Ubiquitous Computing Enabling Greater Cooperation Among Members of a Family

8/14/2019 Ubiquitous Computing Enabling Greater Cooperation Among Members of a Family

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Ubiquitous computing enabling greater cooperation

among members of a familyRoushdat Elaheebocus

School of Electronics and Computer

ScienceUniversity of [email protected]

ABSTRACTThe scenario is set in the year 2020. A decade ago major

technological breakthroughs caused speculations about whether

technology, specially computer-science related, was really our ally

or foe, whether it would tear the society apart or bring us closer

together. In this paper we go through one of these possible

outcomes to demonstrate how large scale distributed and

ubiquitous computing systems enables more cooperation among

individuals, specially members of a family. The Echelon familyconsists of four members that we will follow during a day in their

normal life.

KeywordsDistributed systems, ubiquitous computing, family, futurology

1. INTRODUCTION

While many researchers have produced research work based on

smart-homes [1, 2, 3, 4] or ubiquitous devices, few have focussed

on the cooperation among individuals that such pervasive and

distributed systems will enable. Based on Mark Weiser's

ubiquitous computing vision [5] of a world where individuals

seamlessly interact with computers just like they breathe-in airwithout realising the mechanism behind, we present the

cooperation that pervasive technologies will make possible among

individuals, in this case, among family members in the future. The

scenario is also supported by current research work going on in

terms of ubiquitous technologies.

The layout of this technical report is such that a description of the

family and its members is given followed by an in-depth

description of a smart-device known as the SD that all individuals

will possess in the future and finally, some main activities

performed by one or more members of that family during one day,

each being separated under different sub-headings. For each

activity, there are two parts; firstly a description of the activity as

seen and experienced, and the second part is a brief literature

review grounding the activity into research work that has beendone so far in that context and the technologies behind it.

Echelon which happens to coincide with the name of the

infamous widely distributed signal intelligence collection and

analysis network operated by five countries including the UK and

the United States of America [1], here refers merely to a family

name. Daniel Echelon and his wife Sarah live together with their

20 years old daughter Flora and their newborn son Ryan in the

southern city of Southampton, UK. Daniel is a senior lecturer and

researcher at the University of Southampton for the School of

Electronics and Computer Science while his wife has recently

taken up a part-time job at a supermarket a few meters away from

their house. Flora is an undergraduate student in computer

science and wants to follow the footsteps of her father.

We are currently in the year 2020 and Weiser's prediction of

technology weaving themselves into the fabric of everyday life

until they are indistinguishable from it [5] is now a reality. It has

taken almost five decades for what was research work some ten to

twenty years ago to mature into widespread usage of ubiquitous

computing.

2. THE SMART-DEVICE (SD)Facing stiff competition in the smart phone and PDA markets,

companies have found themselves compelled to adopt a more

inter-operable approach supported by standards to develop thenew generations of 'smart phones'.

A large-screen, data-centric, hand-held device designed to offer

complete phone functions whilst simultaneously functioning as a

personal digital assistant (PDA). [6]. Such is the definition of a

smart phone widely accepted across the community. However in

recent years, we have witnessed a surge in new functionalities

being added to smart phones that the original and major function

which was: 'making phone calls' has blurred into the background.

Thus in the near future, researchers may even consider dropping

the word 'phone' from 'smart phone' and perhaps replace it with

'device' as we have done in this futurology report. We will be

referring to the new generation of smart phones as 'smart devices'

(SD for short).

All citizens of this pervasive computing era has an SD.Comparable to the wearing of watches on our wrists, individuals

go everywhere with it to enabling them to interact ubiquitously

with their environment. In one sentence, the SD has become the

sixth sense of the human race.


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Figure 1. The SD with some of its capabilities andfunctionalities

2.1 Connectivity features of the SDAs shown in Figure 1, several connectivity options are already

being embedded in smart phones such as Bluetooth, WiFi, the less

popular Infra-red and the widespread GPRS. While Bluetooth is

suitable for short-range communication due to its low energy

consumption, WiFi provides a larger bandwidth with a longer

range, typically 250 metres but at the same time is a greedy energy

consumer. GPRS on the other hand is a paid alternative making it

less attractive for frequent usage [7].

What has not been seen so far is Peer-To-Peer networking

capabilities in these smart devices but we are not far from there.

