Towards Ubiquitous Computing Applications Composed from Functionally Autonomous Hybrid Artifacts

Enabling user independence and creativity in ubiquitous computing environments

“…End User Tools can also be appropriated to facilitate users reasoning, as well as manipulating the behavior of the AmI environment, so that they can supervise and eventually create or modify AmI applications to fit their own idiosyncratic wishes and needs. Emergent functionality in AmI can be the result of niche implementations, previously unforeseen, created by end users themselves (Drossos, 2007), , . This new generation of prototyping tools can help shape the future of ubiquitous computing and eventually accelerate the development of next generation ubiquitous applications.…”

“…One such example is the adoption and appropriate adaptation of component models that allows for the recombination of functions (Drossos et al, 2007a), (Drossos et al, 2007b), (Newman et al, 2002). To enable the recombination of elements into new functions, the basic concepts and elements of a component model need to designed in a way that they are capable of being easily communicated to people, so that there is a degree of transparency into the -otherwise invisible -workings of a ubiquitous environment.…”

“…This can be done by an appropriately designed conceptual modelthat embodies the basic technology concepts which allow for inter-associations of artifacts ). An example of a high level programming model that provides a conceptual abstraction allowing end users to describe Ubiquitous scenarios is described in (Drossos et al, 2007b).…”

“…Metaphors stem from already existing (non-ubiquitous) widely recognizable paradigms that imply interconnectivity. Examples that imply interconnectivity can be appropriate familiar terms -like the verbal term 'Plugs' used in (Drossos et al, 2007), or familiar images, as for example a 'Puzzle' ,…”

“…Dynamically defining the parameters for an application is another aspect that can be defined or altered using tools aimed at developers. As (Drossos, 2007b) reports, a tool providing a GUI for creating or changing rules can also provide the advantage that rules can be dynamically altered in a high level manner without disturbing the operation of the rest of the system. Assuming substantially more computing power in the application context of distributed, multimodal sensing and recognition techniques we might want to consider constantly "computing ahead" -modeling the user's actions and precomputing the results along perhaps the five most likely next inputs -as Scott Hudson states in (Hudson, 2005).…”