a new mapping for conflict evidential fusion to increase the efficiency and accuracy of activity recognition. It gives intuitive interpretation for combining multiple sources in all conflicting situations. The proposed approach, evaluated on a real world smart home dataset, achieves 78% of accuracy in activity recognition. The obtained results outperform those obtained with the existing combination rules.     

Websigns: hyperlinking physical locations to the Web

HP researchers are developing handheld devices that combine wireless technology and ubiquitous computing to provide a transparent linkage between physical entities in the environment and resources available on the Web. First-generation mobile computing technologies typically use protocols such as WAP and i-mode to let PDAs, smart phones, and other wireless devices with Web browsers access the Internet, thereby freeing users from the shackles of their desktops. We believe, in addition, users would benefit from having access to devices that combine the advantages of wireless technology and ubiquitous computing to provide a transparent linkage between the physical world around them and the resources available on the Web. We are developing devices that augment users' reality with Web services related to the physical objects they see     

The burden of proof and the optimal security investment of firms in ubiquitous computing

Recently security vulnerabilities and fraudulent transactions have simultaneously increase with the rise in use of smart mobile handsets for electronic transactions. Also, the governing liability rule on disputes arising from security breaches is becoming a practical issue as users get accustomed to doing transactions using various smart and intelligent computing devices in ubiquitous computing environments. Although there have been debates in law and computer science literature, there has been little research on legal issues in comparison with the amount of research on technical issues for electronic transactions. This paper analyzes how a burden of proof can play a role in preventing fraudulent transactions and investigates how it is related to firms’ investments in security.     

Access control management for ubiquitous computing

The purpose of ubiquitous computing is anywhere and anytime access to information within computing infrastructures that is blended into a background and no longer be reminded. This ubiquitous computing poses new security challenges while the information can be accessed at anywhere and anytime because it may be applied by criminal users. Additionally, the information may contain private information that cannot be shared by all user communities. Several approaches are developed to protect information for pervasive environments against malicious users. However, ad hoc mechanisms or protocols are typically added in the approaches by compromising disorganized policies or additional components to protect from unauthorized access.In this paper, we present a usage control model to protect services and devices in ubiquitous computing environments, which allows the access restrictions directly on services and object documents. The model not only supports complex constraints for pervasive computing, such as services, devices and data types but also provides a mechanism to build rich reuse relationships between models and objects. Finally, comparisons with related works are analysed.     

Perci: Pervasive Service Interaction with the Internet of Things

The advancement of ubiquitous computing technologies has greatly improved the availability of digital resources in the real world. Here, the authors investigate mobile interaction with tagged, everyday objects and associated information that's based on the Internet of Things and its technologies. Their framework for integrating Web services and mobile interaction with physical objects relies on information typing to increase interoperability. Two prototypes for mobile interaction with smart posters build upon this framework to realize multi-tag interaction with physical user interfaces. The authors' evaluation identifies usability issues regarding the design of physical mobile interactions, interfaces, and applications.     

A new model for context-aware transactions in mobile services

With the ubiquity of handheld devices (such as smart phones and PDAs) and the availability of a wide range of mobile services (such as mobile banking, road traffic updates, and weather forecast), people can nowadays access information and conduct online transactions virtually anywhere and anytime. In such flexible, dynamic but less reliable environment, transaction management technology is believed to provide service reliability and data consistency. Indeed, in mobile and ubiquitous environments where devices as well as services can seamlessly join and leave the ubiquitous network; transaction management can be very helpful during the recovery of services from failure. Current transaction models and commit protocols do not take into account context information. However, in mobile environments, it is imperative to consider context information in the commit of a transaction—i.e., a transaction can be successfully completed if it meets the required context. In this paper, we propose a new model for context-aware transactions and their performance management in mobile environments. Unlike conventional transactions, context-aware transactions adapt to the required context. By context, we mean the service’s context as well as the users’ context that includes users’ needs and preferences. This paper designs and develops the proposed transaction model and evaluates its performance in terms of time and message complexities as well as transaction’s throughput.     

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.     

