Discuss about the Ubiquitous Computing and Smart home.
The technique of Ubiquitous computing was first introduced in the year 1988 by Mark Weiser. Mark Weiser worked as a Chief Technologist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) (Van den Broek 2013). Mark Weiser identified the shift of the recent trend from traditional computing to micro computers and he wrote many papers in this subject in some of the papers he included John Seely Brown, a chief scientist of PARC to sketch the major outcomes of this type of computing (Hernandez-Castro and Avoine 2016). The term Ubiquitous Computing is used to define the concept where computers are used everywhere.
The report discusses the application of Ubiquitous computing in the smart home. The interaction with computers with the human takes place in any condition or any location. The appliances that are used by the human beings can be integrated with embedded chips to connect the device with other network devices. For example the car appliances, coffee mugs, fridges etc. can be embedded with chips to connect the device with other devices on the network.
Devices
It consists of computing nodes and its size varies from miniature to large, input devices such as video input, voice input, touchpad or keypad input, display devices and it may be soft or hard surface display, storage devices slow or fast and communication devices wireless or wired (Dourish and Bell 2014).
Communication Links
It may be physical link or logical links and the physical links link consists of fixed wireless, mobile wireless, fixed wired or hybrid (Krumm 2016).
Interfacing technologies
There are different types of technologies used in ubiquitous computing such as touch panel technology, video interface technology, navigational technology, voice interface technology, hybrid technology and handwriting based interface (Langheinrich 2012).
Ubiquitous computing is essential for building a smart home; it helps the individual in automating the daily physical task of the person living in the home. The application of ubiquitous computing would make the life easy and help the individual to lead a more independent life. This is accomplished by presenting the innovation in the home (Lai et al. 2013). It can be applied at three levels, which are outer framework, fundamental utilities, and local apparatuses. Using ubiquitous computing the traditional system can be changed and enhances the quality of life by introducing technology in their life. This computing process used for the smart home can adapt itself according to the location. It behaves and interacts according to the nearby objects and peoples (Chung 2014). This system can also detect the change in its environment. Many projects have been researched and we can conclude that the smart home can make our life more easy and fluent. Many electronic devices suitable for building a smart home are developed using ubiquitous computing such as intelligent locks, plant watering monitor, controllable lights, floor sensor, motorized curtain, inhabitant identification devices, etc (Dawadi, Cook and Schmitter-Edgecombe 2013). The smart home requires to produce an environment where the technologies used could interact with each other without taking input from the user for multiple times.
To make the device work with each other it is important to build the device in such a manner that they can communicate with each other through wireless or wired means. The devices are built to consume less power and reduce their size such that it is difficult the device to be detected (Viani et al. 2013). The device are designed according to the requirement and their workings, they can be embedded in the fabrics of the home and have no restriction for the natural movement of the resident. The device of the smart home is connected to a centrally controlled device from where the user can control and set different boundaries for the device (Kaye and Dourish 2014). The central control device may be personal desktop computer, Smartphone, laptops or any other handheld devices.
There are many challenges faced during the application of Ubiquitous computing in the practical scenario (Li, Lee and Weng 2013). Mainly the challenges are faced in engineering and designing the system, modelling the system and to build the user interface design. The command-line, GUI based or menu-driven interaction models are inadequate for Ubiquitous computing (Martínez-Torres et al. 2015). When multiple devices are connected in the network and they communicate it could be a difficult process for the central device to convert the different format of communication signals.
The use of Ubiquitous computing in Smart home has recently grown at a rapid rate in the recent years. The introduction of Smart television has changed the interaction of the data and the audio and video recording technologies have improved. There is a need to centralize the system such that all the devices communicate with a single channel and the data should be distributed from the central device (Li, Lee and Weng 2013). The multimedia devices that are use in the smart home are controlled using a central controlling device that distributes the data gathered from the different ubiquitous devices and forwards the response to the destination device. Arduino microcontroller can be used to connect the devices to the web and make the device work as programmed (Hu and Li 2013). The sensors and the other devices are directly connected to the microcontroller and works according to the command given by it. The smart home appliances and the environment of the home can be controlled remotely by the house owner since each of the devices is connected to the web through the microcontroller.
The Ubiquitous system can be of different types and they are categorized into three different forms such as:
Dust: These are miniature devices and are developed without having output visual display and their size varies from nanometres to millimetres (Martínez-Torres et al. 2015). Some of the examples of this kind of devices are MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems)
Skin: Conductive polymers and light emitter can be induced with the fabrics to form an organic computer device (Hu and Li 2013). These devices are flexible and non-planar and can be used as a display surface. MEMS can be used in the product to make the product communicate with the other devices in the network.
Clay: Multiple MEMS can be connected together to form an arbitrary three dimensional figure. It can be used in different objects for better interface connections.
