A Survey on Context-Aware Computing Context: Past, Present, and Future

Sang-keun Lee Intelligent Database Systems Lab School of Computer Science & Engineering Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Center for E-Business Technology Seoul National University Seoul, Korea

Motivation

Context-Aware System

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History of Context-Aware Computing ContextContext Definition

Term cContext-aware


appeare in Sc hilit an Theimer(1994)

Authors esc ribe c ontext as loc ation, i entities of nearby people, objec an c ts, hanges to those objec ts

Ryan et al. (1997) referre to c ontext as the user s loc ation, environment, i entity, time Day (1998) : the user s emotional state, foc on attention, us loc ation, an orientation, ate an time, as well as objec an ts people in the environment Dey an Abow (2000)
 Any information that c be use to c an harac terize the situation of entities that are c onsi ere relevant to the interac tion between a user an an applic ation, inc ing the user an the applic lu ation themselves

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History of Context-Aware Computing ContextAppli ation & System, Context Model

A tive Badge Lo ation System (Wang et al., 1992)

  

Forward phone alls to a telephone lose to the user Abowd et al., 1997; Sumi et al., 1998; Cheverst et al.,2000 Providing information a ording to the userd s urrent lo ation

Couple of lo ation-aware tour guides

Watson Proje t (Budzik and Hammond, 2000) W3C, RDF available (2000) IntelliZap (Finkelstein, 2001) Context Toolkit (Dey and Abowd, 2001)


p2p ar hite ture + entralized dis overer, attribute-value tuple/XML - Context aggregation/interpretation, histori al ontext data, Context Ownership (Priva y) lo al/remote ontext, Obje t Oriented Model, pro ess higher-level ontext abstra tion in appli ation layer

Hydrogen (Hofer, 2002)



One of the first ontext-aware systems

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History of Context-Aware Computing ContextAppli ation & System, Context Model

Gaia proje t (Roman

 

Exten s operating system ontepts to in lu e ontext-awareness

Graphi al Context Model: ORM (Hendri ksen, 2003) Context Managing Framework (Koripaa, 2003)
 Centralized server

CoBrA- Context Broker Ar hite ture (Chen, 2003)

Broker federation Avoiding bottlene k Context Knowledge base You an assert, delete, modify, query the stored data(API) Flexibile poli y language to ontrol ontext a ess alled Rei (priva y)

2004 W3C, OWL available

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COBRA-Ont(Ontology Model), Inferen e Engine, histori al ontext data,

4-ary pre i ates in DAML+OIL, ontext pro essing is base operation

s)
on first-or er logi

History of Context-Aware Computing ContextAppli ation & System, Context Model

Markup s heme model: Composite Capabilities/Preferen e Profile (CC/PP) (W3C, 2004) SOCAM(Servi e-Oriented Context-Aware Middleware) (Gu, 2004)
  
 Upper ontology, Domain-spe ifi Ontology

CASS (Fahy and Clarke, 2004) CORTEX (2004)

 
 Based on sentient obje t model sensor fusion to manage un ertainty of sensor data

Graphi al Context Model: Context Modeling using UML (Sheng and Benatallah, 2004) CoCA (Ejigu, 2007) Enhan ed CoCA (Ejigu, 2008)
Heuristi s for better performan e

Using a hybrid ontext management model Relational Database, Ontology Tools

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History of Context-Aware Computing: ContextSensor Definition

Burnett (2003) and Gustavsen (2002)
 External and internal

Hofer et al. (2002)

 Physi al and logi al
 
Context that an be measured by hardware sensors, i.e,., lo ationa, light, sound, movement, tou h, temperature or air pressure Context that an be aptured by user intera tions, i.e., the userd s goals, tasks, work ontext, emotional state

Easier to sense

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Semantic Tech & Context - 7

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Practical Semantic Technology - 8

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Practical Semantic Technology - 9

