UbiCom Book Slides
(Short Version)
Chapter 13
Ubiquitous System: Challenges & Outlook
Stefan Poslad
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/people/stefan/ubicom
Ubiquitous computing: smart devices,
environments and interaction
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Related Chapter Links
• Underlying form of this model is given in chapter 1
• Challenges & Outlook is related to UbiCom management in
Chapter 12
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UbiCom Challenges & Outlook
Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges 
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Overview of Challenges
•
•
•
•
Key Challenges
Multi-Level Support for UbiCom Properties
Evolution Versus Revolution
Future Technologies
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Key Challenges
Key Challenges for each of the core UbiCom system
properties are considered:
• Distributed
• Context-Aware
• iHCI
• Artificial Intelligent
• Autonomous
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Key Challenges: Distributed
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•
•
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Reliability
Openness
Less clearly defined system boundary
Synchronising data
Privacy & security
Event floods
Ad hoc interactions
Overwhelming choice, multiple versions, heterogeneity
Reduced cohesion,
 Distribution computation and communication costs
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Key Challenges: iHCI
•
•
•
•
•
•
Users get overloaded.
Disappearing technology problems
Disruptions
Ambiguous user intentions
Loss of privacy & control
Loss of presence in physical real-world
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Key Challenges: Context-Awareness
•
•
•
•
Localized scalability
Unclear user goals and context
Context adaptation leads to quicker commitments.
Balancing system versus application versus user control of
context adaptation
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Key Challenges: Autonomous
•
•
•
•
•
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Loss of high value macro mobile resources
Loss of many low value micro resources
No-one wants to be an administrator
Undesired or unintelligible adaptation
 Interdependencies
Loss of control by user
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Key Challenges: Intelligent
• System infers incorrectly
• Greater reliance and dependencies on systems of systems
interactions to operate.
• Systems learn to operate unsafely
• Systems exceed normal human behaviour limits
• Virtual organisation can masquerade as real organisations.
• Byzantine, disruptive and malicious behaviours
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Multi-Level Support for UbiCom
Properties
• It is not necessary, nor necessarily desirable, to support the
full level for each UbiCom property:
–
–
–
–
–
Distributed
Context-aware
iHCI
Autonomous
Intelligent
• Why not?
– It depends upon the application and the situation.
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Multi-Level Support for UbiCom
Properties
• Propose that there are graduated levels of support by
UbiCom systems for each of the five core UbiCom system
properties:
–
–
–
–
–
level 1 (minimal),
level 2 (basic),
level 3 (medium),
level 4 (high),
level 5 (full).
• Levels of support could be used to indicate of levels of
maturity for a system and for a property
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Multi-Level Support for UbiCom
Properties
• For example, a recommender, location-aware system
application for a mobile user could be designed to support
medium levels of support for the core UbiCom properties:
– ???
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Multi-Level Support for UbiCom
Properties
Multi-Level Support for Smart
• In Section 1.4, the term smart was defined to mean that the
entity can be:
–
–
–
–
Active, Digital, Networked
can operate to some extent autonomously
is reconfigurable
and has local control of the resources it needs such as energy and
data storage.
• A second way to define smart is in terms of the level of AI
the system supports (Figure 13-1)
– minimal type of smartness is that a system has an explicit
representation of its structure and state which it can share with
others.
– medium level of smartness is that systems support problem solving
and reasoning.
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Evolution versus Revolution
• Technology can be categorised as
– disruptive
– sustaining.
• Disruptive technology is one that changes or replaces the
accepted way of doing things.
• Sustaining technology enhances an existing product or
service by refining it or making its creation and delivery
more efficient.
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Evolution versus Revolution
Many visions for future computing assume
• sustainable, incremental, evolutionary progress in
technology,
whereas history has shown repeatedly that markets are
changed mostly by disruptive technologies
• Examples ?
–
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Evolution versus Revolution
• Examples of disruptive technologies along with famous
companies and people that rejected them?
– ??
• Technology sometimes tries to drive use rather than use
drives technology.
– ??
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Future Technologies
• There are many sources of ideas for future technology.
• Many science fiction writers who may have trained or
worked as scientists and engineers have described ideas
which later turned into reality. Examples?
– ??
• Many engineers and scientists in many different fields have
proposed bold visions for the future use of ICT. Examples?
– ??.
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Future Technologies
• Technological revolutions or evolutions are just one of the
environments which must be affected in such a multidisciplinary world
–
• We need to understand the novel secondary effects of
technology, to understand the complex interplay between
systems and their environment.
