Juan Rodríguez-Covili

A communication infrastructure to ease the development of mobile collaborative applications

Mobile workers doing loosely coupled activities typically perform on demand collaboration in the physical workplace. Communication services available in such work scenarios are uncertain, therefore mobile collaborative applications supporting those activities must provide ad hoc communication mechanisms in order to use each cooperation opportunity. Typically, the complexity of implementing such mobile ad hoc communication mechanisms becomes a challenge that jeopardizes the development of mobile collaborative solutions. This article presents a communication infrastructure named HLMP API dealing with that challenge. HLMP API intends to ease the development of such applications through the reuse of communication services. The infrastructure is an application programming interface that implements the HLMP routing protocol and also some awareness mechanisms that are required for mobile loosely coupled work. Developers using this infrastructure do not have to perform low-level programming.

Towards a reference architecture for the design of mobile shared workspaces

Software design is a complex and expensive socio-technical process, for which reuse is an increasingly important concern. This article presents an abstract structure capturing the essence of a mobile shared workspace (MSW), and how a particular MSW can be obtained by instantiating such a structure. It is intended to assist designers of mobile groupware tools to conceive new products reusing design knowledge proved successful in previous solutions. The article also illustrates how the abstract structure can be instantiated to obtain MSWs that support construction inspection activities, hospital work and urban emergency responses. This abstract structure can be evolved in order to make it a reference architecture for mobile shared workspaces.

Supporting informal interaction in a hospital through impromptu social networking

Social networking systems allow users to keep in touch with relatives and friends in the absence of physical proximity. These tools are also increasingly supporting productive interactions in diverse working environments. In this paper, based on the understanding of informal communication in hospitals, we identify opportunities for the use of social networking software in support of hospital work. This has inspired the design of meetU, a tool aimed at supporting impromptu social networking through an ad-hoc communication infrastructure. The services offered by the system are illustrated through interaction scenarios, which were also used to evaluate the system with a group of medical interns.

HLMP API: A software library to support the development of mobile collaborative applications

Mobile collaborative applications are usually deployed in work scenarios where the existence of fixed communication infrastructure is hard to predict. For that reason, these applications use Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) to support communication between mobile users. The complexity involved in such communication infrastructures make that developers avoid developing software for mobile work scenarios. However, it is possible to provide a reusable abstraction of such communication mechanisms, in order to avoid that developers have to deal with low-level programming. This article presents HLMP API, which is an application programming interface that provides access to a HLMP implementation. This API is organized as a fully distributed mobile communication infrastructure, able to run on MANETs. This infrastructure provides an important set of services, which are required to support mobile collaboration. The reuse of these services allows developers to reduce the complexity, times and cost of these development projects.

Enhancing mobile collaboration with HLMP

Wireless communication infrastructure dependence is not always a suitable way to support mobile collaboration. Mobile workers can take advantage of the communication capability embedded in their mobile devices, in order to create communication channels between them. These Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) are robust and they can be deployed almost anywhere. However, these networks need to include a routing protocol that allows mobile workers to collaborate when they are not physically close. This paper presents an application level routing protocol designed to automatically perform MANET formation and message routing procedures. It is intended to assist high level groupware development with a structured high level communication system.

A lightweight and distributed middleware to provide presence awareness in mobile ubiquitous systems

Abstract Several researchers have identified the need to count on presence awareness in ubiquitous systems that support mobile activities, particularly when these systems are used to perform loosely-coupled mobile work. In such a work style, mobile users conduct face-to-face on-demand interactions, therefore counting on awareness information about the position and availability of potential collaborators becomes mandatory for these applications. Most proposed solutions that provide user presence awareness involve centralized components, have reusability limitations, or simply address a part of that service. This article presents a lightweight and fully distributed middleware named Moware, which allows developers to embed presence awareness services in mobile ubiquitous systems in a simple way. The article also describes the Moware architecture, its main components and strategies used to deal with several aspects of the presence awareness support. These design strategies can be reused by software designers to provide presence awareness capabilities into middleware and specific software applications. Moware services were embedded in a mobile ubiquitous system that supports inspectors during the construction inspection process. The preliminary results indicate that the middleware was easy to use for developers, and its services were useful for the end-users.

Extending social networking services toward a physical interaction scenario

Mobile computing provides ubiquitous access to social networking services allowing computer-mediated interaction among its members. This article proposes a new and complementary interaction paradigm promoting face-to-face encounters among community members, based on their physical proximity. Therefore, the virtual space for interactions is extended towards the physical one. The proposal was implemented through a mobile ubiquitous application, which was evaluated to understand its usability, perceived usefulness and performance. The preliminary results of such evaluations are highly encouraging.