A Portal for Interacting with Context-aware Ubiquitous Systems

1
A Portal for Interacting with Context-aware
Ubiquitous Systems

• Don Cruickshank
• David De Roure
• Grid Based Medical Devices for Everyday Health
• Equator / MIAS

2
Users

• Interactive access to live and stored information
  (e.g. visualised, excel) collected from
• Wearable devices
• Sensor networks
• e.g. medics and patients
• e.g. pervasive support desk
• e.g. pollution-sensing cyclists (uploading)

3
Medical jacket sensors

• ECG trace
• Heart rate monitor
• Blood Glucose monitor
• Accelerometers
• GPS location

4
Scenario

• Natural language interaction clinician over a
  phone
• look at Tom
• Toms patient ID is 12345.
• He is wearing a jacket.
• His data is archived.
• Look at jacket on Tom
• His blood pressure and heart rate are
  monitored.
• Look inside archive

5
Personal device interface
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Requirements

• Natural language interface
• Configurable experience for different users
• Patient, clinician, support, administrator
• Carrying spatial information
• 2D/3D spatial, i.e. Cartesian coordinates
• Logical, i.e. symbolic
• Remote access, multiuser, distributed
• Support for collaboration (or integration with
  collaborative tools)

7
MUD benefits

• Open source
• Scriptable using a general purpose programming
  language (LPC)
• Rich support for network protocols, e.g. FTP,
  HTTP, POP3
• Standard clients available
• Modern clients have graphics and sound capability
• Trend towards HTML and CSS
• Supports a variety of Intermud protocols

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Enhancements

• Location description
• All objects carry coords and may have relational
  positioning
• Currently using z-axis aligned polygons to
  represent area
• Span array algorithm used for large geographic
  areas
• Authentication, authorisation
• Access control and domain model exist
• PKI can be integrated
• WS-Security?

9
Location in a Pervasive Environment

• To allow data to be combined, a common model is
  required
• Have defined an ontology to model locations
  within a building
• Not designed from spatial perspective, type and
  purpose more important
• Hierarchical notion of locations and inter-linked
  sub-spaces

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A MUD map of the labs
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Uncertainty in location

• We have to take location information from a
  variety of sources
• GPS
• Bluetooth proximity
• Ultrasonic pingers
• Which one do we trust when we have conflicting
  information?
• We can choose one we think is better
• We can merge the contexts e.g. create a
  specialised location that has the features of all
  relevant locations
• We can duplicate the users and populate the
  separate areas with those people
• When a location technology is known to be false,
  that context is removed (or the false user model
  is destructed)
• Some operations may be high risk enough to
  utilise a certainty factor from the location
  information system

12
MUD technologies

• LPC based MUDs (aka LPMuds) allow for real time
  reconfiguration of live systems
• Location is a strong contextual feature of MUDs
• Jim is located at 1500m west and 30m south of a
  named reference point
• Harry is sitting at the table.
• Roles feature strongly in staffing a MUD
• Authorisation is dependent on domain memberships
• Individual privileges
• Staff members are often only known within the MUD
  domain
• Object trails are commonly used for
  administrative purposes
• Record of previous locations / owners
• Recording the manner in which objects have moved
• Objects can be tagged with special information
  that only staff can see
• Units that are known to be buggy can be labelled
  by support staff and that information is carried
  wherever that object goes
• Objects can react to events in the environment
• E.g. when the child walks near the tree, a sound
  is played out of a loudspeaker nearby

13
Conclusion

• Able to tailor the information flow to personal
  devices dependent on context
• Real-time maintenance of the system possible by
  medics and administrators, each with specific
  access rights
• Uncertainty in location information is not
  straightforward