Ubiquitous Computing: Can you say U-bik-WIT-us?

By: Ray Carroll

You go to the supermarket, find the trolley bay and pick a shopping trolley. As you begin to push it a small screen on the handle welcomes you by name. The trolley has recognised you through some small device that you carry such as a mobile phone, a special badge or maybe even your watch. The smart-trolley uses this identity to access the shopping list that you created at home before you left and displays the products you need, including their price in this supermarket, and the shopping aisle where they are located. Alternatively if you didn't have a shopping list, it could display the list of products you bought on your last shopping trip, even though it was in another supermarket, and again the price and location in the store. When you go to the checkout the total is charged to your bank account automatically (including 2 euro for the trolley) and the list of products you bought are stored for your next shopping trip (which could be in a different county or even country).

This is a practical yet relatively simple example of how ubiquitous and pervasive computing could affect you. And if you are interested in more futuristic visions of ubiquitous computing then the film Minority Report puts forward some interesting ideas and might be worth taking a look at.

Ubiquitous and pervasive are two of the current technology buzzwords and like many buzzwords, not everyone understands what they mean. Understand them or not, however, these are the concepts that will some day change the way you live.

Ubiquitous is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time" and Pervasive is defined as"spread throughout". In this context the term ubiquitous computing is used to generalise the vision of a world where computers as we know them, have disappeared from view and are integrated into the world around us. More specifically, ubiquitous computing puts forward the notion that computer access is not just available in one place (e.g. sitting at your PC), its available everywhere. The user has the same computing capabilities and access to information wherever he goes giving the appearance that it is everywhere at the same time.

With pervasive computing technology the computing is spread among numerous devices, as opposed to the current situation where computing tends to be centred around one specific device.

With processors becoming so small and inexpensive, computers (or 'chips') will be everywhere. In devices, appliances, equipment, in cars, homes, workplaces, factories, and even in clothing or jewellery. We will be surrounded by computers without even realising it, extending your computing capability throughout the environment.

It may seem that the descriptions of the above terms appear very similar. Well they are, and in truth most do not distinguish between the two as the different terms but simply focus on different aspects of what are essentially the same paradigm.

The key factor in this ubiquitous and pervasive new world is communication. All these distributed computers (chips) must be able to communicate with each other on a common network in order for their full potential to be realised.

Wired communications is not a realistic solution as potentially hundreds of devices need to be connected and may be embedded in anything from the wall to your watch, where mobility is essential. Hence wireless media such as radio frequency or infrared are needed to allow a truly ubiquitous computing environment. Coinciding with this is the development of a global integrated telecommunications infrastructure. That is the movement towards the convergence of Internet and telecommunications networks that is currently taking place. This could be of great benefit to ubiquitous computing, as a unified network would greatly improve the level of service that could be provided.

So with ubiquitous and pervasive computing you can have numerous unobtrusive computing devices inhabiting the same area or space, wirelessly connected and capable of communicating with each other and the outside world. These areas with distributed intelligent devices are known as smart spaces. For instance a smart space could be in your home, your office, a shop, the cinema etc. The TSSG has recently undertaken a project called M-Zones (www.m-zones.org) that deals with the collaboration and management between and within these smart spaces.

Ubiquitous and pervasive computing is in its infancy and like any emerging technology, no one can predict for sure what direction it is going to take. Nonetheless it's guaranteed to be an interesting one.