Ubiquitous computing Priti Punia

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Abstract-Ubiquitous or Pervasive (omnipresent) computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. As opposed to the desktop paradigm, in which a single user consciously engages a single device for a specialized purpose, someone "using" pervasive computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, in the course of ordinary activities, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so, (or in other words it means availability and invisibility). Ubicomp environments involve the interaction, coordination, and cooperation of numerous, casually accessible, and often invisible computing devices. The world is no more a desktop. Digital devices getting themselves adjusted in human world, behaving like human assistants in an invisible way to make it more easy and fast for humans.

This paper describes the history of Ubiquitous Computing, present scope, and the ongoing progress in this field by the various organizations around the world along with the challenges this technology is facing.

Introduction

Definitions-

Ubiquitous computing is the method of enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user – Mark Weiser ,Father of Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous computing, or calm technology, is a paradigm shift where technology becomes virtually invisible in our lives. -- Marcia Riley (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.) A few thousand years ago people of the Fertile Crescent invented the technology of capturing words on flat surfaces using abstract symbols: literacy. The technology of literacy when first invented, and for thousands of years afterwards, was expensive, tightly controlled, precious. Today it effortlessly, unobtrusively, surrounds us. Look around now: how many objects and surfaces do you see with words on them? Computers in the workplace can be as effortless, and

ubiquitous, as that. Long-term the PC and workstation will wither because computing access will be everywhere: in the walls, on wrists, and in "scrap computers" (like scrap paper) lying about to be grabbed as needed. This is called "ubiquitous computing", or "ubicomp".

Ubiquitous computing has as its goal the enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user. A number of researchers around the world are now working in the ubiquitous computing framework. Their work impacts all areas of computer science, including hardware components (e.g. chips), network protocols, interaction substrates (e.g. software for screens and pens), applications, privacy, and computational methods

Ubiquitous computing is not virtual reality, it is not a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) such as Apple's Newton, it is not a personal or intimate computer with agents doing your bidding. Unlike virtual reality, ubiquitous computing endeavers to integrate information displays into the everyday physical world. It considers the nuances of the real world to be wonderful, and aims only to augment them. Unlike PDA's, ubiquitious computing envisions a world of fully connected devices, with cheap wireless networks everywhere; unlike PDA's, it postulates that you need not carry anything with you, since information will be accessable everywhere. Unlike the intimate agent computer that responds to one's voice and is a personal friend and assistant, ubiquitous computing envisions computation primarily in the background where it may not even be noticed.

History:

Mark Weiser coined the phrase "ubiquitous computing" around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Both alone and with PARC Director and Chief Scientist John Seely Brown, Weiser wrote some of the earliest papers on the subject, largely defining it and sketching out its major concern.

Related Aereas to Unicomp-

Augmented reality :

Augmented reality (AR) is considered as an extension of Virtual Reality. Virtual Reality (VR) is a virtual space where the player immerses themselves into that exceed the bounds of physical reality. Augmented Reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.

Wikitude World Browser on the iPhone 3GS uses GPS and a solid state compass

Research explores the application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams as a way to enhance the perception of the real world. AR technology includes head-mounted displays and virtual retinal displays for visualization purposes, and construction of controlled environments containing sensors and actuators.

Ambient intelligence :

In computing, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence is a vision on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing. As these devices grow smaller, more connected and more integrated into our environment, the technology disappears into our surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users.The ambient intelligence paradigm builds upon pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing, profiling practices, context awareness, and human-centric computer interaction design and is characterized by systems and technologies that are :

- embedded : many networked devices are integrated into the environment

- context aware : these devices can recognize you and your situational context

- personalized : they can be tailored to your needs- adaptive : they can change in response to you

- anticipatory : they can anticipate your desires without conscious mediation.

Context-aware pervasive systems Human-centered computing

Human-centered computing (HCC) is an emerging, interdisciplinary academic field broadly concerned with computing and computational artifacts as they relate to the human condition. Some researchers focus on understanding humans, both as individuals and in social groups, by focusing on the ways that human beings adopt, adapt, and organize their lives around computational technologies.

Human-computer interaction

Human–computer Interaction (HCI) involves the study, planning, and design of the interaction between people (users) and computers

Smart device

A smart device is an electronic device that is cordless (unless while being charged), mobile (easily transportable), always connected (via WiFi, 3G, 4G etc.) and is capable of voice and video communication, internet browsing, "geo-location" (for search purposes) and that can operate to some extent autonomously. The most famous devices at time of writing are the Apple iPhone and iPad, followed by devices such as the Samsung Galaxy tablet. The term can also refer to a ubiquitous computing device: a device that exhibits some properties of ubiquitous computing including artificial intelligence. Smart devices can be designed to:

support a variety of form factors support a range of properties pertaining to ubiquitous

computing be used in any combination of three main system

environments: physical world, human-centred environments and distributed computing environments.

