Context awareness

About: Context awareness is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5790 publications have been published within this topic receiving 119944 citations.

Adaptive Audio-Based Context Recognition

Abstract: Context recognition is an essential aspect of intelligent systems and environments. In most cases, the recognition of a context of interest cannot be achieved in a single step. Between measuring a physical phenomenon and the estimation or recognition of what this phenomenon represents, there are several intermediate stages which require a significant computation. Understanding the resource requirements of these steps is vital to determine the feasibility of context recognition on a given device. In this paper, we propose an adaptive context-recognition architecture that accommodates uncertain knowledge to deal with sensed data. The architecture consists of an adaptation component that monitors the capability and workload of a device and dynamically adapts recognition accuracy and processing time. The architecture is implemented for an audio-based context recognition. A detail account of the tradeoff between recognition time and recognition accuracy is provided.

Context-based Adaptation of Ubiquitous Web Applications in Tourism

Abstract: The customer nowadays expects ubiquitous access to information exactly relevant to their current context during all trip phases. Information has to be provided in a highly personalised way and has to be accessible anytime and anywhere by any possible devices. Consequently, information systems have to adapt themselves to the current usage context. This paper presents an approach to dynamically adapt ubiquitous web applications in the dimensions of content, design and behaviour to the complete usage context (i.e. user, current situation and used device), making use of an XML-based neutral representation of the web application’s user interface. The paper discusses existing approaches for adaptive systems, presents a generalpurpose adaptation model and a corresponding IT-framework and introduces the application of the proposed approach within the Innsbruck.mobile web application.

Recent Advances on Context-Awareness and Data/Information Fusion in ITS

Abstract: Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) involve various emerging technologies and applications. This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent advances on data/information fusion and context-awareness referring to ITS. Data/Information fusion is necessary to fuse the data from different sensors and thereby extract relevant information on the target sources. On the other hand, context-aware information processing provides awareness of the driving environments by deploying intelligent query processing and smart information dissemination. The fusion and context-awareness should help in improving ITS operations with better road-awareness service, traffic monitoring, vehicle detection as well as development of new methods. This paper is centered on data fusion and context aware methodologies developed recently in the areas of ITS rather than on their ITS applications. We found that the recent progresses in ITS fusion are devoted to the potential cooperative approaches providing real-time/dynamic vehicle sensing technologies, whereas the recent context awareness techniques are deploying service concepts (e.g. location aware service) and frameworks. It is believed that the newly developed advanced fusion/context-aware techniques are becoming more effective to tackle complex traffic scenarios (e.g. traffic intersection) as well as complex urban environments.

Three Categories of Context-Aware Systems

Abstract: With regard to context-aware systems: some optimize system-internal processes, based on the context state at hand; others maximize the user-perceived effectiveness of delivered services, by providing different service variants depending on the situation of the user; still others are about offering value-sensitivity when the society demands so. Even though those three perspectives cover a broad range of currently relevant applications there are no widely accepted and commonly used corresponding concepts and terms. This is an obstacle to broadly understand, effectively integrate, and adequately assess such systems. We address this problem, by considering a (component-based) methodological derivation of technical (software) specifications based on underlying enterprise models. That is because context states are about the enterprise environment of a (software) system while the delivery of context-aware services is about technical (software) functionalities; hence, we need a perspective on both. We consider the SDBC (Software Derived from Business Components) approach that brings together enterprise modeling and software specification. On that basis: (a) We deliver a base context-awareness conceptualization; (b) We partially align it to agent technology because adapting behaviors to environments assumes some kind of pro-activity that is only fully covered by agent systems, in our view. We partially illustrate our proposed conceptualization and particularly - the agent technology implications, by means of a case example featuring land border security.

SAIL: A Sensor Abstraction and Integration Layer for Context Awareness

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are an important technological support for ambient assisted applications. Up to now most WSN applications are based on ad hoc solutions, and attempts to provide reusable applications are still in their youth. Under this trend of research we propose a layered architecture called SAIL (Sensor Abstraction and Integration Layers) to be used in context aware architectures, and aimed at integrating WSN as context information sources. In the proposed approach, the applications running on WSN can be exposed using either a node centric or a data centric paradigm, and they are interfaced with different access technologies. SAIL is currently encapsulated within the OSGi framework and has been tested on MICAz motes.