The value of handhelds in smart environments

The severe resource restrictions of computer-augmented everyday artifacts imply substantial problems for the design of applications in smart environments. Some of these problems can be overcome by exploiting the resources, I/O interfaces, and computing capabilities of nearby mobile devices in an ad-hoc fashion. We identify the means by which smart objects can make use of handheld devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, and derive the following major roles of handhelds in smart environments: (1) mobile infrastructure access point; (2) user interface; (3) remote sensor; (4) mobile storage medium; (5) remote resource provider; and (6) weak user identifier. We present concrete applications that illustrate these roles, and describe how handhelds can serve as mobile mediators between computer-augmented everyday artifacts, their users, and background infrastructure services. The presented applications include a remote interaction scenario, a smart medicine cabinet, and an inventory monitoring application.     

The reflective mobile agent paradigm implemented in a smart office environment

Ubiquitous systems will integrate computers invisibly and unobtrusively in everyday objects. Data will be catched from single or multi-sensor devices and will be used for context extraction. New location-based services will be adapted to user preferences. For this the ubiquitous system needs to know user profiles, likings, and habits. As the user moves, these information must be made available at the new location of the user. Either the user carries the data on wearable or portable computers or the smart environment takes responsibility for transporting them. The amount of new devices and services makes an efficient use by centralized systems very difficult. The idea presented in this paper is that a virtual reflection of the user represented by a mobile agent accompanying in the smart environment. Mobile agents offer a possibility to encapsulate information of a person and the person’s preferences and perform location-based services of the ubiquitous system in the name of the user. Security and privacy are major concerns of such an agent system. This paper describes a ubiquitous mobile agent system named UbiMAS which has security extensions to provide high protection of agents and significant personal data. UbiMAS is applied in the smart doorplate project as part of a smart office environment.     

Empowerment through seamfulness: smart phones in everyday life

In this paper, we describe research into use of multifunctional mobile phones by working adults and posit the device as a plausible realization of ubiquitous computing. We investigate how users actively adapt and adopt the different functions in smart phones to suit their needs and lifestyles. Through an interview and diary study, we discover how the smart phone is used in pragmatic and seamful ways, regardless of the interface of the specific phone selected or the particular features available. Users used phones in highly individual manners; mixed and adapted existing functions to meet their own priorities; added some functions and ignored others to create their own portfolio; and blended their use with the specifics of their everyday lives. While these data challenge some assumptions of human–computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, it also presents new research potential in terms of understanding how users take advantage of the multiple features in smart phone devices and how they utilize seamfulness in everyday smart phones practices.     

Robust authentication and key agreement scheme preserving the privacy of secret key

In ubiquitous computing environments, people may obtain their services from application servers by using mobile devices at any time and anywhere. For convenience, most of those devices are small and of limited power and computation capacity. In this paper, we propose a robust user authentication and key agreement scheme suitable for ubiquitous computing environments. The main merits include: (1) a security-sensitive verification table is not required in the server; (2) the password can be chosen and changed freely by the clients and cannot be derived by the privileged administrator of the server; (3) all well-known security threats are solved in our proposed scheme; (4) the scheme does not have a serious time-synchronization problem; (5) the client and the server can establish a common session key; (6) the scheme is practical and efficient; (7) the scheme can preserve the privacy of the client’s secret key even if the secret information stored in a smart card is compromised.     

Mobile Agent Connection Establishment and Management (CEMA)—Message Exchange for Pervasive Computing Environments

Pervasive computing is an emerging technology that offers new possibilities to distributed computing and computer networking; it employs a wide variety of smart, ubiquitous devices throughout an individual's working and living environment. Mobile agents are software entities that can migrate between servers (mobile agent environments) of the network accomplishing various tasks on the behalf of their owners. The objective of this paper is to describe a test and prototyping environment for experimenting with mobile agents in pervasive environments. A prototype environment for a novel, proactive infrastructure is described for mobile agent assisted pervasive computing. In addition, a new message passing algorithm is provided for mobile agent connection establishment and management (CEMA). Simulation results show the performance of the proposed approach.