ubiquitous computing

Assignment Title:

Group Assignment

Module Code and Title:

Ubiquitous Computing (CE00313-3)

Intake Code:

GF1131COM / GF1171COM

Submitted To:

Mr.Tharindu Ekenayake Amarasekara

Submitted By:

Prasanga Wadanambi (CB003340)

Nilushi Silva (CB003423)

Eeshwaren Veerabahu (CB003120)

Date Assigned:

13th August 2011

Date Due:

3rd October 2011

Ubiquitous Computing - Group Assignment GF1131COM / GF1171COM

Acknowledgment

It would be most appropriate first to have this opportunity to express our sincere thanks

for the people who guide and encourage throughout this project.

We sincerely thank our lecturer Mr.Tharindu Amarasekara for all his support and

passion towards guiding us and providing assistance to clarify our doubts.

Next we sincerely thank our friends who had always been around to support us. Finally

would like to express or sincere gratitude for all people who gave their massive support

to make this project a success.

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Table of ContentsAcknowledgment...............................................................................................................ii

Table of figures................................................................................................................vii

1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................2

2 Features of the intelligent tab and the technology behind them......................................3

2.1 Device Dimension Morphing Feature......................................................................3

2.1.1 Technology behind Device Dimension Morphing Feature...............................4

2.2 Hardware extendibility Feature................................................................................5

2.2.1 Technology behind Hardware Extendibility Feature........................................6

2.3 Adaptive Interface Host Feature..............................................................................8

2.3.1 Technology behind Adaptive Interface Host Feature.......................................9

2.4 Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment Feature........................................11

2.4.1 Technologies behind Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment Feature

..................................................................................................................................12

2.5 Environment Personalization Feature....................................................................16

2.5.1 Technology behind Environment Personalization Feature.............................16

2.6 Adaptability to Environment Variations Feature...................................................18

2.6.1 Technology behind the Adaptability to environment variations feature.........18

2.7 User Authentication Feature...................................................................................20

2.7.1 Technology behind User Authentication Feature............................................20

2.8 Device Hardware Features.....................................................................................23

2.8.1 Nano Sensing...................................................................................................23

2.8.2 Nano Wire Grass (Solar power harvest).........................................................24

2.8.3 Super Hydrophobic Surface (Self Cleaning)...................................................25

2.8.4 Transparent Electronics...................................................................................25

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3 Screen shots...................................................................................................................27

4 Critical Evaluations.......................................................................................................33

4.1 Critical Evaluation- Prasanga Wadanambi............................................................33

4.2 Critical Evaluation- Nilushi Silva..........................................................................34

4.3 Critical Evaluation- Eshwaran Veerabahu.............................................................36

5 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................38

6 References.....................................................................................................................39

7 Individual Research.......................................................................................................41

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Table of figuresFigure 1: Device Dimension Morphing.............................................................................3

Figure 2: Nano Material before and after stretch...............................................................4

Figure 3: Fibril Protein weaves before and after stretch....................................................5

Figure 4: RFID Tags Application.......................................................................................6

Figure 5: AD-Hoc mode communication between intelligent tab and extendible

hardware.............................................................................................................................7

Figure 6: Ad-hoc Network.................................................................................................8

Figure 7: Intelligent acquisition from objects in the environment...................................11

Figure 8: Computer Vision Applied in Face Recognition for Security Purposes............14

Figure 9: Object and Environment Recognition Using Computer Vision.......................14

Figure 10: Augmented Reality.........................................................................................15

Figure 11: Environment Personalization..........................................................................16

Figure 12: House temperature change adaptability to environment variations................18

Figure 13: Face thermogram authentication.....................................................................21

Figure 14: Nano scale bio-mechanical sensing organs....................................................23

Figure 15: Nano wire solar cells......................................................................................24

Figure 16: Super Hydrophobic Surface............................................................................25

Figure 17: Transparent Electronics..................................................................................26

Figure 18: Thermograph Identification............................................................................27

Figure 19: Voice recognition............................................................................................27

Figure 20: Expandability..................................................................................................28

Figure 21: Capability of input surfaces...........................................................................29

Figure 22: Device hosting................................................................................................29

Figure 23: Intelligent Acquisition....................................................................................30

Figure 24: User identification..........................................................................................31

Figure 25: Personalization of environments.....................................................................31

Figure 26: Capability of Decision making.......................................................................32

Figure 27: Schematic view of smart environments..........................................................48

Figure 28: Eavesdropping attack in the network..............................................................64

Figure 29: Denial-of-Service Attack................................................................................65

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Figure 30: Man-in-the-Middle Attack..............................................................................66

Figure 31: Agent Communication Infrastructure in Ubiquitous Computing - Use of

RFID tags.........................................................................................................................75

Figure 32: Agent Communication Infrastructure in Ubiquitous Computing - Comparison

of WAUN with other Wireless Standards........................................................................78

Figure 33:Agent Communication - Layered Ontologies..................................................82

Figure 34: Agent Communication - Using Information Gain to Derive Decision Trees.85

Figure 35: Agent Communication - Conditional Subscription and Redirected

Information Flow..............................................................................................................87

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1 IntroductionThe Abode intelligent tab is a smart device that is built for the purpose of simplifying

the activities that the user carries out in a daily basis. The Intelligent tab is able to

accomplish the task of simplifying user’s activities by, being the central control board

for all essential devices that are part of the activities performed by the user. By being

able to control, gather information and integrate with the various devices, the intelligent

tab helps to define a higher purpose for all devices it interacts with. Without the

intelligent tab, other devices would only be carrying out simple tasks which require a

great deal of interaction from the user.

The intelligent tab has many features which are powered by advanced technologies;

these features will help users to automatically control appliances, the environment and

even acquire information from objects in the environment. Some of the most important

features of the intelligent tab are listed below, these features and the technology behind

them will be discussed in depth, later in this report.

Abode Intelligent Tab’s Primary Features

Device Dimension Morphing

Hardware Extendibility

Adaptive Interface Host

Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment

Environment Personalization

Adaptability to Environment Variations

Active Decision Making

User Authentication

These primary features of the intelligent tab apply to most general activities carried out

by the user, hence enhancing the user’s life by automating the activities, regardless of

the environment.

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2 Features of the intelligent tab and the technology behind

them2.1 Device Dimension Morphing Feature

This feature allows the user to expand and retract the dimensions of the device, to their

preference, without interrupting the interface. Morphing the dimensions of the device

results in the device width and the height being altered while the device default depth

remaining the same. This feature is very important from the user’s perspective, since it

allows the user to alter the dimension of the device for different purposes. In a typical

scenario, the user will require the dimensions of the device to be small, such that it

supports the mobility of the device, in an alternate scenario; the user might require the

dimension of the device to be big, so that the device can support better presentations and

also bigger surface area to work with. This requirement is normally met with the usage

of different size devices for various purposes. As discussed above, the Abode intelligent

tab meets this requirement by its ability to morph its dimension’s. Morphing the

intelligent tab to a bigger dimension from its default dimension will also allow for

seamless synchronization via docking the tab on hardware extensions, this feature will

be discussed in depth, later in the report.

Figure 1: Device Dimension Morphing

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2.1.1 Technology behind Device Dimension Morphing Feature

The intelligent tabs, Device Dimension Morphing feature is supported by the usage of

hardware materials influenced by Nano technology. Nano technology allows Nano

structure of the materials and components which are flexible, to be stretched at will, also

they can hold their new shape, by triggering molecular level, self-construction to weave

Fibril protein’s in the three dimensional mesh. This process reinforces elastic structures.

This technology is inspired by the principle behind spider silk, allowing the material to

change its shape, such that it can adapt to external forces or electric commands.

The use of materials influenced by Nano technology also enables integrated electronics

to share the same flexible properties as the material itself, this allows for uninterrupted

functioning of integrated electronics within the material.

(nokiamorph,2008)

Figure 2: Nano Material before and after stretch

(nokiamorph,2008)

The figures above illustrate the Nano technology based material focused at X 10,000.

The figure on left illustrates the material when it’s not stretched and the figure on right

illustrates the material when it is stretched.

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Figure 3: Fibril Protein weaves before and after stretch

(nokiamorph,2008)

The above figures illustrate the process of molecular level self-construction of weaving

and unweaving fibril protein mesh, on the Nano material.

(nokiamorph,2008)

2.2 Hardware extendibility Feature

This feature allows the user to dock the intelligent tab on to the docking stations of its

extendible hardware; these extendable hardware can enhance the interactive aspect of

the tab as well as enrich the user’s experience. Extendible hardware for the intelligent

tab can vary from -

Intelligent work stations with reactive surface.

Media Players

Automotive Media Docks

Electronic Appliances

Docking the intelligent tab to any of the above hardware, can alter the way these

hardware behave, if we consider a typical scenario; docking the intelligent tab after it

has been morphed to the correct proportions, that is compliant with the extendible

hardware. The intelligent tab detects the presence of the extendible hardware by means

of wireless communication. The newly created communication path between the

intelligent tab and the extendible hardware will then be used to exchange information

and hardware resources. The initial information that would be shared by both devices

will be the classification of the device. At this stage realizing that the extendible

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hardware is an intelligent workstation, the tab will activate the extendible hardware’s

features (e.g. when the tab acknowledges that the extendible hardware is a work station

capable of activating a reactive surface. It commands the extendible hardware to activate

its feature)

2.2.1 Technology behind Hardware Extendibility Feature

The technology behind this feature aids two main process the first being identification

of extendible hardware and the second being deploying a communication channel

between the extendible hardware and the intelligent tab.

Identification of extendible hardware

The intelligent tab can be aware of the extendible hardware its compatible with by

integrating RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags within the hardware, these RFID

tags will be used to identify the hardware and harvest information about the hardware,

RFID tags integrated within the hardware need to comply with the standards of the

intelligent tab, to maintain uniformity in the design of the extendible devices. Encoding

information and features within these Tags, will allow devices that need to access the

hardware to gauge the devices functionalities and capabilities.

Figure 4: RFID Tags Application

(aimglobal,2008)

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The figure above illustrates the function of RFID tags in the real world.

Deploying a communication channel between the extendible hardware and

the intelligent tab

o The Intelligent tab and the extendible hardware can deploy a

communication channel via AD-Hoc network. This requires that both

parties wanting to communicate must be wireless. AD-Hoc networks

allow both the intelligent tab and the extendible hardware to

communicate with each other directly in a peer to peer fashion without

the use of a central access point. For both devices to set up AD-Hoc

wireless network, each device need to be configured for AD-Hoc mode,

both devices on the AD-Hoc network should also use the same SSID

(Service Set identifier) and channel number. AD-Hoc networks and

Mobile AD-Hoc networks are discussed in detail in the Individual

research – Agent Communication in Ubiquitous Computing. The Figure

below shows the intelligent tab communicating with the Extendible

hardware (Intelligent Work Station), via an AD-Hoc mode.

