from ubiquitous computing to ubiquitous intelligence

BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 2 • April 200428

From ubiquitous computing to ubiquitous intelligence

P W Warren

If computers could be as commonplace as the written word, our everyday world would be transformed. That was the vision,announced over a decade ago, of the computer visionary Mark Weiser. In Weiser’s world computers would be ubiquitousand we would interact with them almost subconsciously. This vision is currently developing, but has still some way to go. YetWeiser’s vision can be extended further, with intelligence embedded in objects ranging from mechanical components to tins.This paper outlines a future which embraces Weiser’s vision but goes beyond it to a world of such intelligent devicesinteracting autonomously, for the benefit of people but often without human intervention. Opportunities exist, in particularfor those who develop the new applications and the complex systems which support them. For the general public thegreatest fearwhich needs to be allayed is a loss of privacy.

1. The ubiquitous visionThe phrase ubiquitous computing was probably firstused by the computer scientist and visionary MarkWeiser1, in a Scientific American article in the early1990s [1]. Weiser argued by analogy with writing.Once, writing was the prerogative of scribes whounderstood the underlying technology, such as themaking of ink. Few within the population could read,and for those who did, reading was likely to besomething done consciously, perhaps with effort. Thewritten word existed only in a few places, such as claytablets and monuments. Now the written word iseverywhere, and almost all of us absorb its impactsubconsciously.

So too with computing. Fifty years ago computerswere the prerogative of mathematicians, scientists andengineers for whom programming was the focus ofconscious effort. They were expensive to manufacture,and one was shared between many. From there weevolved to a world in which everyone could have his orher dedicated desk-top machine, often programmedthrough the medium of applications such asspreadsheets. Thence on to a world where we all haveseveral computers with which we consciously interact(perhaps several personal computers, mobile phone andPDA), plus perhaps tens of embedded computers thatwe are not aware of, e.g. in cars and household goods.

Weiser’s focus was on the ubiquitous computerswith which we increasingly interact daily. He wasparticularly interested in the human interface, and wasworking at Xerox PARC with a number of the pioneerswho developed the key ideas governing how we interactwith computers today. He understood, of course, thatthe cost trends were making computers cheaper andmore ubiquitous, but he was concerned that theirinterfaces were too demanding of human attention. Hewanted to see computers ‘disappear into thebackground’, becoming a ‘calming technology’, so thattheir use would be as effortless as reading and writing.He well understood the challenges this posed, andhimself documented some of the issues facingresearchers in this new area [2].

Subsequent sections of this paper will describe inmore detail the vision of Weiser and those who followedhim, examine the technologies which are makingubiquitous computing possible, and review the progressin human/machine interface design. However, for everycomputer with which we consciously interact there arealready many others embedded in our surroundingswith which we do not interact, or with which ourinteraction is not of the classic ‘information processing’sort. These embedded devices can only become moreprevalent, as the technologies discussed later matureand become cheaper. They will be networked, locally aswithin a car, and often to the wider Internet. With someof them we will interact only very occasionally, e.g.when they sense a problem. With others, we will neverinteract — as in some optimisation systems in a car. In

1 Mark Weiser was a computer science pioneer who died tragically youngin 1999. For more information on his life and work, see — http://www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/


BT Technology Journal • Vol 22 No 2 • April 2004 29

any case, they will stimulate new ways of thinking aboutthe nature of computation, and most importantly a widerange of new applications in domains as diverse astransport, manufacturing and health.

If Weiser’s vision was of ‘ubiqitous computing’, theauthor prefers the phrase ‘ubiquitous intelligence’ torepresent this further vision of intelligent devices ineveryday objects, interacting among themselves, withsome applications only occasionally, if ever, interactingwith people.

2. Tabs, pads, boards and moreWeiser and his colleagues experimented with his visionby developing a range of devices, from ‘tabs’ whichwere Post-It note equivalents, through ‘pads’ the size ofa sheet of paper, to ‘boards’ the equivalent of ablackboard.

Tabs could be used as active badges which identifiedtheir wearer, e.g. to a security system. They could alsobe used to identify wearers’ preferences to anothercomputing device which they might be using, besidesenabling them to be tracked down when required. Theycould incorporate a calendar and a diary. Interestinglythey were seen as extensions to other computerdevices, e.g. Weiser talks of shrinking a programwindow from one screen to an icon on the tab.

Pads were intended to be spread out, e.g. on a desk,so that their owner could browse from one to another asone browses across pieces of paper. Their role was toovercome the limitations of what can be displayed on ascreen, what Weiser called ‘the limitations of CRT glass-blowing’. Today these limitations are not so great [3].However, it remains an open question whether one canmore easily interact with pages of information by havingthem on separate ‘pads’, or separately displayed on anenormous screen. In any case, the pads were intendedto be portable in a way which a large screen could notbe.

