Visual Tool for Context Aware Messaging (Information Technology)

Abstract

Context-aware pervasive computing aims to develop programs which understand the (physical or virtual) context or situation of entities (e.g., humans) and automatically act in response to that understanding. One application of context-awareness is context-aware messages, that are messages sent whenever entities (e.g., the senders) are in particular situations and received whenever other entities (e.g., the receivers) are in particular situations. The project will first investigate visual metaphors for context and operators on context, to allow non-technical human users to define and compose contexts and situations in an intuitive manner. We will base this part of the project on our previous work on the notion of context spaces (the results of an ongoing PhD project). Then, the project will develop a tool which uses such metaphors for context-aware messaging. An additional stage, if time permits, of the project is to apply the visual metaphors to another domain - to specify the "source" and "destination" of mobile agents instead of messages.

Investigators: Seng Wai Loke, Amir Padovitz, Arkady Zaslavsky, Muralia Muniyandi