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Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Other terms for ubiquitous computing include pervasive computing, calm technology, things that think and everyware. Promoters of this idea hope that embedding computation into the environment and everyday objects would enable people to interact with information-processing devices more naturally and casually than they currently do, and in whatever location or circumstance they find themselves.

History

The late Mark Weiser wrote what are considered some of the seminal papers in Ubiquitous Computing beginning in 1988 at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Weiser was influenced in a small way by the dystopian Philip K. Dick novel Ubik, which envisioned a future in which everything -- from doorknobs to toilet-paper holders, were intelligent and connected. Currently, the art is not as mature as Weiser hoped, but a considerable amount of development is taking place.

The MIT Media Lab has also carried on significant research in this field, particularly in Hiroshi Ishii's Things That Think laboratory and in the effort known as Project Oxygen.

More recently, American writer Adam Greenfield coined the term everyware to describe technologies of ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, ambient informatics and tangible media. (The 2004 article All watched over by machines of loving grace contains the first use of the term.) Greenfield also used the term as the title of his book Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing (ISBN 0321384016).

Examples

The most direct descendants of Mark Weiser's * "calm computing" concept include products from the company Ambient Devices, which has produced an "orb", a "dashboard", and a "weather beacon", devices that receive data from a wireless network and unobtrusively provide it to a person's peripheral attention, with a lighted globe (the orb) quietly signalling (e.g.) stock market movement, a similar lighted cube (the beacon) signalling weather, and a set of analog meters signalling a variety of user-configurable data.

Another example is the Datafountain, an internet enabled water fountain used to display money currency rates, created by Koert van Mensvoort. The heritage of these devices can be traced to a group of experimental devices created at Xerox PARC, notably Natalie Jeremijenko's "Live Wire," a simple piece of string attached to a stepper motor, itself attached to a simple integrator attached to the office LAN. When the LAN was busy, the motor would step, and the string would twitch, yielding a peripherally noticeable indication of network traffic. Weiser called this calm technology Some would consider GPS-equipped automobiles that give interactive driving directions or RFID store checkout systems to be examples of this kind of system, but these are far from the type of application that were imagined at either PARC or MIT.

Current Research

Ubiquitous computing encompasses wide range of research topics, including distributed computing, mobile computing, sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. Research labs are taking interest in developing this field are listed here.

Resources

Some news sites are recording commercial and academic developments:

Notable conferences in the field include:

Magazines committed to pervasive computing:

Ubiquitous computing initiatives in education:

See also

External links

Distributed computing | Artificial intelligence | Human-computer interaction

Ubiquitous Computing | Informatique pervasive | ユビキタスコンピューティング | Sulautettu tietotekniikka

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Ubiquitous computing".

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