Abstract: The Internet is continuously changing and evolving. The main communication form of present Internet is human-human. The Internet of Things (IoT) can be considered as the future evaluation of the Internet that realizes machine-to-machine (M2M) learning. Thus, IoT provides connectivity for everyone and everything. The IoT embeds some intelligence in Internet-connected objects to communicate, exchange information, take decisions, invoke actions and provide amazing services. This paper addresses the existing development trends, the generic architecture of IoT, its distinguishing features and possible future applications. This paper also forecast the key challenges associated with the development of IoT. The IoT is getting increasing popularity for academia, industry as well as government that has the potential to bring significant personal, professional and economic benefits.

Abstract: A smart home is an application of ubiquitous computing in which the home environment is monitored by ambient intelligence to provide context-aware services and facilitate remote home control. This paper presents an overview of previous smart home research as well as the associated technologies. A brief discussion on the building blocks of smart homes and their interrelationships is presented. It describes collective information about sensors, multimedia devices, communication protocols, and systems, which are widely used in smart home implementation. Special algorithms from different fields and their significance are explained according to their scope of use in smart homes. This paper also presents a concrete guideline for future researchers to follow in developing a practical and sustainable smart home.

Abstract: With the advent internet in the 1990s to the present day facilities of ubiquitous computing, the internet has changed the computing world in a drastic way. It has traveled from the concept of parallel computing to distributed computing to grid computing and recently to cloud computing. Although the idea of cloud computing has been around for quite some time, it is an emerging field of computer science. Cloud computing can be defined as a computing environment where computing needs by one party can be outsourced to another party and when need be arise to use the computing power or resources like database or emails, they can access them via internet. Cloud computing is a recent trend in IT that moves computing and data away from desktop and portable PCs into large data centers. The main advantage of cloud computing is that customers do not have to pay for infrastructure, its installation, required man power to handle such infrastructure and maintenance. In this paper we will discuss what makes all this possible, what is the architectural design of cloud computing and its applications.

Abstract: We extend the computation and information sharing capabilities of networked robotics by proposing a cloud robotic architecture. The cloud robotic architecture leverages the combination of an ad-hoc cloud formed by machine-to-machine (M2M) communications among participating robots, and an infrastructure cloud enabled by machine-to-cloud (M2C) communications. Cloud robotics utilizes an elastic computing model, in which resources are dynamically allocated from a shared resource pool in the ubiquitous cloud, to support task offloading and information sharing in robotic applications. We propose and evaluate communication protocols, and several elastic computing models to handle different applications. We discuss the technical challenges in computation, communications and security, and illustrate the potential benefits of cloud robotics in different applications.

Abstract: Pervasive healthcare applications utilizing body sensor networks generate a vast amount of data that need to be managed and stored for processing and future usage. Cloud computing among with the Internet of Things (IoT) concept is a new trend for efficient managing and processing of sensor data online. This paper presents a platform based on Cloud Computing for management of mobile and wearable healthcare sensors, demonstrating this way the IoT paradigm applied on pervasive healthcare.

Abstract: Ubiquitous computing has a grand vision. Even the name of the area identifies its universalizing scope. In this, it follows in a long tradition of projects that attempt to create new models and paradigms that unite disparate, distributed elements into a large conceptual whole. We link concerns in ubiquitous computing into a colonial intellectual tradition and identify the problems that arise in consequence, explore the locatedness of innovation, and discuss strategies for decolonizing ubicomp's research methodology.

Abstract: Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) which combines mobile computing and cloud computing, has become one of the industry buzz words and a major discussion thread in the IT world since 2009. As MCC is still at the early stage of development, it is necessary to grasp a thorough understanding of the technology in order to point out the direction of future research. With the latter aim, this paper presents a review on the background and principle of MCC, characteristics, recent research work, and future research trends. A brief account on the background of MCC: from mobile computing to cloud computing is presented and then followed with a discussion on characteristics and recent research work. It then analyses the features and infrastructure of mobile cloud computing. The rest of the paper analyses the challenges of mobile cloud computing, summary of some research projects related to this area, and points out promising future research directions.