The History in Summary

Spe ifi Context Definition to General Context Definition Non-Flexible Context Models to Flexible and Extensible Context Model Domain-spe ifi Appli ations to General Frameworks

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Categories of Context Aware Appli ations

S hilit (1994)
 Proximate Sele tion
A user interfa e te hnique where the lo ated-obje ts that are nearby are emphasized or otherwise made easier to hoose

Automati Contextual Re onfigurations

Re onfiguration is the pro ess of adding new omponents, removing existing omponents or altering the onne tions between omponents

Contextual Information and Commands

Queries on ontextual information an produ e different results a ording to the ontext in whi h they are issued

Context-Triggered A tions
Context-triggered a tions are simple IF-THEN rules used to spe ify how ontext-aware systems should adapt

Sang-keun Lee
     Context-Aware / Personalized Contents Push Seamless Devi e Swit hing Automati Devi e Configuration De ision Support/Suggestion Context Aware User Interfa e

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Context-aware omputing appli ations (S hilit, B.; Adams, N.; Want, R.) Copyright 2008 by CEBT Mobile Computing Systems and Appli ations, 1994. Pro eedings., Workshop onVolume , Issue , 8-9 De 1994 Page(s):85 - 90

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An Example of Domain-dependent Appli ations: DomainCyberguide : A mobile ontext-aware tour guide (1997) ontextGoal
   know where tourist is, and what she is looking for predi t and answer question she may pose provide intera tion with other people and environment

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Design Prin iples Ar hite ture

Chen (2004) presents three different approa hes on how to a quire ontextual information
      Dire t sensor a ess devi es with sensors lo ally built in Middleware infrastru ture hiding low-level sensing details, more extensible Context Server multiple lients a ess to remote data sour e Widgets a software omponent that provides a publi interfa e for a hardware sensor, hiding low-level details of sensing, managed by widget manager Networked servi es more flexible, dis overy te hniques are used, not as effi ient as a widget ar hite ture but provides robustness Bla kboard model data entri view, simpli ity of adding new ontext sour es (easy onfiguration) Peer to Peer
Limitation of Memory Resour e, CPU Performan e Only uses lo al built-in sensors

Winograd (2001)

Ar hite ture Style



Centralized Approa h
Robustness

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Baldauf, M., Dustdar, S., and Rosenberg, F. 2007. A survey on ontext-aware systems. Int. J. Ad Ho Ubiquitous Comput. 2, 4 (Jun. 2007), 263-277. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJAHUC.2007.014070

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Hydrogen (2002)
Framework Ar hite ture
 Three layer
Appli ation layer Management layer
 Providing and retrieving ontexts and sharing ontext information with other devi es using P2P ommuni ation

Adaptor Layer
   Separating ontext storing, sensing from other layers Responsible to get information from sensors Providing same ontext information to multiple appli ations

Robust against network dis onne tions, Peer to Peer

Obje t-oriented Context Model

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All layers are lo ated on one devi e

DD

All appli ation have a ess to all ontext data by querying the ContextServer

B B

SOCAM Ar hite ture (2004)

Context providers, Context interpreter, Context database, Context-aware servi es, and Servi e lo ating servi e Ar hite tural Requirements
   A ommon ontext model that an be shared by all devi es and servi es A set of servi es that perform ontext a quisition, ontext dis overy, ontext interpretation and ontext dissemination Upper/Domain-spe ifi Ontology Context Providers Acquire context from sources Context Interpreter Provides logic reasoning Context Database Stores context ontologies Context-aware Services Adapt the way they behave Service Locating Service provides a mechanism where Context Providers and the Context Interpreter can advertise their presence
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H H

H H

H H

The Context Fabri (2004)

Primarily on erned with priva y rather than with ontext sensing and pro essing provides an ar hite ture for priva y-sensitive systems, as well as a set of priva y me hanisms that an be used by appli ation developers
Previous work on priva y has tended to fo us on anonymity or on keeping information from ha kers
Confabd s fo us is in empowering people with hoi e and informed onsent, so that they an share the right information, with the right people and servi es, in the right situation

