Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
phone is not always required. The devices of pervasive computing could interact
with each and with the users. Or even made invisible!
Some of these devices function as sensing devices that can recognize changes in
the context; for example, the changes from the surrounding environment, human
behaviors and so on. Some devices function by reasoning and interpreting the
behaviors or changes from outside based on continuously sensed data input. Some
devices function as output that can trigger or initialize an effect on the surrounding
environment or objects.
Human-Computer Interfaces
Novel human-computer interfaces are needed to meet the requirements of the
pervasive computing. The conventional mouse, keyboard and monitor will not
work anymore. Future interfaces will be interactive, user friendly and embedded
into objects. Augmented Reality (AR) is very promising as an effective visual
information tool, as it can insert the digital information directly into the user's real
world view. This concept is coincident with pervasive computing, as both of them
rely on daily physical objects as the information embedding vehicles. Other
interfaces should extensively consider multisensory channels, such as audio, haptic,
smell and so on, as they are all related to our daily life.
Privacy and Security
The privacy and security issues in pervasive computing are the same as for mobile
computing. There is scope to access users' everyday interactions, movements,
preferences and attitudes, without user intervention or consent; and to retrieve and
use information from large databases of stored data; alter the environment via
actuating devices (EU Directive, 1998). There are three areas that are the most
popularly researched issues (IST, 2005):
(i)
keeping the volume of transmitted data to a minimum;
(ii)
encrypting and sending anonymously data that require transmission;
(iii)
treating security as a continuing and integral element of pervasive computing.
Context Awareness in Pervasive Computing
What the context means in mobile and pervasive system has been explained.
Context awareness refers to capturing a broad range of contextual attributes to
better understand what the consumer needs, and what products or services he or
she might possibly be interested in (Sadeh, 2002). Context awareness is part of
contextual computing, which refers to the enhancement of a user's interactions by
understanding the user, the context and the applications and information being
used, typically across a wide set of user goals (Pitkow
et al
., 2002). Context-aware
pervasive computing system involves the following issues:
*
How is context defined and represented?
*
How is this context information combined and stored within the pervasive
application?
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