Steps toward activity-oriented computing

Abstract

Abstract-Most pervasive computing technologies focus on helping users with computer-oriented tasks. In this NSF-funded project, we instead focus on using computers to support usercentered "activities" that normally do not involve the use of computers. Examples may include everyday tasks around such as answering the doorbell or doing laundry. A focus on activitybased computing brings to the foreground a number of unique challenges. These include activity definition and representation, system design, interfaces for managing activities, and ensuring robust operation. Our project focuses on the first two challenges.

Proximity-based federation of smart objects

“…Example of middleware systems include Linda (Gelernter 1985), Lime (Picco et al 1999), Gaia (Chetan et al 2005), Aura (Sousa and Garlan 2002), Oneworld (Grimm et al 2004), PICO/SESCO (Kumar et al 2003), CORTEX (Verssimo et al 2002), and Activityoriented computing (AoC) (Sousa et al 2008). The goal of these middleware systems is to simplify the development of pervasive environments.…”

“…Some studies (Milner 2001(Milner , 1999 focus on process calculi models. Some other studies (Gelernter 1985;Picco et al 1999) and more recent ones (Chetan et al 2005;Sousa and Garlan 2002;Kumar et al 2003;Grimm et al 2004;Verssimo et al 2002;Sousa et al 2008) provide middleware frameworks to help developers to implement solutions. These approaches are not sufficient to describe the interactions among SOs depending on their location change during the execution of an application scenario.…”

Architectures, methods and tools for creating ambient intelligence environments

“…There's no mechanism however for modeling fluid transitions between tasks by dynamically composing or interrupting them. Therefore, aside from tasks, Aura plans to introduce the notion of Activity [83] which denotes those computational abstractions that can be initiated, suspended, stored, and resumed on any computing device and can be reassigned to other users, or shared among several users. This abstraction has some similar properties with smart objects in our approach; however, the focus, in Aura project's design document, is on the definition of activities with graphical user interfaces by end users and not on managing activities and ensuring their operation in a unified environment where many interdependent and interconnecting activities take place.…”