Form factors

Mark Weiser proposed three basic forms for ubiquitous system devices: tabs, pads and boards.[1]

Tabs: accompanied or wearable centimeter sized devices, e.g., smartphones, smart cards

Pads: hand-held decimeter-sized devices, e.g., laptops

Ubiquitous Computing Properties

Weiser’s vision for ubiquitous computing can be summarized in terms of three core properties:

Devices need to be networked, distributed and transparently accessible.

Human Computer Interaction with devices is hidden to a degree from its users.

Devices exhibit Context awareness of an environment in order to optimise their operation in that environment.

It is proposed that there are two additional core types of properties for UbiCom systems [2]:

Devices can operate to some extent autonomously, i.e., without human intervention, be self-governed.

Devices can handle a multiplicity of dynamic actions and interactions, governed by intelligent decision-making and organizational interaction. This may entail some form of [artificial intelligence] in order to:

o handle incomplete and non-deterministic interactions

o cooperation and competition between members of organizations

o richer interaction through sharing of context, semantics and goals etc.

However, It is hard to fix a closed set of properties that define all ubiquitous computing devices because of the sheer range and variety of ubiquitous computing research and applications. Rather than to propose a single definition for ubiquitous computing, a taxonomy of properties for ubiquitous computing has been proposed, from which different kinds or flavours of ubiquitous systems and applications can be composed and described.[2]

Environments

The term Smart Device Environments has two meanings. First, it can refer to a greater variety of device environments. Three

different kinds of environments for devices can be differentiated [2]:

Virtual computing environments that enable smart devices to access pertinent services anywhere and anytime.

Physical environments that may be embedded with a variety of smart devices of different types including tags, sensors and controllers. These can have different form factors ranging from nano to micro to macro sized.

Humans environments: humans, either individually or collectively, inherently form a smart environment for devices. However, humans may themselves be accompanied by smart devices such as mobile phones, use surface-mounted devices (wearable computing) and contain embedded devices (e.g., pacemakers to maintain a healthy heart operation).

Second, the term Smart Device Environments can also refer to the concept of a smart environment which focuses more specifically on the physical environment of the device. The physical environment is smart because it is embedded or scattered with smart devices that can sense and control part of it.

Smart Devices versus Services

Devices may access or offer one or many services from other devices. Services may be split across several devices or be offered by multiple types of services. Service models tend be oriented towards virtual computing environment service use and Internets with seemingly unbounded resources. Devices embody bounded resources that constrain service use. Weiser has referred to this concept of devices being ubiquitous yet bounded as embodied virtuality.

Smart Devices

Ubiquitous learning

uLearning may use more context awareness to provide most adaptive contents for learners.Here is another meaning for "ubiquitous learning", saying, how to lower the barriers for end users to learn how to handle/control or even co-design ubiquitous apps in future ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) environments. Ubicomp is extending the computing domain from desktop computers to sensor-augmented smart objects (e.g., smart furniture, smart cups). By analyzing the sensed intelligence from smart objects, ubicomp applications can sense the ambient context change and adapt their behavior to assist users. Compared to desktop applications, ubicomp applications are more deeply and widely embedded into our daily lives which requires more complex knowledge on user requirement understanding, heterogeneous sensor data processing, application/device administration, and hardware/software failure handling.

Virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR),is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. Some advanced, haptic systems

now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback, in medical and gaming applications. Furthermore, virtual reality covers remote communication environments which provide virtual presence of users with the concepts of telepresence and telexistence or a virtual artifact (VA) either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove, the Polhemus, and omnidirectional treadmills. The simulated environment can be similar to the real world in order to create a lifelike experience—for example, in simulations for pilot or combat training—or it can differ significantly from reality, such as in VR games. In practice, it is currently very difficult to create a high-fidelity virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power, image resolution, and communication bandwidth; however, the technology's proponents hope that such limitations will be overcome as processor, imaging, and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective over time.

Virtual reality is often used to describe a wide variety of applications commonly associated with immersive, highly visual, 3D environments.

U.S. Navy personnel using a VR parachute trainer

Wearable computer

Wearable computers are miniature electronic devices that are worn by the bearer under, with or on top of clothing. This class of wearable technology has been developed for general or special purpose information technologies and media development. Wearable computers are especially useful for applications that require more complex computational support than just hardware coded logics.

I'm Watch smartwatch with Android.jpg

One of the main features of a wearable computer is consistency. There is a constant interaction between the computer and user, i.e. there is no need to turn the device on or off. Another feature is the ability to multi-task. It is not necessary to stop what you are doing to use the device; it is augmented into all other actions. These devices can be incorporated by the user to act like a prosthetic. It can therefore be an extension of the user’s mind and/or body.