Finally, the boards could serve all manner of uses,e.g. video screens, bulletin boards, whiteboards or flip-charts. Again, interoperability was seen as important;one might pull out text from a board on to a pad or tab,and boards could be shared in the sense that two boardsat remote locations could display the same image.

We are now well over a decade on from whenWeiser set down his original vision, and much of it hasnot yet been realised. There are a number of reasons forthis. Weiser was a visionary, and more time may yet beneeded. In particular, technology has not yet quitedeveloped far enough nor reduced sufficiently in price tostimulate the ubiquity he foresaw. On the other hand,one can argue that a great deal of this vision is with us,

but in a rather different form than Weiser imagined. Hewas writing before mobile telephones and personaldigital assistants were commonplace, and some of hisvision has worked itself out through these two devices.It is interesting to compare the active badge with themobile phone. Both enable the user to be contacted atany time. The active badge does this by ensuring thathis location is always known. The mobile telephoneachieves the same end without the apparent invasion ofprivacy, and by offering the user the capability tocontact others in return. It is easy to see why the latterwould be preferred.

In any case, the vision is still being developedthrough a range of projects. For example, at MIT’sLaboratory for Computer Science, Project Oxygen [4]envisages a future where ‘... computation will behuman-centered ... [and] ... freely available everywhere,like batteries and power sockets, or oxygen in the air webreathe.’ A goal is to use natural communication likespeech and gesture, for example to instruct a device toprint a file to the nearest printer, or send a file to acolleague. The project Web site describes twoscenarios, one work-based, the other in the home. Inthe former the emphasis is on rapidly contacting peopleand scheduling meetings. The latter is concerned withproviding the technology to help older people maintaintheir independence. While worthy, they both lack theoriginality of Weiser’s vision. This is not to be overlycritical. The Oxygen vision poses many toughengineering problems.

Project Oxygen is being implemented via threecomponents:

• interaction is via a handheld device, the Handy21(H21) which enables computation andcommunication — effectively a combined PDA andmobile telephone,

• Enviro21s (E21s) ‘embedded in our homes, offices,and cars sense and affect our immediateenvironment’ — they embody significantcomputational power and can ‘sense a user’spresence, availability and needs’,

• ‘dynamic, self-configuring networks (N21s) help ourmachines locate each other as well as the people,services, and resources we want to reach’ — oneaspect of this is the development of a locationsupport system which will work indoors, where GPScannot reach.

Within the commercial domain, a leading exponentof what they call ambient intelligence2, is Philips.

2 Philips defines ambient intelligence as the merger of ‘ubiquitouscomputing’ and ‘social user interfaces’.



Philips emphasises a number of factors supportingambient intelligence. Devices need to be ‘contextaware’, so that a surface might be at one time a display,and at other times a transparent window or mirror. Theysee device location within a few metres as important,besides a shift from a master/slave relationship with aPC as master and other devices as slaves, to a peer-to-peer relationship between devices. They also under-stand, and are investigating, the difficulties of naturalcommunication, e.g. voice recognition when there arenumerous sound sources in a room, including othervoices. They see the ability to embed processing powerin everything as ‘certain to arrive within 10 to 15 years’.

Philips leads the Ambience project [5] which is acollaborative project forming part of the EuropeanEureka programme. The aim of the Ambience project issimilar to that of project Oxygen — to createenvironments in which people interact naturally withcomputational devices all around them in order toenhance their creativity at work and their quality of lifeoutside work. Ubiquitous computing is a key part of theEU’s technological vision; a complementary Europeaninitiative in this area is ‘The Disappearing Computer’[6]; and ubiquitous computing forms a key componentof the recently launched European 6th Frameworkprogramme.

3. The enabling technologiesWeiser understood that the hardware componentsrequired for his vision were positioned on an inevitablyimproving price/performance curve. In particular hetalked about cheap processing and cheap, large butlightweight displays. One merely had to wait for thepoint at which the vision became affordable. Othercommentators have referenced the oft-quoted Moore’sLaw which tells us that the number of transistorscapable of being manufactured on a chip is doublingsomewhere between every 12 to 24 months. As acorollary the price per transistor is also fallingdrastically.

Evoking Moore’s Law alone is, in the context ofubiquitous computing and ubiquitous intelligence, toslightly miss the point. The computing power on a chipis increasing and the price per MIP falling likewise; butmany applications do not require enormous computingpower. What is required is that the cost per device fallssignificantly so that devices can be everywhere; and thiscost must include that of embedding the deviceswherever they are required.