Bluetooth enabled devices support simultaneous connection with

up to seven other devices forming a piconet and several piconetscan join together to form a larger scatternet. This shall be the basis

for Peer-To-Peer in SDs and can be further expanded via the

Internet through devices having Internet connectivity. Coupled

with GPS data, the devices will enable applications to determine

locations and thus set up these ad-hoc Peer-To-Peer networks

based on proximity.

2.2 Interacting with objects and appliancesSome researchers have focused on using future SDs as input

devices [8] than can act as a wireless mouse, use their cameras for

gesture recognition or even handwriting recognition on their

touch-screen using limited computation and memory [9]. While

these will be useful functionalities, in a distributed and ubiquitous

environment, users will want to use these devices for much more

interaction with appliances in their surroundings. [10] proposedthe use of Elope middleware that will allow SDs to configure

themselves and communicate with tagged objects and let users

invoke services. Tagging here mainly refers to Radio frequency

identification (RFID) [11] that enables RFID scanners to read the

information without the requirement that barcodes has: direct line-

of-sight. These RFID readers will possibly be embedded in SDs

[12].

So far, the major obstacle that remains to be overcome is the wide

range of appliances and the fact that they are produced by

different manufacturers. Thus most of them will have different

interfaces. A solution proposed [7] is the use of a single

framework that can manage the different interaction models that

SDs are capable of engaging in, such as:

Universal Remote Control whereby each SD should store theinterfaces of entities it interacts with. Since pre-storing them all is

impractical and require too much memory for storage, allowing

the entities to 'teach' the SD their interfaces can be an option.

However, not all entities will have such capabilities rendering it

only partially successful.

Dual Connectivity overcomes the limitation of Universal Remote

Control by requiring an object to only provide its identity to the

SD, usually through Bluetooth. The SD then downloads the

required interface from an interface-bank on the Internet using

either WiFi or GPRS and can thus interact with the object.

A wider scale model is the Gateway Connectivity whereby the SD

connects to a gateway station using Bluetooth or WiFi that knows

at least one of the entity that the SD want to interact with and then

acts as a relay. The entities on the other side may communicate

among themselves in a Peer-To-Peer fashion.Peer-To-Peer Connectivity has the main advantage of overcoming

the distance limitation of the other models since it allows the

sharing of information and data without users being in direct

proximity of one another.

Generating interfaces on-the-fly for a wide range of appliances

from the abstract specifications of their functionalities is another

approach [13]. However it will require that all the appliances are

capable of communicating this crucial information in a way that

the SD can understand.

2.3 Accessing ubiquitous services Not only will SDs allow their users to interact with home

appliances but also benefit from services offered by third-parties.

A Mobile Service Toolkit (MST) was developed [14] for this

purpose and examples such as ticket machines, interactive product

catalogues and electronic information kiosks were some of the

services given as examples. Since information were being

provided to third-parties in return for personalised services,

privacy concerns were addressed by providing users with the

ability to choose among three privacy levels that are: 'Always

disclose' , 'Ask for confirmation before disclosure' and 'Request

pin number to authorise disclosure'. However, only services in

fixed locations can be accessed this way. For discovering services

that are mobile and ubiquitous in nature, SDIPP, a protocol


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implemented by extending the Bluetooth Service Discovery

Protocol (SDP) with web access, personalisation, context and

location awareness [15] can be used. SDIPP enables on-the-fly

service discovery and supports a method of anonymous payment

based on electronic cash. Anonymity is preserved by using

device-based authentication through the IMEI number of the SD

instead of user-based.

2.4 Digital identityAlso shown in the image, digital identity and e-certificates are

also a highly desirable features of the SDs. Digital identity is

important to be established for some services such as banking and

authentication of certificates to function. This is discussed in [16]

where its importance for law-enforcement is highlighted. Since

the SD will be used for authentication and trust establishment

[17], it has been compared to a wallet, in this case: an electronic

wallet and its characteristic of having many functionalities

embedded into one device is drawn from the Swiss Army Knife

analogy.

2.5 Other functionalitiesWhile listing all the functionalities of an SD is difficult, a set of

useful ones will now be briefly listed, mainly based from [18]. The SD will include all the features of the smartphones

currently available.

Speech recognition enabling talks from a group of

participants in a meeting for example to be recorded,

classified person-wise and a text-script generated and

archived.

Act as an intelligent agent capable of gathering,

reasoning and inferring information from the Web,

made possible with the semantic web.

In-built projector allows a user to have a much larger

screen to be displayed on any flat surface and the SD's

camera detects and recognises gestures made by the user

on the projected image.

Act as a personal health monitoring system [19] by

communicating with wireless bio-sensors and analysing

the data in real time. If necessary, ambulance or pre-

assigned care-givers are contacted automatically. The

system can also provide medical advice to the user.

2.6 Challenges to be overcomeWhile much of the technologies for developing the various

functionalities in the SDs are already available, there remain

several challenges to be addressed. Privacy is a major concern for

such devices since they will be gathering, holding and sharing so

much data about individuals when the latter start to rely more on

such pervasive devices [20]. Most research work are inclined at

outputting new functionalities and have largely ignored privacy.One of the possibility to tackle this concern is by delegating the

task of privacy level assignment to users [14] whereby they

specify different levels of privacy for different pieces of

information.

Along with privacy, trust and security are also important issues as

discussed in [15, 18] which also mentioned energy consumption

as a constraint that has to be taken into consideration since SDs as

most mobile devices will be running on batteries that have limited

power.

3. ACTIVITIES

3.1 Wake upScenario

With a vibrating pillow under his head, Daniel is woken up at six

in the morning by the bed's alarm system that has obtained data

from his personal calendar service through his SD. Five minutes

later, the alarm system detects that Daniel is still in bed withminimal movements and concludes that he has fallen asleep again

and thus give him another vibration, a little harder this time.

While Daniel's day has already begun, Sarah, is still sleeping in

the same bed, undisturbed, since she works as a part-timer in the

afternoon, she will woken up at 8a.m with the latest soft music

tunes that she has enjoyed listening recently or that her SD has

recommended to the alarm system.

Flora, with the deadline of one her assignment and the end of year

examinations approaching, the alarm system is requested by the

latter's SD to consider these as parameters. The bed sensors has

detected however that she has been sleeping for only five hours

and concludes based on her sleep patterns and other data, that she

requires at least two more hours of sleep.

Related Research

Tracking movements in bed has been done for monitoring patients

at a hospital [21]. In that case, passive infra-red sensors were used

and movement data was being recorded for batch processing. In

our case, a real time system will be desirable as described in [22]

whereby not only movements but also sleeping patterns will be

monitored and analysed. This will require sensors embedded into

the mattress and pillows as well.

Interestingly, alarm systems have been largely ignored by the

research community. However an innovative alarm system [23]

makes use of vibrating pillows connected to an alarm for setting

the time was patented. Using vibrations instead of sounds make it

possible to wake up an individual without disturbing others still

sleeping in the same bed.

By providing the alarm system with some form of artificial

intelligence to allow reasoning, connecting it with the sleep-

monitoring sensor network and enabling interaction with devices

such as the SD normally through a wireless connection such

Bluetooth or WiFi, we effectively obtain a smart alarm system that

has been demonstrated in the scenario.

3.2 Lost CombScenario

Sarah has the habit of always combing her hair as the first thing

when she is up from bed. The previous day , Flora used her

mother's comb and has not put it back in its place. Now since the

latter is still sleeping, Sarah, cannot ask her about the comb's

location. Fortunately, since the comb, as most objects in thehouse, has an RFID tag, Sarah, just pick up her SD and search for

the comb's location. The room in which it currently is and the

approximate distance from another bigger object in that room is

provided. With these information, the lost object is very quickly

located.

Related Research

The idea of using ubiquitous technology to find lost objects such

keys, purse, and in our case, a comb, commonly referred to as


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Frequently Lost Objects (FLO) [24] has been around for the past

decades. Most systems [24, 26, 27] have proposed the use of low

cost radio-frequency tags, known as RFID [25] attached to objects

and that can be read without line-of-sight unlike conventional

barcodes. While the sole use of RFID present some challenges

such as the limited detection range or that the lost object has been

taken out of the house for instance, the smart floor solution is

proposed [24], whereby the information is provided to the userabout the last location that the object was detected and with

whom. All this information is transmitted from the wireless sensor

network to a display unit, in our case, the SD. A step further will

be the use of mobile robots [28] to help locate the object. An

important target population for such systems has been for people

suffering from Alzheimer [29].

3.3 Smart RefrigeratorScenario

As Daniel takes out the milk from the refrigerator for breakfast,

the latter records that action and if the milk bottle is not returned

back, the stock level will be decreased. The Echelon family need

not worry about any items from the refrigerator getting out of

stock since the stock level is constantly monitored by therefrigerator management system. Along with stock levels, expiry

dates are also monitored and family members are notified

whenever an item's expiry date is approaching.

