Ubiquitous Computing

Introduction: What is Ubiquitous computing?

Ubiquitous computing is a phrase first coined back in 1988 by Mark Weiser who is in general seen as the father of Ubiquitous computing and had outlined that it is set by four principles.

1. The purpose of a computer is to help you achieve something else.

2. The best computer is a quiet invisible servant.

3. The more you can do by intuition the smarter you are; You computer should be an extension of this.

4. Technology should create calm, And should inform but not demand our focus or attention.

“Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. ” - Mark Weiser

In short Ubiquitous computing is to help make the lives of the user easier and cut down on certain processes where not previously possible, For example there are now fridges that will know when you are running out of milk and order more, You can have an AI assistant such as Alexa or Siri order your shopping or take down your shopping lists. These computing elements require very little if any input from the user but still perform tasks that the user would need to do and these devices are everywhere now in the forms of mobile phones, fridges, smart watches, Al's, Smart glasses, and many more examples and we are only just scratching the surface of possibilities.

Wearable, handheld and product embedded systems.

Wearable tech in terms of computerised technology has been around since as early as the early 80s, and available widely as early as 1995 when Sega released a Virtual reality headset called the VFX1 Headgear this retailed for nearly 600$ and was revolutionary for its time, however due to technological restraints it only lasted a few years and then people started to forget about VR until the last few years and now it has really taken off, the same can be said for other forms of wearable technology and embedded systems.

There are now a whole range of wearable tech and embedded systems some of which save lives and keep people beating, You have smart watches that track the wearers steps, blood pressure, location, calories burned, how much you are sleeping and even the type of sleep you are getting. In a way these watches could tell you anything you would want to know about yourself and in many ways have been helping doctors to identify potential health issues within the wearers from this data provided. Then you have the medical aspects of embedded systems, There are wearable devices such as insulin monitors which monitor the wearers blood sugars if they are diabetic and give them dosages of insulin accordingly, Pacemakers which can help keep the heart running and even alert emergency services if there is a problem sometimes before the user is even aware it is happening. This technology is saving lives and has been a crucial and revolutionary aid to modern medicine and technology alike.

We are now in a new age of wearable and embedded technology including contact lenses which further help to improve vision and even have the ability to magnify. “Developed by a team led by Eric Tremblay at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the rigid contact lens covers the sclera, or whites of the eyes, making it larger than an ordinary lens. Within it are tiny aluminium mirrors, arranged in a ring around the centre. When light streams through, the mirrors bounce it around several times, causing objects to appear 2.8 times larger than they really are. “-Aviva Rutkin 2015 This style of contact lens could literally change the way we view the world.

Characteristics of interaction and display hardware.

Display hardware is in a constant state of fluctuation screen sizes are getting bigger and smaller and the consumers and designers are always getting new ideas of what we want, TV's are getting bigger and better resolutions with High definition being seen as a standard (1920x1080) 4K UHD being the higher end models (4096 x 2160 pixels ) and 8K being released last year (7680 × 4320 ) where you would be looking at currently about £14,000 to buy so I would say that's more of a luxury purchase if there ever was one. That's just the current state of TV's, similar things happen with phones we're wanting and getting bigger screens, better resolutions on those screens for clearer viewing and now phone company's are toying with fold-able screens so the user can change the size of the phone screen on a whim depending on what they are wanting to do at that given time. “On the front of the Samsung Galaxy Fold there is a 4.6-inch HD+ Super AMOLED (21:9) display, but open the phone up and you'll find a 7.3-inch QXGA+ (QHD+) Dynamic AMOLED (4.2:3) Infinity Flex display which transforms the phone into a tablet. “-techradar

These constant changes and upgrades change the way in which a user will interact with their devices now and going forwards potentially even eliminating the need for a tablet device if a phones display could be large enough, powerful enough and convenient enough to take over that particular market. The way in which we as users interact with our hardware is also changing too, we are now finding more and more intuitive ways to use our devices be it the larger ones at home or the smaller ones we can carry with us, interfaces play a huge role in this and designers now try to make the displays give us as much functionality with as little information as possible so we as users aren't overwhelmed by it all but we still know what is going on most commonly in the forms of apps we can control our devices and have them set to our exact preferences, brightness, colour correction and so much more these devices have been streamlined to keep their users engaged.

Memory and processing constraints.

What a device can accomplish is quite often limited by its memory and processing constraints which is why there are always breakthroughs in processors and storage drives, a good example of this is the difference between an Intel I3 processor, an I5 and an I7 an I3 has 2 cores, an I5 and I7 have 4 cores. An I3 runs at about a max of 4.2GHz an I5 at 3.8GHz and an I7 at about 4.2GHz so you can be clocking much greater speeds out of the I5 and the I7 due the the clock speeds and greater number of cores.