(Grieg mitller,2008)

Figure 5: AD-Hoc mode communication between intelligent tab and extendible hardware

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2.3 Adaptive Interface Host Feature

Adaptive interface host feature allows the intelligent tab to transfer its interface to

display devices that are in the environment. This feature enhances the users experience

in terms of allowing the user to view and present content more effectively. This feature

is most likely to be used in work environment for presentations, study environment for

lectures and even for entertainment purposes where the user can transfer the interface to

a larger display for movie or slideshow playback.

Considering a scenario where the user intends to use this feature in a work environment

for presentation purposes, the user initially load’s the selected presentation prepared on

to the interface of the intelligent tab, after which the intelligent tab identifies that, a

presentation is to be initiated. The tab then searches for suitable hosts (displays) in the

environment, and deploys communication networks with all suitable hosts, and then it

waits for a gesture from the user to initiate the transfer of the interface to the host that it

initially identified. If multiple display hosts are available in one environment, the

intelligent tab will wait for the user to provide different gestures to display components

of its interface amongst the multiple displays. If the display hosts are touch sensitive or

if they are able to recognize gestures, the user can control the interface directly from the

display hosts rather than from the tab. An added feature of the tab is, that it can

manipulate the environment lighting, fixtures and media devices according to the current

activity of the interface being hosted by the display pane (e.g. when the interface is

playing a movie on a large display pane, the lighting in the environment will dim and the

audio devices will be modulated accordingly)

Figure 6: Ad-hoc Network

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2.3.1 Technology behind Adaptive Interface Host Feature

The technology behind this feature aids process such as identification of the display

host, deploying a communication channel between all identified hosts, recognizing

gesture from the user to initiate the transfer of the interface, to the host display and lastly

manipulate environment lighting, fixtures and audio devices according to the activity

being carried out in the interface. Technology that aids the first two processes have

already been covered, in this report, refer to (2.2.1 Technology behind Hardware

Extensibility).

Gesture Recognition

o Gesture recognition technology helps the above discussed feature, such

that it acts as a trigger for transferring the interface to a display host in the

environment. The main advantage of this technology is that, it allows

users to interact with mechanical devices without the need for input

devices such as keyboards, mouse and even touch screen. This

technology interprets human gestures using mathematical algorithms. The

computer interface recognizes two gesture types, they are –

Offline Gestures – Gestures that are processed after the user

interaction with an object.

Online Gestures – Theses are direct manipulation gestures, they

are used to move, scale and transform objects.

The intelligent tab supports both of the above discussed gesture types,

since they are applied to most of the tabs features, to enhance the user’s

experience.

To track the user’s movement to identify what gesture the user is

performing, the intelligent tab uses depth-aware cameras namely Time-

of-Flight cameras (TOF), this generates a depth map of what is being

viewed by the camera at a short range, then it uses the data acquired to

approximate a 3 dimensional representation of things being seen. The tab

then cross references the representation with preloaded representations of

the gestures to interpret them as user interactions. Depth cameras are

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implemented by the intelligent tab, since they are effective in recognizing

hand gestures due to their short range capabilities.

(Mark Billinghurst, 2011)

Manipulating Lighting, Fixtures and Audio Devices to suit the activity on

the interface.

o This technology involves controlling intelligent fixtures such as (lights,

heaters, air conditioners etc.) although it’s not only limited to fixtures,

entertainment appliances and smart furniture’s can also be controlled by a

central device that acts as a switch board to these equipment’s. By

controlling the above mentioned equipment’s, the central device can

manipulate them to create customized environments. These customized

environments can be based on.

Chronological time (based on time of day)

Occupancy of the environment

Presence of natural light

Events (e.g. Presentation, movie playback etc.)

Combination of events (based on program logic)

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2.4 Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment Feature

This feature allows the intelligent tab to acquire information of environments and object

that it can’t detect, recognize or is not able to communicate with. In a typical scenario, if

the intelligent tab encounter’s a situation where the user requires information about an

object such as a vehicle which it cannot recognize or communicate with due to different

standards of communication and or lack of hardware similarities. The tab will inform the

user about its inability to acquire information using the default method (acquiring

information by deploying a communication channel between the object and the tab),

then it will automatically use the Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment feature,

where the user is requested to direct the tab at the object or environment for a brief

moment, during which time the tab would have scanned the object/environment using

computer vision to solve the information requirement. The information is then gathered

from the internet and presented to the user by the use of augmented reality. The

presented information can be basic information, history and or activities related to the

object/ environment.

Figure 7: Intelligent acquisition from objects in the environment

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2.4.1 Technologies behind Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment

Feature

The technology behind this feature allows the intelligent tab to automate the processing

of images from the real world such that it can acquire and interpret information in real

time. Also process the information gathered, to be represented in an organized manner.

The technology behind this feature assists the processes of extracting information from a

scene containing an environment and objects within that environment, gather

information about the recognized objects from the internet and present the information

in an organized manner. Technologies that aid the second process is already covered in

the individual research, refer to (Agent Communication in Ubiquitous Computing)

Computer Vision

Computer vision is the technology that models and replicates human vision via

the usage of software and hardware. It identifies properties such as structures

within objects and environments present in a 2D image and then reconstruct and

interpret it as a 3D scene. The output of this technology is mostly a description,

interpretation or a quantitative measurement of an object in a 3D scene. The

Computer Vision technology uses image processing as one of its primitive

techniques to achieve its purpose. Computer Vision technology can be divided

into 3 main levels, they are –

o Low-level Vision: This level of the computer vision technology is only

used to extract the features of an image such as corner, edge and light

flow.

o Intermediate-level Vision: this level of the computer vision technology is

used to recognize objects and interpret 3D scenes via the usage of

information obtained from low-level vision.

o High-level Vision: This level of the computer vision technology involves

in interpreting evolving information that is extracted from intermediate-

level vision. This level also directs what type of tasks low and

intermediate level should perform. High-level vision can provide

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conceptual descriptions of a scene in terms of the activity being

performed in the scene, the intention and behavior of the scene.

While computer vision being applied in many areas, the intelligent tab applies

computer vision for authentication and retrieval of information in databases,

based on a query image. This allows the tab to identify information about objects

it couldn’t communicate directly with.

(cvlab, 2006)

Augmented Reality

While Computer Vision is able to retrieve information about an object or an

environment by interpreting objects in a scene, the Augmented Reality technology

allows the intelligent tab to augment the real world elements by means of computer

generated sensory inputs such as video, sound and graphics. This allows the user to

view, interact and digitally manipulate the information based on real world elements.

The information layer that augmented reality adds to reality allows users to better

their understanding of an object; this intern helps the user to decide on performing

actions on that particular object. Taking into consideration a typical scenario, the

intelligent tab captures a scene with a focal point on a car, the tab uses computer

vision to identify the object and retrieve information from a database using the image

query technique. The augmented reality then presents the acquired data in a

computer generated pallet of information layer, which the user can use to decide on

the actions he would like to carry out on the car (e.g. take the car for service).

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Figure 8: Computer Vision Applied in Face Recognition for Security Purposes

(Geekosystem, 2008)

The figure above illustrates the use of Computer Vision for face recognition, which can

be applied for security purposes.

Figure 9: Object and Environment Recognition Using Computer Vision

(Adelaide, 2005)

The figure above illustrates the usage of computer vision technology for identifying

objects and environment in a scene.

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Figure 10: Augmented Reality

(media.koyoto, 2004)

The above images illustrates the information layer that is applied on top of the real scene

by the usage of augmented reality

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2.5 Environment Personalization Feature

The environment personalization feature provided by the intelligent tab allows for

customization of a particular environment in terms of lighting changes, temperature

changes and furniture customization, based on the preference of a user. When

considering a typical scenario, the intelligent tab will detect the presence of a user in an

environment, after which the intelligent tab will accommodate the user’s preloaded

preference applying those changes to the environment. Users can expand the

customization criteria by adding other criteria, such as the default channel that needs to

be played on the T.V when the user’s presence is detected in the living room

environment, the music that needs to be played according to the current mood of the user

etc.

Figure 11: Environment Personalization

2.5.1 Technology behind Environment Personalization Feature

The technology behind this feature aids processes such as detecting a user presence in an

environment, identifying the user and adapting the environment to suit the preference of

the user. Technology that detects the last process is already discussed in this report refer

to (2.3.1 Technology behind adaptive interface host)

Face Thermogram Authentication

Face thermogram authentication technology helps the feature such that it is used

to identify the specific users presence in an environment, this technology was

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adopted by the intelligent tab, such that it can clearly differentiate between

several users. This technology is discussed in detail, later in this document, refer

to (2.7.1)

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2.6 Adaptability to Environment Variations Feature

This feature will allow the intelligent tab to command fixtures and fittings within the

interior environment, to vary their performances according to the exterior environment

changes. This way the atmosphere of the home is adaptable to the atmosphere outside

the house. When considering a typical situation such as the winter season, the exterior

environment of the house is very cold due to a significant drop in the temperature and

the humidity level, the intelligent tab which is situated outside the house detects this

environment change by gauging the temperature and humidity level using its embedded

sensors. This information is relayed to the intelligent tab inside the house, which then

determines the optimum temperature change that can be applied to the interior of the

house, after determining the changes that needs to be done, the intelligent tab situated

within the interior of the house, commands the appliances that manage the temperature

of the house to adopt to the temperature changes determined by it.

Figure 12: House temperature change adaptability to environment variations

2.6.1 Technology behind the Adaptability to environment variations feature

The technology behind this feature aids the process such as acquiring temperature and

humidity level information, relaying the acquired information to the intelligent tab

situated within the interior of the house and the intelligent tab relaying commands to

appliances that manage the temperature, to carry out the temperature changes. The first

process involves the technology of embedded sensors within the tab.

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The second and third process involve the same technology, which is multi agent

communication, which is discussed in length in the individual research for Agent

Communication in Ubiquitous Computing, refer to ( 2.3 Ad-Hoc Network for Agents ,

3.1 Layered Ontologies)

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2.7 User Authentication Feature

Identification and authentication of the user is verified with use of two authentication

approaches of biometric authentication. The two authentication approaches which are

proposed are Face thermogram authentication and voice recognition.

2.7.1 Technology behind User Authentication Feature

Biometric Authentication

Biometric authentication is a secure and convenient authentication mode compared to

other authentication approaches such as password or PINs etc. Since no adversary

cannot steal or guess biometric data it provides high security to system.

Face Thermogram Authentication

The authentication of proposed device takes careful consideration. Therefore as the

primary authentication mode, face thermogram authentication is proposed in the

ubiquitous device.