The way to achieve this is through a process akin toprinting, and this is precisely what is being developed.The technology is not that of silicon electronics, but ofpolymer electronics. Printing is essentially a much fasterprocess than the technology of silicon chip production.

In particular, the processes being investigated aretypically additive, i.e. different layers are printed on topof each other. Traditional silicon processes aresubtractive; at stages in the process layers are etchedaway. The resolution of the printing process may neverbe so great as for silicon manufacture. Hence somecommentators see printed electronics as not incompetition with the traditional technology, butcomplementing it to form ‘... an enlargement of theelectronics market with very new applications’ [7]. Inany case, printable electronics will permit a world ofubiquitous intelligence with electronics which can bedeposited cheaply on all kinds of surfaces, from enginesto cans.

A leader in this field is Plastic Logic [8] which isexploiting technology in part developed at CambridgeUniversity’s Cavendish Laboratory. They use polymerthin film transistor technology with semi-conductingpolymers for the switching layers and conventionalelectrically insulating polymers for the dielectrics. Theycan additionally print metals for interconnect and alsocreate vias for interconnection of layers. The last ofthese does, of course, require a subtractive process.Plastic Logic claim to regularly achieve micron-scalechannel lengths and to have demonstrated and beactively developing sub-micron techniques. Thiscompares with silicon technologies of down to around50 nanometre feature sizes in the laboratory today.

The technologies being developed by Plastic Logicand others are likely one day to be used to print com-puting devices on to all types of surfaces. For PlasticLogic the initial application is active-matrix backplanesfor displays. The first such displays are flat. However, bycombining the technology with flexible display tech-nology, such as that of organic light-emitting diodes(OLEDs) [3], it will be possible in the future to produceflexible screens, which will fit into all kinds of spaces,and perhaps eventually include screens which can berolled up like a sheet of paper.

4. Providing connectivityMany of these mass-produced embedded devices willneed to be connected, normally through wirelessconnectivity. Even where devices are not mobile,wireless connectivity will offer great convenience. Thechallenge is to interconnect a very large number ofdevices. Some of these devices may fail periodically.Others may be coming in and out of rangeunpredictably, and parts of the network of ubiquitousdevices need to function when temporarily disconnectedfrom the rest.

An important wireless technology is likely to be meshnetworking, in which each element both transmits andreceives information streams pertinent to itself, but also



retransmits information received from a neighbour on toother neighbours [9]. In this way information finds aroute from originator to destination without that routebeing pre-planned. This relieves congestion and createsreliability by the existence of multiple routes throughthe network. Fleishman [9] makes an analogy with theInternet backbone. The most well-developed meshtechnology at the moment is intended for use in fixedinstallations. However, a mobile P2P variant of meshnetworking, sometimes called ad hoc networking, is alsobeing developed [10].

Closely aligned with mesh networking is the conceptof data-centric networking [11] in which ‘active databundles should be able to marshal (and pay for) theresources they need to make progress in the network’.This means that data can find its own way across an adhoc network until it finds its desired destination. Thedata might be from an environmental sensor network,or might be consumer-originated data such asphotographic data. As above, there is an analogy withInternet routing. A key question is the extent to whichInternet protocols can be used and the extent to whichmore minimalist protocols are needed to take accountof the reduced bandwidth and computational powerwhich will typically be available.

5. The human interfacePhrases like ‘calming technology’ and ‘the disappearingcomputer’ suggest that interaction with ubiquitouscomputing is going to be radically different frominteraction with current computing devices. Indeed, thishas to be the case. If we are to be surrounded bycomputation, we cannot navigate it all using justkeyboard and mouse.

A fundamental principle is that a great deal of theinteraction will be unconscious. In a typical scenario, Iwill enter a room and the room will sense, not just thatanother person has entered but specifically that theperson is me. It will do this either through a devicewhich I wear, by facial recognition, or even byrecognising my gait. The temperature of the room, andthe ambient lighting will be adjusted according to mypreferences. If I am alone it may play my favouritemusic. If the room is an office it may bring up on ascreen an interface to my personal workspace. If theroom is a meeting room, it may offer me someparticular view into that workspace, more appropriateto a meeting. When the meeting starts it will berecorded and stored in my personal workspace. Therecording will be marked up to identify the mostsignificant parts of the meeting, based on an analysis ofthe emotions displayed both in the voice and in thegestures.

