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

Temporal reasoning for intuitive specification of context-awareness

One of the most important challenges of the creation of intelligent environments is the specifications of what intelligent behaviours the system will exhibit. The processing of these situations can be computationally demanding. We report on the advances of the specification of a rule-based language which allows for the natural expression of situations of interest as those which occur on Intelligent Environments. The language focuses on quasi real-time situations and includes new temporal operators which allow a natural reference to time instants and to intervals. We explained how the system is implemented and how the system was validated within a Smart Office scenario

Perspectives on engineering more usable context-aware systems

The expectations of the abilities of context-aware systems (C-AS) often differ from reality. It becomes difficult to program contextual services that react adequately to the circumstantial needs of users as developers need to know, beforehand: the set of contextual states that may exist, what information could accurately determine a contextual state within that set, and what appropriate action should be taken in that particular state. Although there exist many frameworks and tools which support the design and implementation of C-AS, there is less conceptual help for developers to inform them of what contextual situations and services are appropriate (or feasible) to be implemented. This report reviews the state-of-the-art conceptualisation of context, which is more focused on the representational interpretation of the concept, to introduce a perspective that also acknowledges its interactional interpretation. A combination of revised and new definitions is introduced, which give key insights for the development of more useful C-AS. By acknowledging situations as a dynamic phenomenon that arises from action (interaction), and needs to be understood by the developers, it facilitates the analysis of these subjective interpretations into programming constructs (representation). The conceptualisation is also complemented with a set of guidelines for developers, an illustration of their usage, and a further discussion on the future directions for the engineering of more usable C-AS. The introduced conceptualisation is targeted towards the creation of an open-source tool supported framework for the engineering of C-AS

Engineering context-aware systems and applications: a survey

Context-awareness is an essential component of systems developed in areas like Intelligent Environments, Pervasive & Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence. In these emerging fields, there is a need for computerized systems to have a higher understanding of the situations in which to provide services or functionalities, to adapt accordingly. The literature shows that researchers modify existing engineering methods in order to better fit the needs of context-aware computing. These efforts are typically disconnected from each other and generally focus on solving specific development issues. We encourage the creation of a more holistic and unified engineering process that is tailored for the demands of these systems. For this purpose, we study the state-of-the-art in the development of context-aware systems, focusing on: A) Methodologies for developing context-aware systems, analyzing the reasons behind their lack of adoption and features that the community wish they can use; B) Context aware system engineering challenges and techniques applied during the most common development stages; C) Context aware systems conceptualization

A survey on the evolution of the notion of context-awareness

The notion of Context has been considered for a long time in different areas of Computer Science. This article considers the use of context-based reasoning from the earlier perspective of AI as well as the newer developments in Ubiquitous Computing. Both communities have been somehow interested in the potential of context-reasoning to support real-time meaningful reactions from systems. We explain how the concept evolved in each of these different approaches. We found initially each of them considered this topic quite independently and separated from each other, however latest developments have started to show signs of cross-fertilization amongst these areas. The aim of our survey is to provide an understanding on the way context and context-reasoning were approached, to show that work in each area is complementary, and to highlight there are positive synergies arising amongst them. The overarching goal of this article is to encourage further and longer-term synergies between those interested in further understanding and using context-based reasoning

Is Context-aware Reasoning = Case-based Reasoning?

The purpose of this paper is to explore the similarities and differences and then argue for the potential synergies between two methodologies, namely Context-aware Reasoning and Case-based Reasoning, that are amongst the tools which can be used for intelligent environment (IE) system development. Through a case study supported by a review of the literature, we argue that context awareness and case based reasoning are not equal and are complementary methodologies to solve a domain specific problem, rather, the IE development paradigm must build a cooperation between these two approaches to overcome the individual drawbacks and to maximise the success of the IE systems

Co-creation of smart technology with (and for) people with special needs

We report on the lessons learnt during the application of a methodology to develop Intelligent Environments. This methodology was applied to a project which aimed at helping people with Down’s Syndrome and those with similar conditions and needs, to be more included in society. The project is developed by a consortium of commercial, academic, and enduser supporting organizations. One important feature of the methodology is that of being strongly user-centred and we report on how that interaction with users took place and how it continuously shaped the projec

The user-centred intelligent environments development process as a guide to co-create smart technology for people with special needs

We report on the lessons learnt during the application of a methodology to develop Intelligent Environments. One important feature of the methodology is that of being strongly user-centred and we report on how that interaction with users took place and how it continuously shaped our project aspirations and outcomes. The methodology was applied to a project which aimed at helping people with Downs Syndrome and those with similar conditions and needs, to be more included in society. The project was developed by amconsortium of commercial, academic, and end-user supporting organizations. We explain what type of stakeholders engaging activities were considered, how these were distributed along the lifetime of the project and their impact

Towards a New Perspective of Building Tools for Context-Aware Mobile Applications

Technological growth has been exponential in relation to mobile devices (such as embedded sensors) that have allowed developing context-aware mobile applications for the market. This growth generates a new challenge about how to develop this kind of application to adapt them to the current user’s demand. Nowadays, there are several approaches that could be used to create context-aware mobile applications, but these approaches are designed without considering to provide variability in the kind of generated applications. The aim of this paper is to propose a building tool that has been designed from scratch taking into account variability points in order to generate a wide variety of contextaware mobile applications. The first version of our tool is presented in this paper which is based on UML tools like Eclipse, Sirius Obeo, and JBoss. Finally, a discussion of different aspects is detailed to help designers to have guidelines to select the appropriate development environment for the design of building tools for context-aware mobile applications.Publicado en: Gervasi O. et al. (eds) Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2020. ICCSA 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12254. Springer, Cha

CAPAS: A context-aware system architecture for physical activities monitoring

Attribute grammars are widely used by compiler-generators since it allows complete specifications of static semantics. They can also be applied to other fields of research, for instance, to human activities recognition. This paper aims to present CAPAS, a Context-aware system Architecture to monitor Physical ActivitieS. One of the components that is present in the architecture is the attribute grammar which is filled after the prediction is made according to the data gathered from the user through the sensors. According to some predefined rules, the physical activity is validated after an analysis on the attribute grammar, if it meets those requirements. Besides that it proposes an attribute grammar itself which should be able to be incorporated in a system in order to validate the performed physical activity.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação˜ para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: ˆ UID/CEC/00319/2019