Sarah wanted to speak to her father about some computer-related

assignment she is currently working. But since Daniel has been

rather busy lately, he has not been able to discuss it with her at

home. As both individuals will be on the campus today, Daniel

thought that maybe they can meet up there. So he writes a note on

the modern 'stick-notes' on the refrigerator's door: a touch screen

used as a display panel for the refrigerator's system, acts as a

notice board for 'sticking' notes for other family members and

finally, is an interface for the kitchen management system

providing recipes for example. The appliance is also WiFi enabled

and provides a web interface for the family to access when theyare away from home as shown below infigure 2.

Related Research

The smart refrigerator, as described in [22, 30] does not only store

food but can also generate shopping list, manages stock levels, re-

order some common items online automatically, while

considering expiry dates of products stored. It must be highlighted

here that RFID [25] will facilitate the refrigerator's monitoring

task; equipped with an RFID reader, it will be able to accurately

keep track of its content . Furthermore, taking the traditional role

of the empty refrigerator door acting as a notice board, a touch

screen can be embedded into it as proposed in [31, 32], providing

a more aesthetically pleasing look and also enabling messages to

be sent through the web from the display to the family member's

SDs or vice versa.

3.4 Car Navigation & Automated DrivingScenario

After breakfast, Daniel gets ready for work. In the mean-time,

Sarah prepares Ryan so that his father can drop him at the

kindergarten on his way to university. Since dropping the baby

before going to work is an everyday routine, the car navigation

system has already programmed itself for taking that route.

However occasionally, Sarah may not send Ryan with his dad. In

these cases, the car's sensors will detect that there is no baby on

board and thus modify the route. Traffic jam is no longer an issue

now since most of the time, cars auto-drive themselves at constant

speed.

Cars communicate with one another and also with road-side nodesthat they encounter on their way, sharing information about their

destination and traffic flow. With these data, routing is optimised

and time to reach destination is calculated in real-time. With

automatic navigation, cars are able to travel closely to one another

while passengers can relax. Car sensors and cameras detect the

mood of the passengers and react accordingly for example by

playing some soft music by recognising who is currently in the car

and adapting to their taste.

Related Research

While navigation systems using GPS technology is now

widespread [33], cars having automated driving capabilities are

still not on our roads although research works and prototypes

have been produced since the early 90's [34]. The idea of having

one human driver in a vehicle and several other vehicles following

it in automated mode forming a platoon was explored in France in

1993 [34]. The automated highway project demonstrated the

feasibility of automated driving using several technologies

including vision based, radar-based and also platoon-based

[35].It has been shown that the automated system is safer than

having human drivers [36, 37]. One major obstacle that hindered

the success of these early systems was a lack of appropriate

wireless communication technology such as Bluetooth and WiFi.

These were explored in [38] which suggested that cars should

share information about their destination, and the route they

intend to take with other cars. This will allow cars to process

information and optimise their routing. A peer-to-peer network is

used to establish communication with cars over a long range. This

system can be further enhanced by placing road-side nodes tocollect and distribute these information to passing cars. A recent

work studied how ants do not have traffic jam problems [39]. This

is attributed to the fact that they do not overtake one another, are

able to travel very closely to their neighbours and also maintain a

constant speed even when traffic density increases. Comparing

this with cars, it will be very difficult if not impossible for human

drivers to control cars with such precision. Thus, an automated car

navigation and driving system is the ultimate solution.

Figure 2. Interaction between Smart Refrigerator and SD

via the Web


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3.5 Daniel at workScenario

Being an academic staff for the 'Intelligence, Agents, Multi-Media

Group' (IAM), it is not surprising that Daniel and his colleagues

are taking full advantage of advanced computer agents to help

them in their various tasks. This morning, Daniel wants to set up a

meeting for the group to discuss about some importantdevelopment in a research project that they are currently working

on. Since he has already logged-in into his personal computer, he

'summons' the computer agent and provides the latter with some

information including his intention of setting up a meeting, the

group of people he wants to attend it, the urgency level and the

time range. The agent first interacts with Daniel's SD to make sure

he doesn't have any other appointment himself in case of which,

he will be warned. The agent then proceeds to contact the other

people concerned through their own agents that will each have

information about their masters. A consensus is reached among

the agents, a meeting room is booked and their respective masters

are notified about the meeting being scheduled including the time

and location.

