Towards Distributed Awareness - An Artifact based Approach

Abstract: For many applications in ubiquitous computing perception is a central issue. When looking at current implementations sensing and distributed perception is re-invented over and over again. In contrast to that, identifying commonalities and synthesizing a common model can be more effective both from an economic as well as scientific perspective. Providing a model which supports the development of applications poses many challenges. Issues related to specific sensing and communication hardware, local and distributed recognition, as well as application programming and user interfaces have to be considered. We have analyzed the properties of ubicomp perception systems and used their characteristics as a main input for the design of a perception model. The perception model presented in this paper is based on a layered model, discriminating functionality on artifact, setting, and application level. On the artifact layer, data collection, perception, and recognition for the particular artifact is modelled and implemented. On the setting layer perception and recognition tasks concerned with a tightly coupled group of artifacts are located. In the application layer, perception and application-specific recognition is found. The model has been implemented on the Smart-Its platform and offers a toolkit for building systems. The approach was evaluated by building applications, two of which are also reported in the paper. The wider applicability of the model was assessed by analyzing further applications and how they map onto the artifact-based approach.

Bibtex Record

@inproceedings{wmcsa04_artifact,
  title =        {{Towards Distributed Awareness - An Artifact based Approach}},
  author =       {Florian Michahelles and Stavros Antifakos and Albrecht Schmidt 
                  and Michael Beigl and Bernt Schiele},
  year =         {2004},
  booktitle =    {Sixth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications},
  address =      {Lake District, UK},
  month = {December}
}