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.     

基于单片机系统的智能化学生公寓的改造

本文针对学生公寓的特殊情况,介绍了利用单片机系统实现对学生公寓的智能化控制,实现安防、节能、远程监测以及远程控制.并对整个系统的整体构成及各个具体功能模块的实现进行了详细论述.给出了系统框图、部分硬件电路图和程序设计框图.     

A Steward Robot for Human-Friendly Human-Machine Interaction in a Smart House Environment

The independence of people who need help with daily activities will become of vital importance to all societies in the future. This paper addresses the problem of controlling the assistive home environment and emphasizes human-friendly human-machine interactions in an approach designed to achieve independence. To provide residents with an accessible, convenient, and cost-effective environment for independent living, we introduce a new service robot, categorized as a steward robot, as an intermediate agent between residents and their complex smart house environment. The learning capability and emotional interaction of the robot can make it more human-friendly in various tasks. A learning system enables the robot to provide customized services by accumulating knowledge of the user's behavioral patterns in daily activities. An emotional interaction system generates facial expressions to communicate with the user in a human-friendly manner. We have developed two types of a steward robot: a software type, which can be used everywhere via personal computing devices such as a PDA and a cellular phone, and a hardware type, which provides tangible services with physical interaction via two robotic arms and a mobile base.     

Locating experience: touring a pervasive performance

Touring location-based experiences is challenging, as both content and underlying location services must be adapted to each new setting. A study of a touring performance called Rider Spoke as it visited three different cities reveals how professional artists developed a novel approach to these challenges in which users drove the co-evolution of content and the underlying location service as they explored each new city. We show how the artists iteratively developed filtering, survey, visualization, and simulation tools and processes to enable them to tune the experience to the local characteristics of each city. Our study reveals how by paying attention to both content and infrastructure issues in tandem, the artists were able to create a powerful user experience that has since toured to many different cities.     

The universal remote console: a universal access bus for pervasive computing

V2, a technical committee of the International Committee for information technology standards is developing standards for information technology access interfaces. As part of this endeavor, V2 is to issue the Universal Remote Console architecture, a set of draft standards for public review and comment. The five standards specify communications between a Target - a device or service the user wishes to access and a universal remote console-software that is typically hosted on a user's personal device. The standards specify mechanisms for the discovery, selection, configuration, and operation of user interfaces and its options.     

PvcwCORBA:普适计算环境中间件的实现

针对普适环境的平台的多样性、资源的有限性、设备的移动性和应用高性能要求等需求,提出了其中间件的设计和实现方法,并据此构建了pvcwCORBA。通过试验验证了pvcwCORBA作为支持无线接入功能的高性能、嵌入式CORBA,能够适应普适计算环境的要求。     

PICO: a middleware framework for pervasive computing

The pervasive information community organization is a framework for creating mission-oriented dynamic communities of autonomous software entities that perform tasks for users and devices. PICO's telemedicine example scenario demonstrates its potential as a simple, unique, and versatile middleware framework for pervasive computing.     

Evolving a pervasive IT infrastructure: a technology integration approach

Over the past five years or so, pervasive computing has emerged as a new computing paradigm with a great deal of appeal. Enterprises are increasingly showing interest in deploying pervasive information technology (IT) infrastructures to realise the perceived benefits offered by this new computing paradigm. However, a return on the investment and considerations of the currently deployed infrastructure is a constraint for businesses to invest in a pervasive IT infrastructure. Realising that the economics of an investment in a new infrastructure can affect the embracing of pervasive IT, we suggest an approach that shows how the existing technology solutions available in the market and deployed in an enterprise can be used to develop a pervasive IT infrastructure, thereby protecting investments and maximising returns. We present an evolution model to systematically and incrementally achieve a pervasive IT environment, and present guidelines for evaluating which services to develop first based on evolving the existing infrastructure point of view. This work provides practical implications for enterprises as well as pointers for research.

基于云技术的智慧城市中大规模房屋数据处理

在智慧城市中传感器和设备收集各种数据,实现增值服务.主要关注来自智慧城市中的智能房屋数据,提出用于存储和处理大规模房屋数据的Scallop4SC平台,实现智慧城市服务.房屋数据分为房屋日志数据和房屋配置数据,分别使用HBase和MYSQL管理.通过HBase键值以schemaless方式存储管理异构日志数据.MySQL管理配置数据,完成房屋数据查询.多节点Hadoop/Map Reduce集群处理巨量房屋日志数据.最后通过实际一年的房屋日志数据,计算智能设备能耗并完成实验性评估.根据实验结果,探讨Scallop4SC处理智慧城市的数据规模.     

一种可编程的全数字锁相环路的实现

介绍了一种基于FPGA可编程技术实现的用于无线通信实验系统的全数字锁相环路。详细叙述了其工作原理、工作性能、电路实现和仿真结果。     

Jini home networking: a step toward pervasive computing

Jini connection technology forms a network of devices on the fly, without manual connection or configuration. It can also complement other technologies that strive for "anytime, anywhere" connectivity. The article looks at lookup and discovery services; reliability and scalability; Jini architectural requirements; service for non-Jini devices; Jini mobile edition for wireless devices; Jini implementations; and competing and related technologies.     

