Engineering Multimedia-Aware Personalized Ubiquitous Services

Ubiquitous computing focusing on users and tasks instead of devices and singular applications is an attractive vision for the future. Especially the idea of nomadic, mobile users poses new challenges on hardware and software. Mobile devices provide vastly different presentation capabilities and need to integrate into heterogeneous environments. Network bandwidth is far from being constant and services may be available only when online. This paper presents MUNDO, an infrastructure for ubiquitous computing that addresses these challenges. The infrastructure is intended to be non-monolithic with its parts supporting mobile computing using multi-modal user interfaces, mobile data delivery, and ad-hoc communication and networking

Ubiquitous Computing Technology for Real Time Enterprises

The chapter "Ubiquitous Services and Business Processes" discussed the benefits for Real Time Enterprises of Service Oriented rchitectures (SOA) in terms of reusability and flexibility. Web services are one incarnation of SOA. This chapter gives a brief introduction to SOA. It discusses the attributes that define SOA, the roles of the participants in a service oriented environment. The essence of SOA is that clients use services offered by a service provider to get a task done. For the moment we simplify service to "a software component with network connection". Services are offered with a description at well-known "places" (also called registries, repositories), where clients choose services according to their needs. The chapter discusses several approaches to describe services and to look for them. Moreover, some well-known systems, and also current research, are discussed

Strategien zur Behandlung von mobilitätsbedingten Verbindungsunterbrechungen in verteilten Programmierumgebungen

Mit der zunehmenden Verwendung mobiler Rechner steigt auch die Notwendigkeit diese als Knoten in verteilte Systeme zu integrieren. Diese Einbettung soll trotz der speziellen Eigenschaften von mobilen Geräten (z.B. Phasen von Abwesenheit) aus Benutzersicht möglichst transparent erfolgen. Dies ist insofern eine Herausforderung, als eine Netzwerkverbindung für mobile Geräte im Gegensatz zu Geräten im Festnetz nicht garantiert werden kann. Im Rahmen dieser Diplomarbeit wurde ein Basis-System für verteilte Anwendungen entwickelt, das auf Unterbrechungen der Netzwerkverbindung kontrolliert reagiert und nach Wiederverbinden auch bei zwischenzeitlich stattgefundenen Ortswechsel ein nahtloses Weiterarbeiten ermöglicht. Die darauf aufbauenden verteilten Anwendungen sind so von vornherein auf Integration mobiler Systemkomponenten ausgerichtet und können davon optimal Nutzen ziehen

Using Web Services to Build Context-Aware Applications in Ubiquitous Computing

Ubiquitous and mobile web applications are typically very autonomous in nature, because they rely on additional information about the user's context. In this paper we present a general context model for including context information into ubiquitous and mobile web applications. Our model is based on layers, which cover the path from context sources to the application level, including all intermediate filtering and context fusion. As an example, we present a context-aware calendar application built according to our context model

Interaction with a Smart Espresso Machine

We took a standard off-the-shelf espresso machine and integrated a microcontroller, an RFID-reader, and a Bluetooth module. We can control the machine from a com- puter or a cellphone using these extensions. With the RFID-reader, the machine can automatically detect a cup being inserted; it is also possible to distinguish between cups. We have equipped the cups in our group with suitable RFID-tags. Coffee cups are shared, therefore users associate cups with them by using their personal, electronic doorkey. This action personalizes a cup with a user’s preferences. Before cups are put into the dishwasher, they are swiped over a second RFID-reader to remove the user association. By default, cups stay personalized for a predefined time, the corresponding lease is extended every time the cup is used