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Journal ArticleDOI

Responsive office environments

Scott A. Elrod1, Gene Hall1, Rick Costanza1, Michael Dixon1, Jim des Rivieres1 
01 Jul 1993-Communications of The ACM (ACM)-Vol. 36, Iss: 7, pp 84-85
TL;DR: By interconnecting PARC's rich computational Infrastructure with a computerized building management system (BMS) that controls heating, air conditioning, lighting and desktop appliances, this work plans to explore new strategies for energy conservation and office comfort control.
Abstract: A network architecture providing host migration transparency. In Proceedings of SIGCOMM'9I (Sept. 1991), pp. 209-22O. C. The portable common runtime approach to interoperability. In Proceedings of the ACM Sympgsium on Operating Sy,~tems Principles (Dec. 1989). About the Author: MARK WEISER is principal scientist and manager of tlhe Computer Science laboratory at Xerox PARC. Current research interests include new theories of automatic memory reclamation (garbage collection), visualization of operating system internals, t~biquitous computing and embodied virtuality. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distribta~ed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and nolice is give that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy o:herwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. Responsive Office Environments team of facilltles, staff and omputer science researchers t xerox PARC IS exploring applications of ubiquitous computing to energy management and environmental control [1]. By interconnecting PARC's rich computational Infrastructure with a computerized building management system (BMS) that controls heating, air conditioning , lighting and desktop appliances , we plan to explore new strategies for energy conservation and office comfort control. Over the past 20 years, the designers of heating, ventilation, and air conditionIng (HVAC) systems have gradually shifted toward the use of digital computers [2], replacing direct manual control and simple analog feedback loops such as thermostats. Digital control makes possible more flexible, precise, and complex control strategies that In turn can provide significant energy savIngs. For example, most computer-controlled buildings offer automatic temperature setbacks to reduce energy consumption after working hours and on weekends. Many systems also control lighting to save additional energy. Current progress In low-cost distributed computing, communications, and sensing technologies will enable future building management systems to be much more responsive to individual preferences and activities. The following are examples of the types of enhancements that are possible: • Small, location-sensing mobile computers such as PARCTabs provide an ideal Interface to allow office occupants and maintenance staff to set parameters (such as preferred ranges for temperature and light level) and receive feedback about current conditions. • Occupancy sensors are already used at PARC to avoid heating or cooling conference rooms when they are not in use. We are now experlmentlng with user-selectable strategies for switching off lights, computer displays, and …
Citations
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
27 Sep 1999
TL;DR: Some of the research challenges in understanding context and in developing context-aware applications are discussed, which are increasingly important in the fields of handheld and ubiquitous computing, where the user?s context is changing rapidly.
Abstract: 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.

4,842 citations


Cites background from "Responsive office environments"

  • ...Reactive Room [6] Intelligent control of audiovisuals XXX X GUIDE [7] Tour guide XX CyberDesk [8,9,10] Automatic integration of user services XX X Conference Assistant [11] Conference capture and tour guide XXXX X X Responsive Office [ 12 ] Office environment control XX X NETMAN [13,16] Network maintenance XX Fieldwork [17,18,22] Fieldwork data collection XX X X Augment-able Reality [19] Virtual post-it notes XX X Context Toolkit [24] In/Out ......

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  • ...Context-aware has become somewhat synonymous with other terms: adaptive [2], reactive [6], responsive [ 12 ], situated [15], context-sensitive [19] and environmentdirected [13]....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors present a novel sensor system, suitable for large-scale deployment in indoor environments, which allows the locations of people and equipment to be accurately determined and describes some of the context-aware applications that might make use of this fine-grained location information.
Abstract: Configuration of the computing and communications systems found at home and in the workplace is a complex task that currently requires the attention of the user. Researchers have begun to examine computers that would autonomously change their functionality based on observations of who or what was around them. By determining their context, using input from sensor systems distributed throughout the environment, computing devices could personalize themselves to their current user, adapt their behaviour according to their location, or react to their surroundings. The authors present a novel sensor system, suitable for large-scale deployment in indoor environments, which allows the locations of people and equipment to be accurately determined. We also describe some of the context-aware applications that might make use of this fine-grained location information.

