into the future –ubiquitous computing is here to stay for ubicom… · smart dust for example,...

Into the future – Ubiquitous Computing is here to stay

Tianyi Zhang

D07111121

DT230

Introduction

The idea of Ubiquitous computing is proposed by Mark Weiser in 1991, and it is paid wide attention from the late 90s of last century.

Its general meaning is that users can get special and suitable services through cooperation of wired and wireless network at any time and any place.

Ubiquitous computing is based on network technology and mobile computing, and its focus is to provide customer-oriented, integrated and adaptive network services to users.

Introduction

The aim of Ubiquitous Computing is to blend network computing space into people lives’physical space in an undetected way. That’s why MIT name their Ubiquitous Computing research project as Oxygen.

Ubiquitous computing means that people use any device, over any network, at any time given a good quality of Web services in the Ubiquitous environment.

Ubiquitous computing is a new milestone

Ubiquitous computing has changed the tradition that calculation is limited to the desktop

Users can enjoy computing power and system resources in a variety of flexible ways

Only Ubiquitous computing model can truly achieve people-centered way of life.

Ubiquitous computing will replace desktop computing model to become a further milestone of calculation mode.


In the era of Ubiquitous computing, the computer is not in the form of separate computing devices, instead, integrates the embedded processor, memory, communication modules and sensor together as information appliances.

These information equipments integrate computing communications, sending functions in one, so it can easily access with a variety of equipment together


Moreover, Ubiquitous computing devices can connect to Internet inexpensively through a wireless network connection, and they can be customized in accordance with the user’s individual requirements.

Ubiquitous Computing integrates physical space and information space together

Firstly, the objects in physical space will be interrelated with the objects in information space.

For example, a painting hanging on the wall will have a URL pointing to the painting’s related Web sites


Secondly, when we operate the objects in physical space, we can also transparently change the objects’ state of associated information space, and the reverse is also true.

For example, the words written on paper can be digitized and recorded.


With Ubiquitous computing transformation, computer will find new application areas in human life and work. Perhaps one day, your virtual assistant can answer you “where I put my key”. At that time, computer will be an necessary element of life like water, electricity and air.

“Transparent service”

"Transparent" refers that accessing this service is very relaxed and natural.

Currently, such services have been able to be provided in many embedded computing systems.

In future world, there will be more and more computing devices exist around us, it is difficult that people manage and interact with these computing devices by themselves.

"Transparency" will be an necessary attribute of human-computer interaction.

Application prospect of Ubiquitous Computing

Smart Dust

Universal access to information

RFID Tags

Intelligent office System

Mobile Phone - ZigBee

Smart Dust

The science/engineering goal of Smart Dust research project is to verify whether a complete sensor/communication system can be integrated into a cubic millimeter package.

The size of Smart dust is very small and Smart dust has sensing and communication capabilities, so it has a wide range to be applied, including a variety of monitoring tasks.

Smart Dust

For example, Smart dust can be used to monitor on battlefield; Smart dust can monitor the entire control of product, so factory can know products’location and safety at any time; this monitoring function has a wide range in patients caring and elderly care.

Smart dust has small size and wireless networking capabilities, and the price is very cheap. Using different smart dust can build an intelligent and flexible computing environments –“Ubiquitous computing environment” quickly.


“Universal access to information” is to enable users to access the useful information by any way at any time and at any place.

The equipment of the ubiquitous computing can be portable, so when such a device is in a new environment, it can automatically discover available resources and services in the new environment, and interact with the available resources and services in order to provide better user-friendly service.


For example, when a user is outside for a meeting and this user carries his documents in Pocket PC. When the user wants to print out these documents, Pocket PC will be able to find the meeting place’s printer and finish printing automatically in Ubiquitous Computing period.

RFID Tags

This wireless radio frequency identification tag is usually a semiconductor chip, with storage unit and antenna.

All kinds of information-chip memory cells communicate with each other through the antenna and reader, while the majority of RFID tags do not need batteries.

RFID Tags

The clothes with the RFID tags can not only show the prices, but also be able to pass clothing fabrics to washing machine and iron components, so that the temperature of washing, drying and ironing can be set automatically.

If the owner goes to faraway place, the computer will analysis the destination’s climatic conditions through the booking information, the analysis will be also based on each individual's clothing habits.

Intelligent office System

In the office, we often need to use a variety of tools and information resources, such as workstations, desktop computers, white board and etc.

These information resources are widely distributed, sometimes they are not even in the same office.

Using Ubiquitous computing technologies, these independent tools can be enhanced and combined into an integrated computing system.

Then this system is used to monitor user, computer, whiteboard, a variety of networked peripheral devices and data sources interaction, so that users can manage information efficiently.

