Context modeling and context retrieval in mobile usage scenarios – a framework for context-aware mobile applications

Die fortschreitende Verbreitung drahtloser Kommunikationsnetze sowie immer leistungsfähigerer mobiler Computer schafft ein großes Potenzial für ein breites Spektrum innovativer Anwendungen. Kontextsensitive Applikationen adaptieren die Gegebenheiten der jeweiligen Situation des Nutzers, wodurch neuartige, intelligente Anwendungen und Benutzungsschnittstellen möglich werden. Die zunehmende Menge verfügbarer Sensortechniken und die daraus resultierende Vielfalt erfassbarer Kontextinformationen erschweren jedoch vermehrt die Verbreitung dieser Applikationen. Ein Rahmenwerk zur Kontextrepräsentation soll die Entwicklung kontextsensitiver Applikationen ohne Berücksichtigung von Details der Kontexterfassung und -verwaltung ermöglichen. Außerdem sollen Austausch und Wiederverwendbarkeit von Kontextinformationen zwischen Applikationen und Nutzern gestattet werden. In dieser Arbeit wird ein solches Rahmenwerk entwickelt. Zu Beginn steht die Untersuchung von Fragen der Kontextmodellierung, auf deren Grundlage anschließend eine Konzeption erarbeitet wird. Der praktische Teil der Arbeit führt eine Referenzimplementation des Systems durch um zu evaluieren, ob die Konzeption auf Basis aktueller Technologien in die Realität umgesetzt, und als Grundlage für weitere Untersuchungen herangezogen werden kann.The progressive spreading of wireless networks and increasingly powerful mobile computers creates a big potential for a wide spectrum of innovative applications. Context-aware applications adapt the circumstances of the user s current situation which enables new and intelligent user interfaces. Nevertheless, the sheer diversity of exploitable contexts and the plethora of sensing technologies are actually working against the deployment of context-aware systems. A framework for context retrieval should enable the development of context-aware applications without considering details of context acquisition and context management. Moreover, exchange and reusability of context information should be allowed between applications and users. In this work such a framework is developed. At the beginning, an investigation of questions of context modeling is accomplished. After that, a concept is compiled on that foundation. In the practial part of this thesis a reference implementation of the system is conducted to evaluate whether the concept can be put into practice, and be pulled up as a basis for other investigations

A framework for requirements engineering for context-aware services

Context-aware services, especially when made available to mobile devices, constitute an interesting but very challenging domain. It poses fundamental problems for both requirements engineering, software architecture, and their relationship. We propose a novel, reflection-based framework for requirements engineering for this class of applications. The framework addresses the key difficulties in this field, such as changing context and changing requirements. We report preliminary work on this framework and suggest future directions

A SOA-Based Platform-Specific Framework for Context-Aware Mobile Applications

Context-aware mobile applications are intelligent applications that can monitor the user’s context and, in case of changes in this context, consequently adapt their behaviour in order to satisfy the user’s current needs or anticipate the user’s intentions. The design of such applications relies on dynamic middleware platforms that consist of a variety of components. These components are distributed in the environment and interoperate by making use of each other’s services. In the A-MUSE project, we defined a design methodology based on MDA principles that relies on a SOA reference architecture for context-aware mobile applications. This paper shows how abstract concepts in the design of such applications can be applied to realize concrete components that guarantee architectural interoperability. We also present a platform-specific framework that uses BPEL, UDDI registry and web services as target technologies to implement our reference architecture

Multi-purpose infrastructure for delivering and supporting mobile context-aware applications

The use of contextual information in mobile devices is receiving increasing attention in mobile and ubiquitous computing research. An important requirement for mobile development today is that devices should be able to interact with the context. In this paper we present a series of contributions regarding previous work on context-awareness. In the first place, we describe a client-server architecture that provides a mechanism for preparing target non context-aware applications in order to be delivered as context-aware applications in a semi-automatic way. Secondly, the framework used in the server to instantiate specific components for context-awareness, the Implicit Plasticity Framework, provides independence from the underlying mobile technology used in client device, as it is shown in the case studies presented. Finally, proposed infrastructure deals with the interaction among different context constraints provided by diverse sensors. All of these contributions are extensions to the infrastructure based on the Dichotomic View of plasticity, which now offers multi-purpose support

