Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals

John Krumm, John Krumm

• Publisher: Chapman and Hall/CRC
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351381581
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mathematik
• Subtopic: Mathematik Allgemein

"… a must-read text that provides a historical lens to see how ubicomp has matured into a multidisciplinary endeavor. It will be an essential reference to researchers and those who want to learn more about this evolving field."

-From the Foreword, Professor Gregory D. Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology

First introduced two decades ago, the term ubiquitous computing is now part of the common vernacular. Ubicomp, as it is commonly called, has grown not just quickly but broadly so as to encompass a wealth of concepts and technology that serves any number of purposes across all of human endeavor. While such growth is positive, the newest generation of ubicomp practitioners and researchers, isolated to specific tasks, are in danger of losing their sense of history and the broader perspective that has been so essential to the field's creativity and brilliance.

Under the guidance of John Krumm, an original ubicomp pioneer, Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals brings together eleven ubiquitous computing trailblazers who each report on his or her area of expertise. Starting with a historical introduction, the book moves on to summarize a number of self-contained topics. Taking a decidedly human perspective, the book includes discussion on how to observe people in their natural environments and evaluate the critical points where ubiquitous computing technologies can improve their lives. Among a range of topics this book examines:

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• How to build an infrastructure that supports ubiquitous computing applications

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• Privacy protection in systems that connect personal devices and personal information

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• Moving from the graphical to the ubiquitous computing user interface

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• Techniques that are revolutionizing the way we determine a person's location and understand other sensor measurements

While we needn't become expert in every sub-discipline of ubicomp, it is necessary that we appreciate all the perspectives that make up the field and understand how our work can influence and be influenced by those perspectives. This is important, if we are to encourage future generations to be as successfully innovative as the field's originators.

CHAPTER 1

An Introduction to Ubiquitous Computing

Roy Want

CONTENTS

1.1 Founding Contributions to Ubiquitous Computing

1.1.1 Xerox PARC

1.1.2 Tabs, Pads, and Liveboards

1.1.3 Context Awareness

1.1.4 IBM Research: Pervasive Computing versus Ubiquitous Computing

1.1.5 University of Tokyo: T-Engine and the ITRON Operating System

1.1.6 Hewlett Packard: Cooltown

1.2 Ubiquitous Computing in U.S. Universities

1.2.1 UC Berkeley: InfoPad

1.2.2 MIT Media Laboratory: Wearable Computing

1.2.3 Georgia Tech: Living Laboratories

1.3 Ubiquitous Computing in European Laboratories and Universities

1.3.1 Olivetti Research: Active Badges

1.3.2 Karlsruhe: Cups and Smart-Its

1.3.3 Lancaster University: Guide

1.4 Modern Directions in Ubiquitous Computing

1.4.1 Microsoft Research

1.4.2 Intel Research

1.5 The Research Community Embraces Ubiquitous Computing

1.6 The Future of Ubiquitous Computing

References

Ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp, is the term given to the third era of modern computing. The first era was defined by the mainframe computer, a single large time-shared computer owned by an organization and used by many people at the same time. Second, came the era of the PC, a personal computer primarily owned and used by one person, and dedicated to them. The third era, ubiquitous computing, representative of the present time, is characterized by the explosion of small networked portable computer products in the form of smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and embedded computers built into many of the devices we own—resulting in a world in which each person owns and uses many computers. Each era has resulted in progressively larger numbers of computers becoming integrated into everyday life (Figure 1.1).

Although the general trends in computing are clear, the predictions, research, and philosophy behind the technology that make ubiquitous computing a reality have taken many forms, all of which have been shaped by the organizations that cultivated them. The early informative research in this area began in the late 1980s and was pioneered by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), IBM Research, Tokyo University, University of California (UC) Berkeley, Olivetti Research, HP Labs, Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory. Many commercial entities also began forays into ubiquitous computing during the 1990s, exploring the business potential for ubiquitous services, and novel mobile devices such as pen-based computers. At this time, we also saw the introduction of the Apple Newton, and the term PDA was coined. Other product examples included the EO pad, using GO Pen software, and later the Palm Pilot (with Graffiti) and the Sharp Zaurus; Fujitsu also developed a series of tablet and palm-based devices particularly targeted at vertical markets. Later still, MP3 players from Archos and Apple also played into this market.

FIGURE 1.1 Graph conceptually portraying three eras of modern computing.

Today, demonstrating the most convincing evidence of the value of ubiquitous computing, the cell phone, or more precisely the “smart phone,” takes center stage crossing a threshold of processor performance, memory/disk capacity, and connectivity both cellular and local, making it the most widely adopted and ubiquitous computer there has ever been. In the remaining sections, we follow the path of research that has defined ubiquitous computing since its beginning, and discuss the various approaches and some of the philosophies that have grown up around the work.

1.1 FOUNDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

1.1.1 Xerox PARC

The original term ubiquitous computing was coined by Mark Weiser in 1988 at Xerox PARC, while serving as the director of the Computer Science Laboratory (CSL), one of five laboratories at the renowned research center (Figure 1.2). He envisioned a future in which computing technologies became embedded in everyday artifacts, were used to support daily activities, and were equally applicable to our work, managing our homes, and for play. A more complete description of this vision is described on a Web site maintained by PARC summarizing Weiser’s work and ideas and can be found at www.ubicomp.com/weiser. A concise summary of ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp, as it was originally referred to by researchers at PARC, can also be found in his 1991 Scientific American article (Weiser, 1991), which contains his famous quote:

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.

