Recent technological advances have witnessed the rapid encroachment of computing systems into our social spaces. Their acceptance in these social spaces by other occupants, however, might be mostly contingent on their social appropriateness. Notions of social appropriateness might seem vague but even people who don’t act on this commonsense knowledge, and accord to social norms, can sometimes find themselves ostracized from society. It is reflected in behavior that supports a sense of successful engagement and connection. Such behavior communicates a desire to be accepted and a willingness to engage, as opposed to inappropriateness that conveys indifference, rejection or even danger. As social actors, how can systems improve their interactions with us in order to better succeed at their tasks? Perhaps, more interestingly, how might they even improve our communications with each other? In this thesis we describe a framework to identify opportunities to design systems that can begin to act appropriately in social settings, which we call Considerate Systems. It includes a design process and guidelines, which allows an interaction to be viewed from the perspectives of the user, system and task. It also includes an architecture that guides the addition of productive social responses to interactive systems. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by exploring two types of scenarios that impact social interactions in contrasting ways. Remote interactions (such as on a conference call) suffer from an impinging of social cues that people rely on while communicating. On the other hand, situated multitasking interactions (such as texting while driving) can easily overwhelm users and detract from their performance. The framework is applied towards the design of autonomous agents tackling problems endemic to such scenarios. We evaluate their success with respect to specific scenario goals. We conclude by noting that while the challenges of instilling computing systems with a sense of appropriateness seem daunting, our productive use of systems can be enhanced with them.

A Computação Ubíqua está revolucionando a interação do ser-humano com os dispositivos computacionais ao disponibilizar tecnologias pouco intrusivas ao cotidiano das pessoas. A Computação Ciente de Contexto, um dos temas de pesquisa em Computação Ubíqua, tem contribuído para a construção de aplicações capazes de customizar-se e adaptar-se às necessidades do usuário sem a intervenção explícita deste. Suportar o desenvolvimento de aplicações Cientes de Contexto é um dos desafios da Computação Ubíqua. Desenvolvido no mesmo grupo de pesquisa que este trabalho está inserido, o Serviço Web Context Kernel, gerencia informações de contexto e explora as especificações e tecnologias da Web como plataforma de intercâmbio para a informação contextual. O trabalho aqui reportado teve como objetivo investigar a utilização de Serviços Web por meio do emprego da infra-estrutura Context Kernel na integração de aplicações em cenários de trabalho colaborativo e de aprendizado eletrônico. Como resultado, foi elaborado um conjunto de lições aprendidas provenientes do estudo e do emprego das especificações para Serviços Web. Outros resultados foram: as especificações de informações de contexto de grupo e de metadados educacionais em dimensões de contexto e exemplos de utilização do Context Kernel para tornar aplicações cientes de contexto. / Ubiquitous computing has became a revolution in terms of the user-computer interaction by providing technologies that seamlessly integrate themselves to people?s everyday life. Context-aware computing, which is an important research theme in ubiquitous computing, has been contributing for the building of applications that are capable both to customize and adapt themselves aiming to support a user without disturb him. A great challenge in ubiquitous computing has been the support to build context-aware aplications. For that reason, the it has been developed the Context Kernel Web Service, which is a service infrastructure that makes use of Web-based specifications and technologies in order to promote the management and the interchange of context information. In this work the usage of Web Services was analyzed by using the Context Kernel to integrate applications in scenarios of cooperative work and e-learning. As a result, a list of lessons learned was ellaborated with respect to the use and the study of Web Services specifications for context-aware computing. Other results include a context information specifications for metadata about group and educational resources as well as examples of how to use the Context Kernel to leverage applications context-aware.