Face thermogram is one approach of biometric authentication where authentication

is done via detecting facial heat patterns of the branching blood vessels. These heat

patterns which are known as thermograms are unique to each user. The main

advantage is that face thermograms of an individual will be remains same for

person’s life time and also since face thermograms images are captured with use of

inferred cameras it will authenticate accurately without considering the light systems

of the background.

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Figure 13: Face thermogram authentication

Due to characteristics and benefits face thermogram authentication is more

appropriate to the proposed device. The infrared camera which is required to capture

the image of the user is embedded within proposed device. Therefore when user is

accessing the device it will be capturing the thermo image of the user and compare it

with the stored image in the device and authenticate the user. Since face thermogram

is unique to each user, the accuracy of the authentication is high and more reliable.

Also over other biometric authentication modes, face thermography is not intrusive

and user is not required perform any physical action to get authenticated.

Voice Authentication

Voice authentication is used as an alternative authentication mode for the proposed

device. The framework of the proposed device will contain voice based recognition

functionalities and microphones embedded within, which will recognize and

authenticate the users via voice commands.

Through voice authentication voice can be used to authenticate remotely and

therefore this it is less user intrusive and user will be more comfortable (Since it do

not require any action ) than other biometric authentication methods. Mostly voice

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authentication is able to provide fairly accuracy of identify and authenticate the user.

But due to the certain factors such as significant change in individuals voice (with

the users’ age, with users’ health conditions, with users’ mood) and environmental

factors (background noise) will affect voice authentication. Therefore voice

authentication mode is proposed as alternative authentication mode for the proposed

device.

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2.8 Device Hardware Features

The Intelligent Tab’s hardware is as unique as its other features, since the hardware itself

enhances the Intelligent Tab’s features to yield better results. Most of the hardware that

is embedded within the intelligent tab is a result of state of the art Nano engineering. The

intelligent tab uses a combination of traditional material’s as well as materials that have

been manipulated in the Nano scale to transform traditional materials into react and

function in ways beyond the materials default properties. Below are some of the

intelligent tab’s hardware features inspired by Nano technology.

2.8.1 Nano Sensing

Nano sensing feature is embedded within the intelligent tab, by means of implementing

Nano scale sensing Martials comprised of molecular level bio-mechanical sensing

organs that can detect atmospheric changes and certain chemical compounds in the

environment.

(J. Matthew Mauro, 2003)

The image below shows the Nano scaled, bio-mechanical sensing organs picking up

chemical compound in the atmosphere.

Figure 14: Nano scale bio-mechanical sensing organs

(nokiamorph, 2008)

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2.8.2 Nano Wire Grass (Solar power harvest)

Nano wire is a form of technology that produces strands of wires that are so small, that

thousands of the Nano wire strands can fit in on hair strand. This technology is great for

solar cells that can consume solar energy and convert them to electrical energy that can

power mobile device, buildings cars and even whole cities. Being that this technology

will be implemented practically everywhere in the future, it was decided that the

intelligent tab should make use of this promising technology as well. Implementing the

Nano wire technology allows for the intelligent tab to power itself, whenever it needs to,

so the user does not have to become immobile to power the device. This is a very

important feature of the Intelligent Tab, since it allows the tab to be powered

independent without a single power point and also it’s very cheap to implement, hence

making the device attractive to a wider demography. The picture below shoes the use of

Nano wire grass used in a devices surface, such that, when exposed to sunlight, it

harvests the solar energy to power itself.

(Tyler Hamilton, 2008)

Figure 15: Nano wire solar cells

(nokiamorph,2008)

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2.8.3 Super Hydrophobic Surface (Self Cleaning)

Super Hydrophobic surface allows the surface of the intelligent tab to self-clean, when it

comes in contact with water or dirt particles. This feature was modeled after the Lotus-

leaf Effect; the technology behind this feature is the coating of substrates with various

Nano particles, which would be mixed with polymers, electrochemical dispositions of

gold and silver aggregates and various other copper and other components. This allows

for the surface of intelligent tab to replicate the lotus leaf. This feature is important since

Nano scaled transparent electronics have to be safeguarded from water and dirt which

may result in Nano scaled electronics becoming vulnerable to corrosion etc.

(P. Manoudis, 2007)

Figure 16: Super Hydrophobic Surface

(nokiamorph,2008)

2.8.4 Transparent Electronics

The intelligent tab will be transparent, adhering to the principle of a glass surface.

Although the tab may seem to be a glass surface and is transparent, there are electronic

circuits, processors and other hardware peripherals embedded within the intelligent tabs

glass surface. The way it remains transparent is by the use of transparent electronics.

Transparent electronics are production of electronic components such as circuits,

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processors, graphic processors etc. that employs wide band-gap semiconductors, this

way all the electronic components that would be fit into a device could become invisible.

Also electronics at the Nano scale become invisible to the naked eye of the human, this

allows the device to adapt to a glass surface seamlessly, yet function without any

hardware shortcomings. This feature was implemented to support the idea of the device

blending in with the background as well as enhance the aesthetics of the device.

(John F.Wager, 2008)

Figure 17: Transparent Electronics

(nokiamorph,2008)

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Voice Commands

Frequency Diagram


3 Screen shotsDevice Authentication: First Step

Thermograph identification

Figure 18: Thermograph Identification

When a user switches on a device, it will use two level approaches to identify the user.

First the device scans and takes a thermograph image of the user’s face in order to

compare it with default template.

Voice Recognition

Figure 19: Voice recognition

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Thermograph Images

Scanning


If the thermograph image comparison does not work, the device itself enables the

secondary mode of authentication via voice recognition.

Change the size of the device: when it needs

Figure 20: Expandability

The device can change its scale according to the requirements of the user. It provides

expandability of visual controls and broad capabilities of the functions embedded in the

devices.

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Capability of input surfaces:

Figure 21: Capability of input surfaces

Device got the capability of identify and attach surfaces such as multi task tables shown

in the above figure. In that case the device can be in any scale that preferred by the

functions.

Workability with other devices: Device hosting

Figure 22: Device hosting

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The device got the capability of identify interfaces and devices which are enable of

adaptive workability. After the identification, it can also host such devices in order to

simplify the complexity and ease user’s works by controlling number of devices

simultaneously.

Gaining details form objects and devices:

Figure 23: Intelligent Acquisition

Identification of objects and gain its details which are important to user is another

function that embedded into this device.

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Environmental personalization:

Step 1: Identification of user

Figure 24: User identification

Device identifies the user at his/her present.

Step 2: Personalization of environment

Figure 25: Personalization of environments

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Personalize the environment which the user currently in according to the history data or

user entered data. It eases the user’s life by undertaking all environmental aspects by its

own.

Capability of decision making

ABODE is a device which embedded the capabilities of decision making. Such

incidence like controlling inner climate according to the external climate of a house can

show as below.

Figure 26: Capability of Decision making

User involvement of such scenarios reduces by the device and allows the user to stay

calmly on any environmental change or any concern-able situation.

32


4 Critical Evaluations

4.1 Critical Evaluation- Prasanga Wadanambi

Ubiquitous intelligence is a technological area which spreads rapidly along with Smart

world concept in order to simplify the life style of people and targeted on enormous

possible benefits to the society. This technology became a facilitator for systems and

devices which do not had the ability of participate in world’s day to day needs in an

intelligent manner. So on, Smart environments which are embedded with smart devices

and systems, going to be most service expected concept from Ubiquitous intelligence to

achieve the goals which expected.

By taking above details into consideration, the proposed prototype is to develop a device

which can perform as a smart agent in smart environments. The structure of the device

“ABODE” will be developed using and approach which embedded both Artificial

intelligence, Ubiquitous intelligence and NANO technology. Embedded functionalities

will be developed by using most preferred technological approaches in order to provide

accurate, usable and futuristic solutions to all the users.

The ubiquitous intelligence provides facilities which are required by the device from the

stage of the development itself. So on, the functions such as intelligent acquisition of

devices and objects, adaptability to any environment, transforming into different sizes

and adaptability to the surfaces are basically implemented on infrastructure which is

based on Ubiquitous intelligence.

This whole concept of the proposed system is enriched with technologies which are

related to Ubiquitous computing. The research that I have done on ubiquitous

intelligence and related other factors conduct me on identifying the approach for the

development of the proposed device. Complete the project in more successful and smart

manner, my contribution was made from embedding intelligence which implemented in

the system.

33


4.2 Critical Evaluation- Nilushi Silva

Security and privacy is a highly considerable aspect in ubiquitous environment. The

proposed smart device is developed with consideration of security aspects. Biometric

security authentication mechanisms are proposed as main security mechanisms of the

proposed device.

Among all biometric authentication approaches the proposed device includes face

thermogram and voice authentication approaches. Through the research conducted on

security and ethics in ubiquitous computing, I was able to provide a more secure and

reliable security mechanism to the proposed ubiquitous device.

According to the primary research I was able to discover main security aspects and

security features which are available in ubiquitous computing environment.

Passwords/PINs/security codes, tokens (such as rings, badges) and biometric

authentication modes are main security authentication mechanisms which are used to

authenticate a user. Comparing with all these mechanisms the most secured and reliable

technology is biometric authentication. According to the research conducted, compared

to other modes the most secured biometric authentication mode is face thermogram

authentication. As proposed device is an intelligent tab which coordinates with other

intelligent tabs and devices surrounds it, the device should include powerful security

mechanism embedded to protect from attackers. Unlike other biometric modes, such as

voice recognition, face recognition and etc., face thermogram of a person is unique and

not changeable with the person’s life time (persons age). Due to the reasons such as

dust/dirt of finger or surgery of the finger and etc. fingerprint authentication may not

provide accurate authentication of a user. Even though biometric modes such as iris

recognition, retina recognition and DNA provide accurate authentication, they are very

intrusive and not very convenient authentication mechanism since user interaction is

highly required and user discomfort level is high. Therefore face thermogram

authentication is proposed in-order to provide a powerful security to the device and

authenticate the users.

34


And also with the use of the research, I was able to avoid the security attacks which can

be occur in the proposed intelligent tab. The research which is done on security and

ethics in ubiquitous computing environments supported me to recognize the main areas

which security needs to be considered and implemented. Therefore the contribution was

able reduce possible security attacks and increase the privacy in the proposed smart

device.

35


4.3 Critical Evaluation- Eshwaran Veerabahu

Having based my individual research on Agent Communication in Ubiquitous

Computing, I had strong doubts as to how this research area is going to be sufficient to

provide, strong evidence on its importance towards ubiquitous computing. But as my

research began to expand, I gradually learnt that, without the implementation of efficient

communication between agents, Ubiquitous Computing would fail, let alone achieve its

primary purpose of computing everywhere while, blending into the environment. The

reason as to why I declare that communication between agents is the most integral part

of ubiquitous computing, is because only implementing and embedding micro computers

in to most objects in the ubiquitous environment, having made them smart is not

sufficient, because the effectiveness of ubiquitous computing can only be fully harvested

when, the countless number of smart objects become integrated via communication.