These speeds and the memory involved will effect everything you do on your devices, apps, games, word processors all need varying amounts to be able to accomplish your task for example using a word processor might only need a few kilobytes which is why systems going back 20 or 30 years would have been able to run them however a game or program we use nowadays such as Maya would need a considerable amount more and technology has to be kept in line with this, nobody is going to create games that systems can't handle or even run as nobody would want to play them and there is no monetary vale in that for them, whereas if you create a game that has a standard amount of processing power and memory needed to run then you will be able to get a lot more out of it. These constraints are the same for any devices and applications somebody would want to create and release they need to be able to keep up with the demand of better graphics, realism and immersion but at the same time be able to do so without overheating. Smite by Hirez studios is a good example of adhering to a standardised set of processing power and memory as they have managed to do so in a manner which means there game can now be played across multiple platforms allowing PC players to play with the likes of Xbox and Nintendo switch players.

Memory is another area in which we have made great strides and continue to do so for example one of the first hard drives created had a memory of 3.75 megabytes and took up a space of 86 cubic feet, compare that to recently released hard drives of 15 terabytes that take up a space of 2.1 cubic inches. That is a memory improvement of nearly 4 million to one.

Mobile computing applications

mobile computing applications covers a wide range of applications many of which are generally communications based sending emails, text to text, voice to voice communications even video to video communications are all readily available and offer the users much needed communication tools and providing you have an internet connection or data are free. This wide range of communication tools allow for people to connect all over the world, share ideas, concepts and almost anything you could wish for, Such applications allows things such as family to keep in touch, scholars to work together without ever having to be in the same room and even watching television on the go.

Mobility and persistence

Continuing on from the previous section mobility and persistence plays a huge role in the way in which we use our devices, tablets, mobile phones, laptops and other smaller scale devices offer us a lot of options of both decent power and the luxury of mobility, Those with long commutes can use these devices to ease boredom, read books, watch television on the go or even just chat to someone nowhere near their current location whilst on the go and the persistence of these will not be something that ceases anytime soon. Allowing people instant round the world connection to these applications is something they are going to keep up with as long as they are available and the demand for it is something that I can see only ever increasing with more and more generations picking up technology the more the mobility of devices and usage of them will rise.

Networking.

An ad-hoc network is composed of a group of networked devices all communicating with each other without the need of human interference but grouped through a single access point such as a switch or a router. These Ad-hoc networks will often be used in smaller areas and are an ideal set up for small offices and LAN's as they allow for the transmission of data between each point and the separate nodes without the need of an actual internet connection. Location routing and networking all play a part in this too, If the network was to be made bigger or connected to the internet there would be other factors taken into account such as the location of said network, the provider of the internet or servers need to connect to and the way in which the network is organised e it all going through a single computer, all connected to a single server, all of the computers interconnected These all have different benefits and downsides as well as their own costs attached and it is generally up to the network administrator to decide on how they would proceed.

Pervasive computing

“Often considered the successor to mobile computing, ubiquitous computing and, subsequently, pervasive computing, generally involve wireless communication and networking technologies, mobile devices, embedded systems, wearable computers, RFID tags, middleware and software agents. Internet capabilities, voice recognition and artificial intelligence are often also included.”-Rouse 2016 Pervasive computing is often a combination of different technologies all interconnected for example smart watches, When you receive a call from your phone your smartwatch will often ring out or vibrate, When it does this you can on most occasions also choose to take the call through said smart watch instead of having to use your phone, this still all goes through the phone but it is interconnected with the smartwatch allowing for it to take the place in some cases where the watch would be the more prevalent option.

Software environments for mobile and ubiquitous systems development.

There are many differing ways to develop mobile and ubiquitous environments for many differing devices and it more often than not depends on what is available to the developer, the environments they are comfortable with and the knowledge of the developer. Arduino uses a couple but primarily focuses on The Arduino IDE, but there are programs like visual studio that has sections entirely devoted to programming for PC or mobile devices, as well as being a primary point for coding on the unity engine for video game development. There are lots of development options out there as well as a wide range of knowledge databases to choose from to help with development and will more often than not be free for most parts until it comes to publications.

References

Lorena Lehman, M. (2018). The Effects of Calm Technology within Environments. [online] Marialorenalehman.com. Available at: https://marialorenalehman.com/post/effects-calm-technology-environments [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].

McCann, J. (2019). Samsung Galaxy Fold release date, news and features. [online] TechRadar. Available at: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/samsung-galaxy-fold [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].

Rouse, M. (2016). What is pervasive computing (ubiquitous computing)? - Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] IoT Agenda. Available at: https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/pervasive-computing-ubiquitous-computing [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].

Rutkin, A. (2015). [online] Newscientist.com. Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26968-telescopic-contact-lenses-let-you-zoom-in-on-demand/ [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Digibarn.com. (2019). The DigiBarn Computer Museum. [online] Available at: http://www.digibarn.com/index.html [Accessed 8 Mar. 2019].