Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is a compelling vision for how people will interact with multiple computer systems in the course of their daily lives. To date, practitioners have created a variety of infrastructures, middleware and toolkits to provide the flexibility, ease of programming and the necessary coordination of distributed software and hardware components in physical spaces. However, to-date no one approach has been adopted as a default or de-facto standard. Consequently the field risks losing momentum as fragmentation occurs. In particular, the goal of ubiquitous deployments may stall as groups deploy and trial incompatible point solutions in specific locations. In their defense, researchers in the field argue that it is too early to standardize and that room is needed to explore specialized domain-specific solutions. In the absence of an agreed upon set of standards, we argue that the community must consider a methodology that allows systems to evolve and specialize, while at the same time allowing the development of portable applications and integrated deployments that work between between sites. To address this we studied the programming models of many commercial and research ubicomp systems. Through this survey we gained an understanding of the shared abstractions required in a core programming model suitable for both application portability and systems integration. Based on this study we designed an extensible core model called the Ubicomp Common Model (UCM) to describe a representative sample of ubiquitous systems to date. The UCM is instantiated in a flexible and extensible platform called the Ubicomp Integration Framework (UIF) to adapt ubicomp systems to this model. Through application development and integration experience with a composite campus environment, we provide strong evidence that this model is adequate for application development and that the complexity of developing adapters to several representative systems is not onerous. The performance overhead introduced by introducing the centralized UIF between applications and an integrated system is reasonable. Through careful analysis and the use of well understood approaches to integration, this thesis demonstrates the value of our methodology that directly leverages the significant contributions of past research in our quest for ubicomp application and systems interoperability.

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is a compelling vision for how people will interact with multiple computer systems in the course of their daily lives. To date, practitioners have created a variety of infrastructures, middleware and toolkits to provide the flexibility, ease of programming and the necessary coordination of distributed software and hardware components in physical spaces. However, to-date no one approach has been adopted as a default or de-facto standard. Consequently the field risks losing momentum as fragmentation occurs. In particular, the goal of ubiquitous deployments may stall as groups deploy and trial incompatible point solutions in specific locations. In their defense, researchers in the field argue that it is too early to standardize and that room is needed to explore specialized domain-specific solutions. In the absence of an agreed upon set of standards, we argue that the community must consider a methodology that allows systems to evolve and specialize, while at the same time allowing the development of portable applications and integrated deployments that work between between sites. To address this we studied the programming models of many commercial and research ubicomp systems. Through this survey we gained an understanding of the shared abstractions required in a core programming model suitable for both application portability and systems integration. Based on this study we designed an extensible core model called the Ubicomp Common Model (UCM) to describe a representative sample of ubiquitous systems to date. The UCM is instantiated in a flexible and extensible platform called the Ubicomp Integration Framework (UIF) to adapt ubicomp systems to this model. Through application development and integration experience with a composite campus environment, we provide strong evidence that this model is adequate for application development and that the complexity of developing adapters to several representative systems is not onerous. The performance overhead introduced by introducing the centralized UIF between applications and an integrated system is reasonable. Through careful analysis and the use of well understood approaches to integration, this thesis demonstrates the value of our methodology that directly leverages the significant contributions of past research in our quest for ubicomp application and systems interoperability. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

Pervasive computing proposes a new paradigm for human-computer interaction. By embedding computation, sensing, and networking into our daily environments, new computing systems can be developed that become helpful, supportive, and invisible elements of our lives. This tight proximity between the human and computational worlds poses challenges for the design of these systems - what disciplines should be involved in their design and what tools and processes should they follow? We address these issues by advocating for interdisciplinary design of pervasive computing systems. Based upon our experiences teaching courses in interactive architecture, product design, physical computing and through surveys of existing literature, we examine the challenges faced by interdisciplinary teams when developing pervasive computing systems. We find that teams lack accessible prototyping tools to express their design ideas across domains. To address this issue we propose a new software-based design tool called electronic storyboards. We implement electronic storyboards by developing a domain-specific modeling language in the Eclipse Graphical Editor Framework. The key insight of electronic storyboards is to balance the tension between the ambiguity in drawn storyboards and the requirements of implementing computing systems. We implement a set of user-applied tags, perform layout analysis on the storyboard, and utilize natural language processing to extract behavioral information from the storyboard in the form of a timed automaton. This behavioral information is then transformed into design artifacts such as state charts, textual descriptions, and source code. To evaluate the potential impact of electronic storyboards on interdisciplinary design teams we develop of user study based around ``boundary objects''. These objects are frequently used within computer-supported collaborative work to examine how objects mediate interactions between individuals. Teams of computing and non-computing participants were asked to storyboard pervasive computing systems and their storyboards were evaluated using a prototype electronic storyboarding tool. The study examines how teams use traditional storyboarding, tagging, tool queries, and generated artifacts to express design ideas and iterate upon their designs. From this study we develop new recommendations for future tools in architecture and fashion design based upon electronic storyboarding principles. Overall, this study contributes to the expanding knowledge base of pervasive computing design tools. As an emerging discipline, standardized tools and platforms have yet to be developed. Electronic storyboards offer a solution to describe pervasive computing systems across application domains and in a manner accessible to multiple disciplines. / Ph. D.