Com os avanços dos processos da microeletrônica temos dispositivos menores e com maior poder de computação e comunicação. Um Ambiente Pervasivo contém diferentes dispositivos, tais como sensores, atuadores, eletroeletrônicos e dispositivos móveis que interagem com a pessoa de forma natural ao conhecer o contexto. A diversidade de dispositivos e informações do Ambiente Pervasivo introduz um problema de interoperabilidade. Um Ambiente Pervasivo é dinâmico devido à mobilidade do usuário, a variedade de dispositivos. Neste trabalho, é proposto um modelo semântico de contexto para permitir interoperabilidade e fornecer suporte ao dinamismo do Ambiente Pervasivo. O modelo proposto contém características da modelagem de contexto realizadas por trabalhos anteriores, assim como sua integração com a modelagem de preferências das pessoas, políticas de privacidade e serviços. Verificou-se que o modelo de contexto proposto é adequado mediante sua aplicação em um Estudo de Caso e mediante testes realizados. Mostra-se que a modelo de contexto utilizado ontologias e Serviços Web Semânticos permite tratar com informação incompleta e inconsistente, bem como fornece suporte na interoperabilidade e ao dinamismo do Ambiente Pervasivo. / Advances in microelectronic processes have allowed smaller devices with more computation and communication power. Pervasive environment contains different devices like electronic sensor, actuators and mobile devices which interact with the person naturally after the context is known. The device and information diversity introduce an interoperability problem. Pervasive environments are dynamics because of user\'s mobility and a variety of devices. In this work, we propose a context model to allow interoperability and to give support to pervasive environment dynamism. The proposed model contains features of context modeling developed in previous works, as well as, their integration with the modeling of the people\'s preferences, privacy policies and services. It was verified that the context model is appropriate by their application in a Case Study and by accomplished tests. It is shown that the model of context using ontologies and Semantic Web Services allow us to work with inconsistent and incomplete information, as well as gives support to interoperability and dynamism of the Pervasive Environment.

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Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2015-06-05T18:10:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MarcusLewisMartinsl.pdf: 1147305 bytes, checksum: 8ab191e523bbdb499dac8c71ef4d9bf9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-05T18:10:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MarcusLewisMartinsl.pdf: 1147305 bytes, checksum: 8ab191e523bbdb499dac8c71ef4d9bf9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05 / Nenhuma / Este trabalho apresenta o FrameTrail, um framework para o desenvolvimento de aplicações orientadas a trilhas. O FrameTrail se propõe a padronizar a manipulação de trilhas independente do seu domínio de aplicação, ou seja, o framework disponibiliza uma série de funcionalidades que gerenciam a trilha de uma entidade, sem limitar o tipo de contexto e quais os dados específicos das entidades que as aplicações desenvolvidas com base nele manipulam. Além de apresentar os componentes internos da arquitetura do FrameTrail, é também apresentada a estrutura de provedores externos que o framework disponibiliza para que as aplicações possam tratar de trilhas sem a necessidade de seguir um modelo de tecnologia pré-estabelecido. Através desses provedores cada aplicação pode definir quais são as informações relevantes para os seus contextos, assim como permite a parametrização da maneira de como os seus dados serão armazenados. A dissertação também descreve o protótipo desenvolvido do FrameTrail, assim como os estudos de caso desenvolvidos para a sua validação e como eles foram direcionados para aproveitar o melhor as funcionalidades providas pelo framework. / This paper presents the FrameTrail, a framework for developing trail oriented applications. The FrameTrail aims to standardize the manipulation of trails regardless of its scope. The framework provides a number of features that manage the entity’s trail, without limiting the type of context and what the specifics information of the entities that applications developed based on this can handle. We present the internal components of the architecture of FrameTrail and also presents the structure of external providers. This external providers provides the framework so that applications can address the trails without the need to follow a technology model pre-established. Each of these providers can define which information relevant to their contexts, as well as lets you customize the way of how your data will be stored. The dissertation also describes the prototype of FrameTrail, as well as case studies designed to validate him and how they were directed to use the most of the functionalities provided by the framework.

