Enabling Pervasive Computing Become Truly Pervasive

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Enabling Pervasive Computing Become Truly
Pervasive
Dr. Joseph Loyall BBN Technologies
Research Directions in Situational-aware
Self-managed Proactive Computing in Wireless Ad
hoc Networks
March 3, 2009
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What are the grand challenge applications (3 to
4) in the pervasive computing domain today?

• Access to and control of all aspects of your life
  from anywhere
• Requires constant connectivity
• Not just access to e-mail and phone, but also
  your home, family, car, restaurant reservations,
  whats happening up ahead, entertainment
• Information on demand, provided proactively
• Directions to where you need to go, traffic,
  construction and rerouting
• Answers to questions in anticipation (never
  forget a persons name again)
• Your own personal assistant and encyclopedic
  knowledge at the speed of thought
• Fewer devices, more intuitive interfaces
• Why does the ordinary person have tiny screens
  what happened to HUDs?
• Why does everything need to be typed in?
  keyboards get smaller as our fingers get fatter.

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What technological barriers prevent pervasive
computing from becoming truly pervasive?

• Dont want to have to think in terms of devices,
  but instead about capabilities or functionality
• Ease of use is key
• Mobility is key, applications should follow you
  around
• Still need to pull a device (cell phone, PDA,
  Ipod, laptop) out of your pocket, look at it, and
  type on it to use it
• Your car is a big computer (actually lots of
  them), why doesnt it take over all the duties of
  your computer when you get in it
• Devices, connectivity, and applications
  seamlessly following us around as we move
• Connectivity is still spotty
• Why cant our Internet connectivity move from
  device to device and WAP to WAP as seamlessly as
  our cell phone moves from tower to tower
• Middleware, applications, devices need to hide
  the seams better from the user
• Middleware and devices need to manage and control
  the limited and unreliable connectivity so that
  drops and degradation is hidden from the user
• Interfaces
• Still dominated by screens and keyboards
• Proactive, autonomic computing should remove the
  need for much human input
• Luke Skywalker didnt type a single command into
  R2D2 yet got the information he needed when he
  needed it
• Think of the success enabled by systems that
  captured an appropriate user metaphor
• Excel, IPod, TIVO

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What are the particular challenges from the
networking and data mgmt perspectives?

• Device capabilities (processing, memory,
  secondary store) has outstripped the available
  connectivity and bandwidth.
• Still dont have code mobility, WORA
• Its much better than it used to be, but you
  still cant run the same apps on your PDAs as on
  your desktop
• Still significant challenges with versions,
  synchronizing data, etc.
• Although there are more information and services
  at your fingertips, it still takes effort to get
  what you need
• Its hard to remember life before Google, but
  still many situations where crafting a search
  query and looking through pages of results is
  unwieldy
• Data management based on search and response,
  with the analysis, selection, filtering burden on
  the user is not conducive to pervasive computing
• Information and service access are not
  context-aware, proactive
• Computers and devices still do what you tell them
  to, not what you want

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Societal issues that need to be addressed to
enable people-centric design of pervasive
systems?  (1/2)

• Recognizing the innovation associated with some
  incremental achievements
• Tivo is disk IO hooked up to a TV listing
  interface and TV display
• An integration of existing mature technologies
• Yet revolutionized TV viewing (and the economics
  of advertising)
• IPod is a disk drive, file listing, and display,
  and a trivial user input device
• Would be unlikely to be published or funded by
  research funding organizations

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Societal issues that need to be addressed to
enable people-centric design of pervasive
systems?  (2/2)

• Mediating the tension between the all purpose
  device versus a new device for each purpose.

Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!
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How to re-design curriculum towards
next-generation scientists with
inter-disciplinary training suitable to tackle a
wide spectrum of problems in pervasive computing?

• Classes that combine disciplines traditionally
  taught separately
• Middleware, operating systems
• Applications that run on multiple devices, i.e.,
  desktop and small devices
• Context-aware, adaptive, network management
• Classes and disciplines that focus on
• The use and benefit of provided capabilities,
  hiding the specifics of computers
• Removing complexity, increasing mobility and
  functionality
• Simplifying human experience with computers