Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Computing José Viterbo Filho Laboratory for Advanced Collaboration

Multi-agent systems usually assume some form of structure, or set of norms or conventions that articulate or restrain interactions in order to make them more effective… Norms and policies Gustavo R. Carvalho. Governance in Open Multi-Agent Systems. Seminar’s Opening Session, Mobile computing represents a typical scenario where these norms or policies are constantly changing Inside this scenario, agents must be able to adapt to each new set of rules and policies accordingly

Using agent technology to support mobile computing: –Is motivated by agent’s intrinsic properties such as autonomy, mobility, proactivity Mobile computing H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA In order to exploit these properties, policies may be attached to agents’ behaviors These policies define –the actions that agents can perform –resources that they can use –information that they can access…

Context-aware H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA In addition these policies are tightly bound to the context in which they are evaluated and used A policy may be triggered based on the agent’s state, tasks and/or operating environment conditions Applications must be able to efficiently manage, exchange and interpret context information

Example 1: Smart Environments K. Connelly and A. Khalil - Indiana University. On Negotiating Automatic Device Configuration in Smart Environments. 2nd IEEE Annual Conf. on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, Mobile and wearable computational devices that interact with the environment are becoming widespread… –NOT ONLY: laptops and PDAs –BUT ALSO: watches, active badges, smartphones, mp3 players, digital cameras Devices should be able to automatically reconfigure themselves based on current context and user preferences Behavior rules may be imposed to devices that enter a given space

Example 1: Smart Environments K. Connelly and A. Khalil - Indiana University. On Negotiating Automatic Device Configuration in Smart Environments. 2nd IEEE Annual Conf. on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, Following legislation that outlaws the use of video phones in locker rooms, a gym may want the ability to temporarily turn off the camera capabilities of a video phone A university may wish to disable all cell phone calls (except for an outgoing 911) in a lecture hall when an exam is taking place A user may want his cell phone to vibrate, instead of ringing, whenever he enters in a theater or concert room IMPROVE USABILITY PREVENT ABUSE

Example 1: Smart Environments K. Connelly and A. Khalil - Indiana University. On Negotiating Automatic Device Configuration in Smart Environments. 2nd IEEE Annual Conf. on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, Aside from the user preferences (policies), the smart environment may have its own policies when it comes to devices brought into that space Conflict may arise when the device policy differs from the space policy Policy resolution techniques may be implemented automatically adopting an agent-based negotiation approach

Example 1: Smart Environments Ring! Don’t ring! K. Connelly and A. Khalil - Indiana University. On Negotiating Automatic Device Configuration in Smart Environments. 2nd IEEE Annual Conf. on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, device policyspace policy Policy resolution

Example 2: Travel aide A university professor flies to a new city and stays the night for two project meetings, one in the morning, one in the afternoon With a MAS, the professor’s PDA has a connection with the local weather and traffic network, his agent matches this information with his calendar and wakes him up 15 minutes earlier, preventing him to be delayed by a traffic jam In the first meeting, his agent receives the information that the second meeting was postponed, and arranges for another night’s stay M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. ACAI: Agent-Based Context-Aware Infrastructure for Spontaneous Applications. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2005.

Example 2: Travel aide To evolve from a passive state to an active pervasive state, the infrastructure must be able to support uniform context representation, to reason about context, to offer context-based service discovery, and to support a context management and communication protocol M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. ACAI: Agent-Based Context-Aware Infrastructure for Spontaneous Applications. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2005.

Example 2: Travel aide M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. ACAI: Agent-Based Context-Aware Infrastructure for Spontaneous Applications. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Context provider Context consumer Common context representation Must be able to reason about context

Policies and context again H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA The effective contextual information that is used by mobile applications is translated into a set of policies Generated context policies are represented semantically to help achieve the common understanding across different domains

Policy-based approach H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA Agents are provided with a set of policies that govern their overall behavior in the environment and specify their privileges and constraints Each policy includes conditions that permit or prohibit an agent to perform actions on target components Conditions may concern the subject, the target or a particular state or event of the operating environment

CPM PSASAT Network SA Policy-based approach H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA CPM PSASAT Network User moves UA SA UA

Policy-based approach H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA CONTEXT POLICY MANAGER Responsible for monitoring the context information and managing the environment resources based on this context CPM POLICY SERVICE AGENT Manages policies of the domain under its administration to control the behavior and decision-making of the system agents PSA SITE ASSISTANT Is in charge of preparing and setting up a temporary working environment to a user at a visited site SAT

Modeling Context and Policies H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA Policies have to be defined and understood by both machines and humans and to be domain interoperable Modeled using ontology (OWL) The CLNP is a multi-attribute negotiation protocol that allows automated context identification and agreement

Next step H. Harroud., M. Khedr and A. Karmouch - University of Ottawa. Building Policy-Based Context-Aware Applications for Mobile Environments. Mobility Aware Technologies and Applications, MATA Extending the context policy manager with a fuzzy inference engine in generating policies This will provide a necessary robustness against uncertain situations in the environment and maintain the performance of the system even in vague corrupted context information