Ubiquitous System

The Pervasive Fridge

by José Rouillard

Modelling Context for Information Environments

by Michael Grossniklaus

Proc. UMICS 2004: pp. 43-56

Context-awareness has become an important consideration in the development of mobile and ubiquitous systems. While... more Context-awareness has become an important consideration in the development of mobile and ubiquitous systems. While efforts have been made to develop general context models and application frameworks, it remains the case that often the notion of context supported is very restrictive and/or the representation of context is based on simple key-value pairs. As a result, most existing systems lack well-defined semantics and typing for context that would facilitate the general implementation, maintenance and adaption of context-aware systems. In this paper, we present a general context model that consolidates the models underlying many other approaches, while moving to a higher-level of abstraction in terms of semantic context description.

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

by Ahmet Soylu

Playful Utensils

by Jeffrey Tzu kwan Valino Koh

Part of the Food Media System developed by KEIO-NUS Cute Center, Playful Utensils appears to be and functions as... more Part of the Food Media System developed by KEIO-NUS Cute Center, Playful Utensils appears to be and functions as everyday household cooking and dining utensils. They are embodied by common items such as forks, knives, spoons and chopsticks, and can be used as such. However, once Playful Utensils are activated they create a ubiquitous wireless mesh network in which each utensil talks to one another in conjunction with a host server. Working in tandem, a collection of Playful Utensils becomes an orchestra of harmonious, generative musical instruments in which the whole family can play with. Using the traditional and intuitive actions that each utensil was purposely built to function as, ambient dining music can be created adding a new dimension to family-centered interaction in a communal and playful way. This method of playful interaction aims to improve the communication and enjoyment of preparing and eating food in the family household.

A Survey on Web Modeling Approaches for Ubiquitous Web Applications

by Sven Casteleyn

Schwinger, W., Retschitzegger, W., Schauerhuber, A., Kappel, G., Wimmer, M., Proll, B., Cachero, C., Casteleyn, S., De Troyer, O., Fraternali, P., Garrigós, I., Garzotto, F., Ginige, A., Houben, G.J., Koch, N., Moreno, N., Pastor, O., Paolini, P., Ferragud, V.P., Rossi, G., Schwabe, D., Tisi, M., Vallecillo, A., van der Sluijs, K., Zhang, G.: "A survey on web modeling approaches for ubiquitous web applications", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 234-305, Eds. David Taniar and Ismail Khalil Ibrahim, Publ. Emerald, ISBN 1744-0084 (2008)

Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications which are accessed in various contexts, i.e.... more Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications which are accessed in various contexts, i.e. through different devices, by users with various interests, at anytime from anyplace around the globe. For such full-fledged, complex software systems, a methodologically sound engineering approach in terms of model-driven engineering (MDE) is crucial. Several modeling approaches have already been proposed that capture the ubiquitous nature of web applications, each of them having different origins, pursuing different goals and providing a pantheon of concepts. This paper aims to give an in-depth comparison of seven modeling approaches supporting the development of UWAs.
This methodology is conducted by applying a detailed set of evaluation criteria and by demonstrating its applicability on basis of an exemplary tourism web application. In particular, five commonly found ubiquitous scenarios are investigated, thus providing initial insight into the modeling concepts of each approach as well as to facilitate their comparability.
The results gained indicate that many modeling approaches lack a proper MDE foundation in terms of meta-models and tool support. The proposed modeling mechanisms for ubiquity are often limited, since they neither cover all relevant context factors in an explicit, self-contained, and extensible way, nor allow for a wide spectrum of extensible adaptation operations. The provided modeling concepts frequently do not allow dealing with all different parts of a web application in terms of its content, hypertext, and presentation levels as well as their structural and behavioral features. Finally, current modeling approaches do not reflect the crosscutting nature of ubiquity but rather intermingle context and adaptation issues with the core parts of a web application, thus hampering maintainability and extensibility.
Different from other surveys in the area of modeling web applications, this paper specifically considers modeling concepts for their ubiquitous nature, together with an investigation of available support for MDD in a comprehensive way, using a well-defined as well as fine-grained catalogue of more than 30 evaluation criteria.

A Framework for Developing Pervasive Cross-Media Applications based on Physical Hypermedia and Active Components

by Beat Signer

Beat Signer and Moira C. Norrie, Proceedings of ICPCA 2008, 3rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Applications, Alexandria, Egypt, October 2008

We present a framework that supports the development of pervasive cross-media applications through a clean separation... more We present a framework that supports the development of pervasive cross-media applications through a clean separation of interaction design and application programming. The approach is based on a novel concept of active components that provides a lightweight mechanism for linking physical and digital entities to services. We show how the development of cross-media applications can be simplified by adopting an authoring rather than a programming approach and how we achieved this by integrating the active component concept into an extensible hypermedia server.