La prise en considération des exigences en matière de sécurité, de vie privée et de confiance au sein des environnements pervasifs (ubiquitaires) est indispensable à la fourniture des services personnalisés aux utilisateurs. L’objectif de cette thèse est de disposer d’une architecture souple et évolutive intégrant l’authentification des utilisateurs, la préservation de leur vie privée et la gestion de la confiance en vue d’optimiser la stratégie de contrôles d’accès aux services personnalisés. La première contribution porte sur la proposition d’un protocole d’authentification mutuelle construit à partir de schémas cryptographiques robustes d’établissement de clés basés sur les courbes elliptiques (MaptoPoint/Curve algorithm, Weil Pairing) et d’un modèle dynamique basé sur les attributs issus des données contextuelles. La seconde contribution porte sur la conception d’une nouvelle architecture bâti sur un modèle basé sur les attributs et organisée autour de 3 couches : la couche de contrôle de le vie privée qui assure la protection de la vie privée des utilisateurs en contrôlant leurs données personnelles, la couche d’accès associant les processus d’authentification et de contrôles d’accès en intégrant des mécanismes dédiés à la gestion des paramètres de confiance et la couche de service pour la gestion des accès aux services selon le profil de l’utilisateur et de son environnement. La troisième contribution porte sur le développement et la mise en œuvre d’un prototype au sein de la plateforme dédiée à la fourniture de services du laboratoire Handicom de Telecom SudParis. / To provide personalized services to users in pervasive environments, we should consider both user's privacy, trust and security requirements. Traditional authentication and access control mechanisms are not able to adapt their security policies to a changing context while insuring privacy and trust issues. This thesis introduces a new global vision for the protection of pervasive environments, based on context-aware principle. The aim of this thesis is to get a flexible and scalable framework including user authentication, user privacy preserving and trust management in order to optimize the access control strategy to personalized services. The first contribution include the proposal of a mutual authentication protocol supported by both robust key establishment schemes based on elliptic curves (MaptoPoint/Curve algorithm, Weil Pairing) and a dynamic model based on attributes issued from contextual data. The second contribution include the design of a new architecture built on an attribute based model and organized over 3 layers: the privacy control layer which insure the protection of the user private life by controlling their personal data, the access layer which associate authentication and access control processes while providing mechanisms dedicated to trust parameters management , and finally the service layer for service access management according to the user profile and his environment. The third contribution the implementation and the deployment of a prototype within the service delivery platform in Handicom lab of Telecom & Management SudParis.

In this thesis we look into usability in the context of smartphone applications. We selected three research areas to investigate, namely Wireless Personal Area Networks, Context-awareness, and Remote Information Access. These areas are investigated through a series of experiments, which focuses on important aspects of usability within software applications. Additionally, we mainly use smartphone devices in the experiments. In experiment 1, Multi-Platform Bluetooth Remote Control, we investigated Wireless Personal Area Networks. Specifically, we implemented a system consisting of two clients, which were created for Java ME and Windows Mobile, and integrated with a server application installed on a Bluetooth-enabled laptop. For experiments 2 and 3, Context-aware Meeting Room and PainDroid: an Android Application for Pain Management, we looked closely at the research area of Contextawareness. The Context-aware Meeting Room was created to automatically send meeting participants useful meeting notes during presentations. In experiment 3, we investigated the use of on-device sensors for the Android platform, providing an additional input mechanism for a pain management application, where the accelerometer and magnetometer were used. Finally, the last research area we investigated was Remote Information Access, where we conducted experiment 4, Customised Android Home Screen. We created a system that integrated both a cloud-based server application and a mobile client running on the Android platform. We used the cloud-computing platform to provide context management features, such as the ability to store the user configuration that was automatically pushed to the mobile devices.

