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Knowledge Usability and its Characteristics for Pervasive Computing.

Conference Paper · January 2005

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 Knowledge Usability and its Characteristics for
Pervasive Computing
Shameem Ahmed, Moushumi Sharmin, and Sheikh I. Ahamed
Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Abstract - This paper appends a new thread to the
attributes of user applications running in the pervasive
computing environment. This thread, the core of our
scheme, is named Knowledge Usability. Context-
sensitivity, Situation-awareness and Ad hoc
communication; the discussed features of the user
applications till date, are inadequate to analyze the
knowledge related to the user. The concept of “Knowledge
Usability” is derived to eliminate those limitations. This
feature does not deny the importance of others; it goes
side by side with the existing ones to facilitate the user
needs. Moreover, we discuss the necessity of Knowledge
Usability in pervasive computing environment with some
day-to-day life illustrative examples.
Keywords: Pervasive computing, Context-awareness,
Knowledge Usability.
1.0 Introduction
Pervasive computing environments mainly focus on
integrating computing and communications with the
surrounding physical environment to make
computing and communications transparent to the
users. There are three characteristics of user
applications in a typical pervasive computing
environment [1]. Those are: Context-sensitivity, Ad
hoc Communication, and Situation-awareness [2, 3].
The ability of a device to sense its present context
and changes in contextual data is called Context-
sensitivity; with the change of contexts, mobility of
devices and availability of resources, the
instantaneous establishment and termination of the
communication channel among the applications is
called Ad hoc communication; a device’s capability
not only to capture but also to analyze the
relationship among multiple contexts and actions
over a span of time is termed Situation-awareness.
According to S. Yau et al. [3], these three properties
are sufficient to describe all the user applications in
pervasive computing. But there are some applications
where the user’s past, present and future knowledge
must be considered. In that case, the previous
features can be extended to include a fourth one
termed Knowledge Usability which means the
analysis of the user's information to make an
appropriate decision.
Since the information about the user’s past, present,
and future are all part of a certain situation, someone
might be perplexed about the novelty of Knowledge
Usability. However, to date, the situation is described
from a different outlook. Dey [4] described situation
as a description of the states of relevant entities. S.
Yau et al. [3] considered user’s location, light, time
etc. as context as well as situation; they did not
include any specific behavioral pattern of a particular
user in a similar type of situation. This compels the
inclusion of a new branch that deals with user-
oriented knowledge.
In Section 2, Knowledge, Knowledge Usability and
its characteristics are described along with some
scenarios to show why the currently considered
features fail to accomplish user’s needs where
Knowledge Usability never fails. Section 3 deals
with algorithms to mine and store the knowledge. In
section 4, we illustrate an example that follows those
algorithms. In section 5, we concentrate on the
current state of the art. Section 6 contains our future
direction and concluding remarks.
2.0 Knowledge Usability
2.1 Notion of Knowledge Usability
Knowledge, with respect to application running on
user (U) device, is a set of activity states (α1, α2, α3,
α4,..) of U where αi (i>=1) represents U’s
preferences. Knowledge Usability (Ku) is nothing but
an autonomous technique to not only determine αi
but also analyze it to decide U’s appropriate action at
a particular time. In formal definition,
KU = M ({Pa, Pr, Fu}, t, c),
where, M means Mechanism, {Pa, Pr, Fu} means
{User’s Past, Present, and Future Information}, t
means time, and c means the current context.
2.2 Uses of Knowledge about Past (Pa)
If the system has knowledge about the user’s daily
activities then it can provide good quality
information at times of need. For example, if a
person takes coffee around 5 pm daily then the
system can store this information and use it when
necessary. Suppose one day the user is in front of
Lake Michigan and the time is about 5 pm then the
system can search for coffee shops reachable in a few
minutes and provide the user this information.
shop1
Shopping
centre 1
shop2
User is inside
PDA is suggesting
shop
Outdoor
mall 1
shop 3
Figure 1. Selecting shops
2.3 Uses of Knowledge about Present (Pr)
Suppose a user is going to a shop to buy various
items. If the item list is provided to the system, it can
consult the shop’s database. Then it can suggest the
user how to shop to not only minimize the shopping
time but also help him to find the appropriate thing.