When this theory was applied to the abode intelligent tab, countless interesting ideas for

features of the device unfolded.

Features such as Hardware Extendibility, Intelligence Acquisition from the Environment

and Adaptability to Environment Variations; the ideas for these features could never be

conceived; or even if conceived, justifying the idea would have proved to be impossible,

if Agent Communication was not highlighted.

When discussing about Agent Communication in Ubiquitous Computing, two major

topics were highlighted, they were Agent Communication Infrastructure for Ubiquitous

Computing and Efficient Communication Strategies for Agents. Discussing about the

Infrastructure for Agent Communication in UC was straight forward, since UC would

not function as intended without it. Discussing about efficient communication strategies

for agents, proved that providing importance for efficient communication strategies for

agents is also equally important. Since discussing the important strategies that needs to

be practiced when deploying communication amongst agents, would prove Ubiquitous

Computing could not only be effective but efficient as well.

Strategies that would make communication amongst agents efficient, such as employing

layered ontology’s within agents, understanding Agent knowledge representation and

36


exploring Communication Mechanisms which would ultimately decide the efficiency of

the communication between multiple agents.

Overall deploying the Abode Intelligent Tab for the group component as well as

understanding that deploying a communication infrastructure amongst the agents in the

Ubiquitous Computing is as important as following efficient strategies that need to be

applied for agent communication, allowed me to integrate ideas with theories and

enhanced the interest I had in Ubiquitous Computing.

37


5 Conclusion

Ubiquitous computing is the new era of human life evaluation. In present it is a maturing

area where various research institutes and companies are working on, in-order to

implement ubiquitous devices and make ubiquitous project reality for the public users.

The proposed intelligent tab is a prototype for a smart device which can be adopted in a

ubiquitous environment. The intelligent tab is proposed with consideration of all the

aspects of ubiquitous computing such as security, intelligence and etc. The proposed

device is able bind the users day-to-day activities and offer a smart comfortable life.

38


6 References About. (2011). Wi-Fi Wireless Networks and Technology. [Online] Available

from: http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wireless/g/bldef_ssid.html [Accessed:

20th September 2011]

About. (2011). Wireless FAQ. [Online] Available from:

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessfaqs/f/adhocwireless.html

[Accessed: 26th September 2011]

Augmented Reality. (2011). [Online] Available from:

http://www.slideshare.net/ubik/beyond-augmented-reality-ubiquitous-media-

experiences [Accessed: 17th September 2011]

Computer Vision. (2011). [Online] Available from:

http://cvlab.epfl.ch/~fua/courses/vision/intro/vision.html [Accessed: 14th

September 2011]

Gesture Recognition. (2011). [Online] Available from:

http://www.slideshare.net/ubik/beyond-augmented-reality-ubiquitous-media-

experiences [Accessed: 11th September 2011]

Haptic Technology. (2011). [Online] Available from:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/haptic-technology.htm


Nanomaterial. (2011). [Online] Available from:

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/nano/overview.php [Accessed: 2nd

October 2011]

Nanotechnology. (2011). [Online] Available from:

http://www.crnano.org/whatis.htm

[Accessed: 1st October 2011]

Nokia Morph. (2011). [Online] Available from: http://research.nokia.com/morph


Nokia Research Center. (2010). High performance mobile platforms. [Online]

Available from:

http://research.nokia.com/research/high_performance_mobile_platforms


39

http://research.nokia.com/research/high_performance_mobile_platforms

http://research.nokia.com/morph

http://www.crnano.org/whatis.htm

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/nano/overview.php

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/haptic-technology.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/ubik/beyond-augmented-reality-ubiquitous-media-experiences


http://cvlab.epfl.ch/~fua/courses/vision/intro/vision.html



http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessfaqs/f/adhocwireless.html

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University of Cambridge. (2011). Cambridge Nanoscience Centre. [Online]

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option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=1&Itemid=91 [Accessed: 21st

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Super Hydrophobic Coating. (2011).Super Hydrophobic Coating. [Online]

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September 2011]

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u.ac.jp/members/yangwu/images/R5_FGLR.jpg [Accessed: 22nd September

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http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/326750

http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~qji/CV/3dvision_intro.pdf

http://mm.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp/members/yangwu/images/R5_FGLR.jpg

http://mm.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp/members/yangwu/images/R5_FGLR.jpg

http://superhydrophobiccoating.com/

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http://superhydrophobiccoating.com/

http://www.springer.com/materials/optical+%26+electronic+materials/book/978-0-387-72341-9

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http://www.nanoscience.cam.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=1&Itemid=91


7 Individual Research

Ubiquitous Intelligent and Real World Challenges

- Primal Prasanga Wadanamby

41


AbstractIn present, ubiquitous intelligence is the core of development of the smart devices in all

over the world. Any device which has integrated ubiquitous intelligence contains its own

capabilities of doing functions by its own. Therefore, Ubiquitous intelligence became an

imperative technology for people in their day to day life.

In present intelligent became a factor which is known as most challenging from all other

factors of information technology. Ubiquitous intelligence deals beyond from intelligent

factor and spreads around a larger scale of area on the smart world. Therefore ubiquitous

intelligence faces challenges which are integrated with social and technological factors.

The research article would cover the areas which related to the involvement of

ubiquitous intelligence in the Smart world and the challenges which are to be faced

during the interaction with physical world.

42


IntroductionDay by day, the introduction of new devices enables the human to a new dimension of

their lives. While their lives get complicated, an expectation of devices which enables to

ease their work gets higher. Therefore the development of devices which are small in

size and compact with multiple technologies are carrying out by main technological

devices vendors can be seen these days.

At the beginning, most of the devices were made by aiming at a set of specific

requirements. However the concept of developing such devices failed due to the lower

user acceptance rate, constraints offered by the devices and other technological,

environmental and physical factors. Due to these reasons, developers had to come up

with ideas which fulfill the user expectations and with higher level usability. Therefore

the concept of smart world appeared and suddenly the pattern which the technological

devices were developed, changed. The devices such as traditional mobile phones and

televisions became smart by integrating larger number of functions into a single device.

So on, the devices which we are using nowadays was a mythical approach at the early

19s. However the innovativeness of the technological industry is mainly to achieve

humans’ requirements effectively.

Smart world concept is growing up day by day in order to find smarter solutions than

ever for people’s requirements. Therefore newest technology concepts and device are

taking place to fulfill people’s requirements more effectively. Due to these sorts of

situations, the use of Ubiquitous intelligence is having challenges while the involvement

with today’s devices.

This research article is based on three context areas which address the content of Smart

world that integrated technologies such as Ubiquitous computing and the use of

Ubiquitous intelligence in the real world along with the challenges.

43


2.0 The Smart World

According to Ma (n.d) Smart World is the physical world which embedded with all

computer related technologies, devices and materials. However, Smart world is the

concept which merged from the primary concept of “Mirror World” invented by

computer scientist David Gelernter. According to David Gelernter the “Mirror World”

was described as follows. ”You will look into a computer screen and see reality. Some

part of your world. The town you live in, the company you work for, your school

system, the city hospital will hang there in a sharp color image, abstract but

recognizable, moving subtly in a thousand places.” (David Gelernter, 1990 cited in The

Economist, 2010)

In 1991 the chief scientist and the creator of Xerox PARC, Mark Weiser came up with

the idea of Ubiquitous Computing which is known as the third wave of the computing.

Weiser (1996) stated that, its concept is opposite from “virtual reality” and it force

computers to work with people invincibly.

Follow up; European Union’s Information Society Technologies Program Advisory

Group (ISTAG) mentioned a term called “Ambient Intelligence” in their 1999 vision

statement in order to give a similar idea of living along with intelligent interfaces which

embedded in objects around us. (Bohn et al, 2004)

After years of experiments, concepts that introduced by different individuals and

organizations are reformed as a one concept of “Smart World” and it integrate

technologies which were mythical approaches at 1990s. However the concepts became

reality and after years back mankind is in search of multiple mirror worlds or smart

systems which they can meet their needs effectively. The devices which we are using

today are embedded with technologies which are considered as components of the Smart

World. As an example, the mobile phones were the first to introduce as a mobile device

in the world. It was only made for the communication purpose between two or multiple

devices. After decades of the invention, mobile phone is not just a device which can use

to communicate, but also to work on more and more functions such as web browsing,

navigation etc.

44


As mentioned earlier, The Smart World is embedded with technologies which are in

multidimensional form of computing. The areas which these dimensions are included

can be list as follows.

Universal identification

Interface and interaction

Physical & social awareness

Deployment and management

Smart object

Model and design

Platform and middleware

Smart environment

(Ma, n.d)

Each area is based on technical perspective of devices and systems which is going to be

implemented.

45


3.0 Ubiquitous Intelligence in Smart WorldIn Smart World concept, Ubiquitous Intelligence holds the highest place among the four

intelligent computer waves in the world. According to Robin (2009), Artificial

intelligence was the technology which came first in 1956 as a concept and later on it

became a reality by enabling robots and computer systems into self thinkable

machineries. But the lack of adaptability, controllability and manageability on any

circumstances of the Artificial intelligence showed the path to develop more adaptable

technologies in computing such as Natural computing and Social computing.

Natural computing is based on the observations of computational processes in the nature

and human designed computing inspired by nature. And it contains algorithms,

Evolutionary computing, Biologic computing, Neural networks etc. in order to develop

intelligent systems which focused on natural behavioral observations. (Rozenberg &

Spaink, 2005)

Social Computing is the third approach of the intelligent computing and known as the

recent revolution/social turn of the computing. Nowadays websites like Facebook,

Twitter, Myspace etc. are in the top level because of the turn which formed by social

computing. Therefore the collaboration of tools and techniques which construct agent-

based models to make explanations and predictions on social systems involve gathering

users socially. (Dodig-Crnkovic & Simon, n.d)

The Ubiquitous Intelligence is a different approach from above three waves of

computing that only involves in one or few areas of technology. However Ubiquitous

intelligence can be embedded into three different components of the Smart world.

According to Ma (n.d) the essential components in smart world with Ubiquitous

intelligence can be list as follows.

Smart objects - Physical entities which has the smartness

All the devices, networks, sensors and other physical entities with some smartness

embedded into them are known as smart objects. Mobile phone is the one simple

example of smart object which we are using for multiple purposes. Parley (2005) stated

46


that the first mobile phone was cellular radio system in 1947 by D.H Ring with help

from W.R Young for a company only to do communication purposes internally. Now

that device has reached its peak in technology factor and got the smartness embedded

with it in order to simplify the tasks of humankind.