Abstract: Semantic modeling for the Internet of Things has become fundamental to resolve the problem of interoperability given the distributed and heterogeneous nature of the "Things". Most of the current research has primarily focused on devices and resources modeling while paid less attention on access and utilisation of the information generated by the things. The idea that things are able to expose standard service interfaces coincides with the service oriented computing and more importantly, represents a scalable means for business services and applications that need context awareness and intelligence to access and consume the physical world information. We present the design of a comprehensive description ontology for knowledge representation in the domain of Internet of Things and discuss how it can be used to support tasks such as service discovery, testing and dynamic composition.

Abstract: Seamless migration is one of pervasive computing applications. The function of seamless mobility is suitable for mobile services such as mobile Web-based learning. In this paper, we propose an approach that supports an attentive mobile learning paradigm. This mobile learning dynamically follows the user from place to place and machine to machine without user's awareness or intervention by active service. This capability can be obtained by component-based smart system and agent-based migrating mechanism. To demonstrate the approach, the theoretical background of fuzzy-neural network for attentive service will be explained. The proposed fusion decision method is based on fuzzy-neural network which can make the input signal data to fuse better. Using online tuning, the fusion processing can be accelerated and the fusion belief degree can be improved. Description of mobile learning task and migrating granularity of the task is suggested. The design of the seamless migration mechanism is introduced. This includes solving several important sub-problems, such as transferring delay, transferring failure, and residual computation dependency. Our implemented system for attentive mobile learning based on seamless migration is presented. The validity comparison and evaluation of this kind of mobile learning paradigm is shown by experimental demos. This suggested attentive mobile learning paradigm based on seamless migration is useful and convenient to mobile learners.

Abstract: In 2009, two workshops exploring urban informatics were held: and inquiry into the changing landscape of technology-enabled engagement with communities, cities and spaces was presented at both of these events. From these gatherings of international scholarship and research, the book, From social butterfly to engaged citizen: Urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing and mobile technology to support citizen engagement, was compiled. Within these agglomerations, through the lens of the emerging field of urban informatics, both the citizen and citizenship are under scrutiny. There is a clear sense of positioning urban informatics to play a role in the development of the public sphere and community. The editors are acutely aware of the challenge confronting them in their explorations of relations between the social, technology and space, noting a need to apply new hybridities, concepts, theories and methods for understanding such relationships. The book addresses five themes: theories of engagement; civic engagement; creative engagement; technologies of engagement; and design engagement. Obviously, engagement is a core organising thematic and, as both idea and ideal are explored in its breadth, not all engagement is the same. The critical question, as the editors describe, is to understand how various technologies can be harnessed for engagement to pursue diverse ends, including better engagement. However, in itself engagement is not tantamount to citizenship: it is one of many citizenship practices. As Iveson writes, it is not sufficient to facilitate citizen participation, but rather to ask 'What is the vision of the good citizen and the good city they seek to enact?' While technologies do not create the citizen, strategies of citizenship are enacted with and through them. The participation of citizens is not the only hallmark of progressive or empowering urban governance. Consequently, many of the projects in the book address engagement in terms of a communicative, conversational or informational process, for example 'Climate on the Wall'

Abstract: This retrospective on 20 years of ubiquitous computing research identifies opportunities for leveraging utility computing and the Internet of Things to grow the ubicomp infrastructure, and discusses remaining challenges to taking ubicomp systems to where they indeed become ubiquitous.

Abstract: Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space by Mark Shepard, ed. (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2011) Pp. 220, $24.95 (Paperback) Sentient City: Ubiq...

