Real-Time Systems and the Aware Home Anind K. Dey Ubiquitous Computing Future Computing Environments

1/31/20012 The Aware Home

1/31/20013 Description of Aware Home  > 5000 sq. feet of lab space  2 independent & identical living floors (3 bed/2 bath), full basement and attic for research flexibility  A variety of network connections to outside and within:  Fiber to campus, ADSL from BellSouth, WaveLAN, EchoStar satellites, FutureSmart wiring

1/31/20014 Floor Plans

1/31/20015 Living Laboratory for Ubicomp  Build and understand a living laboratory in an everyday setting that is aware of its occupants’ activities and supports the continuous connection of a small community.  More than home automation

1/31/20016 Contrast to Traditional Computing  Implicit interaction as well as explicit  Mobile users in changing environments  Uncontrolled environments

1/31/20017 Building Applications  M. Weiser: The whole point of ubiquitous computing, of course, is the applications.  House applications focused on 3 main aspects: elderly, kids, us

1/31/20018 Ubicomp in FCE  Capture and access: eClass, C2000  Context-awareness: Context Toolkit  Natural input and disambiguation: OOPS

1/31/20019 Overview of Applications in the Home  Focused on context-awareness  Remote and local awareness of activities  Health and security monitoring  Support for privacy  Control of appliances  Support for carrying out activities: cooking, etc.  As well as regular video-conferencing types of activities

1/31/ Real-Time Aspects  Mostly very soft requirements  Security, medical support: harder  User’s perspective  Context: data acquisition, interpretation and disambiguation

1/31/ Context and Context-Awareness  Focused on input  Context: any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity  Context-awareness  General model of interactive computing  Addresses subset of ubicomp problems

1/31/ Context-Aware Applications  Tour guides (museums)  Travel assistants (Hertz NeverLost)  Personalization systems (myYahoo)  And even …

1/31/ Context Widgets  Responsible for acquiring and abstracting data from particular sensor, separation of concerns, storage Widget Sensor Widget Application Sensor Context Architecture Face Recognition Location Widget Location Widget In/Out Board Smart Card Reader

1/31/ Context Interpreters  Convert or interpret context to higher level information  Context not available at appropriate level Face Recognition Location Widget Location Widget In/Out Board Smart Card Reader ID to Name Interpreter

1/31/ Context Aggregators  Collect context relevant to particular entities (recall definition)  Further separation, simplifies design Face Recognition Location Widget Location Widget In/Out Board Smart Card Reader ID to Name Interpreter Building Aggregator

1/31/ Context Toolkit Framework Widget Sensor Widget Application Interpreter Aggregator Sensor Context Architecture Discoverer Service

1/31/ Conference Assistant Slide User Notes Interest Control Audio/Video Indicator

1/31/ Slide textUser notes Retrieved slide Query Interface Schedule context widgets Identity, Location, Activity of People, Places, Things Joe Smithcontext

1/31/ Conference Assistant Arch.

1/31/ Aware Home Applications  Focused on context-awareness  Digital Family Portrait  Intercom  Reminders  Privacy Mirror  Interruption Support  House Control and Security  Gesture Pendant  Robot Pets

1/31/ Digital Family Portrait  Abstract presentation of remote activity  Little real- time concerns

1/31/ Intercom  Allow family to communicate  Co-located  Distributed  Share information about status with “caller”  Has to be available and delivered within short time frame to be useful

1/31/ Ambiguous Context speakers microphone motion detector keyboard display dock

1/31/ CybreMinder

1/31/ Monitoring  Monitor activity and interaction with devices: stove, stairs  Medical diagnosis  Privacy: indicate what’s being sensed to occupants

1/31/ Conclusions  Aware Home is a great testbed for context-aware and ubiquitous computing  Lots of real-time issues that cover the spectrum from soft to hard