Ubiquitous computing  Scenarios:

Mobile Computing to ubiquitous computing

The effects of rapid progress in microelectronics, the convergence of communications and information technology, and the trend towards computerizing and networking everyday objects can best be demonstrated using the example of mobile phones. A few years ago, mobile phones were still so big, expensive, and limited in their functionality that they didn't sell very well and were often used more as a status symbol than a practical tool. This has changed very rapidly. 

In Europe, there are now more mobile phone users than car drivers. Many users have grown so accustomed to them and adapted their professional or even private lives to them that they can't imagine life without this technology. Parallel to this development, within a short period of time the mobile phone has become a device that offers more than just the pure functionality of voice transmission. It has developed into a piece of equipment for which the German expression “Handy” is much more appropriate – not only has it become smaller, but it has also acquired new “handy” functions. The SMS short messaging system has become a completely unexpected success, especially with young people. Specifically for this target group, colored displays which permit the use of more attractive computer games as well as the viewing of forwarded photos and video clips, are now being integrated into the most up-todate generation of mobile phones. The same applies to MP3 players, which offer high-quality music reproduction and could replace the classic “Walkman.”  Another additional function is connection to the Internet. In Europe this has been implemented using the WAP system, through which you can access Web sites from your mobile phone. However, this functionality has not been widely accepted in its current form, firstly because the transmission technology on which the system is based was not sufficiently well developed in 1999 / 2000 (for example, it wasn't “always on,” which meant long waits whilst connecting, making it awkward to use). Secondly, it is clear that the WAP system was not appropriately marketed. Expectations were too high, and consequently users were disappointed. The development of the i-mode system in Japan was a totally different experience – here, mobile commerce was not marketed as an application area as in Europe, but was intentionally targeted at twenty- to thirty-year-old women as a lifestyle feature. The term “Internet” does not appear in the advertising, the focus instead being on services for specific target groups (such as local events, horoscopes, weather forecasts, and even karaoke). Strict quality control, a clear pricing structure, and lots of free services as well as the ability to be “always on” without any explicit connection setup are further characteristics of the i-mode system, which is now beginning to gain ground in other countries, including Germany. Certainly in Japan it has been enormously successful – in the year 2001, it attracted more than ten thousand new customers a day.  Mobile phones are now fully functional computers with the capability to execute Java programs, even those they receive “wirelessly.” This opens up a whole new world of application possibilities. Even with the Japanese i-mode system, however, these mobile computers are not fully integrated into the Internet with all its services. They offer only highly limited functionality by accessing Web information via the conventional mobile telephony network. However, this may soon change, since prototypes of mobile “Internet appliances” already exist. Consequently, it will be possible to use a much broader range of services and options. The functionality of mobile phones is currently expanding in different directions. One option, for example, is to add localization functionality – using radio direction finding and other positioning methods, mobile phones can already be localized to within a few hundred meters. By using satellitesupported GPS systems, localization can be as exact as about ten meters outside buildings. Providing mobile phones with an additional short-range radio interface (a range of about 10 meters can be covered with a thousandth of the usual transmission energy, as with the Bluetooth standard currently on the market) means that other personal devices belonging to the user can also profit from the communication and localization abilities of the mobile phone. The mobile phone implicitly becomes a personal base station and control center for a variety of other devices and “smart objects” nearby, which only have to be equipped with a simple, low-energy (and therefore very cheap and small) short-range communications module in order to be used  for Internet services and other functions.  Another development is the so-called smart phone which, in addition to the usual mobile phone functionality, also takes on the role of a PDA (“Personal Digital Assistant”), with notepad and appointment scheduling functions, for example. Conversely, PDAs are taking on additional telephone functions. This can result in synergies – for example, the portable appointment scheduler can now be synchronized largely automatically with its counterpart in the office via mobile radio communications technology.  