• Pick shop 3
• Go straight up to 2nd
junction and turn left
• Go straight up to next
junction
• Turn left and go up to
•
next junction
Turn right and go straight
PDA to shop 3
Enlarged PDA Screen
Figure 2. PDA suggesting driving directions to the shop
In figure 1, from user’s current location, there are
three shops, one shopping centre, and one outdoor
mall. Shopping centre 1 is the closest one and shop 3
is the farthest. The system collects the location
information, consults the databases for item
availability and item price. After analyzing all
relevant information, it will suggest the user to go to
shop 3, which is most economic from time and
monetary perspective. It will, additionally, provide
the driving direction to that shop. Figure 2 shows this
scenario.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
E C
Figure 3. Suggesting the shortest path
The system will also propose the user to start from a
particular aisle in the selected shop to minimize the
shopping time. The suggested path inside the shop is
shown in figure 3. The item list that the user needs to
buy includes coffee, some gift items, plants, and a
• Go to aisle # 1 for coffee
• Go straight & then right
for gift item in aisle # 2
• Go straight for flowers in
aisle # 5
• Turn right and go straight
in aisle # 6 for table
• Pay in cash counter in
PDA aisle # 7
Enlarged PDA Screen
Figure 4. PDA suggesting direction within the shop
table. Considering the aisle plan of the shop and the
needed items, the system suggests him to start with
aisle 1, then go to aisle 2, next head to aisle 5 and 6.
E and C represent the entrance and cash counter in
figure 3. The user will ignore aisle number 3 and 4 as
these aisles contain electronic goods that he does not
intend to buy now. The sequence of shopping plan
offered by the system is rendered in figure 4.
2.4 Uses of Knowledge about Future (Fu)
The user’s schedule can be very useful for the
system. For example, the user is walking towards a
room and the system knows that he is going to a
meeting (consulting the To-Do list) where the ringer
of a cell phone will not be appreciated. At the
moment the user enters the room, the system will
change the mode of cell phone to “text-message and
 Communicates with
Cell Phone
Cell Phone Vibrates
PDA
Figure 5. PDA changes the ringer -mode
voice-message” and turn the ringer off. This scenario
is presented in figure 5. Again the system can restore
the ringer mode as soon as the user leaves the
meeting room. However, to support all these things,
it needs to know the future schedule of the user.
2.5 Characteristics of Knowledge Usability
To incorporate the concept of Knowledge Usability
in applications, some knowledge centric features
along with context-oriented characteristics should be
addressed. The important features of knowledge
usability include knowledge adaptability, multi-hop,
energy efficiency, and storage efficiency and the
other significant ones will come from context
awareness namely accessibility, consistency,
security, fault tolerance, scalability, transparency etc.
3.0 Knowledge Mining and Storing
3.1 Pa accumulation algorithm
L1. Arrange user’s activity X day wise to get Y,
user’s daily activity for one month
L2. Cluster Y and search for general pattern of user
activities to find Z, user’s weekly activity
L3. Store all those information categorically in Pa
3.2 Pr accumulation algorithm
L1. pr_info ={ } // the present information set
L2. pr_info += { Context}
L3. pr_info += {N} // collected information
L4. pr_info+={U} // information provided by U
L5. Store pr_info in Pr
3.3 Fu accumulation algorithm
L1. fu_info ={ } // future information set
L2. fu_info += {TD}//To-Do List
L3. If TD collides Pa then Pb={Pa-collide Activity}
else Pb = Pa
L4. fu_info += {Pb}
L6. Store fu_info in Fu
3.4 Knowledge Storing
All gathered information can be stored in a device
with huge storage capacity (e.g. desktop PC). A part
of it needs to be stored in the mobile device. To cope
with the memory constraint, the mobile devices
should have some optimization capability. A matrix
based knowledge dissemination approach can be
used in this regard. The dimensions of the two
dimensional matrix represents the time frame of each
day and days of the week. Each cell of the matrix
points out a specific user task. A standard will be
used to assign number for each typical activity. The
irregular task (user dependent) will be allocated some
other pre-specified number. The concept of number
is introduced to guarantee the best possible use of the
storage capacity. For example, the regular tasks like
taking lunch, attending a meeting, buying groceries
will have the number like 1, 2, 3, and so on. Taking
piano lessons, a very user centric activity, should
have some pre-specified number like 500. Mapping
of numbers with activities should be distributed in all
devices of close proximity. It will ensure the
optimum storage utilization of all the devices. The
matrix will be dispersed (if it is very large) among
other devices residing in the same ad-hoc network.
4.0 An Illustrative Example
Suppose Sam and John have a meeting with Dr.