Smart systems – Network, Platform middleware or general application which

has the smartness

Data or voice networks, middleware for platforms of smart devices and smart

applications can be considered as smart systems. Data and voice networks that we are

using for our day to day communication needs are the perfect example for smart

systems. According to Harrison (1995) now, networks are in a position where “Data

networks have evolved from providing point-to-point connections into store and forward

packet networks and Voice networks have also evolved from providing point-to-point

connections to redirecting calls, call blocking, call screening, mobile communication and

roaming among multiple carriers.”

Due to the evolution, networks in nowadays are capable of handling multiple

communication tasks from single network as well as able to be intelligent.

Smart Environment – physical environment with smart objects and devices

Smart environment is a physical environment which embedded with smart objects and

devices to perform a set of user required tasks in order to simplify their day to day

activities. As indicated in Figure 1, the smart devices, appliances and robot agents are

the closest components to the physical world which the users regularly interact with.

47


Figure 27: Schematic view of smart environments

( Cook & Das, 2004)

Though the interaction is made, it’s important to identify user movements, user inputs

and other required feedbacks from the user. Therefore the internal network component

required to establish the communication with devices, sensors and actuators. External

network handles the connectivity with outside of the environment in search of data or to

handle outside task by using a remote connectivity.

48


4.0 Challenges in Real WorldLife without technology is an inconceivable factor for most of people in today’s world.

Technology became a part of our day to day life in order to simplify our work. Mainly,

computers are the components which integrated in most occasions that create networks

between systems and users to perform user required tasks.

To make this interconnection a reality, Ubiquitous intelligence should embed with Smart

world concept. As the article discussed earlier, Ubiquitous intelligence is a vital

component in making world smarter. Thus it is vital; introducing such concept along

with devices and systems can be a cause in many terms.

The causes and challenges which occurs due to the introduction of ubiquitous

intelligence along with the concept Smart world can be describe in a criteria with related

to two external factors such as,

Social

Technological

Social

o People are used to involve technological substances into their lives nowadays.

Therefore the complexity of their lifestyle and essential needs such as medical

equipments put them into a situation where the attitudes of a person change and

incline into a world which operates by smart devices and systems. Afterward, that

person has to become a client of a network which operates by servers called smart

devices and systems. Bohn et al (2004) stated that the potential benefits from the

economic are the key factors of propagation of such information technology

though it is challengeable for the humans.

o Still we got the ability of decision making on things in most cases. But in a smarter

world than this might not let us to make decisions. Due to the higher rate of

dependency on technological devices will lead us number of social challenges such

as privacy and controllability concerns.

49


Technological

o The core concept of Smart world is accompanied with intelligent devices and

systems which perform in the background of our lives according to needs of our

lives. Due to various reasons, our needs and circumstances change time to time.

Thus the systems and devices should adapt to these changeable circumstances and

needs in order to keep the Smart world concept steadily.

o Manageability is another concern that needs to focus on. When it comes to larger

scale ubiquitous environment set-ups, millions of intelligent devices and systems

can be involve for one specific task. In that case, two major concerns appear which

questioned as follows.

Will the devices and systems still be able to meet their original

requirements though they are involved in massive numbers and smaller in

size?

Will they able to understand and control a smart environment which is

known as a highly dynamical environment by operating as a group of

individual objects or systems?

(Bohn et al, 2004)

These questions can be listed as major technological concerns which might build a

discussion among people who are interested in these concepts.

o While using a regular phone, when it rings, the person who is in the caller’s end

knows whether the connection is successful or unsuccessful by listening to the

“Beep” sound from the receiver. But in an environment which includes smart

devices and systems only designed for respond on success factors, may not

configure and predict such situations. So on, the users have to depend upon fault

scenarios which might end up with damages on without noticing. This can be

identified as another concern which occurs due to the minimum ability of

predicting system behaviors.

50


o In a smart world, all the devices and systems are designed to work individually by

using their own intelligence. Involve in an environment similar to smart world,

makes human more dependable on intelligent devices. Though these devices

simplify human life, there can be circumstances where devices control the human

being. Bohn et al (2004) point out that there should be a gap between intelligent

devices and human life in order to prevent such dominant approaches and to have a

manual override mechanism.

51


5.0 ConclusionTechnology has become an important aspect of human life. Computers, mobile phones,

televisions etc. are become more embedded into or lives. Rapid development in

technologies and new inventions creates a virtual bridge between human and technology

in search of a perfect interaction mechanism which simplify our day to day work. Near

future, it will become a part of our lives and will be able to feel the simplicity of things

which we were used to do more hardly. The environment will be the source of each

device, system and function as well as the resource generator for humans.

To achieve above goals, there are factors which we needs to consider on before

implementing new technologies embedded with ubiquitous intelligence. While creating

a smart world, it is a must to look forward with social and technological aspects in order

to become a success one.

52


6.0 References Bohn, J et al. (2004). Living in a world Smart everyday objects – Social,

Economical and Ethical implications. Journal of Human and Ecological Risk

Assessment. Vol10(5). P.763-786

Cook, D & Das, S. (2004). Smart Environments: Technology, Protocols and

Applications (Wiley Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing). [Online]

Available from: http://books.google.com/books?id=fZ5gfxMLw-

oC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f

=false [Accessed: 28th September 2011]

Dodig-Crnkvic, G & simon, J.(n.d). Social Computing. [Online] Available from:

http://iacap11.wordpress.com/program/track-7-social-computing/ [Accessed: 23rd

September 2011]

Harrison, G.C. (1995). Smart networks and intelligent agents. [Online] Available

from: www.research.ibm.com/massive/smartnw.ps [Accessed: 10th September

2011]

Ma, J et al. (2005). Towards a Smart World and Ubiquitous Intelligence: A

Walkthrough from Smart Things to Smart Hyperspaces and UbicKids. Journal of

Pervasive Computing and communication. Vol1(1). P.53-67

Ma, J. (2006). Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing: Third International

Conference [Online] Available from: http://books.google.lk/books?id=-

Se2tX3Mru0C&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=Ubiquitous+Intelligence+in+Smar

t+World&source=bl&ots=ahuQqqDKKq&sig=eot85FLFK6RtXyDE89x3lgpaQI

g&hl=en&ei=kqmHTr3-

DIb5rQej7_zVDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDgQ

6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=Ubiquitous%20Intelligence%20in%20Smart

%20World&f=false [Accessed: 27th September 2011]

Ma, J. (n.d). smart world, ubiquitous intelligence, smart hyperspace & ubickids

study. [Online] Available from:

http://cis.k.hosei.ac.jp/~jianhua/mahome/UbicKids.pdf [Accessed: 27th

September 2011]

53

http://cis.k.hosei.ac.jp/~jianhua/mahome/UbicKids.pdf

http://books.google.lk/books?id=-Se2tX3Mru0C&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=Ubiquitous+Intelligence+in+Smart+World&source=bl&ots=ahuQqqDKKq&sig=eot85FLFK6RtXyDE89x3lgpaQIg&hl=en&ei=kqmHTr3-DIb5rQej7_zVDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=Ubiquitous%20Intelligence%20in%20Smart%20World&f=false



http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquitous-Intelligence-Computing-International-Applications/dp/3540380914/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317586909&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquitous-Intelligence-Computing-International-Applications/dp/3540380914/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317586909&sr=1-1

http://www.research.ibm.com/massive/smartnw.ps

http://iacap11.wordpress.com/program/track-7-social-computing/

http://books.google.com/books?id=fZ5gfxMLw-oC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false




Parley, T. (2005). Mobile telephone history. [Online] Available from:

http://www.privateline.com/archive/TelenorPage_022-034.pdf [Accessed: 26th

September 2011]

Rozenberg, G & Spaink, P.H. (2005). Natural computing. [Online] Available

from:

http://www.springer.com/computer/theoretical+computer+science/journal/11047

[Accessed: 22nd September 2011]

The Economist. (2010). It’s a smart world- A special report on smart systems.

[Online] Available from: http://www.slideshare.net/advertiser/its-a-smart-world


Weiser. (1996). Ubiquitous Computing [Online] Available from: http://www.ubiq.com/ubicomp/ [Accessed: 19th September 2011]

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http://www.ubiq.com/ubicomp/

http://www.slideshare.net/advertiser/its-a-smart-world

http://www.springer.com/computer/theoretical+computer+science/journal/11047

http://www.privateline.com/archive/TelenorPage_022-034.pdf


Security and Ethics Research

Security and Ethics in Ubiquitous Computing Environment

- Nilushi Silva (CB 003423)

55


Abstract Ubiquitous computing is simply an approach of creating an environment through

computer intelligence devices embedded in such a way, where connectivity is available

always and users are allowed to use the connectivity anytime at anywhere. Ubiquitous

computing is still maturing, growing area and currently many companies working on to

make ubiquitous projects reality for general public.

Within last few years security in ubiquitous computing has become a one of the

challenging research topic area in information technology. It is important that the

sensitive information of users are secured from the rest. The privacy in ubiquitous

environment should always require a careful consideration. Currently lack of proper

security technologies in ubiquitous computing has become a serious issue on

development of ubiquitous systems. Without well-defined standards of user privacy,

ubiquitous computing application may lose the control of personal information of its

user to the worse. Therefore security and privacy in ubiquitous computing environments

should be highly considered.

56


1.0 IntroductionAccording to Stajano (2002, p.8) Ubiquitous Computing (“ubicomp”) denotes vision of

the world which defines as ‘Everywhere Computing’. Furthermore Greenfiled (2006,

p.11) mentioned that Mark Weiser who is the creator of Ubiquitous Computing,

introduce ubiquitous computing as ‘Invisible computing’ where computation is

integrated with physical environments of human beings. Weiser & Brown (1996) stated

that Ubiquitous Computing is the third paradigm of computing revaluation. The era of

Ubiquitous computing still is a maturing area where researchers and companies are

working in-order to make it a reality to general public.

With the increasing users of Ubiquitous environment, the power and limitations such as

connectivity, invisibility and etc. of ubicomp leads to consider the security and privacy

of these environments. The imagination effort will only be effective when potential

security steps were identified in-order to ensure the security of the ubicomp

environments.

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2.0 Security Properties of Ubiquitous Computing Nakashima et.al (2009, p.285) stated that computer security threats to information

system can be categorized with reference of key three security properties which are

confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Confidentiality

The Confidentiality is ensuring that the information can only be read by authorized

principals. (Stajano, 2002) The confidentiality needs protection mechanisms which

avoids threat of information disclosure. According to Stajano (2002, p.61) the

primary mechanism used for protect confidentiality of information is encryption,

decryption. Since ubiquitous computing is an everywhere connectivity available

computing approach, confidentiality of information is highly essential. With the use

of different powerful encryption methods the confidentiality can be ensured.