During the meeting, each individual uses his SD to jot down

comments, take notes as well as making reviews about different

ideas being discussed. Participants may choose to share comments

directly from their SDs to the other attendees.

Through an email on his SD, Daniel is informed about a

conference being held next month and his agent on the SD has

already annotated the date and time of the conference with a

comment that Daniel will probably be free based on his current

calendar data. A link has also been added to book air and train

tickets. Daniel clicks on the link and the agent proceeds to book

the tickets on his behalf. The information is then recorded in his

calendar.

Related Research

Autonomous agents have as primary objective to reduce the

cognitive loads of their users by performing calendar managementon their behalf [40, 46]. The use of agents for meeting scheduling

is considered as an inherently distributed task [41, 42] whereby

agents have to find the right balance between protecting their

users' privacy and preferences with the overall organisation which

in our case will include availability of other agents' users,meeting

room, equipments and other resources. The negotiation process

among agents is described as a distributed search process [41]

in which agents have to choose the optimal strategies [43].

As far as reviewing is concerned, the mobility of the Web enabled

by smart phones and in the future by SDs make this activity

possible [44]. With the connectivity among SDs collaborative

work will be greatly facilitated.

The scenario of agent understanding emails,annotating them and

performing bookings online is made possible through the

semantic web [45] whereby data is given meaning through the use

of ontologies expressed in RDF or OWL for example and thus

allowing agents to perform reasoning and make inferences.

3.6 Looking after baby RyanScenario

From time to time both Sarah and Daniel look after the baby

during the day by connecting to the kindergarten's Web Interface

through their SDs. They are able to see Ryan via a camera

installed in his bed at the kindergarten. Ryan can also see and hear

them through an LCD display embedded in every baby's bed.

Through the interface, Sarah usually look at what time Ryan has

been fed his meals, and read comments made by the care-givers

looking after him. The feeding time, quantity can also be edited by

Sarah or Daniel online. At these specified time, the staff at the

kindergarten are reminded by the system.

Ryan also wears a special diaper that can detect when it needs to

be replaced by detecting moisture level. Thus the care-givers do

not need to keep checking the baby manually.

Related Research

Video-conferencing is already widespread but with time, the cost

of equipments will drop significantly. As demonstrated in [47]

baby-care through the Internet using video link reduces cost and

in this situation allows parents to look after their babies even

when they are away. Research has been carried out in facial

expression recognition for babies to detect when they are in pain

[48]. In future research works, recognition of other kind of

expressions such as hunger and joy may also be possible and thus

relayed back to parents.

With low cost RFID tags [25], a smart-diaper has been developedthat uses semi-passive tags that are activated when moisture is

detected [49]. RFID readers incorporated in the beds can thus

detect signals emitted from these tags and transmit them to the

baby-care monitoring system with information about which bed's

occupant requires a diaper change.

3.7 Lunch timeScenario

At 11am, Sarah starts preparing a quick lunch for herself since she

is the only one at home. She accesses the kitchen advisor system

through the touch-screen on the refrigerator's door, choose the

option of 'lunch preparation advice' and select 10 minutes as the

preparation time. Based on her food preferences, which

ingredients are available and what she has eaten recently, tunasalad and scrambled eggs are the two options advised to her. She

selects tuna salad and the system provides her with the

preparation steps as well as the location of the different

ingredients.

At the university, Daniel decides to go to the Piazza restaurant on

the campus to eat something. Since most of his colleagues that he

usually enjoys lunch with have left for a conference, he ends up

going to eat alone. But his SD's agent also knows about the lunch-

mates absence since their agents shared that information. The SD

search for potential people that can accompany Daniel. Her

daughter Flora happens to be going for lunch and She wanted to

discuss with her dad about an assignment. Daniel's SD is aware

about the fact that he had written a note on the refrigerator's

digital notice board. Flora's SD is contacted using an ad hoc peerto peer network and she is asked whether she wants to join her

dad. Both entities agree and the meet-up location is shared by

their SDs share : 'The piazza' enabling both family members to

share a nice lunch-time together while discussing about Flora's

assignment.

Related Research

The kitchen advisor system, is linked to the smart-refrigerator

system described earlier. Since the system is connected to the

Web, the Semantic Web to be more precise, information such as


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recipes, preparation time and ingredients are pulled in real-time

from several websites in real-time as described by Tim Berners

Lee [45]. In addition to these information, the system also use

data collected by SDs such as the kind of food that Sarah usually

orders and runs some recommender system algorithms based on

these parameters.