Mobile Phone - ZigBeeSouth Korea Curitel Communications Company announced that they have started to develop the world's first Zigbee phone, this phone will be available to home or office’s personal computers, home appliances and electric switches together through wireless.

Ubiquitous computing focus on that computing integrates with environment, while the computer itself will disappear from people's attention.

“In the upcoming era of ubiquitous computing, mobile handheld devices will become the core product” said by Han Mi-hyang who is the researcher of Curitel the company to develop the Zigbee phone.

Challenges in the future

The hardware challenges including: � Wireless networking,

� Processing capability & Storage capacity,

� High-quality displays

The software challenges including :� Integration Issues

� Design Issues

Modeling

Security Issues

Hardware challenges - Wireless networking

There are two distinct directions of wireless networking

One is the short-range based such as Bluetooth, which is good at short distance communication between simple devices.

The other direction is the wireless LAN technology which includes the peer-to-peer and bridge

Both of the short-range based wireless and the wireless LAN have some limitations, for example, the short-range has a limitation of the distance; The wireless LAN network can’t identify the location of the devices very clearly and requires bigger equipment to implement the communication.

Hardware challenges - Processing capability & Storage capacity

The Ubiquitous Computing needs some processing capability at both the end users side and the equipments.

The mobile equipments such as mobile phones and PDAs still requires a better Processing capability to provide some software systems and applications to support more functionalities

For the past 30 years, the storage capacity of the devices such as rotating disks has been developed doubling every year

If the speed of the Processing & Storage capability development would keep increasing like this, we could forecast that the performance of the mobile equipments would approach the requirement of the Ubiquitous computing.

Hardware challenges - High-quality displays

Because the most important way for human to get the information is from the vision, how to display information in a small size device is very important for the Ubiquitous Computing.

Displays technologies are not good enough for the requirement of the Ubiquitous computing now.

Bigger screen is not suit for the mobile devices

smaller screens is hard to display some pictures clearly (for example the maps in the GPS).

New technologies might be considered to be used in the Ubiquitous computing in the future.

Software challenges – Integration Issues

How to reuse the existed software is very important for the Ubiquitous computing.

One solution is design new software or middleware to implement the communication between applications and devices - The new software or middleware could provide the standard format for the communication and implement the remote control or other functionalities.

Another solution is to add non-functional properties transparently by the resource kernel - The adding resource kernel could implement that a traditional operating system could be converted to a real-time operation system.

Software challenges – Design Issues

The design of the software for the Ubiquitous computing needed to be considered to face: Portability Issues, High Level Abstraction, Rigorous API tics.

In the Ubiquitous computing environment, there would be kinds of the platform running with different devices.

It is important to consider that how to exploit advanced features provided by those platforms.

Modeling

In order to provide the direction for analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation, it needs to make a unified, complete model about the Ubiquitous Computing to describe its character.

Security IssuesSome of the existed security technologies can not be used in the Ubiquitous Computing.

Especially in the area of privacy protection, in the Ubiquitous Computing model, personal information are integrated with the environment information, it will be much harder to separate one person from the information world.

There are some guidelines from ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich) about the privacy:

� Notice

� Choice and Consent

� Anonymity and Pseudonym

� Proximity and Locality

� Adequate Security

Three examples of Ubiquitous Computing used in our future life

Bob is listening to a concert, suddenly a call comes in, he did not transfer cell phone ring tones to vibration mode, but he doesn’t need to worry that the bell rings will interfere with someone else. Originally, Bob’s mobile phone is a device in ubiquitous computing network, when Bob walked into the concert hall, the sensor detected that the physical location of mobile user changed to the concert hall, so the sensor transferred his mobile phone to vibration mode automatically.


Tom is a taxi driver, he is worried about the case of traffic jams, not only losing time, but also very irritating. But now his car installs a device joining in ubiquitous computing network, through the GPS positioning system, Tom can know traffic jams’phenomenon in advance, he can detour and eliminate a lot of unnecessary trouble.


Alice goes to attend an international conference. When she participates in a panel discussion, her PDA downloads this discussion group’s related materials and brief descriptions of each group members for her dynamically.

Conclusion

Ubiquitous Computing Model is a good approach for future computing.

Ubiquitous Computing is a new model based on the technologies of distribute computing, the net of communication, mobile computing, embedded system.

The development of those technologies provides possibility of Ubiquitous Computing.

The Ubiquitous Computing shows the direction of that the information and the physical spaces are becoming closer and closer.

People require a higher levels of information services –anywhere, anytime, easily use the computing recourses.

Thank you !

into the future –ubiquitous computing is here to stay for ubicom… · smart dust for example,...

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