Pervasive computing

SCI4105
 Overview
• Introduction
• Characteristics
• Evolution
• Projects
• Modern applications
Introduction
 introduction
• “The most profound technologies are those
that disappear. They weave themselves into
the fabric of everyday life until they are
indistinguishable from it.” This statement in
Mark Weiser's well-known “The Computer for
the Twenty-First Century” (Scientific
American, 1991, pp.
Introduction
 Introduction
• The essence of weisser’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 service of
everyday work practices

Intelligent
Ubiquitous = Mobile Computing + Environment
 Key Characteristics of Pervasive
computing:
• Many devices can be integrated into one system for
multi-purpose uses.
• A huge number of various interfaces can be used to
build an optimized user interface.
• Concurrent operation of online and offline supported.
• A large number of specialized computers are integrated
through local buses and Internet.
• Security elements are added to prevent misuse and
unauthorized access.
• Personalization of functions adapts the systems to the
user’s preferences, so that no PC knowledge is required
of the user to use and manage the system.
 Key Characteristics of Pervasive
computing:
• Ubiquity: Components are ubiquitous which
makes them less noticeable
• Context Awareness: Components use sensors
and communication to collect information
about their users and environment and adjust
their behaviour accordingly.
• Pervasive Computing is complimentary to
virtual reality. Turns all object in the world
into a part of an information and
communication system.
 Key Characteristics of Pervasive
computing:
• Distributed Computing
 Key Characteristics of Pervasive
computing:
• Mobile computing: mobile computing has
emerged from the integration of cellular
technology with the web.
 Structure of Pervasive computing
• Three layers make up the structure of
pervasive computing as follows:
• Infrastructure
 Infrastructure layer
Network Computing
Devices devices

• INFRASTRUCTURE
• Layer

Sensors and
Actuators
Computing devices in a pervasive computing environment provide the
capability of information processing

INFRASTRUCTURE
 Sensors and actuators represent devices that can sense or mediate
between physical and virtual environments. Sensors collect
information such as temperature, location, humidity, light, sound, and
tension from the environment

INFRASTRUCTURE
• Network devices provide wired or wireless
network access to connect different devices
together in a virtual environment. Due to the
variety of wireless technologies, we see many
devices using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, infrared,
Zigbee, long term evolution (LTE), near field
communication (NFC), and radio frequency
identification (RFID).
• . The networking capability is essential in
many scenarios where various pervasive
devices can work in concert. For instance, a
smart car assistant can use an LTE connection
to enlist help from cloud-based voice
recognition services to understand the voice
command issued by the user
Middleware Layer
Application layer

• Smart Smart car

hospital space

Pervasive
computing
environments

• Smart
campus
 Application layer
• Smart car space
The car space is highly mobile.
The software system should be
aware of this high mobility of
vehicles. In addition, the vehicle
space requires frequent
information exchanges with the
outside environment. For
example, the vehicle needs local
traffic information in order to
adaptively choose different
routes.
 Application layer
The vehicle is installed with a touch screen, a GPS receiver, a video
camera, and a wireless router. The GPS device enables position
identification for the vehicle, and the video camera captures the driver
image that is recognized by facial recognition. The wireless router
provides an in-car network infrastructure to connect different
components within the vehicle. As a result, when the user is recognized
by the system, the smart car space can automatically trigger
personalized services, such as enabling the entertainment system in the
car to play the user’s favourite music
 Application layer
• A typical scenario in the smart car space is
autonavigation with explicit environment
feedbacks. The user in the car tells the system
his destination via voice input. Then the
system will process the voice input and select
an optimal route..
 Application layer
• During driving, the system continuously
monitors and reports the vehicle’s status, such
as regarding safety issues. For instance, the
control system can detect that the road
condition is bad and that the user is tired;
then the user will be warned to focus on his
driving for safety reasons.
• Additionally, different music may be played for
the user according to the car speed and other
contexts. For instance, the volume of the
music will be tuned down when the user has
an incoming phone call
 Application layer-IC
• Intelligent campus

Intelligent campus (iCampus) is a pervasive computing

environment providing minimal but flexible system
support for people’s daily activities on campus
 Application Layer-IC

