Ekaterina Gilman

Context-aware pervasive service composition and its implementation

Incorporating service composition and pervasive computing into managing users’ complex everyday activities calls for the Pervasive Service Composition paradigm for everyday life. In this paper, we propose the concept of Context-Aware Pervasive Service Composition (CAPSC), which aims at enabling a pervasive system to provide user service compositions that are relevant to the situation at hand. We investigate CAPSC requirements and design a CAPSC architecture by taking into account context-aware peer coordination, context-aware process service adaptation, and context-aware utility service adaptation. We present a proof of concept application prototype as well.

Multimodal interaction with speech and physical touch interface in a media center application

We present a multimodal media center interface based on a novel combination of new modalities. The application is based on a combination of a large high-definition display and a mobile phone. Users can interact with the system using speech input (speech recognition), physical touch (touching physical icons with the mobile phone), and gestures. We present the key results from a laboratory experiment where user expectations and actual usage experiences are compared.

Pervasive Service Computing: Visions and Challenges

Pervasive Service Computing applies service composition and pervasive computing into managing user’s complex everyday activities. To identify the nature of Pervasive Service Computing, we investigate a generic service-oriented pervasive computing scenario – ‘pervasive campus’. We identify the characteristics of Pervasive Service Computing to be: service-oriented approach, explicit description of user’s activity, pervasive nature, semantics, P2P, trust-awareness, and wireless sensor networks. Further, we design a generic computing and communication architecture for Pervasive Service Computing. We specify the challenges facing Pervasive Service Computing, such as context sensing, modeling, reasoning, and P2P-based service composition. Finally, we implement an initial PSC prototype for mobile multimedia service composition.

Stream Reasoning for the Internet of Things: Challenges and Gap Analysis

The Internet of Things (IoT) is not only about interconnecting embedded devices to the Internet, but also about providing knowledge on such devices and what they sense from the physical world. One focus of IoT is put on extracting actionable knowledge and providing value-added services by means of reasoning techniques. Stream reasoning techniques offer a promising solution for processing dynamic, heterogeneous, and volume data for IoT. In this article, we identify the challenges for utilizing stream reasoners from the IoT point of view, review the landscape of stream reasoning techniques, and examine their capabilities to meet the challenges of IoT. Moreover, we present an experimental IoT system implementing stream reasoning and perform a gap analysis to evaluate stream reasoners. Finally, based on the analysis, we suggest several recommendations for future development of stream reasoners in order to overcome the identified gaps.

PSC-RM: Reference Model for Pervasive Service Composition

Pervasive Service Composition (PSC) incorporates service composition and pervasive computing into managing users everyday activities. A generic Reference Model of Pervasive Service Composition (PSC-RM) is needed for guiding PSC architecture design and implementation. To design PSC-RM, we first investigate and present a users generic activity model. Then we analyze characteristics of PSC and envision PSC applications. Based on these applications we present requirements and initial design of PSC-RM.

iCompose: context-aware physical user interface for application composition

Ubiquitous computing environments advocate creating applications by plugging together various resources (mobile devices, displays, augmented everyday objects, and so on) and Web Services to support the user’s everyday activities and needs. This approach is referred to as application composition, and such applications are called composite. Due to the dynamic nature of ubiquitous environments, application composition has to be supported at runtime, so that the applications are able to adapt to the situation within the environment and other contexts. Application composition is usually performed by autonomous context-aware mechanisms that provide limited or no control for users. Still, users need to be aware of their environments and be able to control and configure applications when they are composed and executed. Towards this goal we present in this article a context-aware application composition system based on the iCompose interface for composing and controlling applications at runtime. Users compose applications by simply touching the resources in the environment with their mobile devices, while the iCompose interface provides feedback and assists users by suggesting them possible further actions. The interface relies on a rule-based reasoner and utilizes various context sources to support users dynamically, according to the situation in which they compose applications. We present a complete implementation of the system and report the results of a user evaluation study conducted with 21 participants. This study assesses the issues of control, usability, feasibility and user acceptance of the iCompose interface for context-aware application composition and the prototype as a whole.

Reasoning for Smart Space Application: Comparing Three Reasoning Engines CLIPS, Jess and Win-prolog

This article presents Collect&Drop application, a pervasive system which utilizes RFID technology to store and pick digital content with mobile phones and play it with smart space’s displays and speakers. Collect&Drop is implemented with the support of three reasoning engines, based on CLIPS, Jess and Win-Prolog. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of integrating a reasoning engine into the system, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Also comparison of the three engines implementations is made with respect to performance and resource consumption.

Is there meta-level in smart spaces?

Smart spaces are highly dynamic interactive environments supporting people in their activities. Management of such environments is a very challenging task due to the volatile nature of the interactions happening among resources and people acting in these environments. In this article, we study whether meta-level control of smart spaces helps to tackle this challenge. We suggest making a distinction between context-based adaptation activities of smart spaces and monitoring and controlling of these adaptation activities. We conduct simulation studies in order to validate the proposed concept.

Ontology-driven pervasive service composition for everyday life

Incorporating service composition and pervasive computing into managing users everyday activities gives rise to the paradigm of Pervasive Service Composition for everyday life. This paper presents a novel generic model for services supporting everyday activities. The resulting service composition consists of local services within service peers and services are executed as specified in peer coordination and service collaboration. We suggest a task-based, pervasive, semantic, and P2P-based approach for service composition for everyday life. We first address these fundamental characteristics. We give terminologies related to service composition, pervasive computing, ontology, and Pervasive Service Composition. Secondly, we analyze requirements for describing everyday activities. To meet the requirements we design an initial ontology model for capturing users everyday activity and accommodating peer coordination and service collaboration in Pervasive Service Composition. Finally, we classify existing approaches to Web service composition.

An overview of interactive application composition approaches

Abstract Application composition is an approach to create applications by using software components as building blocks. Applications can be composed ofWeb Services and resources associated with mobile devices, displays and various augmented everyday objects. In this article, we focus on ubiquitous applicationswhich aim at supporting users’ needs and everyday activities. Application composition is particularly suitable for these applications as it proposes to compose ubiquitous applications by choosing the appropriate set of services and resources and their configuration as required by users, their needs and other contexts. This article gives an overview and classifies interactive application composition approaches. These approaches provide the necessary user tools and various user interfaces to enable users themselves to specify their needs and achieve their goals with composed applications. The approaches in this article are analyzed according to the user support provided during the application life-cycle and user involvement during the application composition and execution phases. Furthermore,we look inside the design of user interfaces for visual and non-visual user tools and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. In addition to giving an overview of this research field, our aim is to provide means for describing, classifying and comparing different composition approaches.