–
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices 
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Smart Devices
•
•
•
•
•
Smaller, More Functional Smart Devices
More Fluid Ensembles of Diverse Devices
Richer System Interaction and Interoperability
Migrating from Analogue to Digital Device Interaction
Richer Digital Device Interaction
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Smaller, More Functional Smart
Devices
• Evolutionary trend towards smaller, lower power, higher
resourced devices,
• Phones can be manufactured to be much smaller, lighter,
low powered & multi-functional
•
• Phones can leverage MEMS technology further (Chapter 6)
– .
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Smaller, More Functional Smart
Devices
A Wider Range of Raw Materials from
which Devices are Manufactured
• The use of more flexible materials to act as ICT devices
• This can lead to many more physical objects supporting
dual or even multiple hidden virtual computing functions
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Micro & Nano Device Issues
• Synthetic reality which combines self-organisation of
multiple MEMS devices called catoms and tangible UIs.
• Nano components can also act in a similar manner.
Benefits?
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Microscopic Device Issues
Problems?
• These could get out of control.
• etc
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More Fluid Device Networks
29
More Fluid Ensembles of Diverse
Devices
Many hidden and diverse devices
• In a smart office, smart office ware ….
– e.g., specific lights, on the desk, can switch on when activity on the
desk is sensed whilst other lights in the vicinity can remain off
– …
• In the bathroom, smart (bath)ware ….
– smart mirrors can provide information about predicted conditions
– …
• In kitchen, smart ware …
– Ovens contain temperature probes to sense inside food being
cooked
– …
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Migrating from Analogue to Digital
Device Interaction
•  use of digital vs. analogue devices situated in physical
and human environments. Why?
–
• Many individual digital systems, particularly those which
are embedded systems, currently operate in isolation.
Why?
–
• Drivers for richer, flexible and dynamic device interaction?:
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Migrating from Analogue to Digital
Device Interaction
• Many devices are still designed to be stand-alone analogue
single function appliance devices.
• Discuss what the pros and cons are in different devices
being digital:
– Toaster
– Clothes Iron
– Coffee / tea maker etc
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Richer Digital Device Interaction
• Majority of this richer system interaction is still C2C
interaction
– with some limited HCI to support finely grained user configuration,
rather than CPI or HPI (Section 1.3).
• An evolution pathway towards richer & softer (Section
12.3.1) information interaction is proposed.
– See Section 8.4
• Application data protocols enable different applications to:
– exchange data structures.
– be controlled remotely.
• Richer interaction goes beyond sharing information
– ??.
• This system interaction needs to be managed within the
constraints of their ICT, physical and human environments.
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Device Interaction 
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Smart Device CCI Trends
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Smart Interaction
• Unexpected Connectivity: Accidentally Smart Environments
• Impromptu Service Interoperability
• Context-Awareness: Ill-Defined Contexts Versus a ContextFree World
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Smart Interaction
• Smarter interaction between individual smart devices and
smart environments is a key enabler to promote richer,
more seamless, personal, social and public spaces.
• Interaction with smart mobile & environment devices
requires effective human computer interaction design to
make these systems useful
• Human interactions often need to be centred in physical
world rather than centred in virtual computer devices.
• User activity-oriented interaction is different to service or
task-oriented interaction. How?
• Interaction can benefit from being location aware
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Key challenges for Interaction in
Smart Environments
• Challenges have already been given in Part A
• Multiplicity of interactions increase,
• However, contexts can be hard to determine
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Key challenges for Interaction in
Smart Environments
• Key challenges for using ubiquitous computing applications
in home type smart environments (Edwards & Grinter,
2001) are:
–
–
–
–
–
–
"accidentally" smart home,
impromptu interoperability,
no systems administrator,
designing for domestic use,
social implications of aware home technologies,
reliability, and inference in the presence of ambiguity.
• Their analysis can be generalised to smart (physical world)
environment interaction
• New design models of connectivity with wireless
technologies are needed
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Unexpected Connectivity: Accidently
Smart Environments
• Wireless networks are less deterministic. Why?
–
Example 1
• Homeowners may not realise that their wireless speakers
can actually connect themselves to sound sources in
another house nearby just as easily as to sound sources
within their own home.
• New design models of connectivity with wireless
technologies are needed
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Unexpected Connectivity: Accidently
Smart Environments
Unexpected Connectivity: Accidently
Smart Environments
• But what if the wired interaction accesses the Internet
rather than the interaction remains locally?
