Concept
Context-aware Computing can be seen as the development
of systems that integrate context information to make services more
convenient and easy to use. Context is: Location + Presence + Identity +
Activity + Device + Network + Content.
Context-aware Computing
will operate in two ways: defining the localisation content of the user
in a given environment (collection), and then identifying and providing
the context enriched service (rendering).
Trajectory
Context-aware
Computing was defined in the mid-1990s by scientists from xerox Parc
and Columbia University as ‘systems able to adapt according to location
of use, the collection of nearby people, hosts and accessible devices as
well as to change to such things over time’.
Sensors carried by
people, embedded in objects and integrated into cars, homes, shops, the
workplace, etc. are predicted to grow significantly in the next three
years (11% pa). More than half of these nodes will be mobile phones, 70%
of which will be location-aware. A new generation of context- aware
applications will use sensor, presence, and location information to
deliver ‘context-enriched services’, the primary target of which will be
customer-facing mobile applications and Internet users.
Impact
Context-aware
Computing has the capacity to be highly disruptive and there may be a
‘concentration of difficulty’ in the context data aggregation layer
which could be a bottleneck for the whole process.
The primary
target of Context-aware Computing will therefore be customer- facing
mobile applications and Internet users operating in different ways.
Primary opportunities will be push-based and context-enriched to deliver
services at a reasonable price. This could be applicable in areas like
eCommerce, social networking, and logistics.
Applications will
need to interface with external geolocalisation services combining
localisation information with appropriate context-sensitive telecom
infrastructure (from 3G to radio-frequency identification (RFID),
Bluetooth, etc.). The user interface of mobile devices will need to be
able to represent the relevance of the information delivered.
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