Using Ontologies to Address Key Issues in Ubiquitous Computing Systems (original) (raw)
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Ontologies in Ubiquitous Computing
2006
Ontologies are an explicit specification of a conceptualization, that is understood to be an abstract and simplified version of the world to be represented. In recent years, ontologies have been used in Ubiquitous Computing, especially for the development of context-aware applications. In this paper, we offer a taxonomy for classifying ontologies used in Ubiquitous Computing, in which two main categories are distinguished: Domain ontologies, created to represent and communicate agreed knowledge within some sub-domain of Ubiquitous Computing; and Ontologies as software artifacts, when ontologies play the role of an additional type of artifact in ubiquitous computing applications. The latter category is subdivided according with the moment in that ontologies are used: at development time or at run time. Also, we analyze and classify (based on this taxonomy) some recently published works.
An ontology-driven approach for collaborative ubiquitous systems
International Journal of Autonomic Computing, 2010
Ubiquitous computing environments are complex systems containing a great amount of heterogeneous devices and services available to users. Collaborative activities can benefit from the particular features offered by ubiquitous environments, such as the exploitation of context information. Applications have to be aware of this context and adapt to it. Moreover, such adaptation must be based on application semantics in order to better respond to user needs in any situation. This paper presents a semantic framework for the development of adaptive collaborative applications in ubiquitous computing environments. An ontology model, containing generic collaboration knowledge as well as domain-specific knowledge, is proposed in order to enable architecture adaptation and to support spontaneous and implicit sessions inside groups of humans and devices. The generic part of this model, called generic collaboration ontology (GCO) can be extended by domain-specific ontologies in order to use collaboration knowledge in applications of those domains.
Use of ontologies in a pervasive computing environment
2003
This study reports an emerging application of Semantic Web technologies. The Semantic Web has emerged from Knowledge Engineering and Intelligent Agents, and has been primarily aimed at improved Web Search and Web Services. This study has applied this technology to solve important problems in a CORBA-based Pervasive Computing Infrastructure. Pervasive Computing Environments consist of a large number of independent entities that help transform physical spaces into computationally active and intelligent spaces. These entities could be devices, applications, services or users. A lot of work has been done to enable the different entities to interact with each other. However, not much work has been done in ensuring that the different entities are on the same semantic plane when they interact with each other. To tackle this problem, we have used semantic web technologies to attach semantics to various concepts in Pervasive Environments. We have developed ontologies to describe different aspects of these environments.
An ontology for shared personalizable ubiquitous smart spaces
Abstract—We identify mediation between three types of spatial context as a key component for realizing shared personalizable ubiquitous smart spaces, and argue for an ontology of spatial contexts to provide a common language for these mediation processes. Basic prerequisites for such an ontology are identified, so that requirements of all three types of spatial context can be reflected in a unifying way that allows for seamless integration.
An ontology for context-aware pervasive computing environments
The Knowledge Engineering …, 2003
Ontologies are a key component for building open and dynamic distributed pervasive computing systems in which agents and devices share contextual information. We describe our use of the Web Ontology Language OWL and other tools for building the foundation ontology for the Context Broker Architecture (CoBrA), a new context-aware pervasive computing framework. The current version of the CoBrA ontology models the basic concepts of people, agents, places, and presentation events in an intelligent meeting room environment. It provides a vocabulary of terms for classes and properties suitable for building practical systems that model context in pervasive computing environments. We also describe our ongoing research in developing an OWL inference engine using Flora-2 and in extending the present CoBrA ontology to use the DAML spatial and temporal ontologies.
Ontology-based models in pervasive computing systems
Knowledge Engineering Review, 2007
Pervasive computing is by its nature open and extensible, and must integrate the information from a diverse range of sources. This leads to a problem of information exchange, so sub-systems must agree on shared representations. Ontologies potentially provide a well-founded mechanism for the representation and exchange of such structured information. A number of ontologies have been developed specifically for use in pervasive computing, none of which appears to cover adequately the space of concerns applicable to application designers. We compare and contrast the most popular ontologies, evaluating them against the system challenges generally recognized within the pervasive computing community. We identify a number of deficiencies that must be addressed in order to apply the ontological techniques successfully to next-generation pervasive systems. Printed in the United Kingdom on the potential impact of influential, new, and developing technologies on the field. These discussions led to a special issue on 'The Disappearing Computer' in the Communications of the ACM , which refined these initial areas into five guiding themes:
Ontologies in a pervasive computing environment
2003
Ontologies are entering widespread use in many areas such as knowledge and content management, electronic commerce and the Semantic Web. In this paper we show how the use of ontologies has helped us overcome some important problems in the development of pervasive computing environments. We have integrated ontologies and Semantic Web technology into our Pervasive Computing infrastructure. Our investigations have shown that the Semantic Web technology can be integrated into our CORBAbased infrastructure to augment several important services. This work suggests a number of requirements for future research in the development of ontologies, reasoners, languages and interfaces.
SOUPA: Standard ontology for ubiquitous and pervasive applications
2004
We describe a shared ontology called SOUPA -Standard Ontology for Ubiquitous and Pervasive Applications. SOUPA is designed to model and support pervasive computing applications. This ontology is expressed using the Web Ontology Language OWL and includes modular component vocabularies to represent intelligent agents with associated beliefs, desires, and intentions, time, space, events, user profiles, actions, and policies for security and privacy. We discuss how SOUPA can be extended and used to support the applications of CoBrA, a broker-centric agent architecture for building smart meeting rooms, and MoGATU, a peer-to-peer data management for pervasive environments.
An ontology-based conceptual model for composing context-aware applications
Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) applications operate within an extremely dynamic and heterogeneous environment. Thus context definition, representation, management and use become important factors that affect their operation. UbiComp applications have to dynamically adapt to changes in their environment as a result of users' or other actors' activities. To ease the development of such applications it is necessary to decouple application composition from context acquisition and representation, and at the same time provide universal models and mechanisms to manage context. This paper presents experiences with using an ontology to represent context of operation together with decision making for UbiComp applications that result from the composition of functionally independent components. These components were embedded in everyday objects, hence (a) their services were affected by their physical properties, (b) their context of operation was defined by the existence / availability...
2010
The Ubiquitous Computing concept was first defined by Mark Weiser (Weiser, 1995) and it refers to a new computing era where electronic devices merge with the background. People make use of those electronic devices unconsciously, focusing just on their needs and not in how to accomplish them. The concept of Ambient Intelligence (Ducatel et al., 2001), lying on the ubiquitous computing paradigm, refers to those environments where people are surrounded by all kind of intelligent intuitive devices, capable of recognising and responding to their changing needs. People perceive the surroundings as a service provider that satisfies their needs or inquiries in a seamless, unobstrusive and invisible way. It is generally agreed that AmI (Ambient Intelligence) will have a great impact in economy and society. The potential of AmI technologies in various application areas has been object of numerous studies. For example, the IPTS/ESTO Ambient Intelligence in Everyday Life Roadmap (Friedewald & D...