UBICOMP-RG

Adrian Friday, Oliver Storz andNigel Davies

Lancaster University &University of Arizona

BOF AGENDA

• Introduction– Ubiquitous Computing: Ubicomp the vision– Current state of the art– The role of the Grid

• Discussion of charter and RG formation

• Positions within the group

• Discussion of roadmap

WHO? WHERE?

TODAY’S BOF

• The purpose of today’s meeting is to– Discuss the motivation for a new GGF

Research Group (UBICOMP-RG)– Explore how the ‘the Grid’ can be used to

create a ‘Ubiquitous Computing’ testbed– Feed challenges from Ubicomp domain to

extend Grid middleware– Refine our charter and seek interested parties

UBICOMP: A NEW PARADIGM

• The vision of the late Mark Weiser in “The Computer for 21st Century”, Scientific American, 1991:– Moving beyond the desktop & personal computers– ‘Embodied virtuality’ the inverse of VR, Computers

‘disappearing’ into everyday objects, all around us, ‘ubiquitous’, natural interaction

• “Sal awakens: she smells coffee. A few minutes ago her alarm clock, alerted by her restless rolling before waking, had quietly asked "coffee?", and she had mumbled "yes." "Yes" and "no" are the only words it knows.”

– Supporting everyday activity at work and at home– Predicted would become the dominant form of human

computer interaction within 20 years"

UBICOMP DOMAIN

• Key challenge is promoting ‘natural interaction’– Narrowing semantic gap between computer and

human activity– Computer perception of human centric activity

(sensing, context, learning, inferencing)– Human perception and understanding of the system

(affordances, understanding, learnability)– Inherently multidisciplinary (in CS terms) and target

domain (art, design, entertainment, work…)

UBICOMP WORK

• Many fragmented testbeds in research labs worldwide– Many interpretations of Weiser’s

vision– Stanford iRoom, HP Cooltown,

UIUC’s Gaia, CMU’s Aura, GaTech’s Aware Home, EU ‘Disapearing Computer’, AT&T sentient computing, LabScape, MIT’s Oxygen

– Developing key experimental infrastructures and services

– Now mature conferences and (some) journals (c.f. Ubicomp 2003)

UBICOMP CARE

UBICOMP INTERACTION

UBICOMP UNDERSTANDING

UBICOMP WILD

UBICOMP CHARACTERISTICS

• Not just ‘smart environments’– Heterogeneous

technologies– Novel interaction

devices, sensor networks

– Non-IP, non-standard, bespoke, uncontrolled

– Low power embedded and wearable devices

e-Science: UBICOMP or GRID?

ENGINEERING UBICOMP

• Ubicomp is not ‘Ubiquitous’– Deployment is hard, requiring bespoke software and

hardware– The domain is not fully understood– Core tools and services need to be defined: good

software engineering!– Mechanisms to promote interworking

• It’s not about ‘the global Ubiquitous Computer’• However, standardisation is key to

– To permit roaming and interworking between Ubicomp environments and facilitate higher level applications and emergent properties

SYNERGIES & CHALLENGES

• Clear synergies with Grid in nascent Ubicomp– Need for similar computational services (c.f. meta-

operating system)– Overlapping work (e.g. security, privacy, trust,

resource access, storage/ management, etc.)– New contributions (in both directions!):

• Novel interactions, new understandings and ways of collaborating (context, sensing & sensor fusion, AI, devices & HCI, calmness…)

• Plus much to be learnt from Grid e.g. persistence, evolution, data representation

– Additional leverage from working together (intellectually and computationally)

– Need testbed to support experimentation

OUR ROLE

• The charter– Identification of key application domains for Grid

technologies within UbicompOct 2003

– Mapping of existing Grid technologies to the requirements of ubiquitous computing and identification of unsupported areasDec 2003

– Allocation of areas of work identified to research group members for further investigationJan 2004