This paper proposes a formal approach of verifying ubiquitous computing application scenarios. Ubiquitous computing application scenarios assume that there are a lot of devices and physical things with computation and communication capabilities, which are called smart objects, and these are interacted with each other. Each of these interactions among smart objects is called “federation”, and these federations form a ubiquitous computing application scenario. Previously, Yuzuru Tanaka proposed “a proximity-based federation model among smart objects”, which is intended for liberating ubiquitous computing from stereotyped application scenarios. However, there are still challenges to establish the verification method of this model. This paper proposes a verification method of this model through model checking. Model checking is one of the most popular formal verification approach and it is often used in various fields of industry. Model checking is conducted using a Kripke structure which is a formal state transition model. We introduce a context catalytic reaction network (CCRN) to handle this federation model as a formal state transition model. We also give an algorithm to transform a CCRN into a Kripke structure and we conduct a case study of ubiquitous computing scenario verification, using this algorithm and the model checking. Finally, we discuss the advantages of our formal approach by showing the difficulties of our target problem experimentally.

Context awareness is one of the ultimate goals of ubiquitous computing, and spatial information plays an important role in building context awareness. In this paper, we propose a new interoperable spatial information model, which is based on ucode relation (ucR) and Place Identifier (PI), for realizing ubiquitous spatial infrastructure. In addition, we propose a design environment for spatial information database using our model. Our model is based on ucode and its relation. ucode is 128 bits number and the number itself has no meaning. Hence, it is difficult to manage the relation between ucodes without using a tool. Our design environment provides to describe connection between each ucode visually and is able to manipulate data using the target space map interactively. To evaluate the proposed model and environment, we designed three spaces using our tool. In addition, we developed a web application using our spatial model. From evaluation, we have been showed that our model is effective and our design environment is useful to develop our spatial information model.

This paper proposes a system called Neary that detects conversational fields based on similarity of auditory situation among users. The similarity of auditory situation between each pair of the users is measured by the similarity of frequency property of sound captured by head-worn microphones of the individual users. Neary is implemented with a simple algorithm and runs on portable PCs. Experimental result shows Neary can successfully distinguish groups of conversations and track dynamic changes of them. This paper also presents two examples of Neary deployment to detect user contexts during experience sharing in touring at the zoo and attending an academic conference.

Recent Location Based Services (LBS) extend not only information services such as car navigation services, but supporting various applications such as augmented reality and emergency services in ubiquitous computing environments. However location based services in the ubiquitous computing environment bring several security issues such as location privacy and forgery. While the privacy of the location based service is considered as the important security issue, security against location forgery is less considered. In this paper, we propose improved Han et al.'s protocol [1] that provides more lightweight computation. Our proposed model also improves the credibility of LBS by deploying multiple location sensing technologies.

Automatic recognition of finger gestures can be used for promotion of life quality. For example, a senior citizen can control the home appliance, call for help in emergency, or even communicate with others through simple finger gestures. Here, we focus on one-stroke finger gesture, which are intuitive to be remembered and performed. In this paper, we proposed and evaluated an accelerometer-based method for detecting the predefined one-stroke finger gestures from the data collected using a MEMS 3D accelerometer worn on the index finger. As alternative to the optoelectronic, sonic and ultrasonic approaches, the accelerometer-based method is featured as self-contained, cost-effective, and can be used in noisy or private space. A compact wireless sensing mote integrated with the accelerometer, called MagicRing, is developed to be worn on the finger for real data collection. A general definition on one-stroke gesture is given out, and 12 kinds of one-stroke finger gestures are selected from human daily activities. A set of features is extracted among the candidate feature set including both traditional features like standard deviation, energy, entropy, and frequency of acceleration and a new type of feature called relative feature. Both subject-independent and subject-dependent experiment methods were evaluated on three kinds of representative classifiers. In the subject-independent experiment among 20 subjects, the decision tree classifier shows the best performance recognizing the finger gestures with an average accuracy rate for 86.92 %. In the subject-dependent experiment, the nearest neighbor classifier got the highest accuracy rate for 97.55 %.