Design and implementation of a Context-Aware Health Service Platform (CAHS)

Computers are no match to humans in deducing situational information from their environment and in using it in their interactions. The advent of the context-aware applications seems to offer a way out to the computer that is not context-sensitive. The context aware applications can adapt their behaviors according to the perceived context or situation, without explicit user intervention, thereby providing human-centric services. To simplify the complexity of developing applications, context aware framework, which introduces context awareness into the environment where the applications are executed, is highlighted to provide a homogeneous interface involving generic context management and adaptation solutions. This papier has focused on the design of Context-Aware Health Services (CAHS) platform, which provide a health applications framework embedded on mobile devices. Our proposed platform is capabilities for context manager and adaptations according to context changes. It is designed to base on the SOA principles for achieving a flexible and dynamic architecture

Towards an application framework for context-aware m-health applications

Several social issues, like aging, stimulate the use of mobile ICT applications for mobile healthcare (e.g., telemonitoring). To support novel m-health applications, the consequences of developing these applications should be considered in the scope of a comprehensive architecture. This paper describes ongoing research that focuses on developing an application framework for supporting the development of context-aware m-health applications. It gives initial requirements for such a framework and it gives a first attempt for a functional decomposition. The use of the framework is illustrated by means of an epilepsy tele-monitoring scenario

A framework for implementing formally verified resource-bounded smart space systems

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York. Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm that helps designing and implementing next generation smart applications, where personalized devices interact with users in smart environments. Development of such applications is inherently complex due to these applications adapt to changing contextual information and they often run on resource-bounded devices. Most of the existing context-aware development frameworks are centralized, adopt client–server architecture, and do not consider resource limitations of context-aware devices. This paper presents a systematic framework to modelling and implementation of resource-bounded multi-agent context-aware systems on Android devices. The proposed framework makes use of semantic technologies for context modelling and reasoning about resource-bounded context-aware agents, Android powered smartphones as development platform, a suitable communication model and declarative rule-based programming as a preferred development language

Toward a multidisciplinary model of context to support context-aware computing

Capturing, defining, and modeling the essence of context are challenging, compelling, and prominent issues for interdisciplinary research and discussion. The roots of its emergence lie in the inconsistencies and ambivalent definitions across and within different research specializations (e.g., philosophy, psychology, pragmatics, linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence). Within the area of computer science, the advent of mobile context-aware computing has stimulated broad and contrasting interpretations due to the shift from traditional static desktop computing to heterogeneous mobile environments. This transition poses many challenging, complex, and largely unanswered research issues relating to contextual interactions and usability. To address those issues, many researchers strongly encourage a multidisciplinary approach. The primary aim of this article is to review and unify theories of context within linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Summary models within each discipline are used to propose an outline and detailed multidisciplinary model of context involving (a) the differentiation of focal and contextual aspects of the user and application's world, (b) the separation of meaningful and incidental dimensions, and (c) important user and application processes. The models provide an important foundation in which complex mobile scenarios can be conceptualized and key human and social issues can be identified. The models were then applied to different applications of context-aware computing involving user communities and mobile tourist guides. The authors' future work involves developing a user-centered multidisciplinary design framework (based on their proposed models). This will be used to design a large-scale user study investigating the usability issues of a context-aware mobile computing navigation aid for visually impaired people

A Context-Aware Framework to Provide Personalized Mobile Assessment

In mobile learning environment, context-aware systems refer to applications that employs contextual information to provide appropriate services to the leaners or other applications to perform a specific task. An important challenge in such applications is context modeling, using ontologies to model context information and to reason about context at a semantic level has attracted a lot of interest in the research community. Semantic Web technologies have been applied in recent years with different purposes in education. But, their applications for generating useful personalized mobile assessment resources have not been researched enough so far.In this paper, we introduce a context-aware approach that makes use of Semantic Web technologies to support personalized assessment in mobile environments. We propose a Service-based framework for bringing assessment techniques to mobile environment. We provide a formal description for our mobile assessment framework and detail the functionalities of its various layers. We have carried out also an experiment with computer science university students to evaluate our mobile assessment framework