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Fluid Service Interoperability
• Many ICT devices in physical environment are designed to
be operate as appliances, not to interoperate on-line.
• Some devices are designed to interoperate off-line via
removal media.
• Interoperability of many devices is practically constrained.
Why?
• Interoperability goes beyond simple connectivity.
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Fluid Service Interoperability
• User's expectation is that systems should work together
fluidly and flexibly.
• New design models of interoperability need to interoperate
at multiple levels:
–
–
–
–
–
at the I/O hardware,
plug and play level
at the network level
at the service level
At the connector / Wire level:
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Determine Environment Context
versus Its State
• Focus on meaning of environment context, how it affects an
application goal rather on environment state.
For example, the design of a human weighing scale,
• Should we design context-aware weighing scales?
– How can we design these?
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Context Awareness: Ill-Defined
Contexts versus a Context Free World
• Context-aware systems are often expected to make
decisions with limited context information about the world
and with limited adaptation.
• Environments may be only partially observable,
–
• Adaptation, when performed, should be predictable,
–
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Context Awareness: Ill-Defined
Contexts versus a Context Free World
Context awareness may be ill-defined for several reasons
• Because contexts are derived
– etc
• Contexts may be aggregated from several factors or
indirectly inferred,
.
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Active Context-aware System
Challenges
• Active context-aware systems,
– e.g., systems that issue location-aware alerts to persons
• These can be problematic? Why?
–
• Active context-aware systems should support some user
interaction. Why?
• Replicating the complexity of the real world can make
context-aware systems complex and vulnerable to error.
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage 
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Lower Power and Sustainable Energy
Usage
• A range of power management techniques can be used to
enable devices to reduce their power consumption, e.g.,
• Passive electronic components can be used that do not
require energy to maintain their state,
• Active computation devices can adapt their power
requirements based upon demand
Etc
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Energy: Batteries
• Most macro-sized mobile devices are currently powered by
batteries, which need to be charged by attaching them to
internal building energy grids.
• Batteries have pros & cons
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Energy: Batteries
Alternatives to batteries include:
• Fuel cells
• Capacitors
• Ultracapacitors
• Renewal energy
– kinetic energy,
– mechanical vibrations etc
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Energy Optimisation
Energy optimisation in devices faces several design
challenges.
• A lack of feedback control leads to poor energy
optimisation.
•
Energy can often be wasted instead of usefully converted
into a form to be reused
• Energy is used to provide services which are oriented to a
human presence but humans may not be present
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Smart Energy Grids & Regulation
• A ubiquitous home environment needs to be developed to
support smart energy regulation to improve energy
efficiency.
– In demand response systems
– In direct load control systems
• Can use context-aware energy devices
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices 
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Eco friendly UbiCom Devices
• Environmentally friendly or eco friendly devices are devices
which cause minimum or no harm to the environment.
• This requires considering device use throughout the whole
of its life-cycle, from extraction of raw materials, through
manufacture, through operation, through disposal.
• As more of the physical world is being annotated and
augmented with digital systems, it is vital that devices
behave as part of sustainable digital ecosystems.
• Else, we will end up with an ever increasing collection of
unused yet still usable electronics products to dispose off
whose high cost of production and disposal is not offset
sufficiently.
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Disposal of Fully-Working Devices
• In 2008, consumer electronics account for 1-4% of
municipal waste stream in Europe, USA,
– but is responsible for 40% of the lead in this waste stream
• Although the small size of handheld ICT devices means
that its disposal yields less waste than that of a traditional
desktop computer, it size also makes it more likely to be
thrown away.
• Suggestions for extending the lifetime of the phone?
– Business oriented
– Engineering oriented
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More Eco-friendly Device Use
• Need to consider use & benefits in multiple environments &
orientate these to an eco-friendly goal
– Changing the business model
– Recycling devices & components
– Manufacture using Eco-Friendly Materials
• Need to consider all of the device cycle
– Need to go beyond recycling by also considering demanufacturing
and remanufacturing
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ICT Manufacture using Eco-Friendly
Materials
• ICT Systems should be manufactured from eco-friendly
materials so if they are discarded, the can be recycled
without releasing any toxic substances into the
environment.
• E.g., ???