The ubiquitous computing infrastructure will remindme of actions I must take. In the office I am already

reminded about my next meeting by an embryonic formof ubiquitous computing, my PDA. In the home, as asenior-citizen, I will be reminded when I need to take mytablets. The latter is a mainstay of ‘care in the home’ubiquitous computing scenarios.

It does not take much thought to realise that this ispotentially a nightmare. We all have our favouritestories of how our desktop computer software hasattempted to make intelligent guesses on our behalf,with consequences which are hilarious or severelyannoying, probably depending on our mood. The home-care scenarios are worthy, but likely to becondescending, and, if anything goes wrong, potentiallyconfusing for people who (at least in the scenarios) areparticularly susceptible to becoming confused.

The object of these words is to make the point that ifthese kinds of scenario are to work, the human interfaceneed to be thought through very carefully, making fulluse of what we understand about the human psyche.Just how far can we tolerate the sense of not being incontrol? Will the constant reminders create too muchcognitive load? Just how do we offer services to people,particularly vulnerable people whose pride may alreadybe fragile, without giving the impression ofcondescension?

Answers to these questions will come in part throughtrial and error. We need to start, though, by takingaccount of what the psychologists and other socialscientists have learned already about the humananimal.

The scenarios above could work without our beingconsciously proactive. Even a home which reminds uswhen it is time to take our pills might have learned to dothis from our previous actions. However, someapplications will require conscious actions on our part.The classic situation is to indicate to one device that itshould interoperate with another. I might be in a hotelbedroom and wish to indicate to my portable PC that itshould establish a connection, e.g. using Bluetooth,with a large display on the wall. The general view is thatthe optimum use should be made of all the modalitiesavailable, in particular voice and gesture. Perhaps theuser should be given a choice. Ideally, the system shouldtake account of more than one modality, to help avoidambiguity — although it needs to be aware that thedifferent modalities may be used ambiguously.

In a brief history [12] of the development of human/computer interaction over the last five decades, RichardPew, a long-standing worker in this field, tellingly makesthe point: ‘A key to perceived simplicity isunderstanding in sufficient detail what a user wants todo next so that only the relevant controls are presentedat that time. But that requires predicting the user’s



thinking context and intent’. That understanding is farfrom trivial.

One approach to achieving simplicity is based on theprinciple of direct combination, which was firstdeveloped for desktop computing [13]. Imagine that auser wishes to undertake some operation on twoobjects. Remembering the precise sequence of actionsis often difficult. Instead he merely points and clicks onthe icons representing these objects and is immediatelypresented with a palette of possible operations. Thecited reference has interesting examples of draggingand dropping objects on the screen, and seeing apalette (‘toolglass’) of possible actions. The objectsmight be a pair of windows, or they might be a windowand a number. In the former case, the palette mightinclude commands such as ‘highlight difference’ and‘append’. In the latter case, the possibilities might be‘print n copies’ or ‘magnify by n’. This example isapplicable to a graphical user interface, but parallelexamples could be constructed for command lineinterfaces. The approach could also be extended tomore than two objects.

This principle can be logically extended to the worldof mobile and ubiquitous computing [14]. Imagine aPDA with some sort of scanner attached. In its normalstate, the PDA displays a top level menu. The PDA’sowner is talking to a colleague who shows her a paper ofinterest. She uses the scanner to identify the paper, e.g.by running the scanner across some identification onthe paper. The options on her PDA now narrow down,perhaps to e-mailing the paper, faxing it, or printing it.She then uses the scanner to identify a nearby printer,and the options narrow down to one: ‘print document Ato printer B’. She presses a ‘Do It’ button, and thedocument is printed. This is a simple example; thescenarios can be made much more complex. Underlyingall this is the principle that the user can always fall backon a conventional interface, and hence is never anyworse off as a result of this approach.

6. More technologiesThe original model of ubiquitous computing was of anindividual surrounded by computational ubiquity withwhich he or she is interacting. That interaction may beassumed to be frequent, or it may occur infrequentlywhen there is a perceived problem, such as when Iforget my pills. Nevertheless, the unspoken model is ofthe individual in the centre and the devices interactingwith that individual.

In the ubiquitous intelligence model, the interactionis primarily between the devices, and there is nointeraction with individuals, or at the least veryoccasional interaction indeed.

To understand this model we need to go beyond thetechnologies which Weiser considered, which werelimited by his human-centric vision, and also by thestate-of-the art at the time at which he was writing.Since then a number of technologies have developedenormously.

