From MobiComp

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Imagine a museum, archaeological site or cultural landscape in which visitors and staff can find information about their surroundings and the objects on view, wherever they are. The information provided is tailored to their individual circumstances and needs. Staff may require different information from visitors, but visitors are not a homogeneous group. Adults and children, novices and experts, disabled and able-bodied, first-time and returning visitors all arrive with different knowledge, capabilities and expectations. The depth of information, its style of presentation and the delivery medium may all be varied to suit the needs and expectations of the individual.

Smart Environments and Ambient Intelligence are amongst the terms used by computer science researchers to describe this vision. Unlike today's computing environment centred on the desktop computer, numerous sensors, detectable objects and computing devices are distributed throughout the environment.

These small devices may be in fixed locations, attached to portable objects, or carried by individuals. Information is shared between them because they communicate with each other through a network. They form a high-density, localised form of the World Wide Web.

Unlike many existing museum and site systems which often use only a single technology – audio guides, handheld computers with infrared beacons, kiosks, etc. – our approach employs a variety of technologies to create an integrated guide and monitoring system based on a common software infrastructure. Appropriate technologies may be selected to suit organizational needs and those of different visitor profiles.

The MobiComp installation provides a multi-technology guide to the Interactive Salon exhibits. A variety of sensor systems – infrared, radio, optical – track visitor activity, whilst others monitor environmental conditions – temperature, humidity, vibration – around the exhibits. Information is delivered by a range of devices from the classic kiosk, through handheld computers, to the visitor’s own mobile phone.

The MobiComp infrastructure underlying this demonstration is an experimental system developed with the support of the EPOCH Network (http://www.epoch-net.org). When complete, it will be released as open source software.

MobiComp Infrastructure

MobiComp is a software infrastructure designed to support smart environments. The first version was developed as a research prototype by members of the Pervasive Computing Group in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. Now, further work aimed at improving extensibility and enabling the rapid development and deployment of applications based on MobiComp is under way, in collaboration with ARCES, Università di Bologna, Italy. This work is supported by EPOCH, the European Research Network on Excellence in Processing Open Cultural Heritage, and forms part of the EPOCH Common Infrastructure and the core of the project CIMAD.

A MobiComp application is assembled from specialised components, all based on a small number of key functions:

• Tracker components monitor sensor devices and provide contextual information to
• the ContextService, a distributed store of contextual information shared between all devices in the system.
• ContextListener components are notified when new information is put into the distributed store, and perform application-specific actions.
• Aggregator components combine the behaviour of Trackers and ContextListeners. They are notified when new information arrives, then they perform some action, perhaps transforming the information into a new form, then they place this new information back into the distributed store.

These components provide a simple, but effective, means of coordinating the behaviour of the potentially large numbers of devices in a smart environment. By combining these components, it is possible to build applications that respond automatically to any action that can be sensed in the network of devices.

See the Smart Environment Technologies page for details of the technologies used.

See the Smart Environment Devices page for details of specific hardware and software.

Scenarios

The MobiComp exhibit at the Interactive Salon showcases a number of scenarios illustrating how the infrastructure may be used in smart museums, sites or landscapes. The scenarios include a Visitor Guide to the Smart Salon exhibits, Smart Ticketing, Visitor Monitoring, and Collection and Environmental Monitoring.

See the Smart Environment Scenarios page for further details on these scenarios.

See also InteractiveSalon