Social issues of power harvesting as key enables of WSN in pervasive computing

Pervasive systems have gained popularity and open the door to new applications that will improve the quality of life of the users. Additionally, the implementation of such systems over an infrastructure of Wireless Sensor Networks has been proven to be very powerful. To deal with the WSN problems related to the battery of the elements or nodes that constitute the WSN, Power Harvesting techniques arise as good candidates. With PH each node can extract the energy from the surrounding environment. However, this energy source could not be constant, affecting the continuity and quality of the services provided. This behavior can have a negative impact on the user's perception about the system, which could be perceived as unreliable or faulty. In the current paper, some related works regarding pervasive systems within the home environment are referenced to extrapolate the conclusions and problems to the paradigm of Power Harvesting Pervasive Systems from the user perspective. Besides, the paper speculates about the approach and methods to overcome these potential problems and presents the design trends that could be followed.<br/

User-centered support to localized activities in ubiquitous computing environments

The design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems must be centered on users’ activity in order to bring computing systems closer to people. The adoption of an activity-centered approach to the design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems should consider: a) how humans naturally accomplish an activity; and b) how computing artifacts from both the local and personal domains should contribute to the accomplishment of an activity. This work particularly focuses on localized activities performed by occasional visitors, i.e., activities having a strong association with a specific physical environment, which may be visited by people who are not accustomed to it. We are investigating how ubiquitous computing environments can provide user-centered support to localized activities, by exploring activity specification models and mechanisms allowing for the integration between local and personal environments

Supporting localized activities in ubiquitous computing environments

The design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems must be centered on users' activity in order to bring computing systems closer to people. Adopting an activity-centered approach to the design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems leads us to seek to understand: a) how humans naturally accomplish an activity; and b) how computing artifacts from both the environmental and personal domains may contribute to the accomplishment of an activity. This work particularly focuses on localized activities, i.e., activities having a strong association with a specific physical environment. This work investigates how ubiquitous computing environments can publish and offer user-centered activity support to users with heterogeneous personal environments, by exploring mechanisms allowing for the integration between local and personal environments

Pervasive Gaming: Testing Future Context Aware Applications

More and more technical research projects take place that weave together elements of real and virtual life to provide a new experience defined as pervasive. They bank on the development of mobile services to drive the expansion of pervasive applications and in particular pervasive games. Using geolocalisation, local networks and short range radio frequencies technologies like RFID or other tagging technologies, pervasive games rely on a close relationship to the environment and thus explore the space between fiction and reality. This is their main quality but possibly their main weakness as the development relies on the production of specific contents in relation to the context of use. In this article, we propose to explore what this entirely new paradigm for game design implies in terms of production and how to overcome the limitations due to this dependency of contents and context. Based on our experience of three pervasive games developed within research projects on adhoc wifi (ANR-Safari and ANRTranshumance) and RFID networks (ANR-PLUG), this paper presents different options to reducing the cost of content production relying on either traditional editors or grass root contributions.pervasive games, content production, game design, geolocalised technologies.

Smart Geographic object: Toward a new understanding of GIS Technology in Ubiquitous Computing

One of the fundamental aspects of ubiquitous computing is the instrumentation of the real world by smart devices. This instrumentation constitutes an opportunity to rethink the interactions between human beings and their environment on the one hand, and between the components of this environment on the other. In this paper we discuss what this understanding of ubiquitous computing can bring to geographic science and particularly to GIS technology. Our main idea is the instrumentation of the geographic environment through the instrumentation of geographic objects composing it. And then investigate how this instrumentation can meet the current limitations of GIS technology, and offers a new stage of rapprochement between the earth and its abstraction. As result, the current research work proposes a new concept we named Smart Geographic Object SGO. The latter is a convergence point between the smart objects and geographic objects, two concepts appertaining respectively to

Wearable and mobile devices

Information and Communication Technologies, known as ICT, have undergone dramatic changes in the last 25 years. The 1980s was the decade of the Personal Computer (PC), which brought computing into the home and, in an educational setting, into the classroom. The 1990s gave us the World Wide Web (the Web), building on the infrastructure of the Internet, which has revolutionized the availability and delivery of information. In the midst of this information revolution, we are now confronted with a third wave of novel technologies (i.e., mobile and wearable computing), where computing devices already are becoming small enough so that we can carry them around at all times, and, in addition, they have the ability to interact with devices embedded in the environment. The development of wearable technology is perhaps a logical product of the convergence between the miniaturization of microchips (nanotechnology) and an increasing interest in pervasive computing, where mobility is the main objective. The miniaturization of computers is largely due to the decreasing size of semiconductors and switches; molecular manufacturing will allow for “not only molecular-scale switches but also nanoscale motors, pumps, pipes, machinery that could mimic skin” (Page, 2003, p. 2). This shift in the size of computers has obvious implications for the human-computer interaction introducing the next generation of interfaces. Neil Gershenfeld, the director of the Media Lab’s Physics and Media Group, argues, “The world is becoming the interface. Computers as distinguishable devices will disappear as the objects themselves become the means we use to interact with both the physical and the virtual worlds” (Page, 2003, p. 3). Ultimately, this will lead to a move away from desktop user interfaces and toward mobile interfaces and pervasive computing

Context for Ubiquitous Data Management

In response to the advance of ubiquitous computing technologies, we believe that for computer systems to be ubiquitous, they must be context-aware. In this paper, we address the impact of context-awareness on ubiquitous data management. To do this, we overview different characteristics of context in order to develop a clear understanding of context, as well as its implications and requirements for context-aware data management. References to recent research activities and applicable techniques are also provided

Activity-centered ubiquitous computing support to localized activities

This paper presents ActivitySpot, a ubiquitous computing framework for supporting localized activities, i.e., activities strongly associated to a specific physical environment, performed by occasional visitors. The ActivitySpot framework implements an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing, by defining a conceptual model inspired by Activity Theory and implementing a software infrastructure derived from this conceptual model. ActivitySpot has been evaluated by experiments run at different public spaces and results demonstrate the framework’s suitability to the targeted type of environment.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - SFRH/BD/13299/2003. Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) - POS_Conhecimento