Ubiquitous Computing

Introduction & Definition

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.

Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences. 

In Ubiquitous computing human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.

History of research

            Mark Weiser introduced the phrase ‘ubiquitous computing’ in 1988 during his tenure as chief technologist of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He wrote some early papers on the subject to define and give more information on the subject with the inportant concerns regarding the subject.

            Some more contribution to the field was also given by MIT at media labs in form of consortium by Hiroshi Ishii. Also Georgia Tech's College of Computing, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, UC Irvine's Department of Informatics, Microsoft Research, Intel Research and Equator, Ajou University UCRi & CUS were some of the contributions.

Concept of ubiquitous computing

Ubiquitous computing presents challenges across computer science: in systems design and engineering, in systems modeling, and in user interface design. Contemporary human-computer interaction models, whether command-line, menu-driven, or GUI-based, are inappropriate for the ubiquitous case, natural interaction paradigm will be needed for interaction.

Three forms of ubiquitous system devices are

1.      Dust

2.      Skin

3.      Clay

1. Dust – Dust are tiny devices without visual display. They are autonomous sensing and communication devices in cubic millimetre.

E.g.- Sensors for temperature, humidity, light, motion, in product monitoring, car monitoring, etc.

2. Skin – Skin are the fabrics made of light emitting and conductive polymers. They can be grouped to form flexible display surfaces like on cloths.

E.g.- OLED displays.

3. Clay – Ensembles of “Dust” systems formed into arbitrary 3D shapes resembling many physical objects. 

Advantages

• Facilitating human-computer interaction
• Advancement from the desktop paradigm
• Small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices
• Integrated into everyday objects and activities
• Context awareness.

Applications

1. Natalie Jeremijenko's "Live Wire" - For indication of traffic.
2. Ambient Devices' orb - For receiving data from a wireless network and report current events, such as stock prices and the weather