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Q Q Q

I Q

The CoCA Servi e Platform (2007)

It Keeps the rules in the rule repository It consists of domain dependent/independent ontology

The Platform aims at a quiring and utilizing ontext information to provide appropriate servi es E.g) A ell phone is always set to vibrating mode when its holder is in the library It filters and sends useful

Interface Manager

Manages a UI and interface between the CoCA platform and other modules Data Source Responsible to provide necessary data to the core service (GCoM) Core Service Responsible to provide the core context aware service after reasoning on the components Supplementary Service Knowledge discovery & Collaboration service
Reasoning -> Decision & Action Interpretation, Aggregation

IDS Lab.

contexts to the context repository

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The Enhan ed CoCA Servi e Platform (2008)

Enhan ed version of CoCA

Sele tive feature of loading only relevant ontext data into the reasoner using heuristi s
S S S S S

Combine the best of the relational approa h and ontology approa h

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Summary: Existing systems and frameworks

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Baldauf, M., Dustdar, S., and Rosenberg, F. 2007. A survey on ontext-aware systems. Int. J. Ad Ho Ubiquitous Comput. 2, 4 (Jun. 2007), 263-277. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJAHUC.2007.014070

Criteria

Henri ksen, K., Indulska, J., M Fadden, T. and Balasubramaniam, S. (2005). Copyright 2008 by CEBT Middleware for distributed ontext-aware systems. In: Robert meersman and Zahir Tari et al International Symposium on Distributed Obje ts and Appli ations (DOA), Agia Napa, Cyprus, 31 O tober - 4 November, 2005.

Dis ussion
Does a ontext-aware system bother users?
  MS Offi e Assistant Clippy Three Levels of Intera tivity Personalization
    The majority of users use the default setting of hange a small subset of the possible features Presenting the updated ontext to the user Let the user spe ify how the appli ation should hange Ex) mobile phone prompts the user with information about the time zone hange Changing the ontent autonomously on the basis of measured sensor data Ex) Mobile phone that hanges its time autonomously by new time zone

Passive Context-awareness

A tive Context-awareness
 

The authors on lude that people are willing to give up partial ontrol if the reward in usefulness is great enough

 

Fuzzy Logi

Context Data Abstra tion

What ould be the Killer Appli ation? What ould we mine from the log data?
 Support Rules

Peer to Peer vs. Centralized System

L Barkhuus, A Dey, Is Context-Aware Computing Taking Control Away from the Copyright 2008 by CEBT User? Three Levels of Intera tivity Examined,2003

c c

How ould we deal with the imperfe t/probabilisti

c b b c

ontext data?

b b

c c

Layered Con eptual Framework with Core Components

Private Seamless S alable

Context-Aware Services:

Context Aware User Interface

Context-Aware Personalized Contents Push

Seamless Device Switching

Service & Application Design Layer:

Domain-specific Context Data Modeling

Rule Defining

Semantic Technology Layer: Ontology Repository Inference Engine

Context Ontology Modeling

Context Fusion & Abstraction

Foundation Layer: Sensors Data/Rule Mining Relational Database Network

Low-level Data Modeling

Context Acquisition

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e e

Intelligent

Ubiquitous

Automatic Device Configuration

Decision Support & Suggestion

Service Algorithm Implementation

Privacy & Security Policy Defining

Rule based Action Triggering

Ontology Data Storage & Management

Device Communication

Data Management & Mining

Con lusions
We talked about
     


Motivation History of Context-aware Computing Categories of Context-aware Appli ations Design Prin iple Examples of Context-aware Systems Criteria & Dis ussion
A Context-aware system with
Better s alability and performan e Utilizing histori al ontext data (Rule mining, ...) Better Se urity poli ies and priva y prote tion Virtual and logi al sensor support Standard ommuni ation proto ol and ontext model

What will be the future Context-aware System?

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