CSE 510 - Winter 2003 1

Ubicomp

Anderson/FishkinCSE 510

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Ubicomp – Weiser paper Field started by

Mark Weiser Ms/PhD, Michigan Faculty, MD PARC Area

manager The 4th (and

last) of our “visionary” papers

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The Zen of Ubicomp*

Ubicomp in one sentence: “The most profound technologies are those that disappear.”

Qualitatively different tack from making computers bigger, faster – instead lets make them vanish into the fabric (Vanish == “cognitively” vanish)

*: Thomas Merton summarized Zen as “Zero = Infinity”

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Another way to put it Weiser argument: “There is more

information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods”

“Focus on the task, not the tool”

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Digression Ubicomp and Virtual Reality are

philosophically: Similar Unrelated Opposite

OPPOSITE Virtual Reality – you vanish into the

computer’s world Ubicomp – the computer vanishes into your

world

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Digression Other terms in vogue are

Embodied Computing: Weiser ’91 Invisible Computing: Fishkin ’98, Norman ’98 Pervasive Computing: IBM ’98 Proactive Computing: Tennenhouse ’01 Autonomic Computing: IBM ’01 Calm Computing: Weiser/Brown ’96 Disappearing computer: EU ’00(?)

These are different emphases/slants, all within the “umbrella” of ubicomp.

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Not just a better UI

“the idea of a “personal” computer itself is misplaced” …. “we are trying to conceive of a new way of thinking about computers in their world, one that … allows the computers themselves to vanish into the background”

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Ubicomp by example

“Sal awakens: she smells coffee. A few minutes ago her alarm clock, alerted by her restless rolling before waking, had quietly asked “coffee?”, and she had mumbled “yes”. “Yes” and “no” are the only words it knows”

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Ubicomp by example “Sal looks out her windows at her

neighborhood. Sunlight and a fence are visible through one, but through others she sees electronic trails that have been kept for her of neighbors coming and going during the early morning. Privacy conventions and practical data rates prevent displaying video footage, but time markers and electronic tracks on the neighborhood map make Sal feel cozy on her street.

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Ubicomp by example

Glancing at the windows to her kids’ rooms she can see that they got up 15 and 20 minutes ago and are already in the kitchen.

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Examples

“she spots an interesting quote … she wipes her pen over the newspaper’s name, date, section, and page number and then circles the quote. The pen sends a message to the paper, which translates the quote to her office”

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Examples

“She can press a code into the [garage door] opener and the missing manual will find itself”

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Examples

“Sal glances in the foreview mirror to check the traffic. She spots a slowdown ahead, and also notices on a side street the telltale green in the foreview of a food shop, and a new one at that”.

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Examples

“The foreview helps her to quickly find a parking spot. As she walks into the building, the machines in her office prepare to log her in, but don’t complete the sequence until she actually enters her office”

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Examples

“The telltale by the door that Sal programmed her first day on the job is blinking: fresh coffee” --what would that language look like?

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Examples

“She quickly starts a search for meetings in the past two weeks with more than 6 people not previously in meetings with her”

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Scrap computing eventually

computers/displays will become “scrap” – “can be grabbed and used anywhere; they have no individualized identity or importance”

Do you think this will/should happen?

A:members.aol.com/humorme81/ citybike.htm

B:castlebankandtrust.com/

A:

B:

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Addlesee paper Example of how far Ubicomp has

come in 10 years (and how far it has to go)

Largest (by far) deployed, evaluated, real research ubicomp app: 50 users (grew to over 150) 200 bats 1900 objects 3700 locations

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Addlesee: Technology Used “bats” to

get cm-level positioning, then leveraged that in two ways

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Bats on people You know who was were, when Can annotate cameras w/o vision

algorithms Can migrate working set of docs Can find docs by user/location/time Can forward phone calls (Some of these were also done @

PARC, but in a less real way)

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Bats on objects Use bats as

“magic wands” Similar in concept

(although totally different in execution) to Want work with posters, etc., we saw last week.

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Ubicomp: a different take Instead of instructions/second:

Instructions/joule Instead of installed code size

Hours/installation Seconds/reboot

Instead of MB of memory Cm3 of volume

Instead of “list files in directory X”: List files used in room X by user Y

Instead of “when user clicks on button X, do Y” When you are reasonably certain user X has

performed activity Y, do Z

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Ubicomp: critical issues Heterogeneity

Assumes a world of drastically different sizes, shapes, functionalities in computers

Networked Assumes (nearly) everything is networked. Calls for

Bluetooth – “engineers must develop new communication protocols that explicitly recognize the concept of machines that move in physical space”

Sensor fusion to derive context – what happened, where, when

Uncertainty abounds “Why” is machine learning

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Ubicomp critical issue: power Explicit

charging Disposable

devices Power

scavenge Inductive

coupling/zapping media.mit.edu/

resenv

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Location “Ubiquitous computers must know where

they are” –important subset of sensor fusion

How do you know where everyone and everything is? No one answer: IR, Ultrasound, motion

sensors, RFID, Crickets, etc., etc. Each has its own characteristics, own

uncertainties Merging them is Jeff Hightower’s PhD work

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HCI challenges in Ubicomp

If it’s invisible, how do you know it’s there? How do you know it’s working

“Car Talk” The Want work on RFID tags had this

issue as well

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HCI challenges in Ubicomp Working with false positives/negatives “If he fires one, then I’ll fire one”

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Ubicomp challenge

Finding the “killer app” Is there one? Perhaps we should just

“let a hundred flowers bloom” “[ubicomp] will enable nothing

fundamentally new, but by making everything easier and faster to do, with less strain and mental gymnastics, it will transform what is apparently possible”

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HCI Challenges in Ubicomp Capture, integration, and access

How do you organize/present/integrate all the data?

Different programming model Context-aware Mentioned in AT&T paper

Privacy How do you do evaluation?

Users moving around, performing multiple actions with multiple devices, etc.

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But was he right?

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A challenge “This work really started several

years before 1991. After more than a decade, we are no closer to dealing with the privacy issues.” – Marti Hearst, UC Berkeley

Is this true? Is this a problem?

Club cards

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Reviewing 101 For Monday, you will review two papers

on wearable computing. The review session will be held at CSE

510 paper review HQ: 1100 NE 45th St, 6th floor We will delay the review session until 12:45 The review session will end at 1:30

When you review, you are writing for two audiences The author The papers chair

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Two audiences

What was unclear?What was wrong?Did I miss important work?

Does the reviewer know what they are talking about?Does the paper need much (too much) revision?Is the contribution important?Would it spark debate/future work?Are they succinct?

Author

Papers Chair

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Do they know what they are talking about?

Do they re-explain the main point(s) of the paper? Are the criticisms specific? Do they give examples from the body of the paper? Do they contribute additional references if that is a

complaint Do they articulate the contribution of the paper and

related it to past work? Do they state what the value of the contribution is to

an attendee of the conference or reader of the proceedings

Do they have some clear ideas about how the paper can be improved or extended to increase its value

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Random tips

“One of the most valuable suggestions for reviewing I ever received was to focus on the paper, not the research, nor the researcher.” Critique “the paper”, not “you”

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Have an opinion

“I wish to God I could find a one-handed economist” – Harry Truman

"Neutral" ratings are much less helpful to meta-reviewers than "[weak] accept" or "[weak] reject"; I try to avoid the middle ground.”

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Short paper != long

Short papers typically have no chance for revision – they are accepted or rejected “as is”.