Bulletin

Issue: October 2006

Research in Action

All-embracing world of pervasive computing

The security camera/sensor recognises you as you enter your living room.

Immediately the lights switch on, the climate control adjusts to your preferred temperature, the coffee pot begins to percolate, the movie you plan to watch begins to play on the DVD or TV, window drapes adjust to the angle of the sun and your favourite lounge chair positions itself in front of the screen, adjusting itself to the right height and setting itself to check your weight, ready to send a message to your diet advice chart screened in the kitchen.

How can all this happen? Welcome to the age of all-embracing, ‘pervasive computing’: the science of interconnecting ‘smart devices’.

With the world on the verge of this latest technological revolution, La Trobe University is now involved in research to help bring it about.

One of Australia’s top pervasive computing specialists, Dr Seng Loke, has joined La Trobe as a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, bringing with him expertise in two vital areas of pervasive computing – ‘device ecologies’ and ‘aware systems’.

Dr Loke is engaged in research in both areas, one of them an ARC-funded project on ‘device ecologies’, a collection of electronic devices which exist in relationships with one another.

‘Basically the term ‘device ecologies’ embraces a user setting tasks and the devices then working together to resolve them, while ‘aware systems’ involves devices being aware of their physical as well as computational environment, enabling them to respond intelligently to them,’ says Dr Loke.

He cites an example of the two systems acting together as the ‘smart living room’, with all the devices switching on simultaneously.

For two years, Dr Loke has been working with two colleagues from Monash University on the ARC-funded ‘Device Ecologies’ project to devise a computer program that takes user commands, executes them and then issues commands to individual devices and coordinates their activities.

He says he and his colleagues are on the way to completing a program that translates from an English-like language to a command language for devices, and are confident they will have a prototype program within 12 months.

‘Essentially we are using glue technology” – gluing together ideas from different areas of computing. We are at the point where our prototype issues the instructions, but not yet to the point where the devices can receive and act upon the instructions,’ Dr Loke said.

‘To achieve this we are researching two separate aspects. One is the use of software and the second is the development of a mathematical model, a draft of which is already providing a theoretical foundation for the device ecology model.

‘We are currently working to extend the mathematical model to involve more details. We call our current mathematical model a vanilla” model because at the moment it has only one flavour”, one function. We are working to add additional flavours”, other abilities. This means that the devices connected together will not only acknowledge having received the message, but will send more complex messages back. ‘

The second area of his research, ‘aware systems’, has a myriad of applications for other disciplines and everyday life. ‘An example would be a mobile phone that senses the physical situation of its user and responds appropriately, like recognising its user is in a meeting and automatically sets itself into silent mode.

‘Another could involve large scale systems applied to road safety. The technology can be used to warn drivers of a potentially dangerous situation at an intersection they are approaching.

‘It would work by using sensors both at and near intersections which feed data into a computer system which processes it, foresees danger, and flashes warnings to in-vehicle computers to alert drivers. A PhD student, Ms Flora Salim, is working on this.

‘Another application is context-aware mobile services” by which your mobile phone or other mobile computer device is coded to provide directions to different destinations. This could incorporate GPS or some other kind of technology. ‘