Integrity

Integrity is the property which ensures that the information can only accessed and

modified by the authorized principals. The integrity is applied for information within

a host as well as for information which transit between hosts. Mostly the

environment of Ubiquitous Computing consists with a distributed networking

infrastructure. Therefore proper integrity protection mechanism should apply in-

order to minimize or eliminate data disclosure which problems related integrity and

build a secure system.

Availability

Availability is that ensuring authorized principals are able to access the system and

the information in the system as preferred without any delays. According to Stajano

(2002, p.75) when a user issued a request to a particular service, depending on the

corresponding waiting time the threat to availability which is called as Denial of

Service can be determined. Availability is primary important concern in Ubiquitous

Computing. Therefore ubicomp systems should take consideration to denial of

service attacks to ensure the security of ubiquitous environment.

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3.0 AuthenticationAuthentication is a security feature which is used to identify the legitimate users. It is an

essential considerable entity in ubiquitous environment. Security authentication

approaches that are used in current are passwords, PIN codes, biometric information and

use of tokens (badges/rings etc.). According to Mallow (n.d) in-order to increase the

reliability and security of a particular system, some propose security mechanism named

as multi-factor authentication which consists with combination of multiple factors. In

current biometric authentication has become a popular authentication approach while

traditional authentication approaches such as password and username becomes less used

in high security systems. Biometric authentication is discussed further in the following

section.

3.1 Biometric Authentication

Biometric authentication is done by measuring physical / behavioral characteristics of an

individual. It offers to recognize and authenticate users identity via unique

characteristics. There are several biometric authentication approaches available, with

each approach measure different characteristic of human. Biometric authentication

approach offer convenient and secure authentication to any system. Physical biometrics

includes characteristics such as face, iris, retina, hand, fingerprint and DNA while

behavioral biometrics includes signature, voice and keystroke.

The authentication of biometric is performed as follow:

In the enrollment, the sample of biometric characteristics are captured, processed and

converted to digital form (initially the characteristics are in analog form) and stored on a

database. When user is authenticating, the system will be capture another sample

characteristic and compares it with stored templates in the database. The user

authentication is accepted if a template and the sample are similar.

Most common biometric authentication approaches are described as following:

Face recognition - Face recognition measures distance of specific common

features (which is common in any individuals face) such as eyes, position of the

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jaw, chin, width of the node and etc. With use of these measurements the each

person is uniquely identified.

Face thermogram - Face thermogram offers recognition by detecting the heat

patterns of the blood vessels in the face with the use inferred camera. Since it

uses an inferred camera the system is able to authentication any user

independently to the lighting conditions. Face thermogram of a person remain

same throughout the life and it is a unique feature (even identical twins have

different unique thermograms) which will be not change due to any factor.

Fingerprint recognition - Fingerprint of an individual is a unique characteristic

which remains constant throughout a one’s life time. According to the

technovelgy (n.d) fingerprint recognition uses pattern of ridges on the finger and

template is created with the distinctive pattern found in the image. But when

livescan is performed, due to dust, dirt on the finger or scanner it may provide

inaccurate results.

Voice recognition - Voice recognition is performed with measuring the audio

patterns of a individual. Like face authentication the voice authentication is non-

intrusive. (Because it can be performed without users knowledge). But since

voice recognition is affected by certain factors such as background noise, user’s

illnesses, users age may provide inaccurate results.

Retina recognition - This involves reading the blood vessels in retina of the eye.

This is stable input since retina pattern of person remain same over the life time.

But retina recognition is an intrusive mechanism since user is required to place

the eye near to the scanner and user is required to stay 15 seconds for a good

scan.

Iris recognition - Iris recognition measures for the iris patterns and color of the

iris in the eye. A persons iris patterns are unique and remain same throughout the

lifetime. In-order to perform the measurements the factors such as light

conditions, distance between camera and the user are considered. Iris recognition

is an extremely accurate and effective approach.

Hand geometry recognition - Hand geometry recognition involves with

measurements of fingers and hand such as length, width, total area.

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DNA recognition - DNA recognition involves with patterns of genes in DNA of

human.

(Mallow, n.d)

Benefits of biometrics

With use of biometric authentication, security flows of a system can be enhanced.

Biometric authentication approaches are less susceptible from human errors since the

security of a particular device doesn’t depend of human effort. Also biometrics are less

affected by attacker than traditional passwords. Since biometrics are characteristic which

will not require any human remembrance and carrying, it is very convenient for the users

and less prone to misuse compared to other authentication approaches.

3.1.1 Potential threats in biometric authentication

According to U.are.U and DigitalPersona (n.d, p.4) compared to other biometric

authentication approaches fingerprint biometric is more susceptible to threat attacks.

Biometrics readers can often fooled with use of artifacts.

With using fake finger and latent prints over it is a popular approach of attackers

for retrieve the actions of an authorized user. These types of attacks can be

prevented by adding multiple security authentication levels together such as

adding password/ PINs codes to biometric authentication and having multiple

fingerprint scheme or multiple biometric features to authenticate the user.

Biometric and remote authentication

According to Burr (n.d) biometric authentication mechanisms are not very

appropriate to authenticate user through remote authentication servers. They are

more susceptible to internal of external attacks over the servers.

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4.0 Threat scenarios in Ubiquitous ComputingAccording to Mayrhofer (2008, p.8) the threats which related to ubiquitous computing

systems can be categorized in to 3 levels as follow:

4.1 Physical Attacks

Environment of ubiquitous computing is mainly formed with interconnected devices.

Therefore an adversary can create security threats via accessing physical hardware

devices. In such situation attackers can create threats on devices as follow:

4.1.1 Replacement of hardware devices

As Mayrhofer (2008, p.8) mention, adversary may replace the devices to their own

hardware devices which enable adversary to control and interact with other users

without any awareness of the user.

4.1.2 Modification of hardware/software devices

Adversary also may modify hardware/software content which will allow them to change

the functionalities of the devices/application. For example adversary may install

application loggers to capture the user passwords and keys which will allow them for

remotely access and control the users’ sensitive information.

4.1.3 Side-channel attacks

According to Mayrhofer (2008, p.8) side-channel attacks are methods which used to

learn inner functions of a system. Through these attacks adversary will be able to

measure internal data and algorithms measuring with use of statistical approaches via

external measuring. The most common side-channel attacks are related with

electromagnetic radiation and its analysis. For an example such attacks can occur in-

order to determine the embedded cryptographic keys in a cryptosystem.

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4.2 Wireless Attacks

In a ubiquitous computing environment the users are interconnected with use of wireless

network infrastructure. Wireless attacks occur when adversaries use the wireless

communication connection which is between authorized users. Following are different

types of attacks which adversary may perfume.

4.2.1 Eavesdropping

According to OWASP (2008) Eavesdropping is an attack allows adversaries to capture

data packets which transmits over the network between the users and read the sensitive

information such as passwords or any other confidential data of the users without

awareness of the legitimate user. The network eavesdropping is done with the use of tool

named “network sniffers” (OWASP, 2008) and this tool is capable of capturing the

packets which are in the network. According to Mayrhofer (2008, p.8) in-order to

protect sensitive information of the users from eavesdropping attack the messages which

transmits over the network should be encrypted.

Figure 28: Eavesdropping attack in the network

(OWASP, 2009)

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4.2.2 Denial-of-Service (DoS)

According to McDowell (2004) Denial of service (DoS) attack is an attempt of

adversary to make information or services in the network unavailable to the legitimate

users. This denies the legitimate users accessing certain service. The common way of

forming DoS attack is with creating an unnecessary garbage network traffic in-order to

slow down the network. In a ubiquitous environment preventing DoS is important since

all the devices depends each other.

Figure 29: Denial-of-Service Attack

(Flylib.com, 2004 cited in McCullough, 2009)

4.2.3 Message injection

Message injection is threat which allows adversary to send messages with a fake identity

to a legitimate user. If proper authenticate mechanism is not available to authenticate

messages, any legitimate users can be tricked to believe that the messages are sent from

another legitimate user while they are sent from the attacker.

4.2.4 Man-in-the-Middle (MITM)

These types of attacks are powerful threats where adversary gets the control of the

wireless communication link between two devices. According to Spacey (2011) Man in

the middle attack is a common form of eavesdropping. As an effect of Man-in-the-

middle attack, the legitimate users consider that they communicate with each other while

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they actually communicate with the adversary which will block, modify the messages

sent on the link. With use of cryptography protocol and strong authentication will

prevent system from Man-in-the-Middle attacks.

Figure 30: Man-in-the-Middle Attack

(OWASP, 2009)

4.3 Social Attacks

This type of attacks does not attack via hardware, software of wireless communication

link.

4.3.1 Confusion

According to Mayrhofer (2008, p.9) Confusion is a threat which uses services such as

interacting with another user or device than intended to. Mostly this threat causes by

positioning devices close or having similar names and the respective user interface will

take the responsible in order to prevent it. Confusions will also occur by interacting with

malicious services instead of the original one. Generally those kinds of threats are hard

to identify other than some specific programs which takes effective actions against it.

However, different protocols can use to reduce the impact of the threat.

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4.0 Ethical Aspects of Ubiquitous ComputingGreenfild (2006, p.233) has introduced 5 key ethical principles which guide to establish

a secure ubiquitous environments. The ethical principles are as follows:

Ubiquitous system must default to harmlessness

According to Greenfield (2006, p.235) ubiquitous computing systems always

should ensure the users physical, financial and mental safety.

Ubiquitous system must be self-disclosing

Ubiquitous system should always hold and provide information related to its

ownership of the device, use of the device and its capabilities. Self-disclosure

ensures that depending on the level of exposure, the users will be able to make

knowledgeable decisions.

Ubiquitous system must be conservative of face

This principle concerns that ubiquitous systems should not disrespect the users in

such a manner of embarrass or humiliating.

Ubiquitous system must be conservative of time

Ubiquitous systems should not create unnecessary problems which lead to

ordinary operations. If it introduces such problem, there should be a transparent

equivalent to the user to do the same operation.

Ubiquitous system must be deniable

The last principle is that ubiquitous system should always offer its users to select/

make meaningful decisions as they preferred at any time. For example if the user

preferred to stop use the ubiquitous system or some of its features it should be

enabled to user.

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5.0 ConclusionSecurity and privacy of ubiquitous computing environment should always require an

important priority. In future ubiquitous computing will be a powerful technology which

leads the human activities. But without considering the standards of security and ethics

the new technology will not be effective to the user as it requires.

