Why We Should Care About Context-Aware Computing

1
Why We Should Care About Context-Aware Computing

• Munindar P. Singh
• www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/mpsingh
• singh_at_ncsu.edu
• April 2002

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Proposal

• Facts Context-aware computing is
• Hot.
• Part of IDM.
• Choice We can either
• Ignore it so only platform and data questions
  will remain (with ad hoc approaches for meaning).
• Acknowledge it emphasize semantic questions
  have another motivation for our research.
• Motions Add
• Context-aware computing, e.g., for mobile and
  pervasive scenarios, as an application area.
• Suggested research questions.

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Where can we help and why?

• State of the art suck data from a bunch of
  sensors
• Stream it, store it, munge it, mine it.
• Call it user context and hope it relates to
  meaning.
• Great testbed for fancy modeling with subtle yet
  realistic context experience that people can
  easily appreciate
• Context ? sensor data, but is related to it.
• Subtle relationships between value, quality of
  services, trust and context appropriately
  modeled
• Ontologies and process models to accommodate
  usage and user context.
• Applying and mining sensor data in a meaningful
  manner.

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Research Questions

• How can we model, fulfill services that are
• Suited for user interaction, i.e., intermittent,
  interruptible, exceptional?
• Support precise notions of quality, relevance, ?
• How can we develop WS techniques and
  architectures that apply context while enabling
• Enabling easy administration and portability
  across installations?
• Provisioning and personalization?
• Protecting privacy?
• These questions have broader value, but we will
  address them sooner and more clearly if we view
  them as independently motivated for context-aware
  computing.