Prominent among these is the technology of radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags come ina variety of forms, but all permit the tagged object to beidentified by some sort of scanner. Typically theyinclude a 96-bit identifier which enables not just theclass of object, but the particular object itself, to beidentified. They can be passive, using energy absorbedinductively from the reader, or active employingbatteries. They may include storage and processingcapability. The former may even be present in thepassive form. The latter may extend to an 8-bitmicrocomputer. The range is relatively short, althoughRFIDs operating at UHF and microwave frequencies canoperate at greater than 1.5 metres. The suggestion isthat range will not be a significant restriction, sincedeclining costs of manufacture will enable the readers tobe themselves ubiquitous. The tags are also declining inprice, with some variants now costing only a few cents[15]. Figures 1 and 2 show some RFID tags and a fewapplications.

Fig 1 Example RFID tags.

readers and tags in baggage label in rubber containers



Ubiquitous intelligence will need to interact with thephysical world. In this, micro electromechanical systems(MEMS) will play a key role. These are miniature devices,ranging from micrometers to millimeters, manufacturedusing integrated circuit technology which combineelectrical and mechanical components. They have arange of uses, including as accelerometers and forsensing pressure, flow and the presence of particularchemicals [16]. MEMS technology offers the promise ofsensors so small and so cheap that, when combined withwireless technologies such as ad hoc networking, theycan be distributed in large numbers across the area tobe sensed. This offers a continuum of data, rather thandata from a few discrete points. It also removes thenecessity for selecting optimised sensor locations.

In fact MEMS represent one part of the burgeoningarea of sensor technology. Another important aspect isthe development of devices which bridge the gapbetween the world of silicon and the world of biology, byacting as biological sensors or even as prostheses. Theformer includes devices capable of analysing DNA. Thelatter includes devices capable of partiallycompensating for defects of vision and hearing. They allhave the capacity to form part of a ubiquitouscomputing infrastructure.

Sensor and wireless technologies require power, atleast when one goes beyond passive RFIDs. New forms

of battery are being investigated, including polymer-based batteries which have the advantage of beingflexible. Alternative energy sources are also beingsought, among which are fuel cells and micro-heatengines using hydrocarbon fuels. Harvesting, orscavenging for energy, is also a possibility; this includesboth natural and artificial light sources, vibrations andtemperature gradients. Combined with the search fornew energy sources is the development of techniques toreduce energy consumption. Techniques of chip designare being developed which effectively ‘switch off’ areasof a chip while temporarily not in use. Finally,miniaturisation may lead to packaging energy storagedirectly with the microelectronics.

To reduce the energy demands of wireless,information transmission needs to be limited, since areduction in bandwidth utilisation reduces the powerrequirements. One way to do this is to perform as muchlocal computation as possible, and hence avoid theneed to transmit large quantities of unprocessed data.This may also be useful to overcome spectrumlimitations in areas of dense and highly interactingubiquitous intelligence.

7. Designing distributed intelligenceAdvances in distributed computing technology areneeded to support the applications. This is distributedcomputing on an enormous scale. The centralised

Fig 2 Some RFID applications.

keyless entry

logistics tracking automated payment



control used in traditional computing is not likely to befeasible in a situation with so many devices interactingamong themselves. Apart from the difficulty ofprogramming a central controller, centralised controlcould easily become a bottle-neck. Autonomoustechniques for managing such devices may be capableof being borrowed from nature [17].

The point has already been made that embeddedcomputers will not normally represent the state-of-theart in computation. They will be built from cheap,robust but not high-performance technologies. Hencethere will need to be emphasis on the efficient use of theresource. One pioneer in this is Shrikumar, who hasdeveloped a ‘... Web-server with a full TCP/IP stackusing less than $2 in components’. Shrikumar’sapproach to Web-server design is the basis of acompany, Ipsil [18], which he has co-founded.

Shrikumar has also made an observation on thechanging way we are likely to be thinking aboutnetworked computation [19]. Until now, when thinkingabout a network of computers, we have used a model ofa relatively small number of computational nodes,interconnected in some way. The complexity has beenin these nodes, not in the way in which they areinterconnected. With ubiquitous intelligence this ischanging. The nodes may or may not be so complex,but in any case the way in which they are interconnectedis vastly more so than in the past. Moreover, anyparticular computational process may be sharedbetween a large number of processors. Processalgebras, developed to reason about concurrentcomputing, can be used to model the behaviour of suchsystems, e.g. to understand synchronisation. Onecould, for example, use this approach to share a TCPstack between a hundred processors.