Integrating additional functions into mobile phones typically leads to an increase in size. This might be necessary because the display must be a minimum size, or because a means of input has to be provided. In contrast to this development is the trend towards the decomposition of the conventional mobile phone. You would only wear a light headset or “earpiece” (perhaps even as a piece of jewelry), with the microphone disappearing into a shirt button, both parts communicating wirelessly with the real mobile phone worn on a belt or in a wrist watch, which would also enable short messages and control functions to be displayed. Communications services, controls, displays, and additional functionality such as localization services, Internet access, and digital support can therefore be distributed across different personal “devices” (or rather, fashionable “accessories”) that cooperate with each other. This might even go so far as having spectacles that look perfectly normal, but which display information over your normal view or even blend into it – which might some day enable the virtual red carpet, which the personal navigation system rolls out in front of your eyes to help you find your way in an unknown environment... These aspects are often subsumed under the somewhat diffuse term “wearable computing.” From a technical viewpoint, however, this is not about utopian cyborg visions where humans and computers merge into a single entity. The expectation is very simple – that the computer functionality and the devices that incorporate it should not only be “portable,” but also, to a certain degree, become part of our clothing and be worn more or less directly on our bodies. An appropriate comparison might be between a “portable” pocket watch, which has to be taken out and opened up if needed, and a “wearable” wristwatch, which can be read at any time. Since its sensors are located Figure 1: Percentage of people who have ever used a mobile phone  4close to the body, a wearable computer is also suitable for monitoring its user’s health (and, if necessary, reporting values of vital functions via telemetry to a medical call center) or for reinforcing his sensory perception. In this respect, new qualities and functions are developing due to the proximity to the body which a normal mobile phone could never achieve. The reason such ideas are only now partly being realized is quite simply because technology has not been sufficiently advanced until now. On the one hand, semiconductor technology has had to be developed so that complex functions could be integrated in a very small space, so that size, weight, and energy consumption were acceptable; on the other hand, it is only now that adequate communications technologies for use at very short range (for example “body area networks”) are coming within reach. Last but not least, components such as miniature microphones and highresolution small-format displays have not been available as low-cost mass-produced products until now. Since technical progress has slowly overcome these obstacles, we can soon expect to see such products. Experiments are also being carried out on mobile phone voice recognition, which would simplify operation whilst driving, for example. In a broader sense, voice recognition always makes sense in situations where there is no room for controls – this would be the case with future devices that were “integrated” into clothing or worn as small fashion accessories. When it comes to highly restricted areas of conversation, voice recognition is already relatively good. In the future, higher processor speeds will also deliver sufficiently high recognition rates to enable other digital auxiliary functions (such as navigating in an unknown environment or querying timetables) to be used. We can also expect further increases in quality with the output of synthetic speech. It is a different story with functions that require the “comprehension” of spoken language within a context, such as language translation. Although research results are encouraging, this continues to be a tricky problem, where only slow progress can be expected. Functions requiring a high computing capacity, large databases, or large storage volumes do not have to be implemented “locally” in the IT accessories themselves. For example, if a mobile phone or advanced digital auxiliary device is connected more or less permanently with sufficient speed to the Internet and its servers and services, the storage of data (photos or music, for example) or information processing (for example, automatic language translation) can also take place elsewhere “on the Net” where sufficient capacity, space, and energy are available. Only input and output data would have to be transferred wirelessly between mobile phones and background systems in order to give the user the illusion that his device was doing all this itself. Storing data on the Net also makes sense, so that if the small IT accessories were lost, the data would not be lost as well. Which of these innovations will be first to arrive, and how successful it will be depends, of course, on a variety of circumstances and is not easy to predict. Technical factors (such as, for example, available bandwidth for wireless communications) and economic factors, but also primarily acceptability play an important role. From a technical viewpoint we can already estimate what at least appears to be feasible in the next few years by extrapolating Moore's Law (the doubling of processor power every 18 months and the associated reduction in size and decrease in costs for the same level of performance). What would appear to make sense from an economic viewpoint – for example, regarding the construction of an infrastructure or possible business models – is a far more complicated question to answer, as was recently demonstrated by some of the bizarre results of various UMTS frequency auctions. It is equally difficult to predict how personal information and communications technology will be accepted – satellite telephone systems turned out to be a failure (initially at least), whereas the short messaging system has been a totally unexpected success, given its scale. Whether innovations develop into something useful and acceptable for citizens can often only be decided with hindsight.