The intelligent campus It provides a set of functionalities

• User
Resource Management
Management

Context awareness Message Management

Service Management Data Management

and several typical campus applications

 Map service. It guides users to navigate on
campus by providing detailed directions and
some introduction related to the user’s
location.
 Photo sharing service. It can facilitate the
sharing of photos and the construction of a
social network.
• ■ Search service. This school resource is
valuable to both students and faculty;
iCampus can search users’ interested targets
according to user preference.
• To provide context-aware and adaptive
services, iShadow is designed and developed
based on middleware architecture. It exhibits
the following important features
 Application layer-IC
 Lightweight. iCampus is aware of context and
tracks users anytime, anywhere. For this
purpose, iCampus consists of lightweight
modules.
 Scalability. Based on a distributed resource
discovery mechanism, iCampus can be easily
extended to large-scale networks.
Structure of Pervasive Computing
 Pervasive computing evolution
Weisser believed that a ubiquitous world,
computation could be integrated within
common objects that you might already be
using for everyday work practice, 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.
• Weisser formally refers to this as invincible
computing
PARC
PAD/ an inch-scale computer that
TAB represented a pocket book
or wallet

Tabs communicated wirelessly with a ceiling-mounted base

station using 10 kbps
diffuse infrared signaling
ParcPad, or Pad, a foot-scale device, serving the role of a pen-
based notebook or e-book reader
• ParcPads employed a similar design approach using a low-
bandwidth X-protocol across a radio link, communicating with a
basestation through a proprietary short-range near-field radio
• Liveboard provides the functionality of a
whiteboard
• • Liveboards were designed around standard
computer workstations, but with much larger
penbased displays, and pen-based input
• • In the mid-1990s, IBM began a research
direction it called pervasive computing (IBM
Mobile and Pervasive Computing) • IBM, to its
credit, was one of the first companies to
investigate the business opportunity around
pervasive systems, and created a business unit
dedicated to the task.
• • One of the first commercial deployments of
a pervasive computing system was born from
a collaboration between IBM Zurich and
Swissair in 1999 (IBM Swissair), enabling
passengers to check-in using Web-enabled
(WAP) cell phones
• Once the passengers had accessed the service,
the phone also served as a boarding pass,
showing gate seat and flight departure
information, and identifying the traveler as
having valid fight credentials.
• Although this was one of the most publicized
projects, IBM also applied these technologies
to other service opportunities in banking and
financial services, gaining early experience in
this area.
Taking another approach to ubiquitous computing,
wearable computing puts the emphasis on a portable
computer that can be unobtrusively integrated on a
person’s clothing while still being comfortable to the
wearer.

An important related topic is augmented reality in

which a computer is able to overlay information on top
of what a user sees in order to improve ability to carry
out a task
. • In an expanded view of ubiquitous computing with a
suitably unobtrusive heads-up display embedded in
our eyewear, augmented reality could become an
indispensable tool of the future in much the same way
we have come to rely on the cell phone today
 Pervasive computing Projects
• Classroom 2000 began in July 1995 with a
bold vision of how ubiquitous computing
could be applied to education and provide
added value to standard teaching practices in
the future
• • Classroom 2000 investigated the possibility
of capturing the entire lesson in a form that
would be a useful reference itself. • Key
challenge was to create index points that
enabled students to skip over a block of video
of little interest and be able to jump to the
exact point in time that might provide the
answer to a question
 Furthermore, these index points needed to be
automatically generated, with clear meaning to
anybody who wanted to use them.
 With an electronic board (the Xerox Liveboard was
used for some of the work), it is possible to
timestamp all the annotations made by a teacher
during the lesson, along with slide transitions during
a presentation, and other user-generated input, and
these were used to index the audio and visual record
of the lesson.
• Thus, the combined media, timeline, and
indices represent a powerful summary that
can be immediately made available to the
students when the class finishes.
Aware home project
In 1999, the Aware Home project was
founded and set out to explore how
computation and embedded
technologies could support everyday
activities in a home
In the spirit of Living Laboratories, a
complete residential building was
designed from scratch, providing all of
the expected features in a modern
home, but with additions to support
embedded computation and sensing,
wiring conduits, and a control center.
• Systems introduced into the Aware Home to
support the research included cameras and
RFID tags to identify and track an occupant’s
location and the various forms of sensors.For
example, the house included a smart floor
composed of a network of pressure sensors
that could identify the characteristic
ambulatory gait of individuals as they moved
between rooms, thus providing additional
means of occupant identification.
Guide Project
The GUIDE project was created, obtained a
government grant, and captured the imagination
of many researchers interested in location-based
services in the wild.

It was the first mobile electronic guidebook

designed and optimized from concept to
implementation for use by tourists
 Modern directions
• • SenseCam is a small wearable computer that
periodically captures images of the world as a
user moves around.
• • In collaboration with the MyLifeBits project,
SenseCam provides a wealth of contextual
data about the wearer, augmented by a
database describing documents and other
electronic media that the individual has
accessed.
 Applications
• Applications:
There are a rising number of pervasive devices available in
the market nowadays. The areas of application of these
devices include:
• Retail
• Airlines booking and check-in
• Sales force automation
• Healthcare
• Tracking
• Car information System
• Email access via WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and
voice.