Abstract
The usage needs of a mobile device vary according to
context. Mobile context awareness research aims at
providing the device user with a way of usage that suits
the situation. Interaction based on context requires
acquiring, abstracting and delivering information from
multiple sources, such as sensors, to the application or
application control. A generic software framework and
tool for facilitating the rapid development of mobile
device context-aware applications were developed in this
work. The blackboard-based framework supports all tasks
that are required for context-based application control,
where contexts can be any events that are relevant to
user interaction with the application, including explicit
inputs. The core component of the framework, Context
Manager, provides a publish and subscribe mechanism and a
database for the applications and application control.
The framework provides an application programming
interface (API) for developers. As a higher
abstraction-level programming interface, a customization
tool enables easy end-user development of context-aware
features into existing applications without changing
them.
An extensible ontology is used as a uniform context
representation within the framework. The purpose of the
ontology, together with the API, is to enable easy
access, use and reuse of human-understandable context
information. Context information sources, such as
sensors, often produce a continuous stream of low
abstraction-level data. The framework supports the
transformation of a continuous data stream into
abstracted context events, described in the ontology.
Context information is delivered to applications or
application control as abstracted events. The main result
of the dissertation is a software framework, ontology and
tool, which facilitate the customization of sensor-based
human-computer interaction in mobile devices. The
practical applicability, scope, and computational
efficiency of the implemented framework and customization
tool are evaluated with performance measurements and
multiple applications implemented in a mobile phone with
real sensor sources.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Qualification | Doctor Degree |
Awarding Institution |
|
Supervisors/Advisors |
|
Award date | 25 Nov 2005 |
Place of Publication | Espoo |
Publisher | |
Print ISBNs | 951-38-6669-6 |
Electronic ISBNs | 951-38-6670-X |
Publication status | Published - 2005 |
MoE publication type | G4 Doctoral dissertation (monograph) |
Keywords
- mobile computing
- context-aware computing
- mobile interaction
- mobile context awareness
- application control
- blackboard-based architecture
- software framework
- context management
- information model
- application programming interface
- sensor-based interaction
- customization
- end-user development
- personalization