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ICT Can Reduce Use of Physical
Environment Resources
There are many examples of use of ICT to reduce use of
physical resources
• Paperless trading
• Video-conferencing instead of physical conferencing etc
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Reusing & Recycling Common
Components
• This can be challenging
• Consider how we can design common components such as
power transformers to be reused.
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Overview of (Forward) Engineering
versus Reverse Engineering
Manufacturing
• Traditional manufacturing, forward manufacturing, moves
from high-level abstractions and logical designs to the
finished product, formed out of lower order components.
• Reverse manufacturing. remanufacturing is a process that
– starts with a finished product, an output of a previous
manufacturing process,
– but which seeks to undo this
– in order to reuse some parts, recycle or even remanufacture a
product to make it usable again.
• Demanufacturing is just the disassembly stage for
remanufacturing and reverse manufacturing.
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Remanufacture & Demaufacture of
Embedded Smart Devices
• There is a different challenge in handling the
remanufacture & demaufacture of smart devices embedded
into or strewn into physical environments versus handling
self-contained smart devices
– As acquisition and disassembly processes are different.
•
In industrialized countries, macros sized electronic
equipment is currently processed separately from other
physical world objects because of its material composition.
• However, as microelectronic components become
increasingly embedded in commonly used non-ICT objects,
this may make it both ecologically and economically
unfeasible to separate these embedded components for
special waste treatment.
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Ecofriendly: Main Lessons
• As technologists we need to build things in a modular way,
to make things easy and cheap to repair.
• Rather than to just replace things, we need to build things
to last longer.
• From the outset, we need to design things to support easy
and economical methods of disposal.
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Disposal of Micro Devices
• Is the disposal of smart dust devices represents only a
minor concern?
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI 
• Part G: Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Smart Human–Device Interaction
•
•
•
•
•
•
More Diverse Human–Device Interaction
More Versus Less Natural HCI
Analogue to Digital and Digital Analogues
Form Follows Function
Forms for Multi-Function Devices
Posthuman: ICT Augments Human Abilities Beyond Being
Human
• Blurring of Reality and Mediated Realities
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Smart Human–Device Interaction
• Smart devices can be used to form a smart personal and
pervasive space for their owners that follow them around.
• Smart devices may be resource constrained, leading in turn
to restricted device behaviours
• Devices may be mobile.
–
• Flexible service discovery is needed
–
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Smart Device HCI Trends
• Smart devices have changed from the recent past to the
current time as follows:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
from GUIs to gestures
from VDUs to smart fabrics
from stationary pad transceivers to mobile tab sized transceivers
from simple robots to autonomous machines
from hard disks to digital memories or footprints
from shrink-wrapped to mash-ups
from sometimes-on phones and answer-phones to always-on.
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Smart Device HCI Trends
• Interface stability 
• Ecosystems of P2P ad hoc interaction of devices occur
• Hyper-connectivity 
• Ephemeral human memories 
•
• New forms of creative engagement 
• Multiple-modes and multiple channels of communications
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Smart Device HCI Trends
Natural HCI: Challenges
Challenges in natural HCI?
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HCI: 2nd Nature
• Although, UbiCom systems (artefacts) aim to make some
artificial activities seem more natural for humans to interact
with, UbiCom inherently does the opposite by changing an
activity from being less natural to being more artificial.
• What appears to be natural interaction is dynamic,
historical, cultural and to an extent personal.
• Need to focus ion making interaction 2nd nature rather
than on making it natural.
• Several factors affect making interaction 2nd nature.
– ??
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Analogue to Digital Conversion
• The physical world itself is not a discrete digital system,
although it can sometimes be approximated to one.
• It is an analogue continuum of states in multiple
dimensions.
• In order to sense and interface to the world, analogue to
digital conversion (ADC) is needed.
• There is a trade-off involved in terms of the benefits of
going digital versus the disruption to the human experience
in changing some traditional way of doing things.
• In order to digitise activities may require transducers:
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Digital Analogues
• Much human interaction remains inaccessible to many
humans.
• How to  accessibility?
– Use digital analogues?
– etc
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Form follows Function
• With single function analogue type devices, functional &
physical design can be naturally intertwined so that the
physical form follows function or vice versa
•
Possible for digital artefacts to mimic analogue form
–
• Could in theory mimic the form of complex physical objects,
using smart clay type devices.
• Hence,  accessibility to interact with rare physical
artefacts
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Forms for Multi-Function Devices
• Whereas it is sometimes intuitive to design single function
devices so that form follows function,
• Form of a multi-function device may be less obvious.