Context-aware systems detect user's physical and social contexts based on sensor networks, and provide services that adapt to the user accordingly. Representing, detecting, and managing the contexts are important issues in context-aware systems. Composition of contexts is a useful method for these works, since it can detect a context by automatically composing small pieces of information to discover service. Danger-aware services are a kind of context-aware services which need description of relations between a user and his/her surrounding objects and between users. However when applying the existing composition methods to danger-aware services, they show the following shortcomings that (1) they have not provided an explicit method for representing composition of multi-user' contexts, (2) there is no flexible reasoning mechanism based on similarity of contexts, so that they can just provide services exactly following the predefined context reasoning rules. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a two-stage composition method based on context similarity to solve the above problems. The first stage is composition of the useful information to represent the context for a single user. The second stage is composition of multi-users' contexts to provide services by considering the relation of users. Finally the danger degree of the detected context is computed by using context similarity between the detected context and the predefined context. Context is dynamically represented based on two-stage composition rules and a Situation theory based Ontology, which combines the advantages of Ontology and Situation theory. We implement the system in an indoor ubiquitous environment, and evaluate the system through two experiments with the support of subjects. The experiment results show the method is effective, and the accuracy of danger detection is acceptable to a danger-aware system.

This paper proposes a novel service configuration approach that can realize dynamic critical Quality of Service (QoS) adaptation to ever-changing and resource-limited ubiquitous computing environments. In the approach, service configuration is reduced to a Fuzzy Control System (FCS) which aims to achieve critical QoS variations on minimal level with less power cost. Two configuration strategies, service chain reconfiguration and QoS parameters adjustment, along with a configuration algorithm, are implemented to handle different types of QoS variations. A self-optimizing algorithm is designed to enhance the adaptation of the FCS. Simulation results validate the proposed approach.

This paper proposes a MAC protocol for presence information discovery in ubiquitous networks. The proposed protocol is designed for proactive discovery in which wireless devices periodically broadcast packets containing presence information. The protocol is based on Framed Aloha. The objective of the protocol is to assure the discovery time of single-hop neighbors considering wireless collisions and also power consumption. In this paper, we show that the proposed protocol is able to assure specified discovery time in distributed networks with random topology.

A component framework for building and operating visual interfaces for context-aware services in ubiquitous computing environments is presented. By using a compound-document technology, it provides physical entities, places, stationary or mobile computing devices, and services with visual components as multimedia representations to enable them to be annotated and controlled them. It can automatically assemble visual components into a visual interface for monitoring and managing context-aware services according to the spatial-containment relationships between their targets in the physical world by using underlying location-sensing systems. End-users can manually deploy and customize context-aware services through user-friendly GUI-based manipulations for editing documents. This paper presents the design for this framework and describes its implementation and practical applications in user/location-aware assistant systems in two museums.

The steady approach of advanced nations toward realization of ubiquitous computing societies has given birth to rapidly growing demands for new-generation distributed computing (DC) applications. Consequently, economic and reliable construction of new-generation DC applications is currently a major issue faced by the software technology research community. What is needed is a new-generation DC software engineering technology which is at least multiple times more effective in constructing new-generation DC applications than the currently practiced technologies are. In particular, this author believes that a new-generation building-block (BB), which is much more advanced than the current-generation DC object that is a small extension of the object model embedded in languages C++, Java, and C#, is needed. Such a BB should enable systematic and economic construction of DC applications that are capable of taking critical actions with 100-microsecond-level or even 10-microsecond-level timing accuracy, fault tolerance, and security enforcement while being easily expandable and taking advantage of all sorts of network connectivity. Some directions considered worth pursuing for finding such BBs are discussed.

We present a model checking approach to the rationale, implementation, and applications of a query language for location-based services. Such query mechanisms are necessary so that users, objects, and/or services can effectively benefit from the location-awareness of their surrounding environment. The underlying data model is founded on a symbolic model of space organized in a tree structure. Once extended to a semantic model for modal logic, we regard location query processing as a model checking problem, and thus define location queries as hybrid logic-based formulas. Our approach is unique to existing research because it explores the connection between location models and query processing in ubiquitous computing systems, relies on a sound theoretical basis, and provides modal logic-based query mechanisms for expressive searches over a decentralized data structure. A prototype implementation is also presented and will be discussed.

The roaming services with the predefined security associations among the entities in various networks are especially complex. We propose a novel architecture to support future context-aware interoperator roaming services throughout 4G networks by using Roaming Coordinators. We design a secure context management model for the practical use of Smart Cards in the secure roaming services. Our architecture solves the interoperator roaming management problems while minimizing the processing overhead on the mobile nodes.

With advances in ubiquitous environments, user demand for easy data-lookup is growing rapidly. Not only users but intelligent ubiquitous applications also require data-lookup services for a ubiquitous computing framework. This paper proposes a backward-compatible, searchable virtual file system (S-VFS) for easy data-lookup. We add search functionality to the VFS, the de facto standard abstraction layer over the file system. Users can find a file by its attributes without remembering the full path. S-VFS maintains the attributes and the indexing structures in a normal file per partition. It processes queries and returns the results in a form of a virtual directory. S-VFS is the modified VFS, but uses legacy file systems without any modification. Since S-VFS supports full backward compatibility, users can even browse hierarchically with the legacy path name. We implement S-VFS in Linux kernel 2.6.7-21. Experiments with randomly generated queries demonstrate outstanding lookup performance with a small overhead for indexing.