Task computing

A Task Computing Framework (TCF) is a framework that supports Task Computing, by providing support for:

- The workflows of Task Computing, i.e., at a minimum, Discovery, followed by Composition and Execution

- Semantic description of tasks and services- Specification, Execution and Re-Usability of tasks by

end-users- Manipulation including creation and disposal of

services by the end-users

Ubicomp Systems : Progress, Opportunities, and ChallengesTwo key visions—Calm Computing and Ambient Intelligence. In 1991, Weiser envisioned a world where interaction occurs with everyday but computationally augmented artefacts using natural interactions, our senses, and the spoken word—Sal’s alarm clock senses when to interact with her to trigger the brewing of coffee; augmented reality window displays add first to her perception of her neighbourhood’s movements, then the activity of her remote colleagues. It’s a calm world where information seamlessly moves in and out of attention as automation gives way to human interaction. Digital and physical are tightly integrated: Sal locates a missing manual by virtue of its embedded tag; her ‘foreview mirror’ helps her transit to work and park more efficiently. Particularly radical at the time, Sal accesses not one computer but many, and these work together as a single seamless entity.It’s a future where computation augments the senses, and the interconnectedness of information, the environment, and devices enables them to work in concert to support everyday life—for convenience and enhanced productivity.We should consider how ubicomp technologies can be designed to augment the human intellect so that people can perform ever greater feats, extending their ability to learn, make decisions, reason, create,solve complex problems and generate innovative ideas

Challenges

A. Ubiquitous Data

In the current social and political climate, we cannot imagine any kind of technology being relied upon as a sufficient guarantor to enable us to pass through airport security without close scrutiny—could we ever trust a ubicomp environment to do this? This scenario raises several important questions about the ‘data in ubicomp’, its trustworthiness, and access to it: 1) When can we infer with certainty? One reason we might not trust ubicomp with recognising our identity is that sensed interactions are imprecisee observations of the world, often taken from multiple sensors and at varying points in time—ubicomp environments need to weigh this evidence and make a judgement of when and how to react. The severity and importance of the outcome is certainly application- and context-dependent 2) Where is ubiquitous data located? Ubiquitous access to data raises the important question of where ubiquitous data lives. Certainly, a global ubiquitous data store is not practicable for capacity, bandwidth, latency, and availability reasons. But neither is it desirable. For many environments such as rooms, homes, companies, and hospitals, the demands for security and privacy require enforcement of conventional or physical ‘boundaries’.3) How long should data persist and who can access it? What does the environment know about us? What should it know and what should we trust it with? How long should data be retained? What is transient and what should persist? Can we delete it, and can be forgotten? To enact the foreview mirror, Sal needs access to information about free space in the car park. Intuitively it seems acceptable that this is public information. However, if the data is more intrusive and can identify particular vehicles or persons, then suddenly the uses towhich it can be put are more insidious and the need for tighter control more exigent. In typical ubicomp systems, data is closed to the experimenters who deploy the system or experiment, and the choice as to what’s kept and forgotten by the system is often under articulated, so this issue is not addressed. To enable open scientific use of ubicomp sensing, or even, ubicomp crime-scene forensics, the issue of data persistence and access controlcomes to the fore. This is even more challenging in ubicomp as often notions of identity are weak.4) How do we express our privacy wishes? What is tracked and shared by the environment, and what remains private to the individual, is still very much unsolved.

A key challenge of creating ubicomp systems that can be deployed in more than one environment and for substantial periods of time, is the degree of change or volatility experienced: 1) Volatility: The changing environment. Not only does the world change (and thus so should our computational understanding of it, as alluded to above), but so the set of users, devices and software components in an environment change over time—far more frequently in ubicomp systems than in conventional distributed systems. This implies the creation and destruction

of associations— logical communication relationships—between software components resident on the devices. It also implies failures where communication is no longer possible between them. But change also brings opportunities, as new resources with different capabilities come into play. The system must be designed to incorporate change and failure within normal operating parameters and gracefully adapt or degrade appropriately. 2) Responding to volatility: Adaptation. 3) Evolution: Adapting to the unexpected. The goal should be ‘open loop’ adaptation, i.e. the ability for the environment to cope with users, devices and software it has not seen before.

Various other challenges-

Work on ubiquitous computing is still at an early phase. Most work now is concentrating on the mobile infrastructure for wireless networking. Because ubiquitous computing envisions hundreds of wireless computers in every office, its need for wireless bandwidth is prodigious. For instance, I work in a not-very-large building with 300 other people. If each of us has 100 wireless devices in our offices, each demanding 256kbits/sec, we are using 7.5 gigabits of aggregate bandwidth in a single building. This is difficult to achieve with currently envisioned wireless technologies.