Abstract: This paper presents the Content Aware Network designed as one of the Parallel Internets developed on Virtual Infrastructure The CAN is a post-IP network designed to facilitate access to multimedia content in large scale environment We introduce the proposed CAN network architecture and discuss mechanisms and algorithms required to assure ubiquitous content access and efficient content delivery In particular, we propose new content naming and resolution schemes, an effective content source selection algorithm, which optimize resource utilization and the flexible content delivery method Moreover, we present developed prototype and numerical results illustrating effectiveness of proposed CAN delivery method

Abstract: The recent trend of ubiquitous access to embedded physical devices over the Internet as well as increasing penetration of wireless protocols such as ZigBee has raised attention to smart homes. These systems consist of sensors, devices and smart appliances that can be monitored and controlled remotely by human users and cloud services. However, the lack of a de facto communication standard for smart homes creates a barrier against the interoperability of devices from different vendors. We address this challenge by proposing a holistic, extensible software architecture that seamlessly integrates heterogeneous protocol- and vendor-specific devices and services, while making these services securely available over the Internet. Our architecture is developed on top of the OSGi framework and incorporates a semantic model of a smart home system. As a result, we achieve semantic interoperability -- the ability to integrate new applications and drivers into the deployed system during runtime. Furthermore, we integrate a new access control model for specific smart home scenarios. As a proof of our concept, we demonstrate the seamless semantic discovery of home devices at runtime by integrating several protocols including X10, Insteon, ZigBee and UPnP into a real test. Using smart phones and cloud services together with our home gateway implementation, we further demonstrate the ease of integration of new applications and drivers.

Abstract: A new paradigm for ubiquitous healthcare characterized by pervasive continuous vital sign data collection, real-time processing of monitored data to derive meaningful physiological parameters, and context-aware data- and patient-centric decision making, is central to deliver personalized healthcare solutions to the elderly and the physically challenged. However, this new paradigm requires real-time processing of wirelessly collected vital signs using inherently complex physiological models and analysis of the processed information under context (e.g., location, ambient conditions, current physical activity) to extract knowledge about the health condition of patients. As the computational capabilities of biomedical sensor nodes are insufficient to run these models, this article presents an innovative resource provisioning framework that organizes and harnesses the computing capabilities of under-utilized electronic devices in the vicinity (e.g., laptops, tablets, PDAs, DVRs, medical terminals) in home and hospital settings. Novel wireless communication solutions for reliable vital sign transmission and algorithms for acquiring context awareness to support this framework are also discussed.

Abstract: Weiser's landmark Scientific American article inspired many researchers to explore an exciting socio-technical vision of a third generation of computing. At the 21st anniversary of that published vision, I want to assess ubicomp's maturity and explore the identity challenge it faces. Today, ubicomp as a niche research topic no longer makes sense; we must celebrate its "disappearance" as a well-scoped research agenda because it has become a profound agenda across most of computing, and beyond. This should not be surprising; the 2nd generation of computing, the personal computer revolution, experienced the same profound disappearance. In celebration of this imminent disappearance, I will highlight the unique contributions of the ubicomp community, express some remaining intellectual challenges, and speculate on how to formulate new visions of computing that might succeed this third generation.

Abstract: As smartphones get smarter by pushing intelligence to the phone and computing cloud, they'll start to understand our life patterns, reason about our health and wellbeing, help us navigate our day, and intervene on our behalf. Here, the authors present various smartphone sensing systems that they've built, arguing that, eventually, these smartphones will evolve into cognitive phones.

Abstract: Ubiquitous computing and our cultural life promise to become completely interwoven: technical currents feed into our screen culture of digital television, video, home computers, movies, and high-resolution advertising displays. Technology has become at once larger and smaller, mobile and ambient. In Throughout, leading writers on new media--including Jay David Bolter, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Lev Manovich--take on the crucial challenges that ubiquitous and pervasive computing pose for cultural theory and criticism. The thirty-foure contributing researchers consider the visual sense and sensations of living with a ubicomp culture; electronic sounds from the uncanny to the unremarkable; the effects of ubicomp on communication, including mobility, transmateriality, and infinite availability; general trends and concrete specificities of interaction designs; the affectivity in ubicomp experiences, including performances; context awareness; and claims on the "real" in the use of such terms as "augmented reality" and "mixed reality."