Form for Multi-function device?
• How to use the 2 largest planar surfaces of mobile phone
to support multiple functions
Design component based devices
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Posthuman Model
• Humans will use
– more accompanied micro systems
– more wearable or surface-mounted systems
– more implants for direct body & brain, interfaces
• As humans become more dependent on machines, it may
make us become less human. Why?
• Technology could distance us from nature
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Posthuman: ICT Augments Human
Abilities Beyond Being Human
• Implants are used to enable less able people to become
more normally able but they can also be used to enhance
normal abilities.
• There are many wider societal and moral issues here?
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Future use of Virtual & Mediated
Realities
•  use of embedded and implantable devices is changing
the nature of & experiences of being human
• Virtual models have been created that can autonomously
synthesize realistic human motions and possess a broad
repertoire of lifelike human motor skills
• Cannot yet deploy physical artefacts of humans, e.g.,
robots & androids, in everyday life.
• Virtualisation can be progressively used to give the illusion
of different places and times.
• Increased virtual interaction can cause physiological effects
– E.g., Multiple virtual identity disorders etc
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human versus Machine Intelligence 
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
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Human Intelligence Versus Machine
Intelligence
• There are different visions of how humans and intelligent
systems will coexist in the future.
– E..g, Machine Intelligence singularity etc
• Human brains & ability have not appeared to have changed
significantly over a couple of thousand years,
• Humans have developed machines which allows the
combined ability of humans using machine as tools to
improve pure mental and physical human ability.
• As human develop ever more complex machines will these
machines remain under human control?
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Artificial Intelligence versus Human
Intelligence
Human versus Artificial Intelligence
• What are Humans better at ?
• What are machines better at ?
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 AI: More Active Environments
• Environments will become more active.
• Machines model humans better.
• This can cause more complex cyclic mutual modelling
independencies
• This can cause a difficulty in establishing operational
equilibria between multiple active interacting artificial
intelligent and physical world systems.
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 AI: Over-Reliance on Computers
• 2 extremes in portraying a future landscape for future
human computer interaction.
– Over reliance on computer
– Greater distrust of computers
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AI Dependence on Human Intelligence
• “The intelligence of a system is indivisible from the people
who use it, built it, and designed the task environment in
which it runs”.
• Until clever machines can autonomously design other
intelligent machines, intelligent machines will always rely
on human ingenuity of designer and /or operator.
• Balance and combine best of human and machine
intelligence
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Can Human Intelligence be Captured
Artificially?
Can human intelligence be modelled or ultimately subsumed
by machine intelligence?
• Differences in architecture between human brain & ICT
computer exist. What?
• There is no embodiment
• Can machines actually think versus merely simulate
thinking?
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Future of AI: Human Risks
• Jobs
• Time
• Loss of individualism
•
• Loss of privacy
•
• Loss of accountability to humans
• Humans die out
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Chapter 13: Overview
The slides for this chapter are split into several parts:
• Part A: Overview of Future Challenges
• Part B: Smart Devices
• Part C: Smart Interaction
• Part D: Smart CPI - Energy Usage
• Part E: Smart CPI - ECO-Friendly UbiCom Devices
• Part F: Smart HCI
• Part G: Human versus Machine Intelligence
• Part H: Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril 
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Social Issues: Promise Versus Peril
• Increased Virtual Social Interaction versus Local Social
Interaction
• UbiCom Accessible by Everyone
• UbiCom Affordable by Everyone
• Legislation in a Digital World & Digitising Legislation
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Social-issues: Promise versus Peril
• New technology may be disruptive
• Can create new social norms
• More open access increases the need for privacy control of
more vulnerable groups
• Social aspects including benefits are often not envisaged
by service providers.
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Social Ubiquity
• The characteristics of ubiquitous computing are often
quoted as being able to support computation anywhere and
anytime.
• However, it is worth considering the exclusivity of the
relationships between computation in the digital age and
specific social groups.
• Many markets of goods become saturated before reaching
everyone,
– e.g., in the video game market there is a sharp divide between
gamers and non-gamers and this has lead to a stagnant market
(Section 5.2.4).
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Social Ubiquity
• What about the relations between the individual and
personal space of users and technology.
• Almost no ubiquitous-computing systems work ubiquitously.
• Many demonstrations of a smart room or building, work
only in their place of development.
