Ubiquitous Computing
What is Ubiquitous Computing?
“Ubiquitous computing is the method of enhancing computer use by making many
computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively
invisible to the user”.[7]
The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the
fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.[8]
About 15 years ago few years ago, I bought a used car which had an engine that would
inexplicably cut out at random. On the highway, in busy intersections or on quiet streets,
I could never rely on this car to get me from here to there. After many trips to the
original dealer and my own mechanic, many relatively inexpensive parts were replaced
with no success at resolving the problem. Finally, the mechanic said that the only thing
left was to replace the “computer”. I didn’t even know this car had a computer!
In this happy circumstance, the computer was warranted for 50,000 miles. The odometer
read 49,000…free computer. Better yet, the problem was resolved.
This is the essence of Ubiquitous Computing. The human interacts with various devices
and the environment and has no need for knowledge that a computer is involved.
Ubiquitous Computing looks forward to the day when computers (from tiny computer
chips to super computers) will be seamlessly and transparently used in all aspects of our
everyday lives.
What Ubiquitous Computing is not.
The analogy that is often held up as an example of Ubiquitous Computing is the
refrigerator that can tell you when to buy more milk.[5] This is a good example to
contemplate as it can help us learn what Ubiquitous Computing is and is not.
Although some people consider the “buy more milk command” a part of the Ubiquitous
Computing environment, there are others who consider that and other superficial
functions to be do-able, but impractical and thus not worth the long term effort that would
be required to bring them to reality.
“What is striking about most of these
scenarios is the marginal and irrelevant character of the
needs referred to in them and of the envisioned
enhancements of the activities”[3]
Even more striking is the stark contrast between the
marginality of the enhancements and the complexity of the
computing infrastructure required to achieve them.[3]
Knowing when to buy milk is a personal decision, involving not only how much milk is
left, but also what your future plans are. Are you going to be out of town for the next few
days?
Are you going to have friends over for coffee… or cocoa? Ubiquitous
Computing technology can be used to make simple decisions for us, but should it?
“A few places in the world have begun work on a possible next generation computing
environment in which each person is continually interacting with hundreds of nearby
wirelessly interconnected computers. The point is to achieve the most effective kind of
technology, that which is essentially invisible to the user.”[7]
So the goal of Ubiquitous Computing is not to use computers to do unimportant tasks
(which may become a consequence of Ubiquitous Computing), but rather, to create a vast
infrastructure of computers that will be available to serve humans needs.
Requirements for Ubiquitous Computing
Ubiquitous Computing has two basic requirements:
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Natural interfaces – “We desire natural interfaces that facilitate a richer variety of
communications capabilities between humans and computation.”[1]
Ubiquitous Computing technology requires computers to be able to input
information from natural human activity. That is, a human shouldn’t have to
explicitly enter data into a computer. Humans communicate through speech,
handwriting, gestures. Research is being conducted on how to translate that
human communication into computer usable data.
Context-awareness – “Ubicomp applications need to be context-aware, adapting
their behavior based on information sensed from the physical and computational
environment.[1]
That is, in addition to recognizing Natural Interfaces from human activity,
computer devices can become aware of elements in the environment, including
other computing devices. The Pharmaceutical industry is currently testing the
imbedding of computer chips in the boxes of product (Radio Frequency
Identification – RFID Technology). These chips can be queried by other devices
as they move from manufacturer to retailer, so that each box of product can be
traced.[5]
Thus the concept of Ubiquitous Computing doesn’t mean just that there are lots of
computers in the environment, they also must collect data by monitoring natural
human activity and be able to interact with other computing devices.
Data Capture Problems
Researchers are currently studying new materials and devices for data capture. Although
Ubiquitous Computing requires seamless interfaces, it does not preclude the use of new
materials and devices for data capture. Electronic Whiteboards, audio and video devices,
pens and tablets, new types of ink and other devices are being developed and tested.
[4][3][8] Use of these devices is not invisible to the user; but as they become more
familiar, they will be more acceptable to Ubiquitous Computing technology.
We are familiar with basic programming support for keyboard and mouse operations,
Researchers are also working on basic programming support for audio, video and
pens to parse and interpret that information. [3][5]
Capturing human activity in a way that allows a computer to manipulate that data, is
often very difficult. Handwriting is one example. Electronically capturing the hand
movement is relatively easy using special pens, inks and tablets. But interpreting and
manipulating those strokes as words and numbers or other symbols is much more
difficult.
Location awareness is an important aspect of Ubiquitous Computing. The most well
known example is the Global Position System (GPS) device that can report where it is
anywhere in the world. But there has also been research into Active Badges [8] and other
location aware devices. It is important to note that no location-aware devices work
everywhere, thus, a “handoff’ of information from one device to another will be required
in some cases.
“There is more to context than position and identity. Most context-aware systems still do
not incorporate knowledge about time, history(recent or long past), other people than the
user, as well a many other pieces of information often available in our environment”[1]
Current systems focus their attention on one person. In a Ubiquitous Computing
environment computers will have to incorporate the relationship of many people.[1]
Generally, current systems are not aware of the passage of time (except for effective
dated records). A baseline of behavior over time is of particular interest in Ubiquitous
Computing.[1]
Sensing contextual information such as body temperature, heart rate and galvanic skin
response will help understand why people act as they do.[1] Devices to transmit and
capture this information will be useful in a Ubiquitous Computing environment.
