Middleware 2003 ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference Rio Othon Palace Hotel Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 16-20 June 2003

[ Home ] [ Program ] [ Registration ] [ Organization ] [ Sponsors ] [ CFP ] [ Important Dates ] [ Submissions ] [ Travel ]

Tutorials
Keynote Speech
Posters
Workshops
Work in Progress
Student Travel Grants
Student Volunteer Program

Website Mirror at the University of São Paulo

Full Paper Abstracts

A Middleware for Context-Aware Agents in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Anand Ranganathan and Roy H. Campbell (UI Urbana-Champaign)

Ubiquitous Computing advocates the construction of massively distributed systems that help transform
physical spaces into computationally active and intelligent environments. These environments are
characterized by heterogeneous devices, mobile users and rapidly changing contexts. The design of
systems and applications needs to accommodate these new features of the environment. Most
importantly, agents in ubiquitous and mobile environments need to be context-aware so that they can
adapt themselves to different situations. In this paper, we argue that ubiquitous computing environments
must provide middleware support for context-awareness. We also propose a middleware that facilitates
the development of context-aware agents. The middleware allows agents to acquire contextual
information easily, reason about it using different logics and then adapt themselves to changing
contexts. Another key issue in ubiquitous computing environments is allowing autonomous,
heterogeneous agents to have a common semantic understanding of contextual information.
Our middleware uses ontologies to define different types of contextual information. These ontologies
enable different entities to attach the same semantics to different terms, particularly to contextual
information. This middleware is part of Gaia, our infrastructure for enabling Smart Spaces.

Latest update: 13 June 2003 - Questions and Comments about the Site: fmc@inf.ufg.br