This thesis describes research on methods for Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing to better
suit users in an Intelligent Environment. The approach is to create and equip a computing
environment, such as our Active Office, with technologies that can identify user needs
and meet these need in a timely, efficient and unobtrusive manner.¶
The critical issues in the Intelligent Environment are how to enable transparent,
distributed computing to allow continued operation across changing circumstances and
how to exploit the changing environment so that it is aware of the context of user
location, the collection of nearby people and objects, accessible devices and changes to
those objects over time.¶
Since the Intelligent Environment is an environment with rapid and rich computing
processing, the distributed context processing architecture (DiCPA) was developed to
manage and respond to rapidly changing aggregation of sensor data. This architecture is a
scalable distributed context processing architecture that provides: 1. continued operation
across changing circumstances for users, 2. the collection of nearby people and objects, 3.
accessible devices and 4. the changes to those objects over time in the environment. The
DiCPA approach focuses on how the Intelligent Environment provides context
information for user location, user mobility and the user activity model. Users are
assumed mobile within the Intelligent Environment and can rapidly change their access to
relevant information and the availability of communications and computational resources.¶
Context-Aware Computing is a new approach in software engineering for Intelligent
Environment. It is an approach in the design and construction of a context-aware
application that exploits rapid changes in access to relevant information and the
availability of communication and computing resources in the mobile computing
environment. The goal of Context-Aware Computing is to make user interaction with the
computer easier in the smart environment where technology is spread throughout
(pervasive), computers are everywhere at the same time (ubiquitous) and technology is
embedded (ambient) in the environment. Context-aware applications need not be
difficult, tedious or require the acquisition of new skills on the part of the user. They
should be safe, easy, simple to use and should enable new functionality without the need
to learn new technology. They should provide relevant information and a simple way for
a user to manage.¶
The Intelligent Environment requires a context-aware application to improve its
efficiency and to increase productivity and enjoyment for the user. The context awareness
mechanism has four fundamental cores i.e. identity (who), activity (what), location
(where) and timestamp (when). Based on DiCPA architecture, the model of user location
(where), user mobility (where), user activity (what) and Intelligent Environment response
(what) were developed. Prototypes were also developed to proof the Context-Aware
Computing concept in the Intelligent Environment.¶
An Intelligent Environment uses the multi-disciplinary area of Context-Aware
Computing, which combines technology, computer systems, models and reasoning, social
aspects, and user support. A good quality project for Context-Aware Computing
requires core content and provides iterative evaluation processes, which has two types of
iteration: design and product iteration of the evaluation. The aim of the development of
an evaluation program in Context-Aware Computing is to determine what to test, how to
test and the appropriate metrics to use. This work presents the metrics for a good quality
project in the Context-Aware Computing area, which is followed by the evaluation of the
prototypes of this work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216836 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Mantoro, Teddy, teddy.mantoro@anu.edu.au |
| Publisher | The Australian National University. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.anu.edu.au/legal/copyrit.html), Copyright Teddy Mantoro |
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