Other areas that need to be explored
-
Context Fusion – No single device works in all environments (GPS often doesn’t
work indoors). Compatible devices must be developed to hand off information
from one device to another to in order to maintain location awareness.[1]
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Network Protocols “Ubicomp changes the emphasis in networking in at least four
areas: wireless media access, wide bandwidth, real-time capabilities for
multimedia over standard networks, and packet routing.[7]
Audio/video recording is easy, but systems to quickly retrieve specific
information still need to be developed. For example audio recordings of the
construction of a building could aid in maintenance.[1] Also with current
technology recording “everything” isn’t an option. Decisions currently need to be
made as to what information will be relevant in the future. As audio/video
recordings move from the personal to recording public settings, privacy issues
will have to be explored.
Merging of multiple forms of media will add value to the Ubiquitous Computing
environment.
One function that could be considered close to Ubiquitous Computing is eMail. You can
go to any computer workstation (that is connected to the Internet) and get your email
regardless of who your eMail service provider is. Many people can go to any one of
many display terminals and get eMail from one of many providers. The next step that
would make it truly Ubiquitous Computing is that each person would have to carry or
ware or have imbedded some sort of identifying device that would either contain or point
to the person’s eMail provider, username and password.
This is a big stumbling block. How much personal information do we want to be
broadcast over the internet? This is one of the conundrums for Ubiquitous Computing.
Pure Ubiquitous Computing requires that computers be able to recognize individual
people without any need for the person to specifically communicate with the computer.
On the other hand, we don’t want to have our personal information available for anyone
(any computer) to pick up
Study to decide how to provide maximum usable information for a Ubiquitous
Computing environment, without providing personal information that can be connected
to a specific person, will have to be conducted. Also how can we secure personal
identification devices?
Capture-and-access research
There has been considerable research in the area of meeting-room/classroom
environments:
- Schmandt and Arons, 1985 and Hindus and Schmandt, 1992 recorded phone
conversations and test ways to access the content.
- The Tivoli System (Minneman et.al, 1995) used various software tools for
recording note taking.
- Electronic Whiteboard technology (Elrod et al, 1992)
- Classroom 2000 (Abdowd, 1999) merged audio and video and ink media to
access and displays the recordings in a synchronized fashion.
-
Experiments with support of capture of brainstorming sessions (Brotherton et al.
1999) and structured design meetings (Richter et al. 1999)
Author’s Conclusion
By its nature, Ubiquitous Computing is always a many-to-many relationship, many
computers, many people and objects. Thus it can be extrapolated that in a truly
Ubiquitous environment, Standards must come first. That’s not to say that proprietary
work isn’t a necessary prerequisite to the standards, but a function can’t become
Ubiquitous until the standards are in place. This has profound implications as to how the
Ubiquitous Computing environment will be built. How do we reimburse an organization
for their investment in developing a Ubiquitous Computing feature when the
specifications have to be distributed to other manufactures after the standards are set?
A great deal of thought will have to be invested in the question of personal information
security. Truly Ubiquitous Computing requires that a significant amount of personal
information be freely available for computers to pick-up and process. How to draw the
line between necessary information and unnecessary private information will be a
difficult problem.
In the classroom there has been some research into video recording of classroom lectures
and creating indexes so that a student reviewing the recording can quickly find a specific
portion of the lecture. In addition there has been research into electronic whiteboard, pen
and tablet forms of data capture. Before this feature can be truly ubiquitous the
technology of video storage will have to be advanced so that the cost of storing all
lectures will be considered trivial. The technology of creating indexes is secondary in
importance. If good classroom videos are ubiquitous then electronic whiteboards and
electronic tablets would be unnecessary.
Bibliography
[1]Abowd, Gregory D. and Mynatt, Elizabeth D. “Charting Past, Present, and Future
Research in Ubiquitous Computing”, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction, Vol 7, No 1, March 2000, PP28-58
[2] Agu,Emmanuel , “CS 525M Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Seminar”
http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~emmanuel/courses/mobile_computing/slides/mc_intro_01_20.pd
f
[3] Araya, Agustin A., “Questioning Ubiquitous Computing”, Proceedings of the 1995
ACM 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Science, PP230 – 237, Nashville, TN, 1995
Also at
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/260000/259560/p230araya.pdf?key1=259560&key2=1577869801&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=11111111&
CFTOKEN=2222222
[4] Dourish, Paul, “What we talk about when we talk about context”, Personal and
Ubiquitous Computing, vol 8, Issue 1,February, 2004 Also at
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/980000/970985/40080019.pdf?key1=970985&key2=414
7869801&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=11111111&CFTOKEN=2222222
[5] Forcinio,
Hallie , “What can Radio Frequency Identification Do for Pharmaceutical
Packaging?”, Pharmaceutical Technology, Vol 27, No. 5, May, 2003 also at
http://www.trenstar.com/pdfs/may_03_pharm_tech.pdf
[6] Rhodes, Bradley J., Minar, Nelson and Weaver, Josh,”Wearable Computing Meets
Ubiquitous Computing” The Proceedings of The Third International Symposium on
Wearable Computers (ISWC '99), San Francisco, CA, October 18-19 1999, pp. 141-149.
also at: http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/wearhive.html
[7]Weiser, Mark, “Some computer science issues in Ubiquitous Computing”, March 23,
1993, http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext//weiser,/UbiCACM.html
[8] Weiser, M. (1991) The Computer for the Twenty-First
Century. Scientific American, 265 (3), 94- 104. also at
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html