Simms at 1:00 pm at Friday and all the necessary
documents are stored in Sam’s desktop PC. At 10:00
am, John informs Sam that they will have to attend a
presentation where people from multiple disciplines
will come. So Sam has to go to the presentation place
immediately. The system running on Sam’s device
knows about his schedule and also knows that Sam
would not be able to return before 1:00 pm. So the
system will upload all the necessary documents for
the meeting from the PC. Pa accumulation algorithm
is used in this regard. To add the information that
Sam will have to attend a presentation at 10:30 am, it
uses the Pr accumulation algorithm. At 12:45 pm, if
the presentation goes on and the meeting place is 10
minutes driving distance from the presentation place
then the system will suggest the user to choose either
the presentation or the meeting based on the priority
which follows Fu accumulation algorithm.
5.0 Current State of the Art
Cheverst et al. in their Guide [5] system uses location
to provide service to the user. Chen et al.
differentiate the applications based on whether the
application changes its behavior depending on the
context [6]. Schmidt et al. defined context as the
knowledge about the user’s and IT devices state [7].
But our definition of Knowledge includes all relevant
and important information about the user’s schedule,
preference etc.
Opportunity Knock system of D. J. Patterson et al.
[8] is based on a combined architecture made up of a
Bluetooth sensor beacon that broadcasts GPS data, a
GPRS-enabled cell-phone, and remote activity
inference software. The system copes with its
activities through remote communication with a
remote database, which is not suitable for ad-hoc
network. We propose matrix based knowledge
dissemination approach that not only ensures the ad-
hoc nature of the network but also copes with the
memory constraints.
A personal assistant named Specter [9] is designed
which keeps track of the user's actions and affective
states. But their focus is different from ours as they
deal with extension of perception, learning about
behavior and affect, augmentation of decision-
making and effecting, reflection and introspection,
usability engineering, and system integration.
6.0 Discussions and Future Work
In this paper, Knowledge Usability, an
imperative yet ignored feature till date, is
appended as the fourth characteristic of the
applications running in a pervasive computing
environment. Besides, the characteristics of this new
thread are also addressed. We have also tried to
provide different dimensions as well as the
motivation to adopt the new concept.
Currently, we are implementing this Knowledge
Usability as a service of our ongoing middleware
project named MARKS (Middleware adaptability for
resource discovery, knowledge usability and self-
healing) on pocket PCs (Dell Axiom 30) using C#
on .NET Compact framework. We are implementing
some applications for PDAs, which will use the
“Knowledge Usability” as a service. To distribute
knowledge in a secured manner and to protect the
privacy of the user’s information, the concept of
“secret sharing” will be used. To increase the level of
adaptability of the application in different situations,
the hidden markov model concept will be employed.
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7.0 References
[1] M. Weiser. “Some Computer Science Problems in
Ubiquitous Computing”. Communications of the
ACM, 36(7): 75--85, July 1993.
[2] G. Abowd, and E.D Mynatt. “Charting Past,
Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous
Computing”. ACM Trans. Computer Human
Interaction, 7(1): 29--58, Mar 2000.
[3] S. Yau, Y. Wang, and F. Karim. “Development of
Situation-Aware Application Software for
Ubiquitous Computing Environments”. Proceedings
of Computer Software and Application Conf., 233--
238, 2002.
[4] A. K. Dey. “Understanding and Using Context”.
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Journal 5(1): 4--
7, 2001.
[5] K. Cheverst, N. Davies, K. Mitchell, A. Friday,
and C. Efstratiou. “Developing a Context-Aware
Electronic Tourist Guide: Some Issues and
Experiences”. Proceedings of the 2000 Conference
on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hague,
Netherlands, 17--24, Apr 2000.
[6] G. Chen and D. Kotz. “A survey of context
aware mobile computing research”. Dartmouth
Computer Science Technical Report TR2000-381.
[7] A. Schmidt, K. Aidoo, A. Takaluoma, U.
Tuomela, K. V. Laerhoven, and W. V. Velde.
“Advanced interaction in context”. Proceedings of
First International Symposium on Handheld and
Ubiquitous Computing. 89--101, Sep 1999.
[8] D. J. Patterson, L. Liao, K. Gajos, M. Collier, N.
Livic, K. Olson, S. Wang, D. Fox, and H. Kautz.
“Opportunity Knocks: a System to Provide Cognitive
Assistance with Transportation”. Proceedings of
sixth international conference on Ubiquitous
Computing. Nottingham, England, Sep 2004.
[9] SPECTER: Context- and Affect-Aware Personal
Assistance in Instrumented Environments.