Interoperability is also required at the applicationlevel. In particular, there is a need to discover serviceson the Web, and to combine those services to create acomposite service, without human intervention. Theobvious way to achieve this is through standardisationactivity to define the semantics of these Web Services.Indeed this is happening through initiatives such as Jini3

and UPnP4. These standardisation initiatives are at arelatively low level, but more specifically standard-isation ‘affords us only a limited ability to anticipate allpossible future needs’ [22]. An alternative, sketched outin the reference from which this quotation was taken, isto use the approach of the Semantic Web [23, 24] tomake the semantics explicit, rather than implicit in a

standard. The Semantic Web offers both a mechanismfor describing functionality and also a mechanism foruniquely naming objects, on the Web and in thephysical world. It potentially enables information andcomponent services from different sources to becombined to create user services. Thus the combinationof date information in a diary application, withinformation about a friend’s birthday and preferences inan address book application, and with informationabout specially discounted products in a company’smarketing application, might create a recommendationto purchase a product. The use of Web Services toextract and draw the correct inference from thisinformation, combined with Web Services to organisepayment and dispatch of the goods to the correctaddress, creates a composite service ‘on the fly’.

8. Look, no people — the world of ubiquitous intelligence

Today, initial ubiquitous intelligence applicationsinclude those employing RFID tags, in particular torestrict loss and theft during distribution of goods. Thetag is not associated with individual items, but withpallets or cases. They have similarly been attached tobeer kegs, which have significant value even whenempty. They are also being used for a range of moreinnovative applications. For example, when attached tobins of parts in a manufacturing process, they are beingused to automatically initiate the display of instructionsto assembly line workers. At Las Vegas airport they havebeen used to automatically reroute baggage [15]. Thedeclining price of the devices, and of the associatedreaders, is now beginning to permit association withrelatively low-value items. This of course extends theopportunities for stock control and prevention of theft.It enables new kinds of use, including the collection ofrich data about consumer behaviour. It also raisesprivacy concerns, as is discussed in section 9.

The car is another early application domain forubiquitous intelligence. There are already ubiquitouscomputing applications in the car, for example to aidnavigation. However, more truly ubiquitous intelligenceapplications are also under development, e.g.networked systems to optimise fuel consumption andreduce undesirable emissions [25].

Another application domain is the home, whereenergy consumption could be minimised whileachieving the desired living environment. Such systemswould, for example take power from the cheapestsource available at any given time, be it solar power,gas, electricity or whatever is available; perhapscomplementing this with a more expensive sourcewhere the cheapest alternative is not adequate; orwhere a house can generate more than its own needs,sending some to the national grid. One can go further

3 Jini, initiated by Sun, offers an architecture for network-centric services[20].4 The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) initiative is supported by the industry-wide UPnP Forum [21], and also by Microsoft. The UPnP Forum seeks ‘... toenable simple and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCsfrom many different vendors’.



than this and imagine a smart house where thematerials are modified by the ubiquitous intelligence toreflect the weather conditions; sometimes letting heatthrough the house’s skin; sometimes offering maximuminsulation.

One fruitful avenue for thinking about howubiquitous intelligence can be used is to consider wherethere is interaction in the physical domain, e.g.mechanical or chemical. Such interaction is frequentlyguided by interaction in the information domain. Thelatter is often now the preserve of human intelligence,e.g. adjusting one mechanical component so that it caninterwork with another. With ubiquitous intelligence,both components can be aware of their characteristicsand adjust accordingly.

Such interaction may be localised — here is just oneexample stemming from a number of recent medicaltragedies. Drugs, in themselves appropriate to apatient, have been injected into the wrong part of thepatient’s body, with sometimes fatal consequences.One can imagine a drug dispenser which is able to sensewith which part of the patient’s body it is in contact. Tothe dispenser would be connected a container with theappropriate drug. The packaging process would includeprinting electronics on the container with hard-programmed information about how it should be used.The interaction of intelligence in the dispenser and inthe container would then verify appropriate usage. Inthe highly rare event of inappropriate usage, the drugwould not be dispensed and an alarm would be raised.

In some cases interaction may be at a distance, e.g.over the Internet [26]. The Forrester consultancy hasconsidered some potential applications of what they callthe ‘X Internet’. X Internet is short for ‘executableInternet’, an enlarged vision of the current Internet. Inthe X Internet, all manner of interacting devices will beconnected via the Internet. A typical consumerapplication might be in digital photography, where tagsassociated with a digital image could be transmittedwith the image so that, for example, a printer could beoptimised to generate the image [27]. Other examplesare in manufacturing. Interconnection of RFIDtechnology to enterprise resource planning systems willenable much more flexible supply chains, through moreimmediate information. It will also enable the earlydetection of malfunction — as it is happening ratherthan when the finished goods are quality-inspected [28],or worse still at a later stage when expensive recalls areneeded. Indeed, it may be possible to detect a trendtowards malfunction before goods are actually sub-standard.