Um dos principais desafios de pesquisa na UbiComp consiste em fornecer mecanismos para a ciência de contexto que promovam o desenvolvimento de aplicações que reajam de acordo com a dinâmica do ambiente de interesse do usuário. Para manter o conhecimento a respeito desse ambiente, a área da UbiComp pressupõe a utilização de informações produzidas e disponibilizadas em diferentes localizações, o tempo todo. Nesse sentido, os recentes avanços na área da Internet das Coisas (IoT) têm proporcionado uma crescente disponibilidade de sensores conectados em rede, os quais são potenciais produtores de informações contextuais do ambiente para aplicações ubíquas. Com essa motivação, nessa tese é apresentado o COIOT, um middleware para Internet das Coisas concebido com o objetivo de gerenciar a coleta e o processamento das informações contextuais do ambiente físico, bem como a atuação remota sobre o mesmo. O COIOT foi idealizado considerando os trabalhos previamente desenvolvidos pelo grupo de pesquisa GPPD (Grupo de Processamento Paralelo e Distribuído) da UFRGS, particularmente o middleware EXEHDA (Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications). Na concepção do COIOT foi adotada uma abordagem distribuída de processamento de contexto que contempla tanto as premissas da IoT quanto as demandas das aplicações da UbiComp. A arquitetura proposta também contempla o gerenciamento de eventos distribuídos através de regras e triggers para tratar as mudanças de estados dos contextos de interesse. Além disso, a arquitetura proposta gerencia outros aspectos importantes nos cenários da IoT, como o tratamento da interoperabilidade, da heterogeneidade, apoio ao controle da escalabilidade e descoberta de recursos. As principais contribuições desta tese são: (i) a concepção de uma arquitetura para IoT capaz de realizar de forma distribuída tanto a coleta e processamento das informações contextuais, como a atuação remota no meio a fim de atender as aplicações da UbiComp e, (ii) a proposição de um modelo de processamento de eventos distribuídos adequado aos cenários da IoT. Para avaliar a arquitetura do COIOT foram realizados dois estudos de caso na área da agricultura. O primeiro estudo de caso foi desenvolvido em ambiente de produção a partir de demandas de pesquisadores da área da agricultura, particularmente da análise de sementes. Já o segundo estudo de caso teve como cenário de testes ambientes da viticultura de precisão. / One of the main research challenges in UbiComp is to provide mechanisms for context-aware to promote the development of applications that react according to the dynamics of user interest environment. To keep the knowledge of this environment, the area of UbiComp presupposes the use of information produced and made available in different locations, all the time. In this sense, the recent advances in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) have provided an increasing availability of sensors and actuators networked. These sensors are potential producers of contextual information. With this motivation, this thesis is presented the CoIoT, a middleware for Internet of Things (IoT) designed in order to manage the collect and processing of contextual information of the physical environment as well as remote actuation on it. The CoIoT was designed considering the work previously developed by the research group GPPD (Parallel Processing Group and distributed) of UFRGS, particularly middleware EXEHDA (Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications). In designing the CoIoT it was adopted a distributed approach of context processing that includes both the principles of IoT as the demands of the applications of UbiComp. The proposed architecture also includes rules based and triggers mechanisms to deal with events that characterize the changes of states of the contexts of interest. In addition, the proposed architecture manages other important aspects of IoT scenarios such as the treatment of interoperability, heterogeneity, support the control of scalability and resource discovery. Until now, the central contributions of this thesis include: (i) the design of an architecture for IoT able to perform distributed way both the collect and processing of contextual information, such as remote actuation in the environment in order to meet UbiComp applications and, (ii) the proposition of a distributed event processing model appropriate to the IoT scenarios. In order to evaluate the CoIoT architecture, two case studies were carried out in the area of agriculture. The first case study was developed in a production environment based on the demands of agricultural researchers, particularly seed analysis. On the other hand, the second case study was based on precision testing of viticulture environments.

Com os avanços dos processos da microeletrônica temos dispositivos menores e com maior poder de computação e comunicação. Um Ambiente Pervasivo contém diferentes dispositivos, tais como sensores, atuadores, eletroeletrônicos e dispositivos móveis que interagem com a pessoa de forma natural ao conhecer o contexto. A diversidade de dispositivos e informações do Ambiente Pervasivo introduz um problema de interoperabilidade. Um Ambiente Pervasivo é dinâmico devido à mobilidade do usuário, a variedade de dispositivos. Neste trabalho, é proposto um modelo semântico de contexto para permitir interoperabilidade e fornecer suporte ao dinamismo do Ambiente Pervasivo. O modelo proposto contém características da modelagem de contexto realizadas por trabalhos anteriores, assim como sua integração com a modelagem de preferências das pessoas, políticas de privacidade e serviços. Verificou-se que o modelo de contexto proposto é adequado mediante sua aplicação em um Estudo de Caso e mediante testes realizados. Mostra-se que a modelo de contexto utilizado ontologias e Serviços Web Semânticos permite tratar com informação incompleta e inconsistente, bem como fornece suporte na interoperabilidade e ao dinamismo do Ambiente Pervasivo. / Advances in microelectronic processes have allowed smaller devices with more computation and communication power. Pervasive environment contains different devices like electronic sensor, actuators and mobile devices which interact with the person naturally after the context is known. The device and information diversity introduce an interoperability problem. Pervasive environments are dynamics because of user\'s mobility and a variety of devices. In this work, we propose a context model to allow interoperability and to give support to pervasive environment dynamism. The proposed model contains features of context modeling developed in previous works, as well as, their integration with the modeling of the people\'s preferences, privacy policies and services. It was verified that the context model is appropriate by their application in a Case Study and by accomplished tests. It is shown that the model of context using ontologies and Semantic Web Services allow us to work with inconsistent and incomplete information, as well as gives support to interoperability and dynamism of the Pervasive Environment.