Ad hoc peer to peer networking [7] is one of the four modes of

communication that the SD is capable of. As described in moredetails in the 'Smart Device' section, this allows communication

among individuals although they may be out of range for

Bluetooth or WiFi to function.

3.8 Sarah at workScenario

At noon, Sarah walks to work at the nearby supermarket. She is

working on the afternoon shift today. As soon as she enters the

building, her presence is acknowledged along with the time of

entry by the supermarket's staff attendance system which has

identified Sarah through her SD coupled with a face recognition

process.

At the supermarket, the shopping carts now have digital touch

screen displays ( figure 3) that can be used to advertise products

currently on discounts. Shoppers normally download there

shopping list from their SDs to the digital display of the carts

since it is larger in size. The display then convert it into a

checklist, guiding the shoppers to the items' shelf locations as

well as providing suggestions and advice about each product. As

soon as a product is added to the cart, it is marked accordingly in

the digital list.

Checkout is simply about rolling the cart nearby an exit space and

the SD then ask the user to confirm payment for the items

purchased and a digital receipt is issued.

Sarah's job, although being called a cashier, is no longer like the

traditional one. She rarely performs checkout, she just need to be

present for special cases where a customer has trouble with theself-checkout system.

At the end of her shift, Sarah use her SD to query the home

refrigerator's system for a shopping list as depicted in figure 2.

Within seconds, a list is sent to her. Knowing that prices at the

supermarket can be higher than elsewhere or the suggestions by

the supermarket can be biased, Sarah's SD camera is used to

detect gestures made with her fingers and perform actions such as

price comparison of a product with several other supermarkets.

Reviews made by customers are also downloaded from the Web

and shown to her. One of the items in the list: 'Corn' is out of

stock at the supermarket. So the SD advises Sarah to delegate this

item to Daniel who can purchase it on his way back home from

somewhere else. Sarah agrees and a few more items that were out

of stock at the supermarket are also delegated to Daniel's SD.

Related Research

As discussed in the SD and the smart-refrigerator sections, they

can interact with one another through several methods. In this

case, the SD communicates with the refrigerator system through

the Web.

Radio Frequency Identification tagging [25], is once again used

on all products instead of barcodes. A large portion of the

scenario above has been derived from an experimental store

developed by the METRO Group [50] that have referred to the

system of intelligent shopping cart as personal selling assistants

(PSAs). These are WiFi enabled with Internet connectivity and

equipped is RFID readers thus enabling them to know the exact

content of the cart. This information is sent back to the store's

main system at the moment of checkout and thus avoiding the

need for scanning each item one by one as is currently being done.

There is a video clip that demonstrates how these technologies

work together [51].

3.9 The dinnerScenario

On Friday nights, the Echelon family usually dines outside in

different the restaurants located in the city. Tonight it it is Flora's

turn to choose which restaurant they will go, so she grabs her SD

and start flipping through the digital business-cards of restaurants

that had been automatically sent to her while she was within 100

meter range of them previously. Her SD has automatically

classified them into categories and assigned ratings based on her

personal preference of food. These data were collected every time

she spent time in a restaurant and ordered specific dishes.

Having marked a few top desirable restaurants, she summons her

SD's AI-agent to help her come up with a final selection. The

latter connects to the restaurants websites and download their

latest menu updates including special offers.

Once Flora has decided on the restaurant, its GPS coordinates are

sent via Bluetooth to the in-built car navigation system while an

Figure 3. Shopping cart with LCD

touch-screen display [51]


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entry is made to the online family-blog about the restaurant-dinner

online to be edited and approved later on by a member of the

family. The latter which is WiFi enabled, downloads the latest

updates from the transport-department to know current traffic-

flow status, whether any particular road have been closed for

road-works between their current location (home) and the

restaurant. Finally it generates the optimal path to reach

destination.

Two minutes prior to reach destination, the car-navigation system

queries the transport-department for available parking spaces

closest to the destination and also queries the law-enforcement-

department for theft and other related crime in that area and

advise Daniel about these.

When they enter the restaurant, the menu is downloaded onto

their SDs . Other dinners' reviews are also made available to the

family. They make their choice which is then sent directly to the

restaurant management system. Their SDs also store the

information about the food ordered. After having completed

dinner, the family members are requested by their SDs to review

the food.