Abstract: Virtual environments have always been considered as a means for more visceral and efficient human computer interaction by a diversified range of applications. The spectrum of applications includes analysis of complex scientific data, medical training, military simulation, phobia therapy and virtual prototyping. Evolution of ubiquitous computing, current user interaction approaches with keyboard, mouse and pen are not sufficient for the still widening spectrum of Human computer interaction. Gloves and sensor based trackers are unwieldy, constraining and uncomfortable to use. Due to the limitation of these devices the useable command set based diligences is also limited. Direct use of hands as an input device is an innovative method for providing natural Human Computer Interaction which has its inheritance from textbased interfaces through 2D graphical-based interfaces, multimedia-supported interfaces, to full-fledged multi-participant Virtual Environment (VE) systems. Conceiving a future era of human-computer interaction with the implementations of 3D application where the user may be able to move and rotate objects simply by moving and rotating his hand - all without help of any input device. The research effort centralizes on the efforts of implementing an application that employs computer vision algorithms and gesture recognition techniques which in turn results in developing a low cost interface device for interacting with objects in virtual environment using hand gestures. The prototype architecture of the application comprises of a central computational module that applies the camshift technique for tracking of hands and its gestures. Haar like technique has been utilized as a classifier that is creditworthy for locating hand position and classifying gesture. The patterning of gestures has been done for recognition by mapping the number of defects that is formed in the hand with the assigned gestures. The virtual objects are produced using Open GL library. This hand gesture recognition technique aims to substitute the use of mouse for interaction with the virtual objects. This will be useful to promote controlling applications like virtual games, browsing images etc in virtual environment using hand gestures.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) term is recently emerging to envision a global infrastructure of networked physical objects. As different definitions of IoT do currently exist, we specifically refer to IoT as a loosely coupled, decentralized system of smart objects (SOs), which are autonomous physical/digital objects augmented with sensing/actuating, processing, and networking capabilities. SOs are able to sense, log, and interpret information generated within themselves and around the neighboring external world where they are situated, act on their own, cooperate with each other, and exchange information with humans. The development of a IoT based on SOs raises many issues involving hw/sw system architecture and application development methodology. A few approaches (e.g. FedNet, UbiComp, Smart Products) have been to date proposed to support the vision of an SO-based IoT infrastructure. In this paper we first discuss the suitability of the agent paradigm and technology to effectively support the development of such an IoT infrastructure and then propose a multi-layered agent-based architecture for the development of proactive, cooperating and context-aware smart objects. Our architecture takes into account a wide variety of smart objects, from reactive to proactive, from small to very large, from stand-alone to social. The implementation phase can be based on multiple agent languages and platforms (JADE, JADEX, LEAP, MAPS) atop heterogeneous computing systems (computers, smartphones, and sensor nodes).

Abstract: Modern mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have made many pervasive computing dreams come true. Still, many mobile applications do not perform well due to the shortage of resources for computation, data storage, network bandwidth, and battery capacity. While such applications can be re-designed with client-server models to benefit from cloud services, the users are no longer in full control of the application, which has become a serious concern for data security and privacy. In addition, the collaboration between a mobile device and a cloud server poses complex performance issues associated with the exchange of application state, synchronization of data, network condition, etc. In this work, a novel mobile cloud execution framework is proposed to execute mobile applications in a cloud-based virtualized execution environment controlled by mobile applications and users, with encryption and isolation to protect against eavesdropping from cloud providers. Under this framework, several efficient schemes have been developed to deal with technical issues for migrating applications and synchronizing data between execution environments. The communication issues are also addressed in the virtualization execution environment with probabilistic communication Quality-of-Service (QoS) technique to support timely application migration.