CoWSAMI: Interface-aware context gathering in ambient intelligence environments

Abstract

In this paper we present CoWSAMI, a middleware infrastructure that enables context awareness in open ambient intelligence environments, consisting of mobile users and context sources that become dynamically available as the users move from one location to another. A central requirement in such dynamic scenarios is to be able to integrate new context sources and users at run time. CoWSAMI exploits a novel approach towards this goal. The proposed approach is based on utilizing Web services as interfaces to context sources and dynamically updateable relational views for storing, aggregating and interpreting context. Context rules are employed to provide mappings that specify how to populate context relations, with respect to the different context sources that become dynamically available. An underlying context sources discovery mechanism is utilized to maintain context information up-to-date as context sources and users get dynamically involved.

Bringing context-aware access to the web through spoken interaction

“…As it will be described in Sect. 3, we use a commercial platform that captures external context, then this information, together with the user profile, is used [3,16], Generic [4,7,20,37,53,55] One of the main points of our proposal is to provide a more natural interaction with users by means of spoken dialog systems. We propose an architecture valid for slot-filling dialog tasks.…”

“…Mobility support is guaranteed by the use of speech as the communication modality, which allows to easily access the application by means of mobile devices. Web services are used to obtain the information that is task-dependent in order to provide an answer to the user System type: Framework/Toolkits [4,7,20,37,53], Application [3] Mobility support [4,16,37,53,55] Level of Web service implementation: Full [3,4,7,20,53,55], Partially [16,37] Context information…”

“…External context is provided by means of the Appear IQ platform and internal context is considered by means of user profiles External: location, device, network, calendar, device, network [4,7,16,27,37,53] Internal: user peculiarities, preferences, needs [4,7,16,53] Context representation Key-value, tagged encoding, object-oriented We have developed an hybrid approach between key-value representation and dialog act semantics, in which the information which is vital for the oral interface is integrated into the dialog act and the rest of the contextual information is represented using XML Context modeling UML [50,53,55], XML [4,16,20,27], OWL/Ontology [7,37,53], tool specific [37] We use XML files to transmit context information using the OASIS web services context specification for sharing and passing context information between services and clients…”

“…Sensing Techniques: Instrumentation [7,27,55], Polling [16,37,53,55] Sensor interface: Web service [53,55], Specific [7,16,37] Data retrieval and publishing: Query, Subscription [37], Push-Only [37] Context storage Storage Model: Centralized [37,53], Distributed [4,53,55] We propose the use of relational databases for context storage Storage Databases: Relational Databases [4,37], XML [55], RDF/OWL [53], Others [37] Access Interface: Web service [4,53,55], Others Request Specification: SQL [4,37], XPath/XQuery [55], SPARQL [53], Specific…”

“…Overlay network distribution: Centralized [4,37,53,55], P2P [55] Context information is transferred using SOAP messages according to the OASIS web services context specification. The SOAP message header to transfer the context information modeled following the OASIS specifications, and the management of the information is carried out in the dialog manager of the proposed dialog system Direct transport distribution: SOAP extension [20,53], Web proxy [27] Access mechanism: Query through Web service [4,53,55], Subscription through Web services Notification/Pubscribe [37], Subscription through WS call back [37,55], Subscription through specific protocol [55] Context information is used for content, communication and service adaptation.…”