Ambient intelligent applications require applications to recognise user activity calmly in the background, typically by instrumentation of environments. In contrast, we propose the concept of Cooperative Artefacts (CAs) to instrument single artefacts that cooperate with each other to acquire knowledge about their situation in the world. CAs do not rely on external infrastructure as they implement their architectural components, i.e. perceptual intelligence, domain knowledge and a rule-based inference engine, on embedded devices. We describe the design and implementation of the CA concept on an embedded systems platform and present a case study that demonstrates the potential of the CA approach for activity recognition. In the case study we track surface-based activity of users by augmenting a table and household goods.

The authors organized a workshop on education at the Ubicomp 2003 conference in Seattle, Washington in October12, 2003. This paper reports on the results of that workshop. The intention is to provide a more concrete basis for discussion of ubicomp education at subsequent forums, such as PerEd 2004.

Ubiquitous computing is giving rise to applications that interact very closely with activity in the real world, usually involving instrumentation of environments. In contrast, we propose Cooperative Artefacts that are able to cooperatively assess their situation in the world, without need for supporting infrastructure in the environment The Cooperative Artefact concept is based on embedded domain knowledge, perceptual intelligence, and rule-based inference in movable artefacts. We demonstrate the concept with design and implementation of augmented chemical containers that are able to detect and alert potentially hazardous situations concerning their storage.

In this paper we describe the design and architecture of an adaptive proactive environment in which information, which reflects the communal interests of current inhabitants, is proactively displayed on large-scale public displays. Adaptation is achieved through implicit communication between the environment and personal sensor devices worn by users. These devices, called Pendle, serve two purposes: they store and make available to the environment user preferences, and they allow users to override the environment's proactive behavior by means of simple gestures. The result is a smooth integration of environment-controlled interaction (experienced by the user as implicit interaction, triggered by their presence) and user-controlled explicit interaction. Initial results show that user-controlled adaptation leads to an engaging user experience that is unobtrusive and not distracting. Crown

We describe the architecture and the implementation of Multishelf-a decentralized peer-to-peer infomediator. Multishelf was designed and built during a ten-week senior software methodology course using the Proem peer-to-peer platform. We discuss the infomediation problem, present our scalable peer-to-peer solution including the effectiveness of using the Proem peer-to-peer platform, and conclude with plans for future work.

The combination of personal mobile devices and mobile ad hoc networks for mobile collaboration was discussed. The possible application scenarios include informal social interactions in public places, opportunistic meetings in office settings and educational multi-user applications for use in classrooms. The success of ad hoc networks largely depends on the applications and social benefits they provide.

This paper motivates and describes the notion of mobile ad-hoc information systems. Such a system consists of a decentralized and self-organizing network of autonomous, mobile devices that interact as peers. Connectivity is determined by distance between devices; as hosts change their physical location they establish pair-wise communication links based on mutual proximity. We describe application scenarios for mobile ad-hoc information systems and identify technical challenges of a generic software infrastructure. Moreover, we present the goals and architecture of Proem, a peer-to-peer system and development platform for mobile ad-hoc applications. Proem has successfully been used as instructional tool in an advanced software engineering course on peer-to-peer computing.

This paper describes a framework for managing and distributing trust information in a community of mobile and wearable computer users. Trust information in the form of reputations are used to aid users during their social interactions with the rest of the community.

This paper introduces the notion of profile-based cooperation as a way to support awareness and informal communication between mobile users during chance encounters. We describe the design of Proem, a wearable system for profile-based cooperation that enables users to publish and exchange personal profile information during physical encounters. The Proem system is used to initiate contact between individuals by identifying mutual interests or common friends. In contrast to most previous research that concentrates on collaboration in well-defined and closed user groups, Proem supports informal communication between individuals who have never met before and who don’t know each other. We illustrate the benefits of profile-based cooperation by describing several usage scenarios for the Proem system.

This paper reports on an empirical study aimed at evaluating the utility of a reality-augmenting telepointer in a wearable videoconference system. Results show that using this telepointer a remote expert can effectively guide and direct a field worker's manual activities. By analyzing verbal communication behavior and pointing gestures, we were able to determine that experts overwhelmingly preferred pointing for guiding workers through physical tasks.

This paper presents a collaborative wearable system based on the notion of remote sensing. Remote sensing lets users of wearable or stationary computers perceive a remote environment through the sensors of a remote wearable computer. We describe a concrete system with remote sensing capability that is designed to enhance the communication and cooperation of highly mobile computer technicians.

This paper describes a wearable computing system for monitoring and controlling of 'intelligent' environments. The main components of the system are (1) an open, expandable service model for the description of functionality provided by environments; (2) a self-Adapting wearable computer that can function as remote interface to a wide variety of services.