The location information of ubiquitous objects is one of the key issues for context-aware systems. Therefore, several positioning systems to obtain precise location information have been researched. However, they have scalability and flexibility problems because they need completely configured space with a large number of sensors. To avoid the problems, we proposed a self-organizing location estimation method that uses ad hoc networks and Self-Organizing Maps and needs no prepared space with a large number of sensors. But, as in other similar precise localization methods, the proposed method needs advanced distance measurements unavailable to conventional wireless communication systems. In this paper, the self-organizing location estimation method's modification for distance measurement that uses received signal strength available to conventional wireless communication systems but which fluctuates uncertainly, is described and location estimation accuracy with the modified method is shown.

In ubiquitous environment that users access resource anytime and anywhere, access control model should consider user's location information. The proposed uT-RBAC includes the location information for user's least privilege. It also supports time related information, which enables the access control model to accommodate various ubiquitous environments. The proposed uT-RBAC can be dynamically applied to various ubiquitous computing envrionment.

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is a computing para-digm which utilizes human-centric systems and applications. With the widespread use of information appliances, robots and sensors, the ubicomp paradigm is expected to become a reality in the near future. Because close interaction between a person and the computing environment is required for ubicomp, autonomous decentralized control will play an important role. In this paper, we discuss autonomous decentralized control in ubicomp from the viewpoint of typical ubicomp applications, smart environments and context-awareness.

While mobile networks have been enhanced to support a variety of mobile multimedia services such as video telephony and rich data content delivery, a new challenge is being created by the remarkable development of micro-device technologies such as micro processor-chips, sensors, and RF tags. These developments suggest the rapid emergence of the ubiquitous computing environment; computers supporting human life without imposing any stress on the users. The combination of broadband global networks and ubiquitous computing environment will lead to an entirely new class of services, which we call ubiquitous networking services. This paper discusses how to create ubiquitous service environments comparing global networking approaches which are based on fixed and mobile networks. It is shown that the mobile approach is better from service applicability and reliability viewpoints. Networking architecture is proposed which expand 4G mobile cellular networks to real space via gateways on the edges of the mobile network (i.e. mobile terminals). A new set of technical requirements will emerge via this approach, which may accelerate the paradigm shift from the current mobile network architecture and even from the Internet of today.

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) demands new security and privacy enhancing technologies for the new information and communication environments where a huge number of computers interact with each other in a distributed and ad hoc manner to access various resources and services. This paper surveys emerging security and privacy enhancing technologies, focusing on access control in ubiquitous computing environments because this is the underlying core technology to enforce security and privacy policies. We classify access control technologies into three types associated with the three access control phases of prevention, avoidance, and detection, and provide an overview of ubiquitous computing-oriented technologies and solutions, ranging from security and privacy models and policies to the enforcement of policies and system implementation.

This paper proposes two types of network architectures using UMTS Release 5 architecture and wireless LAN suitable for context-aware information delivery and personal communication services, and it reports on preliminary evaluations of their performance. The first type of network architecture is the NCA (network-centric architecture) and the second is the ECA (end-user-centric architecture). The two architectures are modeled with a queuing network and their response times are compared through theoretical analysis and simulation. The results indicate that with low-performance servers, the response times of the ECA are generally shorter or almost the same as those of the NCA. However with high-performance servers, the response times of the NCA are generally shorter except during high server utilization.

This paper first discusses the misinterpretation of the concept of "ubiquitous computing" that Mark Weiser originally proposed in 1991. Weiser's main message was not the ubiquity of computers, but the transparency of interface that determines users' perception of digital technologies embedded in our physical environment seamlessly. To explore Weiser's philosophy of transparency in interfaces, this paper presents the design of an interface that uses glass bottles as "containers" and "controls" for digital information. The metaphor is a perfume bottle: Instead of scent, the bottles have been filled with music -- classical, jazz, and techno music. Opening each bottle releases the sound of a specific instrument accompanied by dynamic colored light. Physical manipulation of the bottles -- opening and closing -- is the primary mode of interaction for controlling their musical contents. The bottles illustrates Mark Weiser's vision of the transparent (or invisible) interface that weaves itself into the fabric of everyday life. The bottles also exploits the emotional aspects of glass bottles that are tangible and visual, and evoke the smell of perfume and the taste of exotic beverages. This paper describes the design goals of the bottle interface, the arrangement of musical content, the implementation of the wireless electromagnetic tag technology, and the feedback from users who have played with the system.