In any ubiquitous device the fundamental properties of security which are

confidentiality, integrity and availability should be well maintained in-order to have a

well secured, successful device. The ubiquitous computing environment consists with

devices interconnected network architecture. Therefore ubiquitous devices are more

prone for attacks if appropriate powerful security mechanisms as not performed.

And also when concerning authentication of ubiquitous environment, biometric

authentication approaches such as face thermogram authentication, fingerprint

authentication are more reliable and convenient than traditional authentication methods.

Though face thermogram authentication requires large capacity storage within few

years’ time there will be mechanism to decrease the capacities of the files. Therefore

with the improvement of the technology these drawbacks will be fade away and will

become more powerful authentication mechanisms in ubiquitous environment.

Currently there are no standardized ethical principles available and which is only

available are ethical guidelines proposed by different recognized authors. Therefore

with use of standardized ethical guidelines will enhance the security of ubiquitous

environment.

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6.0 References Burr, B. (n.d). Biometric Authentication Issues. [Online] Available from:

http://www.secureidnews.com/audio/iab_0908/burr.pdf [Accessed: 25th

September 2011]

DigitalPersona. (n.d). Enhancing Security with Biometric Authentication.

[Online] Available from:

http://www.comptalk.com/documents/white-papers/EnhancingSecurity.pdf


Greenfield, A. (2006). Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing.

California: New Riders.

Mallow, C. (n.d). Authentication Methods and Techniques. [Online] Available

from: http://www.giac.org/cissp-papers/2.pdf [Accessed: 28th September 2011]

Mayrhofer, R. (2008). Ubiquitous Computing Security: Authenticating

Spontaneous Interactions.

McCullough, J. (n.d). Uncovering Denial of Service Attacks. [Online] Available

from: http://flylib.com/books/en/2.827.1.33/1/ [Accessed: 26th September 2011]

Nakashima, H., Aghajan, H. & Augusto, J. (2009). Handbook of Ambient

Intelligence and Smart Environments. [Online] London: Springer. Available

from: http://books.google.lk/books?

id=dc0hNrV0CwMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed:

2nd October 2011]

Simplicable. (2011). Web Security Illustrated. [Online] Available from:

http://simplicable.com/new/web-security-illustrated [Accessed: 26th September

2011]

Stajano, F. (2006). Security for Ubiquitous Computing. England: John Wiley &

Sons, Ltd.

Technovalgy. (n.d). Biometric authentication: What method works best?.

[Online] Available from: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Technology-

Article.asp?ArtNum=16 [Accessed: 29th September 2011]

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http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Technology-Article.asp?ArtNum=16

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Technology-Article.asp?ArtNum=16

http://simplicable.com/new/web-security-illustrated

http://books.google.lk/books?id=dc0hNrV0CwMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.lk/books?id=dc0hNrV0CwMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://flylib.com/books/en/2.827.1.33/1/

http://www.giac.org/cissp-papers/2.pdf

http://www.comptalk.com/documents/white-papers/EnhancingSecurity.pdf

http://www.secureidnews.com/audio/iab_0908/burr.pdf


OWASP. (2011). Network Eavesdropping. [Online] Available from:

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Network_Eavesdropping [Accessed: 30th

September 2011]

OWASP. (2011). Man in the middle attack. [Online] Available from:

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Man-in-the-middle_attack [Accessed: 30th

September 2011]

US-CERT. (2009). National Cyber Alert System. [Online] Available from:

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-015.html [Accessed: 2nd October 2011]

Weiser, M. & Brown, J. (1996). The coming age of calm technology. [Online]

Available from: http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/acmfuture2endnote.htm


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http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/acmfuture2endnote.htm

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-015.html

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Man-in-the-middle_attack

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Network_Eavesdropping


Individual Research on Agents in Ubiquitous Computing

Agent Communication in Ubiquitous Computing

(CB003120) – Eshwaran Veerabahu

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1.0 IntroductionUbiquitous computing is achieved through the interoperability of sensors/actuators,

context-awareness, social computing, continuous computing and digital memories.

While each of the above mentioned components play a major role in ubiquitous

computing; context awareness can be considered as the primary component that drives

ubiquitous computing. Context awareness in essence is a framework which comprises of

the context (which is the information gathered in relation to the questions of who, what,

when, where and why) and agents. Agents can be considered as components of a system

or a software abstraction that assist people and act on their behalf, they are autonomous,

reactive and goal driven. By tying the awareness of the five questions (5w), into an

intelligent system, the context aware framework is able to organize a halo of information

around an individual.

(Mark Weiser, 1996)

In its initial stage, ubiquitous computing was envisioned as multiple computers and other

agents such as sensors etc. working together to achieve the purpose of simplifying

people’s lives while being invisible. Since then a great deal of research has been

conducted towards multi agent systems, which identified key challenges such as

achieving serendipitous interoperability (the ability for agents to discover and utilize

services that they are not familiar with) and an efficient ontology (the hierarchical data

structure that contains the relevant entities and their relationships and rules within a

provided knowledge area), identifying the solutions to these challenges, requires that an

efficient communication network is setup between agents. Hence this research will

cover communication infrastructure and efficient communication strategies that ought to

be practiced for deploying an interoperable multi agent system in ubiquitous computing.

(Kevin Reagan, 2010)

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2.0 Agent Communication Infrastructure in Ubiquitous

ComputingAccording to (Dr.P.C. Jain, 2006) the infrastructure of ubiquitous network is such that, it

would be presented as a federation of networks, where services which are user oriented,

will be available anywhere at any time, at no operational cost. Users, who are an integral

part of ubiquitous computing, are able to access and share information regardless of their

location or the device they are interacting with. This is made possible by the use of

mobile access, broad band and intelligent home appliances that can access the network.

Nano scale computer will be embedded into the user’s environment and objects within

that environment, such that they will be integrated via a wireless network, and also be

linked to the internet. Deploying the communication infrastructure for ubiquitous

computing depends heavily on the combination of IP networks and broad band wireless

access, such that mobile, consumer electronics and optical communications are

combined into one universal network as viewed by (Dr.P.C. Jain, 2006).

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2.1 Smart Agents of the future

(Mark Weiser, 1996) proposed that agents in the future will be able to function more

effectively due to the steady progress made in technologies for sensors, processing

power and memory; this advancement will allow agents in ubiquitous computing to

connect to the internet as much as standalone personal computers. Smart agents will be

optimized to carry out their tasks on their own, which will allow the users to provide

very little effort and technical knowledge to operate them.

All smart agents will possess network embedded processors, since they are crucial for

embedded computing systems.

Most smart devices will be based on present computer hardware technology such as

processors, memory, sensors, input/output devices, communication hardware that is

needed for connecting smart objects and even the interface that acts as a channel

between hardware and software components.

Middleware’s will play a major role in the communication of agents in the future, since

they will define how various agents communicate with each other in a network.

Interactions with a network of smart devices from a human point of view will be

drastically changed since; the smart devices are seamlessly integrated, to provide an

almost unconscious interaction.

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2.2 Identification of Agents in a Vast Network

As expressed by (Dr.P.C. Jain, 2006) identification of devices (agents) is a major

concern in ubiquitous computing. To overcome this problem, RFID tags will be used in

most devices, by means of possessing low powered microchips combined with antenna’s

for communication. A device will possess a unique serial number and harbor

customizable information. This information can be transmitted to devices that are in

close proximity via RF signals. The use of RFID tags or cards, near a device, will allow

for it to be customized suiting the preference of the user in possession of the RFID card.

The figure below shows the use of RFID tags on abstract objects.

Figure 31: Agent Communication Infrastructure in Ubiquitous Computing - Use of RFID tags

( thewirelessreport.com, 2009)

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2.3 AD-Hoc Network for Agents

AD-Hoc network is a local Area Network, which is constructed progressively as

multiple devices (agents) establish connection with the network. This network mode

allows wireless devices (agents) to discover agents within the network range to discover

and communicate directly with each other; it is similar to a peer to peer network

architecture requiring no central access point for agents to relay their communication

from.

(Bradley Mitchell, 2009)

Setting up an AD-Hoc network requires that all wireless agents be configured for AD-

Hoc mode, contrary to the alternative infrastructure mode. Also all wireless agents

within the AD-Hoc network are required to operate with the same SSID as well as the

same channel number.

This network features a small group of devices, most times a group consisting of only

two agents. Since AD-Hoc network mostly features a small group of agents

communicating with each other, proximity between agents is close. Expanding an AD-

Hoc mode network to a larger scale could result in instability of the network and

ultimately become very unstable. Also the performance level of the AD-Hoc network is

bound to suffer if the number of agents in the network grew rapidly.

An agent in an AD-Hoc network which needs to connect to the internet should install a

special-purpose gateway; also AD-Hoc networks cannot be bridge to wired Local Area

Networks.

Hence AD-Hoc network should mostly be established for short term networking and

networking between small devices such as Agents in ubiquitous computing consisting of

sensory agents etc.

2.3.1 Advantages of AD-Hoc Network Mode

Requires no existing infrastructure

Deployment can be done rapidly, and they are self-configuring

Establishing Wireless links

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Since agents (devices) are mostly mobile, the topology can be considered as

dynamic

(Bradley Mitchell, 2009)

2.4 Wide Area Ubiquitous Network (WAUN)

The WAUN communicates small amount of data over a wide area using VHF/UHF

bands. Although considering the advances made in wireless technology such as large

scale Monolithic Microwave IC by using CMOS devices, Diversity Antenna’s and

adaptive modulation and coding the efficiency of this network can be increased in terms

of speed and reach. The areas of application for this network are listed below.

Meter Reading’s (Gas/Water/Power)

Remote Management

Tracking

Environment Monitoring

Community Security

Integrated Connectivity of agents such as mobile nodes, personal computers,

home appliance etc.

Below is an illustration of the WAUN compared with other wireless standards.

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Figure 32: Agent Communication Infrastructure in Ubiquitous Computing - Comparison of WAUN with other Wireless Standards

( ntt.co.jp, 2009 )

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3.0 Efficient Communication Strategies for Agents(Jurriaan van Diggelen, 2008) identified that the main challenge in achieving

serendipitous interoperability is that it excludes the possibility to deploy a

communication network between the agents (system components) in advance; this is

caused due to the inability to specify which agent relays which information to which

other agent. The most efficient method of going around this problem is by specifying the

information needs of an agent at design time, and allowing the agent to compute how to

obtain this information at run time. Thus agents are required to have the correct

communicative skills to set up a communication network such that they can exchange

sufficient information amongst them.

Although sufficient information sharing is encouraged between agents, they should

avoid exchanging information that is not required for them to function efficiently.

Agents should only be required to exchange information that is necessary due to the

following reasons.

To avoid information overload since they could lead to over exertion of

hardware resources.

Models that consist of mobile devices with limited energy can be affected by

information overload, since mobile communication is heavy on power

consumption.