A second challenge of the mobile infrastructure is handling mobility. Networking developed over the past twenty years with the assumption that a machine's name, and its network address, was unvarying. However, once a computer can move from network to network this assumption is false. Existing protocols such as TCP/IP and OSI are unprepared for to handle machine mobility without change. A number of committees and researchers are now working on methods of augmenting or replacing existing protocols to handle mobility.

A third challenge of the mobile infrastructure is window systems. Most window systems, such as those for the Macintosh and for DOS, are not able to open remote windows over a network. Even window systems designed for networking, such as X, have built into them assumptions about the mobility of people. The X window system protocol, for instance, makes it very difficult to migrate the window of a running application from one screen to another, although this is just what a person traveling from their office to a meeting might want.

Networking,Mobility,Scalability,Realiability in short are issues to be considered.

III. Opportunities for growing the infrastructure

A. Utility Computing in the CloudUtility computing can help realize the ubiquitous computing vision by providing large-scale and long-lived storage and processing resources for personal ubicomp applications. The notion of a utility that makes computing resources available to the public, analogous to an electric or telecommunications utility. This notion has become reality in recent years with the rise of cloud computing services such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, which offers pay-as-you-use resources in the form of virtual machines. For instance, they would allow individuals to packages are installed on their virtual machines, and to insist that any data formats used be open and portable. While utility computing in the cloud can provide important backend resources for ubicomp applications, it cannot provide all the necessary infrastructure. B. Internet of ThingsIn our opinion, a key problem in wider adoption of ubicomp is the tight coupling with particular embedded infrastructure. This has led researchers to become increasingly ingenious in considering how they might exploit infrastructures out there for other purposes, such as the cell phone network, power lines, and frequently smart phones and users themselves. Buildings incorporate sensors , motion-triggered lighting, intruder detection, fault detection, and so on. Even domestic homes increasingly have security and heating systems with room-level sensors that detect motion and the opening and closing of windows and doors. Some commercial appliances (e.g. elevators, copiers) can already ‘call home’ for engineering support in the event of failure. Our cars are becoming increasingly densely sensed, not only for measuring the ongoing operation of the car and the environment it encounters, but also increasingly for the safety and comfort of passengers. Then there are sensors in our civic infrastructure and roads. All this increasing ‘smartness’ is surely an opportunity to the ubicomp community, providing this infrastructure were open to us. Outlook for large-scale deploymentWhile there have been many successful research prototypes of ubicomp systems, we do not believe the technology in such prototypes will see wide adoption until a number of difficult issues are resolved. Two of the main issues are more economic than technical: Who will pay for ubicomp systems and who will manage them? ConclusionsIn the twenty years since Weiser articulated the ubiquitous computing vision, a large and vibrant research community has grown around the ubicomp concept. Numerous successfulprototypes have been built and evaluated, demonstrating the utility of many different aspects of ubicomp systems. In that same timeframe, digital technology has made great advances, enabling products and services that are complementary to the ubicomp vision and have become part of the everyday lives of billions of people. Arguably the most successful of these products is the mobile phone, which places increasing amounts of computing, sensing, and communication capabilities in the hands of a significant portion of the earth’s

population. However, despite this progress and the continuing opportunitiesfor further advances, formidable challenges remain to be overcome before we can realize many of the core ubicomp scenarios such as Calm Computing and Ambient Intelligenceon any large scale.

Current research:Ubiquitous computing touches on a wide range of research topics, including distributed computing, mobile computing, sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence.

Conclusion: Strengths

• The paper identifies certain key features of Ubiquitous applications

• Exemplifies these features with real-life projects• Correlates SE challenges pertaining to such pattern of

application developmentAccordingly, it proposes changes that need to be inculcated in the stream of Software Engineering

Weakness- The paper only looks into ‘Rapid Prototyping’

paradigm of application development- It overlooks other models and approaches available

for UbiComp application development.(probable challenges therein have not be catered for)

References

[Suchman 85]. Suchman, Lucy A. Plans and Situated Actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Xerox PARC Technical Report ISL-6. February 1985

[Weiser91] Weiser, Mark. The Computer for the Twenty-First Century. Scientific American. September 1991. pp. 94-104.

Mark Weiser's original material dating from his tenure at Xerox PARC:

Ubiquitous Computing

Links referred:

Context and Adaptivity in Pervasive Computing Environments: Links with Software Engineering and Ontological Engineering.

Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision, by Genevieve Bell & Paul Dourish.

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/context-aware_computing.html

Towards pervasive computing in health care – A literature review, article in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making (Open Access journal) by Carsten Orwat, Andreas Graefe and Timm Faulwasser.

Pervasive Technology Lab (CIC) Pervasive Technology to Help People with Mental Health Problems.

Wwikipedia/ubiquitous computing Google.com/images