In fact, the Forrester vision of the X Internet is morethan just the interconnection of intelligent devices

across the Internet, it also embraces the Semantic Web.In the medical example above, the assumption was thatthe semantics which governed the interaction betweendrug dispenser and drug container were implicitly hard-programmed into the electronics, based on someagreed standard. This may be the case. However, theForrester examples start from the view that ‘... industryconsensus [to generate the agreed semantics] takes toolong and is too parochial’ [27]. The digital photographyexample above uses semantics defined explicitly in adictionary, typically situated on a manufacturer’s Website. This approach is more flexible than using pre-agreed semantics, but clearly generates more networktraffic.

In reality there is no sharp dividing line betweensystems which act autonomously and those whichfeature human interaction. There is a spectrum, fromtotal autonomy to continual interaction; and in any casepeople are at the centre of all our systems as theultimate, if indirect, users.

Figure 3 shows how applications can be classifiedaccording to the degree of man/machine and machine/machine interaction. An example of an applicationemploying a high level of both types of interactionmight be an advice system for medical workers.Information about drugs, equipment and the conditionof the patient could interact to optimise equipmentsettings and drug dispensing automatically, while at thesame time giving treatment advice to medical staff.

9. Will privacy ever exist again?Technological advances often bring threats as well asbenefits. Ubiquitous intelligence threatens the end ofprivacy. RFID tags built into all manner of products,including clothes, offer many benefits. They could havea big impact on theft. It has even been suggested thatsuch tags could contain washing information and ensurethat the right program is used in the washing machine,or that the wrong clothes are not washed together.However, the more sinister side of this has been neatlysummed up in the reported words of a lady who ‘...didn’t want a man standing next to her to be able tolearn the make and size of her bra using a handheldreader hidden in his pocket’ [29]. In fact, a recent planon the part of Benetton to attach tags to some of theirproducts caused such a public outcry that Benettondecided not to go ahead. The conclusion of at least oneauthor is not that the technology is unsuited to theconsumer arena, but that its deployment needs to bedone with the proper privacy protection [30].

Forrester has analysed this question in some depth,in particular by asking consumers about the trade-offbetween the potential benefits of Internet technology ingeneral and the loss of privacy [31]. The general



conclusion was that people need to believe they have alot to gain before disclosing personal information.Forrester imagined a continuum, with at one extremehealth data, the sharing of which might save one’s life,and at the other extreme ‘behavioural data for lifestylebenefits’. Among the latter would be information aboutTV viewing which many people might only be preparedto share anonymously. In between the two extremes lie‘diagnostic data for auto safety’ and ‘shopping data tosave time and money’.

This is not just about people’s modest desire forprivacy. Information unwittingly revealed could lead tocriminal acts. These might be financial, or worse.Information surreptitiously scanned from the devices onan individual’s body could be of use to a stalker. Inpractice, really valuable information is likely to beprotected, e.g. by cryptographic techniques. Thedanger may be that the combination of large quantitiesof apparently trivial information could create valuableknowledge for those with a criminal intent.

10. The research challengesAll the component hardware technologies discussedabove present enormous challenges, e.g. printableelectronics, flexible displays, more power-efficientcomputational architectures. However, progress willbuild on the enormous wealth of knowledge the lastcentury has given us about the physics and chemistry ofour world, and as such is relatively predictable. Thecoming decade is likely to see much progress in thesetechnologies. Even the long-standing problem ofimproved power sources will see great advances, e.g.from technologies such as fuel cells and energyscavenging.

Interconnection, chiefly wireless interconnection,will need to deal with the limitations of spectrum, howto manage the complexity of interconnection, besideshow to minimise intercommunication in order to reducepower requirements.

Once this interconnection is achieved, manyapplications, e.g. environmental monitoring appli-cations, will generate an enormous wealth of data.Developing techniques to analyse this enormousvolume of data is itself a challenge. Data needs to befused from a large number of different sources. Theintelligence in the ubiquitous devices can be pressedinto service to undertake pre-processing. Sometimesthere will be gaps in the data, when devices fail or areout of range. Sometimes, perhaps often, there will beinconsistencies, and the data analysis techniques needto take account of this.

In a paper which provides a useful survey of thechallenges of ‘pervasive networks’ the point is madethat: ‘... the most serious impediments to pervasivecomputing’s advances are systems challenges’ [32].There will be big opportunities for suppliers of end-to-end systems and of software components within thesesystems.

