Mobile and Pervasive Computing - 6 Past, Present and Future Researches of Ubiquitous Computing Presented by: Dr. Adeel Akram University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila, Pakistan

Computing with natural interfaces  Ubicomp inspires “off-the-desktop” applications  Needs “off-the-desktop” means of interaction  Speech, gestures, writing  More accessible  Easier to use??? 2

Computing with natural interfaces  Error prone interaction  Permit new and numerous mistakes  People do not have perfect recognition  As low as 54%; cursive handwriting 88%; printed handwriting 96.8%  Recognition accuracy == user satisfaction??  Not really: complexity of error recovery dialogues and value-added benefit of any given efforts  Entering a command vs. writing journal entries  Several research areas  Error reduction (about 5-10%)  Error detection  Reusable toolkit for error handling 3

Context aware computing  Current Systems  Generally using position and identification of objects  Still do not provide a complete context  Definition of context is limited  Research areas  Context toolkits  Toolkit for sensing environment  Explicit use of sensed information is up to program  What is context?  How is context represented? 4

What is context?  Who  Currently generally tailored to one user  How important are others in determining our behavior  How could this be captured?  What  Attempt to figure out what is currently happening  Sense environment, use calendar software etc.  Where  Location based information, e.g., GPS  Most explored context information  When  Easily obtained information -- Computer is good at remembering time  Although determining when one event stops and another begins is not easy  Why  Even harder than the “what” question, biometric sensors might help (e.g., body temperature, heart rate, etc) 5

Toward context aware computing  Context representation  Requires universal context schemes or toolkits with standard context representations  Context sensing and fusion  How to make context-aware computing “ubiquitous”?  In practice, there are few truly ubiquitous, single-source context services  E.g., GPS does not work indoors; different indoor localization schemes have different characteristics (e.g., cost, range)  Like sensor fusion, context fusion handles seamless handling of sensing responsibility between boundaries of different context services  Combining multiple context sources can increase the accuracy of context information 6

Automated capture and access  Recording information and data as it occurs  Computers are inherently good at recording, people are not  People freed up to summarize and understand  Most work in academic/ classroom settings  Time stamping lectures, digital whiteboards  Challenges in “capture and access”  Sometime we don’t know we want to capture something until after its already happened  How could the computer know that?  If it captures everything then we need a system of sorting and filtering (access)  Access is a problem because capturing of raw data can be burdensome for sifting through; systems need to recognize important events facilitate access 7

Everyday computing  Continuous interactions (i.e., no clear beginning or end)  Both fundamental activities like communication and long- term endeavors do not have predefined starts and ends; information from past can be recycled  Very different traditional HCI design which assumes “closure” with clear goals like spell checking, dialogue, etc.  Interruption is expected:  People are constantly interrupted  Computer systems must recognize interruption and change state  Also computers must appropriately inform users  Multiple activities operate concurrently:  People multitask and rapidly switch task based on external unpredictable environment  Systems need to adapt to this opportunistic behavior and change accordingly 8

Toward everyday computing  Develop continuously present interface  No current model of continuously present interfaces, even people are not continuously present  Create an interface that doesn’t get annoying (e.g., wearable devices)  Determine what information should require my attention and what should be display peripherally  Connect events in the physical and virtual worlds (e.g., face to face vs. , document, webs)  Modify/fuse existing HCI schemes to efficiently support everyday computing (but evaluation is challenging and laborious) 9

System evaluation challenges  Hard to evaluate Ubicomp Systems  Little publish on ubicomp evaluation  Systems often required to be fully connected leading to systems that are hard to build  Lack of development toolkits make system creation difficult  Systems often need to be integrated into peoples lives which using big clunky prototypes does not lead itself well too  Task/Goal centric approaches don’t work in ubicomp 10

Example Projects  Pervasive computing projects have emerged at major universities and in industry:  Project Aura (Carnegie Mellon University)  Oxygen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)  Portalano (University of Washington)  Endeavour (University of California at Berkeley)  Place Lab (Intel Research Laboratory at Seattle)  For illustration let us look at Project Aura 11

Example Projects : Project Aura (1)  Aura (Carnegie Mellon University)  Distraction-free (Invisible) Ubiquitous Computing. 12

Example Projects : Project Aura (2)  Moore’s Law Reigns Supreme  Processor density  Processor speed  Memory capacity  Disk capacity  Memory cost ...  Glaring Exception  Human Attention Adam & Eve2000 AD Human Attention 13

Example Projects : Project Aura (3)  Aura Thesis:  The most precious resource in computing is human attention.  Aura Goals:  Reduce user distraction.  Trade-off plentiful resources of Moore’s law for human attention.  Achieve this scalably for mobile users in a failure-prone, variable-resource environment. 14

Example Projects : Project Aura (4) 15  The Airport Scenario  Jane wants to send from the airport before her flight leaves.  She has several large enclosures  She is using a wireless interface  She has many options.  Simply send the  Is there enough bandwidth?  Compress the data first  Will that help enough?  Pay extra to get reserved bandwidth  Are reservations available?  Send the “diff” relative to older file  Are the old versions around?  Walk to a gate with more bandwidth  Where is there enough bandwidth?  How do we choose automatically?

Example Projects : Project Aura (5) 16  The Mobile Task Scenario  Aura saves Scott’s task.  Scott enters office and gets strong authentication and secure access.  Aura restores Scott’s task on desktop machine and uses a large display.  Scott controls application by voice.  Bradley enters room.  Bradley gets weak authentication, Scott’s access changes to insecure.  Aura denies voice access to sensitive application.  Scott has multi-modal control of PowerPoint application.  Aura logs Scott out when he leaves the room.

Other Scenarios of Ubiquitous Computing  Buy drinks by Friday (1)  Take out the last can of soda  Swipe the can’s UPC label, which adds soda to your shopping list  Make a note that you need soda for the guests you are having over this weekend 17

Other Scenarios  Buy drinks by Friday (2)  Approach a local supermarket  AutoPC informs you that you are near a supermarket  Opportunistic reminder: “If it is convenient, stop by to buy drinks.” 18

Other Scenarios  Buy drinks by Friday (3) - Friday rolls around and you have not bought drinks - Deadline-based reminder sent to your pager 19

Other Scenarios  Screen Fridge  Provides:   Video messages  Web surfing  Food management  TV  Radio  Virtual keyboard  Digital cook book  Surveillance camera 20

Other Scenarios  The Active Badge  This harbinger of inch-scale computers contains a small microprocessor and an infrared transmitter.  The badge broadcasts the identity of its wearer and so can trigger automatic doors, automatic telephone forwarding and computer displays customized to each person reading them.  The active badge and other networked tiny computers are called tabs. 21

Other Scenarios  The Active Badge 22

Other Scenarios  Edible computers: The pill-cam  Miniature camera  Diagnostic device  It is swallowed  Try this with an ENIAC computer! 23

Other Scenarios  Artificial Retina  Direct interface with nervous system  Whole new computational paradigm (who’s the computer?) 24

Other Scenarios  Smart Dust  Nano computers that couple:  Sensors  Computing  Communication  Grids of motes (“nano computers”) 25

Questions???

Assignment#3  Write a detailed note on Project Aura highlighting each area of the project as described on the following page: 