One.world: experiences with a pervasive computing architecture

A new architecture, one.world, provides an integrated, comprehensive framework for building pervasive applications. It targets applications that automatically adapt to highly dynamic computing environments, and it includes services that make it easier for developers to manage constant change. We illustrate the metrics for designing and evaluating pervasive computing systems. The performance measurements are done using Sun's Java Hotspot virtual machine.     

PerContRep: a practical reputation system for pervasive content services

Social network has extended its popularity from the Internet to mobile domain. Personal mobile devices can be self-organized and communicate with each other for instant social activities at any time and in any places to achieve pervasive social networking (PSN). In such a network, various content information flows. To which extent should mobile users trust it, whilst user privacy can also be preserved? Existing work has not yet seriously considered trust and reputation management, although trust plays an important role in PSN. In this paper, we propose PerContRep, a practical reputation system for pervasive content services that can assist trustworthy content selection and consumption in a pervasive manner. We develop a hybrid trust and reputation management model to evaluate node recommendation trust and content reputation in the context of frequent change of node pseudonyms. Simulations show the advantages of PerContRep in assisting user decisions and its effectiveness with regard to unfair rating attack, collaborative unfair rating attack, on-off attack and conflict behavior attack. A prototype system achieves positive user feedback on its usability and social acceptance.     

The implementation of a secure and pervasive multimodal Web system architecture

While most users currently access Web applications from Web browser interfaces, pervasive computing is emerging and offering new ways of accessing Internet applications from any device at any location, by utilizing various modes of interfaces to interact with their end users. The PC and its back-end servers remain important in a pervasive system, and the technology could involve new ways of interfacing with a PC and/or various types of gateways to back-end servers. In this research, cellular phone was used as the pervasive device for accessing an Internet application prototype, a multimodal Web system (MWS), through voice user interface technology.This paper describes how MWS was developed to provide a secure interactive voice channel using an Apache Web server, a voice server, and Java technology. Securing multimodal applications proves more challenging than securing traditional Internet applications. Various standards have been developed within a context of Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) platform to secure multimodal and wireless applications. In addition to covering these standards and their applicability to the MWS system implementation, this paper also shows that multimodal user-interface page can be generated by using XSLT stylesheet which transforms XML documents into various formats including XHTML, WML, and VoiceXML.     

The programmable network prototyping system

The programmable network prototyping system (PNPS) uses a collection of reusable hardware modules that implement generic communications functions such as transmission, reception, signal propagation, and pattern matching. These modules are interconnected and configured to emulate a variety of communication networks whose behavior can be monitored under different load conditions. The user specifies a network as a set of interacting components using available software tools. These tools are accessible within a prototyping environment that includes a control system for configuring the hardware modules and interconnecting them according to the component specifications. Previously designed components are stored in a library and can be used to specify new networks. Although PNPS is designed to provide a prototyping environment for communication networks, some of the basic ideas can be useful in other contexts     

MARS: a programmable coordination architecture for mobile agents

Mobile agents offer much promise, but agent mobility and Internet openness make coordination more difficult. Mobile Agent Reactive Spaces (MARS), a Linda-like coordination architecture with programming features, can handle a heterogeneous network while still allowing simple and flexible application design     

The construct of a high-level computer language for programmable assembly

In recent years, considerable effort has been devoted to developing and extending programming languages for manipulation of computer-controlled robotic arms for various tasks. The present trend is to develop high-level languages that simplify the programming task so that they can be used by a less well-trained person with ease and speed. In this article, the information required for assembly is examined and a construct of a new computer language is proposed. An example of a computer program using the proposed language for assembling a pencil sharpener is given. This program is compared with similar program written in another language currently being developed and extended.     

Spatial-aware service management in a pervasive environment

We can perceive the advent of Internet of Things enriched pervasive environments attributed to the fast emerging of embedded and interconnected intelligent devices and sensors. However, most of current pervasive systems are still being developed based on the so-called the system is the application philosophy, causing the developers to take care of all technical details from the ground up. There is relatively little research focuses on building higher-level abstractions so that the burdens of developers can be relieved. The abstraction of a “place,” also known as an “Ambient,” is an essential context information when implementing a pervasive system. The quality of the results of a service composition can be improved if the concept of Ambient is taken into account. This paper aims to investigate the use of Ambient in the pervasive system systematically. We propose several new spatial abstractions and a spatial-aware service management scheme for the Ambient on top of a robust service management protocol. Formal verification, complexity analysis, and experiments are performed to verify the robustness, efficiency, and performance of the proposed approach, respectively.     

The development of a program generator for programmable logic controllers

Programmable logic controllers (PLC) are very widely used for sequential logic control in manufacturing environments. PLCs serve to integrate materials handling and processes in automated manufacturing systems. Due to changing demands on manufacturing systems, frequently new control software needs to written and changes need to be made to existing control software. The productivity of such software development efforts can benefit from a software generation tool. We present an approach for the development of such a tool.