Supporting service discovery, querying and interaction in ubiquitous computing environments.

In this paper, we contend that ubiquitous computing environments will be highly heterogeneous, service rich domains. Moreover, future applications will consequently be required to interact with multiple, specialised service location and interaction protocols simultaneously. We argue that existing service discovery techniques do not provide sufficient support to address the challenges of building applications targeted to these emerging environments. This paper makes a number of contributions. Firstly, using a set of short ubiquitous computing scenarios we identify several key limitations of existing service discovery approaches that reduce their ability to support ubiquitous computing applications. Secondly, we present a detailed analysis of requirements for providing effective support in this domain. Thirdly, we provide the design of a simple extensible meta-service discovery architecture that uses database techniques to unify service discovery protocols and addresses several of our key requirements. Lastly, we examine the lessons learnt through the development of a prototype implementation of our architecture

Device and context influence on wireless infotainment access: A real world story

Copyright @ 2005 CEPISUser considerations are paramount when it comes to take up of technologies, and even more so in the case of mobile devices, in which the success of a particular device often depends on its novelty appeal. However, relatively little work has been undertaken exploring how day-to-day tasks are affected when mediated by such access devices. This paper reports the results of an empirical study placed in a 'real-world' setting, in which participants undertook typical infotainment - combined information and entertainment access tasks on three different wireless-enabled mobile devices. These were a laptop, a Personal Digital Assistant and a Head Mounted Display device. Our results show that, with the exception of participants' level of self-consciousness when using such devices in public environments, the user wireless infotainment access experience is generally unaffected by device type. Location was shown, though, to be a significant factor when users engage in tasks such as listening to online music or navigation

Query management in a sensor environment

Traditional sensor network deployments consisted of fixed infrastructures and were relatively small in size. More and more, we see the deployment of ad-hoc sensor networks with heterogeneous devices on a larger scale, posing new challenges for device management and query processing. In this paper, we present our design and prototype implementation of XSense, an architecture supporting metadata and query services for an underlying large scale dynamic P2P sensor network. We cluster sensor devices into manageable groupings to optimise the query process and automatically locate appropriate clusters based on keyword abstraction from queries. We present experimental analysis to show the benefits of our approach and demonstrate improved query performance and scalability

Scalable and flexible location-based services for ubiquitous information access

In mobile distributed environments applications often need to dynamically obtain information that is relevant to their current location. The current design of the Internet does not provide any conceptual models for addressing this issue. As a result, developing a system that requires this functionality becomes a challenging and costly task, leading to individual solutions that only address the requirements of specific application scenarios. In this paper we propose a more generic approach, based on a scalable and exible concept of location-based services, and an architectural framework to support its application in the Internet environment. We describe a case study in which this architectural framework is used for developing a location-sensitive tourist guide. The realisation of this case study demonstrates the applicability of the framework, as well as the overall concept of location-based services, and highlights some of the issues involved.To the GUIDE team, and especially to Keith Mitchell and Matthias Franz, for their collaboration in the preparation of this case study. To Adrian Friday for his comments on a draft version of this paper. To the anonymous reviewers for their attentive reading and valuable comments. This work was carried out as part of the PRAXIS funded AROUND project (PRAXIS/P/EEI/14267/1998) and supported by grant PRAXIS XXI/BD/13853/97

Generic framework for the personal omni-remote controller using M2MI

A Generic Framework for the Personal Omni-Remote Controller Using M2MI is a master’s thesis outlining a generic framework for the wireless omni-remote controller that controls neighboring appliances by using Many-to-Many Invocation (M2MI). M2MI is an object-oriented abstraction of broadcast communication. First, this paper introduces the history of remote controllers and analyzes omni-remote controller projects made by other researchers in this area, such as the Pebbles PDA project at Carnegie Mellon University and HP’s COOLTOWN project. Second, this paper depicts a generic framework of the personal omni-remote controller system including architecture, type hierarchy, and service discovery. In this framework, a module approach and a decentralized dual-mode service discovery scheme are introduced. When users request a certain type of service, their omni-remote controller application will first discover the available appliances in the vicinity and then bring up the corresponding control module for the target appliance. Thus, users can control the appliance through the User Interface of the control module. To join the omni-remote controller system, servers and clients need to follow the type hierarchy convention of the system. Finally, several implementations are given to show the control of different appliances with different capabilities. These appliances include thermostats, TVs with parental control, and washing machines

Service Discovery Protocol Interoperability in the Mobile Environment

International audienceThe emergence of portable computers and wireless technologies has introduced new challenges for middleware. Mobility brings new requirements and is becoming a key characteristic. Mobile devices may move around differ- ent areas and have to interact with different types of networks, services and may be exposed to new communication paradigms. Thus, mobile distributed systems need to dynamically detect and adapt their interaction protocols to interoperate with services available in the environment. As a result, middleware for mobile devices must overcome two heterogeneity issues to provide interoperability in the mobile environment, i.e, heterogeneity of discovery protocols and of inter- action protocols between services. Whereas adaptation techniques from reflec- tive middleware are suitable for the latter, it is more problematic for the former if both issues are addressed concurrently. Specifically, reflective mechanisms consume too many resources like bandwidth, memory and CPU, which are lim- ited on the mobile devices. This paper first highlights why current solutions to interoperability fail to realize service discovery protocol interoperability with both high performance and low resource consumption. Second, this paper ad- dresses this open issue by using software architecture concepts enhanced with event-based parsing techniques to provide efficient, lightweight and flexible mechanisms to bring full service discovery interoperability to any existing mo- bile platform

Mobile information access in the real world: A story of three wireless devices

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2008 ElsevierThe importance of the user perspective to the wireless information access experience cannot be understated: simply put, users will not indulge in devices that are perceived to be difficult to use and in technologies that do not offer quality infotainment – combined information and entertainment – content. In this paper, we investigate the impact that mobile devices have on the user wireless infotainment access experience in practice. To this end, we have undertaken an empirical study placed in a ‘real-world’ setting, in which participants undertook typical infotainment access tasks on three different wireless-enabled mobile devices: a laptop, a personal digital assistant and a head mounted display device. Results show that, with the exception of participants’ level of self-consciousness when using such devices in public environments, the user wireless information access experience is generally unaffected by device type. Location was shown, though, to be a significant factor when users engage in tasks such as listening to online music or navigation. Whilst the interaction between device and environment was found to influence entertainment-related tasks in our experiments, the informational ones were not affected. However, the interaction effects between device and user type was found to affect both types of tasks. Lastly, a user’s particular computing experience was shown to influence the perceived ease of wireless information access only in the case of online searching, irrespective of whether this is done for primarily informational purposes or entertainment ones