Figure 1: System Architecture of the Ubiquitous Smart home
(Source: Viani et al. 2013)
In the figure above a low cost environment for a smart home is shown in which all the devices and sensors are centrally connected with the Arduino Ethernet server (Chung 2014). The server is a microcontroller device and it is the main link between the devices and the user that is the user can interact with the devices through the server and change the settings according to the needs (Martínez-Torres et al. 2015). Smart home are the future of living environment, there is an increase in security in smart home. Intruder alert can be deployed in the smart home using the motion sensor and immediately alert the owner and the nearest police station and prevent burglary. Fire alarm can also be used in the smart home to increase the safety using gas and smoke sensor (Li, Lee and Weng 2013). The sensor alerts the owner if there is any gas leak in the kitchen or any smoke coming in any room and the owner can take immediate action. Automated door lock can also be used that makes the life of the owner easy and he can have access to his house without using any keys. The owner can also check that if he had locked all the doors or not, if he has not locked the door he can lock it remotely (Lai et al. 2013). Smart home makes the life of a person easy the more power can be saved using the ubiquitous devices. The room temperature and lighting condition of the house change according to the weather condition and the timing (Chung 2014). The user can also manually adjust all the things or pre program the devices to work according to the choice of the owner.
There are different sensors and Radio Frequency Interface Devices (RFID) used in the smart home to make the device interconnected with each other (Viani et al. 2013). The smart home can assist the person living in the house like remind the person about the cricket match. The smart home opens new opportunity in the life of a person with the application of ubiquitous computing technology. It provides increase in the communication, functionality and the awareness (Kaye and Dourish 2014). There is a recent increase in the likelihood of the smart home and it is expected that there would be an increase in Smart home user in the upcoming years. There are a number of challenges faced for the implication of smart home they are mostly technical, pragmatic and social domain (Langheinrich 2012). These problems can be reduced when there would be increased smart home owners. The ubiquitous computing can be deployed in the real world in many of the fields; it can be applied to smart homes to automate the room temperature and lighting condition of the rooms (Button et al. 2015). Different sensors are built using this technology and these sensors are applied in wide range of devices like the orientation sensor or proximity sensor of a mobile phone. There is a scope of future development of the smart home using ubiquitous computing (Baig and Gholamhosseini 2013). The smart home can act in case of a health emergency of the owner of the house and automatically communicate with the nearest hospital or service and thus can save the life of the owner.
Conclusion
The report discusses about the smart home developed using ubiquitous computing devices that can be controlled remotely and interact with each other and the owner of the house. The smart home system should be designed including the user of the system such that the requirement of the user is clearly understood. The devices are controlled by the owner of the house remotely using smart phone. All the devices and sensors used in the smart home are connected to a central microcontroller and the microcontroller is connected to the web servers. The connection can be wired or wireless connection the wireless connection is hassle free and it reduces the wiring cost the smart features are applied in an existing home. The ubiquitous computing is applied for the introduction of the devices and sensors and linking it with management software through which all the devices can be managed.
References
Baig, M.M. and Gholamhosseini, H., 2013. Smart health monitoring systems: an overview of design and modeling. Journal of medical systems,37(2), pp.1-14.
Button, G., Crabtree, A., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P., 2015. ‘New’Ethnography and Ubiquitous Computing. In Deconstructing Ethnography (pp. 61-84). Springer International Publishing.
Chung, K.Y., 2014. Recent trends on convergence and ubiquitous computing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 18(6), pp.1291-1293.
Dawadi, P.N., Cook, D.J. and Schmitter-Edgecombe, M., 2013. Automated cognitive health assessment using smart home monitoring of complex tasks.IEEE transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics: systems, 43(6), pp.1302-1313.
Dourish, P. and Bell, G., 2014. “Resistance is futile”: reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 18(4), pp.769-778.
Hernandez-Castro, J. and Avoine, G., 2016, April. Cryptanalysis of ubiquitous computing systems. In 2016 18th Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Hu, Q. and Li, F., 2013. Hardware design of smart home energy management system with dynamic price response. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid,4(4), pp.1878-1887.
Kaye, J. and Dourish, P., 2014. Special issue on science fiction and ubiquitous computing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 18(4), pp.765-766.
Krumm, J. ed., 2016. Ubiquitous computing fundamentals. CRC Press.
Lai, Y.X., Lai, C.F., Huang, Y.M. and Chao, H.C., 2013. Multi-appliance recognition system with hybrid SVM/GMM classifier in ubiquitous smart home. Information Sciences, 230, pp.39-55.
Langheinrich, M., 2012. Privacy in ubiquitous computing. Chapman & Hall Crc.
Li, C.T., Lee, C.C. and Weng, C.Y., 2013. An extended chaotic maps based user authentication and privacy preserving scheme against DoS attacks in pervasive and ubiquitous computing environments. Nonlinear Dynamics,74(4), pp.1133-1143.
Martínez-Torres, M.D.R., Díaz-Fernández, M.D.C., Toral, S.L. and Barrero, F., 2015. The moderating role of prior experience in technological acceptance models for ubiquitous computing services in urban environments.Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 91, pp.146-160.
Van den Broek, E.L., 2013. Ubiquitous emotion-aware computing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 17(1), pp.53-67.
Viani, F., Robol, F., Polo, A., Rocca, P., Oliveri, G. and Massa, A., 2013. Wireless architectures for heterogeneous sensing in smart home applications: Concepts and real implementation. Proceedings of the IEEE,101(11), pp.2381-2396.
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