MARK WEISER

FIGURE 1.2 Xerox PARC—Computer Science Laboratory 1991: Mark Weiser using a Liveboard with a ParcPad visible in the foreground. (Photo courtesy of PARC, Inc., http://www.parc.com)

The essence of Weiser’s vision is that mobile and embedded processors can communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure, seamlessly coordinating their operation to provide support for a wide variety of everyday work practices. A consequence of this approach is that each device needs to limit the range of its communication to enable valuable wireless bandwidth reuse. As a result, he introduced the notion of bits-per-second per-cubic-meter to the ubicomp vision (Weiser, 1993a), and inspired many researchers to explore techniques for spatial reuse of the radio spectrum. In the early 1990s, there were no short-range wireless standards that could provide this capability, but today we have Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC), IrDA, Zigbee, and WiFi (soon WiFi PAN), which have enabled wide deployment of devices that take advantage of local ad hoc communication, and can be used to build the ubicomp vision.

Going beyond technology per se, Weiser saw ubicomp as an opportunity to improve on the style of computing that has been imposed on users since the early days of the mainframe also carrying over to PCs—namely, sitting in a chair, staring at a screen, typing on a keyboard, and making selections with a mouse. Through this style of interaction, traditional computers consume much of our attention and divorce us from what is happening all around us, resulting in a somewhat solitary all-consuming experience. Weiser believed that in a ubicomp world, computation could be integrated with common objects that you might already be using for everyday work practices, rather than forcing computation to be a separate activity. If the integration is done well, you may not even notice that any computers were involved in your work. Weiser sometimes also referred to this as invisible computing and wrote a number of articles about his philosophy (Weiser, 1993b).

To illustrate the concept of invisible technology more effectively, consider an analogy based on the familiar printed page. The technology behind printing is the deposition of ink on thin sheets of paper. For optimal results the design of the ink and paper must be well thought out. For example, the ink must stain the surface of the paper to provide a high contrast black against the white background, it must be durable in use, and not wick into the paper even if wet. However, when we read a printed page, we rarely notice the underlying ink and paper and ink technologies; we read the pages and comprehend the ideas; but it is not necessary to focus on the technology, the characteristics of the ink, or the manufacturing process of the paper to be able to use it. You might say that printing technology “gets out of the way” of the user, allowing the higher-level goal of reading a story, or acquiring knowledge; on the other hand, traditional PCs rarely do this. Instead, they usually require us to continuously tinker with the system, maintaining it and configuring it to complete a task. In summary, when designing and using ubicomp technologies, we may have the opportunity to more closely parallel the higher-level experience we have when reading the printed word.

Another term Weiser used to describe ubiquitous computing was “The coming age of calm technology” (Weiser and Seely-Brown, 1997). Although there is no simple formula to convert a PC application into a calm embedded computing experience, ubiquitous computing takes the opposite philosophy to the PC, which tries to virtualize our world (e.g., the familiar PC desktop and icons representing documents, printers, and trash can). Instead, ubicomp pushes the computerized versions of these technologies back into the physical world (Weiser, 1994). For example, rather than reading documents on a PC screen in a graphic made to look like a printed page, the objective would be to create a dedicated document reader with an embedded processor that you can hold and use just like a book. This is an old idea from PARC originally conceived by Alan Kay with his Dynabook project, but was later updated by Weiser’s vision, making it highly connected and coordinating wirelessly with the surrounding systems. From a user’s perspective, the experience of using such a device is simplified relative to a PC because it has a dedicated function (a design point sometimes referred to as an information appliance); it does not need the complex arrangement of nested menus and control functions required by a generalized computing platform. Although this concept has been tested several times in the marketplace, for example, Rocketbook and Softbook, which were not commercially successful, the idea is still being revisited in the marketplace today with Sony’s e-reader and Amazon’s Kindle. Similar to the evolution of the PDA, each generation learns from the failures of the previous generation, and at the same time technology improves, allowing an e-book to more closely match the affordances of the real book it is trying to replace.

1.1.2 Tabs, Pads, and Liveboards

Under Weiser’s leadership, CSL set out to design and build a ubiquitous computing environment within the confines of the research center. PARC has long had a philosophy of “Build what you use, and use what you build” and the ubicomp research theme continued that tradition.

However, given the resource constraints of research, it was necessary to limit the scope of the ubicomp exploration to a manageable set of projects. These were selected by asking the question, “What is the minimum set of usable devices that can be built in a laboratory but still provide a sandbox rich enough to explore ubicomp and its defining characteristics?” Toward this goal, a guiding philosophy was inspired by the traditional units of length. The units inch, foot, and yard were born out of everyday needs and had a different origin than the more scientifically rationalized metric system with the millimeter, centimeter, and meter.

Consider how the traditional units came about: they most likely represent significantly different uses from a human perspective. Yard-scale measurements are typically used to measure objects around us that are large and immovable. Foot-sized objects can be held in your hands and carried, but are large enough that they are not likely to be carried with us at all times. However, inch-scale objects can fit in a pocket and be forgotten about while carrying out other unrelated daily activities. In other words, these three measurements represent three very different scales of human interaction, and define scale transitions for how we interact with the world around us. If ubiquitous computing systems were built to mimic everyday capabilities that occur at these three scales, any observation of such a system would probably have generic characteristics that would hold true for a much larger set of devices, each falling into one of these categories.

PARC thus embarked on the design of three devices: ParcTab, or Tab, an inch-scale computer that represented a pocket book or wallet (Want et al., 1995); the ParcPad, or Pad, a foot-scale device, serving the role of a pen-based notebook or e-book reader; and Liveboard, a yard-scale device that provides the functionality of a whiteboard.

FIGURE 1.3 (a) Xerox ParcTab a palm (inch-scale) computer communicating using diffuse infrared (IR) signalling; (b) an infrared transceiver basestation installed in the ceiling of each room comprising the ubicomp environment. Note the ri...