"Is Ubiquitous Computing the technology of the future or just hype?"

Ubiquitous or pervasive computing assumes there will be large numbers of ‘invisible’ processors embedded into the environment and interacting with mobile users. Users will experience this world through a wide variety of devices, some they will wear (e.g medical monitoring systems), some they will carry (e.g. personal communicators that integrate mobile phones and PDAs), and some that are implanted in the vehicles they use (e.g car information systems). Seamless wireless communication will support user interaction when mobile and access to wired backbone networks connected to the internet. storage and processing services in the environment will provide support for limited capability portable devices.

This heterogeneous collection of devices will interact with intelligent sensors and actuators embedded in our homes, offices, transportation systems to form a mobile ubiquitous computing environment which aids normal activities related to work, education, entertainment or healthcare.

This is the 'hype' but in reality there are many difficult problems still to be solved:

• Connectivity is not seamless but requires switching between bluetooth, wireless-lan and cellular radio.
• We need very low powered devices that do not need battery changes or connection to a mains power source
• It is very difficult to accurately determine human activity such as walking or driving down the same street, exertion due to running for a bus or an imminent heart problem, when you are in the cinema so that your communicator should automatically switch to silent mode.
• Issues of trust, security and privacy become even more problematic in ubiquitous computing environments which are able to track your movement and activities at all times. Portable devices will combine the functions of mobile phone, keys, credit cards, passport and medical record so mechanisms to cater for loss or theft are needed.
• The scale of these ubiquitous systems necessitates ‘autonomic’ (self-organising and self-managing) systems which can dynamically update software to cater for new services and applications.
• Human interaction via small screens and mobile phone based keypads is extremely limiting.
• The business and accounting models required for funding the intelligent infrastructure of adaptable networks, processing and storage services which must be available everywhere ­ home, work, shopping malls, in trains and planes is not obvious. How will this be funded?

Panelists:

Morris Sloman (Chairman), Imperial College London, Presentation in PDF

Anatole Gershman, Accenture Technology Labs, USA, Presentation in HTML

Ravi Jain, NTT DoCoMo USA Labs, Presentation in PDF

Bruno von Niman, Ericsson, Sweden, Presentation in HTML