1,606 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: This dissertation shows how the Context Toolkit has been used as a research testbed, supporting the investigation of difficult problems in context-aware computing such as the building of high-level programming abstractions, dealing with ambiguous or inaccurate context data and controlling access to personal context.
Abstract: Traditional interactive applications are limited to using only the input that users explicitly provide. As users move away from traditional desktop computing environments and move towards mobile and ubiquitous computing environments, there is a greater need for applications to leverage from implicit information, or context. These types of environments are rich in context, with users and devices moving around and computational services becoming available or disappearing over time. This information is usually not available to applications but can be useful in adapting the way in which it performs its services and in changing the available services. Applications that use context are known as context-aware applications. This research in context-aware computing has focused on the development of a software architecture to support the building of context-aware applications. While developers have been able to build context-aware applications, they have been limited to using a small variety of sensors that provide only simple context such as identity and location. This dissertation presents a set of requirements and component abstractions for a conceptual supporting framework. The framework along with an identified design process makes it easier to acquire and deliver context to applications, and in turn, build more complex context-aware applications. In addition, an implementation of the framework called the Context Toolkit is discussed, along with a number of context-aware applications that have been built with it. The applications illustrate how the toolkit is used in practice and allows an exploration of the design space of context-aware computing. This dissertation also shows how the Context Toolkit has been used as a research testbed, supporting the investigation of difficult problems in context-aware computing such as the building of high-level programming abstractions, dealing with ambiguous or inaccurate context data and controlling access to personal context.

1,152 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Pierre Wellner1
TL;DR: The DigitalDesk is built around an ordinary physical desk and can be used as such, but it has extra capabilities, including a video camera mounted above the desk that can detect where the user is pointing, and it can read documents that are placed on the desk.

1,127 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The ubiquitous computing philosophy, the PARCTAB system, user interface issues for small devices, and the experience in developing and testing a variety of mobile applications are described.
Abstract: The PARCTAB system integrates a palm-sized mobile computer into an office network. The PARCTAB project serves as a preliminary testbed for ubiquitous computing, a philosophy originating at Xerox PARC that aims to enrich our computing environment by emphasizing context sensitivity, casual interaction and the spatial arrangement of computers. This article describes the ubiquitous computing philosophy, the PARCTAB system, user interface issues for small devices, and our experience in developing and testing a variety of mobile applications.

440 citations


Cites background from "Responsive office environments"

  • ...Second, another Ubiquitous Computing project at Xerox PARC, the Responsive Environment Project [ 7 ], has been exploring how environmental control can save energy during the day-to-day operation of a building....

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References
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Nov 1989
TL;DR: The Portable Common Runtime (PCR) is built, a language-independent and operating-system-independent base for modern languages and offers four interrelated facilities: storage management, symbol binding, threads, and low-level I/O.
Abstract: Operating system abstractions do not always reach high enough for direct use by a language or applications designer. The gap is filled by language-specific runtime environments, which become more complex for richer languages (CommonLisp needs more than C+ +, which needs more than C). But language-specific environments inhibit integrated multi-lingual programming, and also make porting hard (for instance, because of operating system dependencies). To help solve these problems, we have built the Portable Common Runtime (PCR), a language-independent and operating-system-independent base for modern languages. PCR offers four interrelated facilities: storage management (including universal garbage collection), symbol binding (including static and dynamic linking and loading), threads (lightweight processes), and low-level I/O (including network sockets). PCR is “common” because these facilities simultaneously support programs in several languages. PCR supports C. Cedar, Scheme, and CommonLisp intercalling and runs pre-existing C and CommonLisp (Kyoto) binaries. PCR is “portable” because it uses only a small set of operating system features. The PCR source code is available for use by other researchers and developers.

106 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The evolution of BEMS from its beginning in the 1970s to the present is reviewed, concentrating on the control aspects, in terms of system layout, system hardware and control techniques.

33 citations