9 th June 2004GGF 11 Ad-hoc Meeting UBICOMP-RG: Bridging two communities Adrian Friday, Oliver Storz and Nigel Davies Lancaster University & University of Arizona

Agenda Introduction Progress update Initial thoughts Next Steps Discussion Group Formation Seven Questions Charter Summary and Action Points

IP POLICY STATEMENT

Ubicomp: very µ primer The vision of the late Mark Weiser in “The Computer for 21st Century”, Scientific American, 1991:The Computer for 21st Century “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”

Challenges for the Grid A Ubicomp Use Case? ‘Natural’ interaction No single point of interaction Highly heterogeneous: embedded systems, sensor networks (PAN to global scale) Ad-hoc/ spontaneous interaction Multiple communication paths (multimodal interaction), distributed Dynamic, adaptive

State of the art? Ubicomp is… A hot research topic in computer science Emerging, embryonic, evolving (many fragmented testbeds) High risk Multidisciplinary Could lead us toward a revolutionary shift in how we use computers

Why this RG? We believe there is significant synergy between the Grid & Ubicomp Benefits to Ubicomp Linking these communities (seeing further…) Achieving reuse, increasing scale of experiments (standardisation) Benefits to the Grid Short term: challenging/ novel requirements (dynamic, low power, mobile, embedded, autonomous, etc.  new use cases) Long term: cross-over technology/ research (new tools, novel forms of interaction, HCI/ ethnography, resources etc.)

Ubicomp projects Many fragmented testbeds in research labs worldwide Many interpretations of Weiser’s vision Stanford iRoom, HP Cooltown, UIUC’s Gaia, CMU’s Aura, GaTech’s Aware Home, EU ‘Disapearing Computer’, AT&T sentient computing, LabScape, MIT’s OxygenUIUC’s Gaia Developing key experimental infrastructures and services Now mature conferences and (some) journals (e.g. UbiComp, Pervasive…)

Progress update Following last BOF (GGF10) Solicited contributions from others via the mailing list – low response! Initiated discussions with Ubicomp community Following 1 st UbiSys at Ubicomp 2003, have proposed follow up workshop to raise awareness Written IEEE Pervasive ‘Horizons’ article espousing our vision (on our web site): This has led to some initial interest

Perceptions Strong consensus regarding the importance of interoperability However, there were doubts about the suitability of Grid technologies: “Why the Grid? The Grid is not catering for our needs!” Grid is one of many possible platforms Solutions targeted at high-performance distributed computing Heavyweight (OGSI & GT3) Why not just use Web services?

Plan Create a ‘first stop’ for those seeking to develop Ubicomp Grid Applications Best practice dissemination Software tools, FAQs etc. Ability to ‘raise issues’ for Ubigrid- RG 2. Detailed analysis by RG taskforce 3. Use case/ discussion with relevant RG/WGs 4. Feedback 1. Candidate Selection

Reflections Initial questions Research focus - lack of immediate driving application (in Grid), can RGs work in responsive mode? Do we have the right people? Natural scepticism about adopting outside technology, so Going will be slow initially (proof of concept, grid- forge style community building), need to seed However Increased awareness could lead to fruitful collaborations

Aims for today (In increasing order of) Interest Tracking the group’s progress Taskforce membership Acting as liaisons (identify/ liaise with related RG/WGs) Positions within the group Show of hands… Next steps? Discuss. 7 questions?

Actions

Evaluation Criteria 7 questions (from GFD-C.3) Is the scope of the proposed group sufficiently focused? Are the topics that the group plans to address clear and relevant for the Grid research? Will the formation of the group foster (consensus– based) work that would not be done otherwise? Do the group’s activities overlap inappropriately with those of another GGF/IETF/W3C? Are there sufficient interest and expertise in the group’s topic, with at least several people willing to expend the effort? Does a base of interested consumers appear to exist for the planned work? Does the GGF have a reasonable role to play in the determination of the technology?

END - THANKS FOR ATTENDING