A software development framework for context-aware systems

The beginning of the new century has been characterised by the miniaturisation and accessibility of electronics, which has enabled its widespread usage around the world. This technological background is progressively materialising the future of the remainder of the century, where industry-based societies have been moving towards information-based societies. Information from users and their environment is now pervasively available, and many new research areas have born in order to shape the potential of such advancements. Particularly, context-aware computing is at the core of many areas such as Intelligent Environments, Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living or Pervasive Computing. Embedding contextual awareness into computers promises a fundamental enhancement in the interaction between computers and humans. While traditional computers require explicit commands in order to operate, contextually aware computers could also use information from the background and the users to provide services according to the situation. But embedding this contextual awareness has many unresolved challenges. The area of context-aware computing has attracted the interest of many researchers that have presented different approaches to solve particular aspects on the implementation of this technology. The great corpus of research in this direction indicates that context-aware systems have different requirements than those of traditional computing. Approaches for developing context-aware systems are typically scattered or do not present compatibility with other approaches. Existing techniques for creating context-aware systems also do not focus on covering all the different stages of a typical software development life-cycle. The contribution of this thesis is towards the foundation layers of a more holistic approach, that tries to facilitate further research on the best techniques for developing these kinds of systems. The approach presents a framework to support the development not only with methodologies, but with open-source tools that facilitate the implementation of context-aware systems in mobile and stationary platforms

Holistic Blockchain Approach to Foster Trust, Privacy and Security in IoT Based Ambient Assisted Living Environment

The application of blockchains techniques in the Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining much attention with new solutions proposed in diverse areas of the IoT. Conventionally IoT systems are designed to follow the centralised paradigm where security and privacy control is vested on a 'trusted' third-party. This design leaves the user at the mercy of a sovereign broker and in addition, susceptible to several attacks. The implicit trust and the inferred reliability of centralised systems have been challenged recently following several privacy violations and personal data breaches. Consequently, there is a call for more secure decentralised systems that allows for finer control of user privacy while providing secure communication. Propitiously, the blockchain holds much promise and may provide the necessary framework for the design of a secure IoT system that guarantees fine-grained user privacy in a trustless manner. In this paper, we propose a holistic blockchain-based decentralised model for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environment. The nodes in our proposed model utilize smart contracts to define interaction rules while working collaboratively to contribute storage and computing resources. Based on the blockchain technique, our proposed model promotes trustless interaction and enhanced user's privacy through the blockchain-Interplanetary File System (IPFS) alliance. The proposed model also addresses the shortfall of storage constraints exhibited in many IoT systems

Smart homes and their users:a systematic analysis and key challenges

Published research on smart homes and their users is growing exponentially, yet a clear understanding of who these users are and how they might use smart home technologies is missing from a field being overwhelmingly pushed by technology developers. Through a systematic analysis of peer-reviewed literature on smart homes and their users, this paper takes stock of the dominant research themes and the linkages and disconnects between them. Key findings within each of nine themes are analysed, grouped into three: (1) views of the smart home-functional, instrumental, socio-technical; (2) users and the use of the smart home-prospective users, interactions and decisions, using technologies in the home; and (3) challenges for realising the smart home-hardware and software, design, domestication. These themes are integrated into an organising framework for future research that identifies the presence or absence of cross-cutting relationships between different understandings of smart homes and their users. The usefulness of the organising framework is illustrated in relation to two major concerns-privacy and control-that have been narrowly interpreted to date, precluding deeper insights and potential solutions. Future research on smart homes and their users can benefit by exploring and developing cross-cutting relationships between the research themes identified

Enhancing smart environments with mobile robots

Sensor networks are becoming popular nowadays in the development of smart environments. Heavily relying on static sensor and actuators, though, such environments usually lacks of versatility regarding the provided services and interaction capabilities. Here we present a framework for smart environments where a service robot is included within the sensor network acting as a mobile sensor and/or actuator. Our framework integrates on-the-shelf technologies to ensure its adaptability to a variety of sensor technologies and robotic software. Two pilot cases are presented as evaluation of our proposal.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech