Design of Wearable Computing Systems for Future Industrial Environments

During the last two decades a lot of methodology research has been conducted for the design of software user interfaces (Kirisci, Thoben 2009). Despite the numerous contributions in this area, comparatively few efforts have been dedicated to the advancement of methods for the design of context-aware mobile platforms, such as wearable computing systems. This chapter investigates the role of context, particularly in future industrial environments, and elaborates how context can be incorporated in a design method in order to support the design process of wearable computing systems. The chapter is initiated by an overview of basic research in the area of context-aware mobile computing. The aim is to identify the main context elements which have an impact upon the technical properties of a wearable computing system. Therefore, we describe a systematic and quantitative study of the advantages of context recognition, specifically task tracking, for a wearable maintenance assistance system. Based upon the experiences from this study, a context reference model is proposed, which can be considered supportive for the design of wearable computing systems in industrial settings, thus goes beyond existing context models, e.g. for context-aware mobile computing. The final part of this chapter discusses the benefits of applying model-based approaches during the early design stages of wearable computing systems. Existing design methods in the area of wearable computing are critically examined and their shortcomings highlighted. Based upon the context reference model, a design approach is proposed through the realization of a model-driven software tool which supports the design process of a wearable computing system while taking advantage of concise experience manifested in a well-defined context model.

Broadcast Quality Video Contribution in Mobility

The continuous growth of the available throughput, specially in the uplink of mobile phone networks is opening the doors to new services and business opportunities without references in the past. In more concrete, new standards HSDPA/HSUPA, introduced to complement and enhance 3G networks, together with the advances in audio and specially video coding, like those adopted by the standard H.264 AVC have boosted the appearance of a new service: exploiting the mobile telephony networks for contributing broadcast quality videos. This new service is offering just now a low cost, high flexibility alternative that, in a brief period of time, will substitute the current Electronic News Gathering (ENG) Units, giving rise to what is being to be called Wireless Journalism (WENG1 or WiNG2). This chapter discusses both the technologies involved and the business opportunities offered by this sector. Once reviewed the state of the art, different solutions will be compared, some of them recently appeared as commercial solutions, like QuickLink 3.5G Live Encoder3 or AirNow!4 and others still in research and development processes.

New Ways to Buy and Sell

We also intend to carry out an in-depth empirical and theoretical study of the territorial and social effects linked to the development of the information and communication society in rural communities. Our aim is to assist the progress of public decision-making and administrative efficiency for when the time comes to invest in suitable services and activities related to the information society in the rural environment, by defining the needs of those citizens resident in peripheral regions-areas with the purpose of developing their competitiveness and addressing the new social demands generated.

In-TIC for Mobile Devices

At present, the main advances in mobile technology have been aimed at improving multimedia-messaging services and reproducing videos and music. This new support system adds accessibility to mobile telephones, making them easier to use for the people who need them the most, people with reduced physical or mental capacities who cannot use a conventional mobile.

Mission-Aware Adaptive Communication for Collaborative Mobile Entities

Adaptation of communication is needed to maintain the connectivity and quality of communication in group-wide collaborative activities. This becomes quite a challenge to handle when mobile entities are part of a wireless environment, in which responsiveness and availability of the communication system are required. In this chapter, these challenges are addressed within the context of the ROSACE project where mobile ground and flying robots have to collaborate either between them selves or with remote artificial and human actors during save and rescue missions in the event of disasters such as forest fires. This chapter presents our first results. The final goal is to propose new concepts, models and architectures that supports cooperative adaptation which is aware of the mission being executed. Thus, the communication system can be adequately adapted in response to predictable or unpredictable evolutions of the activity requirements and to the unpredictable changes in the communication resource constraints.