Air pollution is a severe issue in many big cities due to population growth and the rapid development of the economy and industry. This leads to the proliferating need to monitor urban air quality to avoid personal exposure and to make savvy decisions on managing the environment. In the last decades, the Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly being applied to environmental challenges, including air quality monitoring and visualization. In this thesis, we present CAVisAP, a context-aware system for outdoor air pollution visualization with IoT platforms. The system aims to provide context-aware visualization of three air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM2.5) in Melbourne, Australia and Skellefteå, Sweden. In addition to the primary context as location and time, CAVisAP takes into account users’ pollutant sensitivity levels and colour vision impairments to provide personalized pollution maps and pollution-based route planning. Experiments are conducted to validate the system and results are discussed.

<p>The purpose of the study is to explore the context, from the users’ perspective, in order to find relevant context parameters that can be useful in the development of the future context-aware technology. The goal is to find some of the context parameters relevant to the situated activity and investigate to what extent and in which way they influence the user in everyday planning activities.</p><p>The method used in the study was based on scenario descriptions. A total of 41 participants reported how they would have acted in the different situations and they also rated how important they believed the different context factors were in the situations. Analyses were made to reveal relationships between context factors and service properties used by the participants in the scenarios.</p><p>In the study several interesting relationships between context factors and the use of services were discovered. The level of urgency was in several situations considered to be important, and it was also found to have an impact on how the participants chose to communicate. The cost was introduced by the participants during the study. It seemed to be important; however, in situations with high urgency it became less important. The study revealed a potential relationship between the risk of disturbing the people in the vicinity and the effort to communicate quietly. Another interesting finding was the relationship between privacy and the choice of modality when communicating: voice-based services were avoided. Further, the importance of privacy and disturbance also appeared to have greater influence in non-anonymous situations than in anonymous.</p> / <p>Syftet med studien är att undersöka kontexten, utifrån användarens perspektiv, för att kunna hitta relevanta kontextfaktorer som kan vara användbara i utvecklingen av kontextmedveten teknologi. Målet är att finna kontextfaktorer som är relevanta för den pågående aktiviteten och undersöka i vilken utsträckning och på vilka sätt dessa faktorer påverkar användaren i de dagliga planeringsaktiviteterna.</p><p>Metoden som användes i studien baserades på scenariobeskrivningar. 41 stycken försöksdeltagare fick beskriva hur de skulle ha handlat i de olika situationerna och de fick också skatta hur viktiga de olika kontextfaktorerena var i situationerna. Analyser genomfördes för att finna samband mellan kontextfaktorer och egenskaper hos de tjänster som försöksdeltagarna använde sig av i scenarierna.</p><p>I studien upptäcktes en rad intressanta relationer mellan kontextfaktorer och användningen av tjänster. Exempelvis ansågs nivån av brådska vara betydelsefull i flera situationer och den verkade också ha inverkan på hur försöksdeltagarna valde att kommunicera. Försöksdeltagarna introducerade under studien kontextfaktorn kostnad. Kostnaden påverkade valet av tjänster men blev mindre betydande i situationer med stor brådska. Studien visade också på potentiella samband mellan risken att störa människor i sin omgivning och viljan att kommunicera tyst. En annan intressant upptäckt var sambandet mellan avskildhet och kommunikationssätt: röstbaserade tjänster undveks när andra människor fanns i närheten. Dessutom verkade det som om det var viktigare att värna om sin avskildhet och att inte störa andra i ickeanonyma situationer än i situationer där man var helt anonym.</p>

A speech controlled animation system is both a useful application program as well as a laboratory in which to investigate context aware applications as well as controlling errors. The user need not have prior knowledge or experience in animation and is yet able to create interesting and meaningful animation naturally and fluently. The system can be used in a number of applications ranging from PowerPoint presentations to simulations to children’s storytelling tools. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)