Contextual computing

Contextual Computing research aims to develop systems incorporating awareness of and the ability to adapt to user context. A dictionary definition of context may state: "The context of an idea or event is the general situation that relates to it and which helps it to be understood. " [1]. In Contextual Computing, context should include information to enable systems to achieve timely and precise understanding users and their situation, the system providing users with more personalised and contextual services than is normal. Currently, various innovative techniques and applications in contextual computing have emerged and continue to emerge in a number of fields such as health care, e-commerce and e-learning etc. Medical telemetry, used in the monitoring of ambulatory patients while in transit can be easily managed with wireless systems [2]. An example in. this field is Wireless ECG (Electrocardiograph) developed by Duke University. This system monitors a patient's cardiac symptoms offering rapid and reliable transmission of data to a clinician prior to the patient's admission [3]. A further example is AmbieSense [4], a system with which I have been previously involved. The purpose of AmbieSense is to provide personalised, context-sensitive information to the mobile user. An ambient information environment will be provided by a combination of context tag technology, a software platform to manage and deliver the information and personal computing devices to which the information is served. The project aims to deliver information to the mobile citizen at the right time, place and situation. The information provision will largely be achieved using specialist content providers associated with the project. Currently, our research in UCE in pervasive computing falls into three principal areas: 1.Context Ontology: the research is aimed at developing a domain relevant context ontology which can be utilized in user modelling for context-aware applications. A prototype has been developed in mobile learning domain. A discussion is provided in [5]. 2.Intelligent Retail Business: when compared to traditional retail business applications, intelligent retail business solutions are being asked to satisfy complex customer's needs by providing a more personalised and ubiquitous services. An 'Intelligent Retail Business ' system architecture is presented in the Figure 1. The content server occupies the role of providing commercial information, integrating the business information for each retail source with relevant commercial services such as online payment. Moreover, the content server provides management of customer's context with the aim of delivering personalised services. In a shopping mall, a wireless tag contacts with customers via wireless network (e.g. Bluetooth) and links with the content server based on a local network. The functionalities of the wireless tag include delivery of business information to mobile customers and tracing their context. To out-store situation, two types of communication protocols have been considered to deal with variable mobile devices. SMS provides message to the mobile customers, who use GSM/CDMA/... mobile phone; WAP is the solution for that using advanced mobile devices, such as PDA. 3.Mobile Health Care: in contrast to other wireless health care systems such as the previously cited Wireless ECG (Electrocardiograph) system [3], our research concentrates on prediction of some paroxysmal diseases such as epilepsy using EEG (electroencephalograph) with developing and integrating analytical software into mobile devices such as a PDA. To upcoming disease, based on an analysis, a PDA may send a message to an ambulance dispatch centre or to relatives providing location information obtained using for example GPS. Contextual Computing is an innovative research field covering multiple disciplines. Its commercial applications have revealed more and more exciting and startling progress.