Ubiquitous Computing and the role of geometry - Barry Brumitt, John Krumm, Brian Meyes, and Steven Shafer
@ARTICLE{brumitt00
author = {Barry Brumitt and John Krumm and Brian Meyers and Steven Shafer},
title = {Ubiquitous computing and the role of geometry},
journal = {IEEE Personal Communications},
year = {2000},
volume = {7},
pages = {41--43}
}
Key Points
- Geometry is a key requirement for a ubiquitous system
An overarching ubiquitous computing system should maintain an awareness of it's occupants, understand the physical and functional relationship to I/O devices, and also understand the context in which interaction may occur.
The paper discusses the importance of geometry and geometric models for ubiquitous computing. If you don't know what you can change, or what a user will interact with, or worse, don't know the relationships between interactions and possible actuations or outcomes, you cannot make a true ubiquitous system. There fore a system needs a comprehension of physical space.
Another key feature is resource extensibility. A 'plug and play' feature which means a new sensor/actuator is localised to the rest of the system and is then made available. Also, for transparency and ease of development, the geometric representation of devices should be the same regardless of perception mode.
Some future questions asked by the paper:
- Geometric representation will be driven by sensor data. Inevitably this will conflict. How can this be resolved?
- How should sensors discover the physical relationship of itself to others and to the world (i.e. people, devices, things). How automatic can this be?