The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) and the success of rich cloud services have pushed the horizon of a new computing paradigm, edge computing, which calls for processing the data at the edge of the network. Edge computing has the potential to address the concerns of response time requirement, battery life constraint, bandwidth cost saving, as well as data safety and privacy. In this paper, we introduce the definition of edge computing, followed by several case studies, ranging from cloud offloading to smart home and city, as well as collaborative edge to materialize the concept of edge computing. Finally, we present several challenges and opportunities in the field of edge computing, and hope this paper will gain attention from the community and inspire more research in this direction.

Edge Computing: Vision and Challenges

Context is a poorly used source of information in our computing environments. As a result, we have an impoverished understanding of what context is and how it can be used. In this paper, we provide an operational definition of context and discuss the different ways in which context can be used by context-aware applications. We also present the Context Toolkit, an architecture that supports the building of these context-aware applications. We discuss the features and abstractions in the toolkit that make the task of building applications easier. Finally, we introduce a new abstraction, a situation which we believe will provide additional support to application designers.

/pdf/understanding-and-using-context-ixmte100q2.pdf

Understanding and Using Context

When humans talk with humans, they are able to use implicit situational information, or context, to increase the conversational bandwidth. Unfortunately, this ability to convey ideas does not transfer well to humans interacting with computers. In traditional interactive computing, users have an impoverished mechanism for providing input to computers. By improving the computer’s access to context, we increase the richness of communication in human-computer interaction and make it possible to produce more useful computational services. The use of context is increasingly important in the fields of handheld and ubiquitous computing, where the user?s context is changing rapidly. In this panel, we want to discuss some of the research challenges in understanding context and in developing context-aware applications.

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/ctk/pubs/HUC99-panel.pdf

Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Computing devices and applications are now used beyond the desktop, in diverse environments, and this trend toward ubiquitous computing is accelerating. One challenge that remains in this emerging research field is the ability to enhance the behavior of any application by informing it of the context of its use. By context, we refer to any information that characterizes a situation related to the interaction between humans, applications, and the surrounding environment. Context-aware applications promise richer and easier interaction, but the current state of research in this field is still far removed from that vision. This is due to 3 main problems: (a) the notion of context is still ill defined, (b) there is a lack of conceptual models and methods to help drive the design of context-aware applications, and (c) no tools are available to jump-start the development of context-aware applications. In this anchor article, we address these 3 problems in turn. We first define context, identify categories of contextual information, and characterize context-aware application behavior. Though the full impact of context-aware computing requires understanding very subtle and high-level notions of context, we are focusing our efforts on the pieces of context that can be inferred automatically from sensors in a physical environment. We then present a conceptual framework that separates the acquisition and representation of context from the delivery and reaction to context by a context-aware application. We have built a toolkit, the Context Toolkit, that instantiates this conceptual framework and supports the rapid development of a rich space of context-aware applications. We illustrate the usefulness of the conceptual framework by describing a number of context-aware applications that have been prototyped using the Context Toolkit. We also demonstrate how such a framework can support the investigation of important research challenges in the area of context-aware computing.

/pdf/a-conceptual-framework-and-a-toolkit-for-supporting-the-3ct19ji2mn.pdf

A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications

Cooperation and conflict among dunnocks, Prunella modularis, in a variable mating system

In a study that provided unique insights into the challenges associated with developing location-based applications, the Lancaster Guide project used members of the general public to test a network-centric electronic tourist guide. We discuss two main topics. The first is our choice of positioning technology - beacons that broadcast using an IEEE 802.11 wireless network combined with user input. The second topic concerns techniques for generating custom tours for electronic city-guide systems. Guide generates these custom tours by taking into account multiple contextual triggers and user preferences. In practice, producing good tours and, indeed, assessing the quality of a tour are difficult tasks. While our analysis of techniques for producing custom tours is somewhat specific to the city-guide domain we believe that the majority of our work is relevant to location-based systems in general.

Using and determining location in a context-sensitive tour guide

The authors discuss the problems in creating the next generation of widely deployed ubiquitous computing systems and articulate current technical and sociological challenges to inspire researchers in the field. They discuss significant research challenges that have yet to be addressed. Central to documenting these challenges is recognizing the context within which we are operating, so they first describe the technical and social changes of the 1990s that directly affected ubiquitous computing then.

Beyond prototypes: challenges in deploying ubiquitous systems

47 The GUIDE project [4, 6] has been developed to provide city visitors with up-to-date and context-aware hypermedia information while they explore the city of Lan-caster in England. Visitors view this information via a handheld GUIDE unit based on the Fujitsu TeamPad 7600 tablet PC, which measures 213x153x15mm, weighs 850g, and is powered by a Pentium 166MHz processor. In GUIDE, the adaptive hypermedia presented to visitors is tailored to both environmental context (the major attractions in the city) and the visitor's personal context. Examples of the personal context used to drive the adaptation process include the visitor's current location , the visitor's profile (that is, the visitor's interests), and the set of attractions already visited. This latter piece of context enables pages of information to reflect those attractions the visitor has already seen. For example, if visitors make a return visit to Lancaster Castle, they are welcomed back. Oberlander [8] uses the term \" coherence \" to describe the tailoring of information in this way. A field trial-based evaluation of the GUIDE system [4] found the response of visitors to such anthropomorphic behavior [9] to be reasonably positive, with some visitors expressing that they felt \" reassured \" Adaptive Hypermedia Context-Aware Tourist GUIDE the role of in a W W here to go and what to do, in the limited amount of time available , are common problems encountered by tourists when visiting a city for the first time. In effect, cities are large information spaces, and in order to navigate these spaces visitors often require numerous guidebooks and maps. However, because guidebooks are general-purpose references, they tend to contain a significant amount of information of little relevance to the interests of a particular individual. When considering the design of a hypermedia system for supporting the information needs of city visitors, the use of \" adaptive hypermedia \" appears the obvious choice for tailoring the information to the interests of the visitor. However, to meet the requirements of this particular application domain, the traditional approach of using a user model as the sole means for driving adaptation is not sufficient. Indeed, GUIDE represents an example of a visible application stream in adaptive hypermedia research, one in which applications are context-aware [3, 10] and able to use context, such as the user's current location, to adapt the presentation of hyperme-dia. Examples of other applications in this stream include [5] and [7].

Nigel Davies

Papers

Cooperation and conflict among dunnocks, Prunella modularis, in a variable mating system

Using and determining location in a context-sensitive tour guide

Beyond prototypes: challenges in deploying ubiquitous systems

The role of adaptive hypermedia in a context-aware tourist GUIDE

Paternity and parental effort in dunnocks Prunella modularis : how good are male chick-feeding rules ?