Location Based E-commerce System

Location-based mobile services (LBMS) are at present an ever growing trend, as found in the latest and most popular mobile applications launched. They are, indeed, supported by the hasty evolution of mobile devices capabilities, namely smart phones, which are becoming truer mobile pocket-computers; by users demand, always searching for new ways to benefit from technology, besides getting more contextualized and user-centred services; and, lastly, by market drive, which sees mobile devices as a dedicated way to reach customers, providing profile-based publicity, products, discounts and events. With e-commerce, products and services started arriving to potential customers through desktop computers, where they can be bought and fast delivered to a given address. However, expressions such as “being mobile”, “always connected”, “anytime anywhere” that already characterize life in the present will certainly continue to do so in the near future. Meanwhile, mobile devices centred commerce services seem to be the next step. Therefore, this paper presents a system architecture designed for location-based e-commerce systems. These systems, where location plays the most important role, enable a remote products/services search, based in user parameters: after a product search, shops with that products are returned in the search results and are displayed in a map, around the user present location; and services like obtaining more information, reserving and purchasing are made available as well. This concept represents a mix between traditional client-oriented commerce and faceless mass-oriented e-commerce, enabling a proximity-based user-contextualized system, being well capable of conveying significant advantages and facilities to both service-providers/retailers and users.

Ontological Dimensions of Semantic Mobile Web 2.0

In this chapter, we advance, from the point of view of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, an analysis of which ontological dimensions are needed to develop Mobile Web 2.0 on top of Semantic Web. This analysis will be particularly focused on social networks and it will try to make an outlook about the new knowledge challenges on this field. Some of these new challenges will be linked to Semantic Web context, while others will be inherent to Semantic Mobile Web 2.0.

Towards a Programming Model for Ubiquitous Computing

Mobile computing is been driven by the proliferation of portable devices and wireless communication. Potentially, in the mobile computing scenario, the users can move in different environments and the applications can automatically explore their surroundings. This kind of context-aware application is emerging, but is not yet widely disseminated. Based on perceived context, the application can modify its behavior. This process, in which software modifies itself according to sensed data, is named Adaptation. This constitutes the core of Ubiquitous Computing. The ubiquitous computing scenario brings many new problems such as coping with the limited processing power of mobile devices, frequent disconnections, the migration of code and tasks between heterogeneous devices, and others. Current practical approaches to the ubiquitous computing problem usually rely upon traditional computing paradigms conceived back when distributed applications where not a concern. Holoparadigm (in short Holo) was proposed as a model to support the development of distributed systems. Based on Holo concepts, a new programming language called HoloLanguage (in short, HoloL) was created. In this chapter, we propose the use of Holo for developing and executing ubiquitous applications. We explore the HoloL for ubiquitous programming and propose a full platform to develop and execute Holo programs. The language supports mobility, adaptation, and context awareness. The execution environment is based on a virtual machine that implements the concepts proposed by Holo. The environment supports distribution and strong code mobility.

Research Challenge of Locally Computed Ubiquitous Data Mining

Advances in wireless, sensor, mobile and wearable technologies present new challenges for data mining research on providing mobile applications with intelligence. Autonomy and adaptability requirements are the two most important challenges for data mining in this new environment. In this chapter, in order to encourage the researchers on this area, we analyzed the challenges of designing ubiquitous data mining services by examining the issues and problems while paying special attention to context and resource awareness. We focused on the autonomous execution of a data mining algorithm and analyzed the situational factors that influence the quality of the result. Already existing solutions in this area and future directions of research are also covered in this chapter.

Making Location-Aware Computing Working Accurately in Smart Spaces

In smart environment, making a location-aware personal computing working accurately is a way of getting close to the pervasive computing vision. The best candidate to determine a user location in indoor environment is by using IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) signals, since it is more and more widely available and installed on most mobile devices used by users. Unfortunately, the signal strength, signals quality and noise of Wi-Fi, in worst scenario, it fluctuates up to 33% because of the reflection, refraction, temperature, humidity, the dynamic environment, etc. We present our current development on a light-weight algorithm, which is easy, simple but robust in producing the determination of user location using WiFi signals. The algorithm is based on “multiple observers” on ?k-Nearest Neighbour. We extend our approach in the estimation indoor-user location by using combination of different technologies, i.e. WiFi, GPS, GSM and Accelerometer. The algorithm is based on opportunistic localization algorithm and fuse different sensor data in order to be able to use the data which is available at the user position and processable in a mobile device.