Computer technology has advanced to the point where it has invaded our lives and become embedded in our environment. The problem with this is that not everyone has it, can use it, understands it or finds value in it. This requires an innovative solution that couples technology use in a communal and public space that provides both free access to technology and technology that is meaningful. Interactive architecture suggest new modes of interacting and interfacing between users and their environments offering the potential for richer and more intuitive dialogues between users, each other and our wider environments. Harnessed in a sustainable platform like a supermarket, it can become a manageable grassroots solution that serves the civic, cultural and social needs of a community. If developed in line with the goals of facilitating public information exchange and discourse in the built environment the application of interactive environments to its context seems well suited to contribute towards encouraging active user participation, social interaction and personal empowerment.

Intergiciel Sémantique pour les Services de l'Informatique Diffuse

Recent technological advancements are enabling the vision of pervasive or ubiquitous computing to become a reality. Service discovery is vital in such a computing paradigm, where a great number of devices and software components collaborate unobtrusively and provide numerous services. Current service-discovery protocols do not make use of contextual information in discovering services, and as a result, fail to provide the most appropriate and relevant services for users. In addition, current protocols rely on keyword-based search techniques and do not consider the semantic description of services. Thus, they suffer from poor precision and recall. To address the need for a discovery architecture that supports the envisioned scenarios of pervasive computing, we propose a context-aware service-discovery protocol that exploits meaningful contextual information, either static or dynamic, to provide users with the most suitable and relevant services. The architecture relies on a shared, ontology-based, semantic representation of services and context to enhance precision and recall, and to enable knowledge sharing, capability-based search, autonomous reasoning, and semantic matchmaking. Furthermore, the architecture facilitates a dynamic service-selection mechanism to filter and rank matching services, based on their dynamic contextual attributes, which further enhances the discovery process and saves users time and effort. Our empirical results indicate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed architecture.

Pervasive computing is an important trend today. It concerns devices and services in a smart space that interact with users in a simple, natural, and harmonious way. Many problems in this domain have been studied from different perspectives in various projects. However, one important characteristic of pervasive computing, which is how to make it non-intrusive so that users can focus on their tasks, has received little formal attention. Nowadays, many computing entities including smart devices, and software components, are involved in our daily lives, and users need to deal with them as well as with other people. Besides, people are easy to reach with multiple devices. We believe there should be a systematic way to help users avoid intrusive ones. We propose a model for posing and answering two questions: will an interaction intrude on its receiver if delivered, and given that the interaction is deliverable, how can it be delivered effectively and not too overtly? With this model, the intrusion problem is analyzed and the essential factors are identified. A quantitative approach is used, so that factors have quantitative values for comparison and computation. We also apply context to refine them in order to achieve better results. We then illustrate how to materialize the model and build a system whose design is inspired by the Jabber framework that includes a collection of standards, technologies, and projects for instant messaging. The discussion is at a general level that does not depend on Jabber. However, by choosing Jabber in implementation, we reuse existing software and technologies, and benefit from Jabber/XMPP standardization, its low entry barrier for application developers, and its rich community support. The main contributions of our work are two-fold. First, we propose a model for intrusiveness in pervasive computing. Second, we address the problem at the system level by designing and realizing it. We also make use of standardized instant-messaging technologies, more precisely Jabber, in the system instantiation to reuse existing software, making the system more flexible and extensible.

The smarter homes of tomorrow promise to increase comfort, aid elderly and disabled people, and help inhabitants save energy. Unfortunately, smart homes today are far from this vision – people who already live in such a home struggle with complicated user interfaces, inflexible home configurations, and difficult installation procedures. Under these circumstances, smart homes are not ready for mass adoption. This dissertation addresses these issues by proposing two smart assistants for smart homes. The first assistant is a recommender system that suggests useful services (i.e actions that the home can perform for the user). The recommended services are fitted to the user’s current situation, habits, and preferences. With these recommendations it is possible to build much simpler user interfaces that highlight the most interesting choices currently available. Configuration becomes much more flexible: since the recommender system automatically learns user habits, user routines no longer have to be manually described. Evaluations with two smart home datasets show that the correct service is included in the top five recommendations in 90% of all cases. The second assistant addresses the difficult installation procedures. The unique feature of this assistant is that it removes the need for manually describing device functionalities (such descriptions are needed by the recommender system). Instead, users can simply plug in a new device, begin using it, and let the installation assistant identify what the device is doing. The installation assistant has minimal requirements for manufacturers of smart home devices and was successfully integrated with an existing smart home. Evaluations performed with this smart home show that the assistant can quickly and reliably learn device functionalities. / <p>QC 20130924</p>