• Many Content or Information services are designed to be
regional rather than local
• Loss of conventional regulatory control at fixed boundary
points through disruptive technologies
• Technological innovation can strain existing business
models
– E.g., place-shifting audio-video content
– E.g., P2P shifting of server power
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Social & Person Awarensss
• Systems could seek to orientate their services based upon
social context.
– Social sorting
•  ability of smart environments to analyse & correlate more
human interactions & link these to identities ->  privacy
• Promiscuous tags, e..g, RFID, left on items that accompany
you, can inform others in public spaces about you
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Virtual Social Interaction versus Local
Social Interaction
•
•
•
•
Computers becoming more interwoven into physical world
More remote access and virtual interactions
Ubiquitous networks and devices, by default always on?
Are work and leisure overlapping too much?
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UbiCom Accessible by Everyone
• To make systems accessible has
– a general meaning
– a specific meaning in terms of HCI usability criteria.
• In the general sense, ICT accessibility
– the degree to which it can be easily reached or used by as many
people as possible.
• In HCI, ICT accessibility
– technology that can be used by people with a wide range of
physical & mental abilities and disabilities.
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Accessibility
• Within the general sense, making UbiCom accessibility,
means taking in account not just usability but also:
– economic affordability,
– international cultural access
• Many countries have a sizeable ethnic, diversity
– e.g., in the UK this was about 8% in 2001.
• Many international national, cultural, religious rules,
conventions govern use of ICT products & services.
– Give Examples
• Why design UIs to be accessible by the widest possible
group of users?
– Maximises user group
– Is a legal requirement
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Affordability
• The use of UbiCom access devices by everyone is dictated
to a very large extent by economics and social aspects and
in addition to the technology.
• In some parts of the world, people still cannot afford the
capital outlay to purchase an ICT device or the costs to
maintain and operate ICT devices
• How to develop ICT infrastructure in emerging economies?
• Socio-economic factors affect how smart devices can be
used by everyone. What are these?
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Affordability
Technical strategies to reduce the equipment cost include:
• Using open-source software; GNU UNIX, Linux
• Low-cost PCs and lap-tops: e.g., One Laptop Per Child”
(OLPC) is an education project,
• Low cost through Miniaturization of ICT components
(Section 6.4)
• etc
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Affordability
• Need to reduce other operational costs, through the
providing cheaper and multi-service local access networks,
– ??
–
• In rural areas, computers must be designed for volatile &
low power supplies & volatile & low bandwidth network
access (Section 3.3.3.9).
• Robust to be designed for use in more hostile open living
physical environments rather in enclosed living spaces.
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Digitising Legislation
• Legal frameworks:
– are complex and manual
– oriented to be human readable
– Oriented to be understandable by human legal specialists
• Can be difficult to know exactly which specific legislation
applies
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Digitising Legislation
• There are two complementary aspects of legislation we
consider here.
• As legislation gets so complex, we need to develop
automated techniques to show legal compliance.
– Else humans may get over burdened, become a bottleneck
• The legislation needed to protect the rights in society as
more innovative UbiCom systems become developed and
more widely deployed, needs to be reviewed / evolve..
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Digitising Legislation
• How to automate regulatory compliance
• How to structure and transcode these accurately represent
legal rules etc
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New Legislation for UbiCom
• Society sets up bodies to review and regulate new
technologies in order to protect individuals and society.
• These concerns are enhanced for UbiCom. Why?
– ??
• Technical, social and commercial uncertainty about
detrimental effects which may happen
– ??
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New Legislation for UbiCom
• To protect humans from robots and to give robots some
rights to protect themselves as sentient beings, a set of 3
Laws for Robotics was proposed by Asimov in 1940s.
• Are these robot laws sufficient?
• Emergent type technology and intelligence can be hard to
legislate to control research and development.
• Legislation can be formulated to be too technology specific
and thus to become too technology restrictive.
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Machine Ethics
• Machines can be designed to incorporate:
– multiple individual human traits such as intelligence, emotions
– collective human traits such as social and legislative behaviours.
• Whilst designing machines to operate legally appears
understandable,
• Should machines also be designed to be ethical, to support
fairness, justice, equity, honesty, trustworthiness &
equality?
• How to support machine ethics.?
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Summary & Revision
For each chapter
• See book web-site for chapter summaries, references,
resources etc.
• Identify new terms & concepts
• Apply new terms and concepts: define, use in old and
new situations & problems
• Debate problems, challenges and solutions
• See Chapter exercises on web-site
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Exercises: Define New Concepts
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Exercise: Applying New Concepts
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