UBIQUITOUS AND PERVASIVE

COMPUTING

Year 4
Academic Year 2022/2023
Computer and Software Engineering
School of ICT
College of Science and Technology
University of Rwanda
By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
Ambient Intelligence

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Introduction
• Pervasive systems embody all the time, everywhere,
transparent services, such as those provided by modern
critical infrastructure systems, computer-supported health
care networks, and smart living environments.
• A vision of an interconnected infrastructure that creates
ambient intelligence, allowing anytime, anywhere,
unobtrusive services that are gracefully and non- invasively
integrated into humans’ daily activities.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Intelligent Environments

• is an environment that is able to acquire and apply

knowledge autonomously about the environment
and adapt to its inhabitants’ preferences and
requirements in order to improve their experience

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Two concepts

1. Acquiring knowledge about the environment:

• which results in a need for context information to be one of the main
components in intelligent environments
• also requires some kind of instrumentation in order to gather
information from the physical world.
2. Need to apply knowledge autonomously: which requires some kind
of artificial intelligence.
• Sensing is carried out by using smart devices with sensors, or by
inserting instrumentation into the environment, such as, for
example, using cameras to capture the situation of people or objects
in a room. By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura
 Sensing Technology
• Sensing technology is one of the foundations of
intelligent environments and, therefore, many
types of sensors are used for a variety of physical
situations, which can be position, light, sound,
pressure, velocity, direction, presence of gas or
chemicals, amongst others.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Intelligent environments actions
• Interpreting the environment’s state:
• Representing the information and knowledge associated with the
environment
• Modeling, simulating and representing entities in the environment:
• Planning decisions or actions:
• Learning about the environment:
• Interacting with humans:
• Acting in the environment

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Components of an intelligent
environment.

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Ambient Intelligence
• People are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that
are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is
capable of recognizing and responding to the presence of
different individuals in a faultless, modest and often invisible
way
• The basic idea behind AmI is that by enriching an environment
with technology (mainly sensors and devices interconnected
through a network), a system can be built to take decisions to
benefit the users of that environment based on real-time
information gathered and historical data accumulated
 Achievement…..
Ambient Intelligence aims to enhance the way
people interact with their environment to promote
safety and to enrich their lives.
The achievement of Ambient Intelligence largely
depends on the technology deployed (sensors and
devices interconnected through networks) as well
as on the intelligence of the software used for
decision-making.
 Sensing
Perception is accomplished using variety of sensors.
● Software algorithm perceives the environment and
specifies the action that can be taken to change the state
of the environment.
● Sensors have been designed for position measurement,
for detection of chemicals and humidity sensing, and to
determine readings for light, radiation, temperature,
sound, strain, pressure, position, velocity, and direction,
and physiological sensing to support health monitoring.
 Technologies Used in AmI

• Radio Frequency Identification

• Microchip implant (human)
• Sensor
• Affective Computing
• Biometrics
 Radio Frequency Identification

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of a

wireless non-contact system that uses radio-
frequency electronic fields to transfer data from a tag
attached to an object.
 Microchip implant (human)

A human microchip implant is an integrated circuit

device or RFID transponder encased in silicate glass
and implanted in the body of a human being. It typically
contains a unique ID number that can be linked.
 Sensor

• A sensor is also called detector which is a

convector that measures a physical quantity and
converts it into a signal which can be read by an
observer .
 Affective Computing

is the study and development of systems and devices

that can recognize human affects.

• In Affecting computing ,the machine should

interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt
its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response
for those emotions.
 Biometrics
Biometrics refers to the identification of humans
by their characteristics.

17
Applications
 AmI Properties
• Scalability
• Invisibility
• Context-awareness
• Smartness
• Pro-action
 Scalability
• Management of a great amount of
– Devices
– Applications
– Users
• Performance
• Development of systems, middleware's, models, applications
that are independent and can resist to a high number of devices,
users, etc.
• Middleware is software which lies between an operating system
and the applications running on it and enables communication
and data management for distributed application
Invisibility
Context-awareness
 Context-aware Computing
• Context-aware Computing
– Brings us one step closer to the Pervasive
Computing vision
– Enables computer systems to anticipate users’
needs and to act in advance
– An emerging paradigm to free everyday users
from manually configuring and instructing
computer systems
 Building context-aware systems
for Pervasive Computing
• Building context-aware systems for Pervasive
Computing is often difficult and costly:
– User privacy issues when sharing personal information
– Supporting resource-poor mobile devices
– How to reason about sophisticated contexts in a
dynamic environment
– Inconsistent and ambiguous contextual knowledge
– Security, trust, ... (goes on and on)
 Definitions of Context
• In context-aware computing
– No unified definition of context
– Most of the definitions agree that context has
something to do with the interactions between
the users and the computing systems
 Definition of Context
• Context is information that can be used to
characterize the situation of a person or an object
in a Pervasive Computing environment.
– The identities and attributes of people and devices
– The locations of people and devices
– The activities that people are participating in
– The roles and intentions of people when participating
in the activities
 Context-Aware Systems (1 of 2)
A Call-forwarding System
A user has left The phone rings The system detects
his office in his office his current location

The system forwards The system detects the Calls are forwarded
the call to a nearby user is in an meeting to
phone his voice mailbox
 Context-Aware Systems (1 of 2)
• Two types of contexts are used:
The system detects
his current location Location Context

The system detects the

user is in an meeting
Activity Context
 Context-Aware Systems (2 of 2)
Shopping Assistant
A user enters a store PDA displays the info
Turns on his PDA of a store item
+ +

As the user wonders PDA analyzes user’s

around in the store personal profile PDA recommends store
items to the user
 Context-Aware Systems (2 of 2)
• Three types of contexts are used:
PDA displays info
of the store items Location Context
+ +
=
PDA analyzes user’s Identity Context
personal profile
&
Attribute Context
 System Characteristics
• Context-aware agents often run on mobile
devices
• For agents to become context-aware,
context sensing and context reasoning
mechanisms are required
• Context-aware systems often exploit user
information (e.g. personal profile, user
location & social activity)
 Smartness
• Applying intelligence
• Intelligent” use of perceived changes

• Example: Smart House - Power reduction

by switch on/off the lights

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

Pro-action
 AmI Systems
• Middleware
Hardware’s constraints
Environment’s constraints
User and Application’s constraints
Summary

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura

 Quiz

• Based on what was covered during the class,

list 10 main keywords that were frequently
discussed. You can also include the ones
which were discussed in the last class

By Dr. Damien Hanyurwimfura