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

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

The theory of affordances

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.

/pdf/context-aware-computing-for-the-internet-of-things-a-survey-3nibvvc921.pdf

Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information (such as user location, time of day, nearby people and devices, and user activity) Since it was proposed about a decade ago, many researchers have studied this topic and built several context-aware applications to demonstrate the usefulness of this new technology Context-aware applications (or the system infrastructure to support them), however, have never been widely available to everyday users In this survey of research on context-aware systems and applications, we looked in depth at the types of context used and models of context information, at systems that support collecting and disseminating context, and at applications that adapt to the changing context Through this survey, it is clear that context-aware research is an old but rich area for research The difficulties and possible solutions we outline serve as guidance for researchers hoping to make context-aware computing a reality

/pdf/a-survey-of-context-aware-mobile-computing-research-1c5wp0noju.pdf

A Survey of Context-Aware Mobile Computing Research

Situated computing concerns the ability of computing devices to detect, interpret and respond to aspects of the user's local environment. In this paper, we use our recent prototyping experience to identify a number of challenging issues that must be resolved in building wearable computers that support situated applications. The paper is organized into three areas: Sensing the local environment, interpreting sensor data, and realizing the value of situated applications. We conclude that while it is feasible to develop interesting prototypes, there remain many difficulties to overcome before robust systems may be widely deployed.

Towards situated computing

Research field trials of fully functional prototypes of location-based games are an effective way to test game designs and develop an understanding of what makes games compelling. They may also expose emergent behaviors or facets of the game which were not predicted in the design. Experiments are a good way to explore these emergent behaviors in a rigorous way. We describe an emergence-driven research methodology that formalizes this process of using emergent phenomena from research field trials to drive experiments. We also describe a range of techniques that can be used to evaluate location aware experiences.

A research methodology for evaluating location aware experiences

A device for providing user input to a computer device 20 comprises a digitiser 2,3 operable
in a first mode to provide point and click control of a user interface of a computer device and
operable in a second mode to provide keystroke entry to a user interface of a computer device.
Switching means 11 enables a user to switch between the first mode and the second mode of
the digitiser; and signals output from the digitiser are output from a serial port 17 to the
computer device 20. The device 1 is adapted to be handheld in use and physically separate
from the computer device 20 to which user input is to be provided. Keystroke entry is
provided by handwriting input to the digitizer.

User input device

https://calvium.com/calvium/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Calvium_Research_PrimingPaperwithRefsFinal.pdf

Priming, sense-making and help: Analysis of player behaviour in an immersive theatrical experience

In this paper, we describe an extensible toolkit for creating, testing and executing context-aware mobile applications. Our aim is to facilitate research in wearable & ubiquitous computing by providing an experimental framework into which novel sensors, networking mechanisms, web services and algorithms can easily be added and explored. The paper describes the toolkit, an SDK used to create plug-ins, and three example extensions that encapsulate a low-cost 3-axis compass, a heart rate monitor and a system for detecting services available on the network.

Richard Hull

Papers

Towards situated computing

A research methodology for evaluating location aware experiences

User input device

Priming, sense-making and help: Analysis of player behaviour in an immersive theatrical experience

An Extensible Toolkit for Context-Aware Mobile Applications