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

There is evidence that the public are learning to either ignore or actively avoid public displays. While most research has focused on addressing this issue by increasing the perceived value of the content shown we have been inspired by the strong bind between mobile phones and their users to explore an alternative approach, i.e. to encourage viewers to form emotional attachments with displays. In this paper we report on our early studies that explore this idea in a real-world testbed.

I Love My Display: Combatting Display Blindness with Emotional Attachment

There has recently been considerable research and development in the field of open distributed processing. The goal of this work is to enable access to distributed services without concern for the underlying environment. A number of standards and platforms have emerged to achieve this goal. This paper provides a tutorial introduction to these initiatives. In particular, the paper examines the ISO standard for a reference model for open distributed processing, OMG's CORBA and OSF's DCE. The paper concludes that these initiatives are different in scope and should be viewed as complementary. The paper also speculates on a path to convergence between the three initiatives although a number of issues remain to be solved before such a convergence can become a reality.

Standards and platforms for open distributed processing

The aging population experiences increased health risks, both physical and emotional. Two such risks are those of isolation and falling. This papers draws from HCI literature in these two independent research areas to explore the needs of family communication with elderly parents at risk of falls. We report on a study with 7 elderly parents and 3 of adult children, as well as a group interview with 12 elderly living in a sheltered accommodation. Findings indicate important emotional needs on both parts: adult children's anxiety for the wellbeing of their parents at risk of falls, and elderly's need for autonomy and their appreciation for an aesthetic design. We concluded with implications of these findings for designing for family communication in this challenging context.

/pdf/communication-needs-of-elderly-at-risk-of-falls-and-their-24009m998q.pdf

Communication Needs of Elderly at Risk of Falls and their Remote Family

Understanding an audience's behavior is an important aspect of evaluating display installations In particular, it is important to understand how people move around in the vicinity of displays, including viewer transitions from noticing a display, through approach, to final use of the display Despite the importance of measuring viewer mobility patterns, there are still relatively few low-cost tools that can be used with research display deployments to capture detailed spatial and temporal behavior of an audience In this paper, we present an approach to audience monitoring that uses an off-the-shelf depth sensor and open source computer vision algorithms to monitor the space in front of a digital display, tracking presence and movements of both passers-by and display users We believe that our approach can help display researchers evaluate their public display deployments and improve the level of quantitative data underpinning our field

/pdf/audience-monitor-an-open-source-tool-for-tracking-audience-3ktdn7o3qo.pdf

Audience monitor: an open source tool for tracking audience mobility in front of pervasive displays

The emerging importance of multimedia applications has led to many ideas about how best to support multimedia in a distributed environment. Lancaster University proposes one approach, i.e. start with models emerging from the Open Distributed Processing (ODP) standardization process, and extend them to incorporate multimedia services. Bellcore's Touring Machine proposes a different approach: let developers of multimedia applications specify an interface, and then design a network that meets the specification. Each approach has relevance, and an ideal environment must incorporate both, but questions remain about how the two perspectives fit together. We have contrasted and compared the Lancaster and Touring Machine approaches in an attempt to integrate their individual perspectives into one design. This paper documents our results.

Nigel Davies

Papers

I Love My Display: Combatting Display Blindness with Emotional Attachment

Standards and platforms for open distributed processing

Communication Needs of Elderly at Risk of Falls and their Remote Family

Audience monitor: an open source tool for tracking audience mobility in front of pervasive displays

Integrating Computing and Telecommunications: A Tale of Two Architectures