Related Research

Mobile-based advertising has for long been subject of research,

starting with the short message service (SMS) [57]. However the

advertising could not be targeted and required that users opt in

voluntarily. With Technologies such as Bluetooth and WiFi being

embedded in mobile phones, location awareness was used to

target users [58] but still from a group of people passing at a

location it was difficult to know about them, their habits and

preferences. With the SD, users can choose to share some

information about them and thus enable advertisers to better

personalised advertising and do better targeting as mentioned in

[59]. Users will accept to share information to advertisers since

they can also benefit from advertising to some extent as pointed

out in [57].

As far as trusting reviews made by other dinners, trust and distrust

values among people [60], probably by grouping people with

similar food taste will give an indication about how much one can

rely on a review usually made on mobile devices as demonstrated

in [44].

3.10 Going to CinemaScenario

After a wonderful dinner, the family decides to go to watch a

movie. Since Sarah's birthday was a few day away, she gets to

choose the movie. She grabs her SD and request for a list of latest

movies. The SD is aware about Sarah's taste and which movies

she has already watched. She is then asked with whom will she be

going: Daniel only, complete family or friends. When she selects'family', the other family members' SDs are contacted via

Bluetooth and their movie preferences queried. Finally Sarah's SD

provide a final list of suggestions that will please everybody and

also taking their current location into consideration, with Sarah's

taste having a higher priority. Sarah make the final decision, the

SD proceeds to purchase the tickets for the family members on the

Web and the location for the cinema building is uploaded to the

car's navigation system. Reaching the cinema, their seats locations

are transferred to their respective SD which is then able to guide

them inside the dimly-light building to their seats.

Related Research

The above scenario is made possible due to the semantic web

explained in [45] making data available for agents to reason upon.

And the remaining capabilities have already been described in the

Smart Device section earlier.

3.11 The family blog (Flog)Scenario

The family blog has enabled an effortless way of keeping a 'family

diary'. One blog post is made daily by pulling together different

activities automatically from devices such as SDs and the car

navigation system.

For example today, a picture was snapped automatically when

Daniel was taking Ryan to the car and annotated accordingly.

While Sarah was preparing the quick lunch at home, the kitchen

cameras made a high-quality movie of her cooking, this was also

included in the blog post. Similarly, when the family went out for

dinner, the car-navigation system sent the destination and time

data to the blogging system which then downloaded the comments

and reviews each family member had made from there SDs.

While the final blog post is very interesting for the familymembers to learn how the others spent their day, privacy can be

an issue. There are some information that they would not like to

share. Thus there exist some privacy features such as by default

everything about each family member is made private to himself

or herself. Then there is the allow-list and group-privacy levels for

example, a group of relatives are allowed to see the different

activities of the family when they were together, another one for

particular member of the family only and another without time

and precise details making it just some kind of summarised post.

Related Research

While automated-blogging as described in this scenario has not

been research much, some work in this direction has already been

done. Mobilog [52] is a framework that automates the creation ofblog posts by pulling together information from different websites

and weather services to incorporate contextual information in a

post and thus saving user's time. They just need to go through the

automatically-generated post, add some personal text if they want

and approve it for posting. Mobile blogging has also been

investigated in [53] while adding video in blog posts been

explored in [54]. While these automated and mobile blog posts

are very interesting, they are not of much use for machine, in our

case, agents to crawl and understand their contents. Since the

Semantic Web has been made for machines to understand,

similarly, Semantic blogs are now being designed to give meaning

to data [55, 56].

4. CONCLUSIONThe extent to which ubiquitous computing will change the life ofindividuals is difficult to imagine. But what has been presented in

this paper is not fiction, for most of the systems presented,

research works have been published and prototypes implemented.

One of the most common technologies that has been used in

pervasive computing is RFID mainly because of its low cost,

wireless capability and it does not require line-of sight to be

scanned.


8/10

We have demonstrated that pervasive computing will enable

greater cooperation among individuals however the biggest

challenge of such technologies remains their adoption by society

since it is them, that will be the users and their lifestyles will be

changed. Studying how users adopt and use innovative

technologies in itself is a science, as has been the case for the

Web, which has given birth to Web Science, perhaps we will

need a Ubiquitous Computing Science to better understand it.[61].

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Ubiquitous Computing Enabling Greater Cooperation Among Members of a Family

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