Models which might also involve humans can be affected, since humans are

more prone to information overload than computers.

The above discussed problem can be tackled by agents dynamically deploying a

communication structure amongst them, which would allow them to exchange sufficient

information using very few messages as possible.

The above solution is derived with the use of Qualitative AI which uses layered

structures of ontologies which are formalized in logic; agents thereafter can use

ontological reasoning to decide what information they require from which other agent.

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Quantitative AI based solutions can also be applied to this problem, which will allow the

usage of decision trees and probability theory; these will be discussed in depth later in

this report.

When discussing efficient communication strategies for agents, it is important to take

into consideration minimizing communication loads, this can be achieved by agents

adopting efficiency measures such as:

Applying decision trees to determine the order in which information needs to be

acquired.

Using efficient interaction Query and Publish/Subscribe mechanisms.

Using Conditional Subscription mechanism, which allows the agent to be

notified about something when a condition is true.

The above discussed efficiency mechanisms will be discussed in detail later in this

report.

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3.1 Layered Ontologies

Ontologies are structural frameworks that can be used to organize information, they also

represents knowledge as being a set of concepts within a domain and relationships that

exist between those concepts. This can be used to describe the domain and reason about

the entities of that domain.

Ontologies are primarily used in the following fields –

Artificial Intelligence

Software Engineering

Semantic Web

Information Architecture

Library Science

Maintaining a common ontology is identified as the best way to achieve mutual

understanding between agents, since it prompts the agents to use terms that represent the

same meaning. However since ubiquitous computing, comprises of different

components, it results in the existence of heterogeneous ontologies hence these

components tend to represent information in different ways (Components tend to view

and interpret the word differently), hindering the ability for agents to communicate with

each other.

To overcome this problem, agents will have to adapt to layered ontologies where each

agent will have part of its ontology that is common to parts of other agent’s ontology.

This way every agent has the ability to maintain its own ontology that is customized to

suit its task as well as use the parts of its ontology that is common to other agent’s

ontology, for communication purposes.

(Peter J. Werkhoven,2008)

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Figure 33:Agent Communication - Layered Ontologies

(Jurriaan van Diggelen, 2008)

The above figure is an example that illustrates the use of layered ontology for

communication in a multi agent system in ubiquitous computing. In this example the

PDA (Agent 3) deals with a high level concept of what constitutes a crisis level. The

other component (Agent 2) has less abstract information such as fire and other hazards,

the sensory agent (Agent 1) possess low level information such as the temperature of an

environment.

The ontology of each of these agents is composed of several contexts, which are then

related by the translations of the contexts between them, specified by mappings. As

shown above each concept (e.g. Temperature) belong to a specific context (e.g. Temp),

Agent 3’s ontology consist of concepts from two contexts (Fire and Temp), hence Agent

3 relates context Fire with context Crisis by means of mapping, which is indicated in the

figure above by a blue layer.

Given that a wireless ad-hoc network exists, allowing agents to pick up on each other’s

presence, explore the contexts that are embed within each other’s ontologies and also

transfer data to each other. A communication path is initiated to resolve the information

need of an agent. Taking into consideration the above example, Agent 3 finds the need

for the information (Crisis: Dangerous). To satisfy its information needs for the concept

(Dangerous), it starts searching other agent’s ontologies that’s contain the concept

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(Dangerous), since no other agent has this concept Agent 3 translates the concept

(Dangerous) into a lower level concept (Fire) via the usage of mapping. The concept fire

can be there for be queried to Agent 2 which is familiar with the concept, but needs to

translate the concept (Fire) to a lower level concept (Temperature), such that it can pass

on the query to Agent 1, and since Agent 1 is a sensory agent, it is able to obtain

information directly from the world, this transition marks the end of the chain of queries.

3.1.1 Agent Knowledge Representation

(Jurriaan van Diggelen, 2008) identified that the knowledge base of an agent is

formalized in description logic and it consists of two main parts, a TBox and an ABox.

Figure 1 only illustrates a TBox. The TBox of an agent’s knowledge base implements

the ontology of it, while storing concepts and their relationships within itself. The ABox

stores sentences that are constructed by the usage of concepts. In its initial stage it is

believed to be empty, but it grows as the agent comes into contact with other agents or

senses its environment.

3.2 Communication Mechanism

This section of the report focuses on how efficiently agents information needs can be

met. This section will also focuses on which concepts from contexts within other agents

qualify as informative to agents information needs, as well as determine the best order in

which to obtain information within the concepts. Also this section will highlight the

different interaction mechanisms that agents can use to obtain information.


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3.2.1 Informative Concepts

This communication mechanism enhances agent communication by preventing queries

being posed which can be considered as less resourceful for solving a particular

information need of an agent. Considering this is mechanism in real life human context,

in a scenario such as when a traffic warden is inquiring about, the reason as to why the

driver failed to stop at the signal. The traffic warden is most likely to inquire about the

possibility of the driver being under the influence of alcohol, rather than inquire about

the type of shoes the driver is wearing.

Agents which are communicating with each other need precise rules that need to be set,

to implement the above discussed property. This can be done by specifying in the

description logic, when a concept in one context qualifies as important informative

concept in another context.

At times importance of a concept can only be realized by posing multiple queries to

multiple agents; this process is known as query dissemination. The process of querying

informative concepts can be considered as similar to the chaining expert systems, where

to realize the truth value of an outcome, all truth values of the queries that support and

are part of the main query should be known. Hence the outcome of these sub queries can

be regarded as informative.


3.2.2 Decision Trees

It is important to realize that not all queries resolve an agents information need, there

can be instances where an agent queries the informative concept of another agent, and

have a negative response or have no response at all, leaving the agent information need

unsatisfied. To overcome this problem, it is always better to anticipate on an expected

answer, when deciding which informative concepts need to be queried first e.g. (in the

real world an investigator working for the fire department might first base his questions

on the frequently occurring causes of fire accidents rather than base questions on the

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least likely to occur causes ). To apply this same mechanism in agent communication, a

quantitative measure known as the “information gain” is used. This measure allows the

agent to gain an insight as to how close the agent is getting to satisfy its information

need by targeting its queries towards a specific concept.

Information gain measures the expected reduction in information entropy (which

measures the purity of information), this process allows for reducing information load,

by means of agents basing their queries on concepts that have the highest information

gain. Then by repeatedly organizing the concepts in order based on their information

gain, decision trees can be constructed which will inform the agent, the order in which

the concepts are to be queried. The construction of the decision tree is primarily done by

ID3 algorithms. The figure below illustrates the process of deriving decision trees for

agents to identify the order in which they are supposed to query concepts.

(Robert-Jan Beun, 2008)

Figure 34: Agent Communication - Using Information Gain to Derive Decision Trees

(Robert-Jan Beun, 2008)

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3.2.3 Querying & Subscribing

There are two main types of interaction mechanisms in ubiquitous computing, they are

Querying and Subscribing. When an agent queries for the truth value of concept, the

agent is bound to attain information regardless of whether the concept returns true or

false. When an agent subscribes to a concept, the agent is only notified when the concept

returns true, when no notification is received, the agent assumes that the concept doesn’t

abide to its information requirement, hence the subscribe protocol can be considered as

an interaction mechanism in ubiquitous computing that allows for efficient information.

(Rogier M. van Eijk, 2008)

3.2.4 Conditional Subscriptions

This interaction mechanism allows for agents to request and receive information given

that some conditions are met. This mode of interaction mechanism is especially useful,

when information that are retrieved from two different agents need to be combined to

arrive at a conclusion. Considering the figure given below, Agent-5 is in need of

information (e.g. information that constitutes a snow storm), to satisfy this information

requirement, Agent-5 must obtain information in terms of truth values from concept D

from Agent-1 and concept C from Agent -2. Assuming that Concept D denotes the truth

value for “high snow levels” and Concept C denotes the truth values for “Aggressive

Winds”. In a day to day context, Concept D (high snow levels) and Concept C

(aggressive winds) can frequently occur true, but very rarely do they occur true at the

same time. Since Agent-5 is subscribed to both of the agents for concept C and D, it is

bound to receive a large amount of notifications. This can be avoided by the usage of

conditional subscription where Agent-5 can request to send notification about concept C

only when concept D is true as well. This requires that Agent-1 have information on

Concept C, which it can obtain from Agent-2.

86


Figure 35: Agent Communication - Conditional Subscription and Redirected Information Flow

(Jurriaan van Diggelen, 2008)

87


4.0 Conclusion Agents, who are the most integral part of the UC paradigm, allowed me to conclude, that

communication amongst these agents is as important as agents themselves. Since

integration of agents enhance the UC paradigm to unprecedented levels.

While having established that seamless communication amongst agents is important, its

should be realized that efficient communication is also important.

This will allow for efficient usage of resources, which agents in ubiquitous computing

have in limited levels.

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5.0 Reference Jurriaan van Diggelen, Robbert-Jan Beun, Rogier M. van Eijk, Peter J.

Werkhoven (2008). Agent Communication in Ubiquitous Computing: the

Ubismart Approach. Netherlands: anon. p1 - p2.

Bradley Mitchell. (2009). What is Ad-Hoc Mode in Wireless Networking?.

Available:

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessfaqs/f/adhocwireless.html. Last

accessed 28th Sep 2011.

Anon. (2011). What is Ad-Hoc Mode in Wireless Networking?. Available:

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessfaqs/f/adhocwireless.html. Last


Kevin Reagen. (2010). Ubiquitious Computing. Available:

http://www.slideshare.net/kmregan/ubiquitous-computing-2179363. Last


NTT. (2009). Wide Area Ubiquitous Network compared with other wireless

networks. Available:

http://www.ntt.co.jp/mirai/e/organization/organization0101.html. Last accessed

28th Sep 2011.

Jurriaan van Diggelen, Robbert-Jan Beun, Rogier M. van Eijk, Peter J.

Werkhoven (2008). Agent . (2008). Layered Ontologies. Available:

www.cs.uu.nl/research/projects/icis/IA/AAMAS08.pdf. Last accessed 26th Sep

2011.


Werkhoven (2008). Agent . (2008).Communication Mechanism. Available:


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thewirelessreport. (2009). RFID tracking capabilities. Available:

http://www.thewirelessreport.com/2006/06/20/canadas-privacy-commissioner-

says-rfid-tracking-capabilities-sh/. Last accessed 28th


Werkhoven (2008). Agent . (2008). Decision Trees. Available:


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Werkhoven (2008). Agent . (2008). Query vs Subscribe. Available:


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Dr.P.C.Jain. (2006). Ubiquitous Computing and Communication – An

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%202009/Paper/Ubiquitous/UbiquitousComp.pdf. Last accessed

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ubiquitous computing

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