SWE 699 – Ubiquitous Computing Seminar

Cross-listing: IT 821, ECE 699

Fall 2008

Tuesdays, 7:20 to 10:00pm at Robinson Hall B, room 202 (map)

Ubiquitous (aka pervasive) computing is an emerging concept of how people may use computing support in the future:  no longer interacting with one computer at a time, but rather interacting with a dynamic set of networked computers, often invisible and embodied in everyday objects in the environment.

This course introduces ubiquitous computing concepts and technology through guided readings and hands-on project experience.  This paper offers a good overview of how ubiquitous computing builds on distributed systems and mobile computing, and illustrates the kind of material to be covered in class.  Specifically, the following topics will be covered:

·         Definition and scope of ubiquitous computing.

·         Architectures for ubiquitous computing

–        new devices and communications;

–        software architectures & middleware.

·         Integrating the physical and the virtual worlds

–        sensing and actuation;

–        ontology and modeling the world;

–        awareness and perception.

·         Interactions between humans and (ubiquitous) computers

–        situated (context-aware) computing;

–        multimodal and natural interaction;

–        disambiguation and proactivity.

·         Social aspects of ubiquitous computing

–        implications on privacy, security and autonomy;

–        system and legal safeguards;

–        cost-benefit and market forces.

·         Deployment and evaluation of solutions

–        scalability, reliability, maintenance;

–        user-centric evaluation (controlled experiments and “in-the-wild”).

This course is co- taught with Dr. Jens Kaps, see here for course details