The development of software for ubiquitousintelligence applications poses new kinds of problem.How do we design software which is able to handle theenormous degree of interaction and be robust enoughto deal with elements failing or going out of range? Howdo we do that in a way which is sufficiently modular andreusable as to be economic? Do we need a new model ofcomputation, in particular one which sees computation

Fig 3 The classification of application types by degree of interaction.

ubiquitous computing

scientific and commercialcomputing

high

man

/mac

hine

inte

ract

ion

ubiquitous intelligence

limit

ed m

an/m

achi

nein

tera

ctio

n

limited machine/machineinteraction

high machine/machineinteraction

N.B. ‘fail-safe alerts’ refers to uses, e.g. in medicine, where a human is only alerted when a failure mode or potential misuse is detected

tabs pads

boards PDAsmedical help systems

advanced prostheses

building management

engine optimisation

fail-safe alerts



and communication as intimately bound together, notseparate activities with their own disciplines?

Coping with the enormous information demands ofour current world is problem enough. Ubiquitouscomputing will spawn radically new classes ofapplication, which will require new ways of thinkingabout the user interface. All we have learnt about gooduser interface design will need to be exploited, butreinterpreted for the new kinds of interaction. We needalso to make full use of what is known about how wecomprehend and internalise knowledge. Progress willthen depend on a process of trial and error whenconfronted with real applications. Direct combination isone approach. Another is the use of multiple modalities.In any case, ubiquitous interaction will be a fertileground for researchers for several decades to come.

The need for privacy will also contribute to theresearch agenda. The question here is not just therelatively well-defined one of how we can protectinformation. We need also to understand people’sperception of the trade-off between the benefits anddisadvantages of information-sharing, and how peoplecan be informed about the real benefits and the realthreats, and make decisions for themselves. We needalso to understand what can be deduced from largequantities of apparently trivial data.

These questions are so challenging because, in thefive decades or so of computer science, we have simplynot confronted this degree of complexity before.Moreover, we can only glimpse the range ofapplications. As new applications emerge, they willgenerate new technical challenges. The development ofthese applications will depend critically on engineersand computer scientists working closely with otherprofessionals such as doctors, surgeons, mechanicalengineers and architects. The former understand thepromise of distributed computing. The latterunderstand the application domains.

As real problems are solved, generic principles willevolve, and reusable components will be developed tobe applied in other domains.

AcknowledgementsThe author would particularly like to thank Dr AlanSteventon, formerly BT’s head of long-term research,who first drew his attention to the challenge andpromise of ubiquity. Thanks are also due to the author’sformer students on ‘module 13’ of the BT MSc whostimulated further his thinking in this area, and toProfessor George Coulouris, their joint supervisor.

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20 Jini — http://wwws.sun.com/software/jini/

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22 Lassila R and Adler M: ‘Semantic Gadgets: Ubiquitous ComputingMeets the Semantic Web’, in Fensel D et al: ‘Spinning theSemantic Web’, The MIT Press, pp 363—376 (2003).

23 Warren P: ‘The next steps for the WWW: putting meaning into theweb’, The IEE Computing and Control Engineering, pp 27—31(April/May 2003).

24 Davies N J, Fensel D and Richardson M: ‘The future of WebServices’, BT Technol J, 22, No 1, pp 118—130 (January 2004).

25 Allan R: ‘Electronics will inspire safer, fun-to-drive cars’,Electronic Design — http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/Index.fm?ArticleID=5044

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27 Truog D et al: ‘How The X Internet Will Communicate’, ForresterTechStrategyTM Report (December 2001).



28 Chew J et al: ‘The X Internet makes manufacturing flexible’,Forrester TechStrategyTM (May 2002).

29 Garfinkel S: ‘An RFID Bill of Rights’, MIT Technology Review(October 2002).

30 Stanford V: ‘Pervasive computing goes the last hundred feet withRFID systems’, IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2, No 2, pp 9—14(April-June 2003).

31 Spivey C et al: ‘The X Internet and Consumer Privacy’, ForresterTechStrategyTM Report (December 2003).

32 Estrin D et al: ‘Connecting the physical world with pervasivenetworks, IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1, No 1, pp 59—69(January—March 2002).

Paul Warren works within the NextGeneration ICT Services team in BT’sResearch Department. He leads a numberof activities within SEKT, a majorEuropean collaborative project developingSemantic Web technologies. In a previousForesight role, he investigated technologytrends, ranging from eBusiness to novelforms of computing.

A technologist by training, his interest hasalways been focused on the application oftechnology to solve business problems.Earlier experience included a secondment

to the CBI to study government support for techology in industry. Hehas a BSc in Theoretical Physics and also holds an MSc and an MPhil inElectronics.

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