助成

Institute forInternational Policy Studies
・Tokyo・

IIPS International Conference“The IT Revolution and the Transformation of Society”

Tokyo
November 5-6, 2003

“A Prospect of Ubiquitous Computing Environment:
New applications and Issues”
By
Prof. Hideyuki Tokuda
Chairperson/Professor,
Graduate School of Media and GovernanceFaculty of Environmental Information
Keio University

A Prospect of Ubiquitous Computing Environment:
New applications and Issues
Hideyuki Tokuda½¾

Graduate School of Media and GovernanceFaculty of Environmental Information, Keio University
hxt@sfc.keio.ac.jp

Abstract. The evolution of the Internet in 90’s gave us a new dimension of social
information infrastructure. Extended use of the Web technology with high speed
broadband networks created a new life style in the cyberspace era.
Advances in mobile wireless communications and pervasive devices such as Internetready cell phones, WiFi-ready PDAs, handheld devices, sensor devices, RFID
tags are accelerating the further evolution of our life style in the ubiquitous networking era. In the ubiquitous networking era, every daily objects will be connected to various networks and we will be able to access and control any objects
and services at anytime and from anywhere.
In this paper, we discuss a prospect of ubiquitous computing environment. In particular, potential application domains are described and some of early prototype
examples are shown. The possible issues are also discussed from social as wellas technical point of views. We then summarize the strong and weak points of the
future of the ubiquitous network society.

1 Introduction
In the early 80’s in Japan, we had a very small three-node experimental computer network which uses a telephone line for communications. Even setting a dedicated telephone line for a UNIX machine was a very difficult task in Japanese universities. In themid 80’s, Japanese research community was able to join the TCP/IP community withgreat help from US researchers such as Dr. Dave Farber and Dr. Larry Landweber who
were creating the CSNET[1] at that time. This was the beginning of the Internet era.
The evolution of the Internet in 90’s gave us a new dimension of social information infrastructure. Extended use of the Web technology with high speed broadband
networks created a new life style in the cyberspace era[2]. Popularity of Internet-readycellular phones, such as i-mode phones, also accelerates the further growth of the cyberspace. Using a small device such as an i-mode phone, we could enjoy various kindsof information and services such as news, digital cinema, entertainment, e-ticketing,e-billing, and e-banking at anytime and from anywhere.
Advances in mobile wireless communications and pervasive devices such as Internetready cell phones, WiFi-ready PDAs, handheld devices, sensor devices, IC tags are accelerating the further evolution of our life style in the ubiquitous networking era[3–5].
In the ubiquitous networking era, every daily objects will be connected to various types

of networks. We will be able to access and control any objects and get various services
at anytime and from anywhere.
In this paper, we discuss a prospect of ubiquitous computing environment. In theremainder of the paper, potential application domains and some of early prototype examples are discussed in Section 2. Section 3 describes the possible issues from social
as well as technical point of view. Sectoin 4 summarizes the strong and weak points ofthe future of the ubiquitous network society.

2 Ubiquitous Application Domains
This section first describes the gap between Mark Weiser’s vision of the ubiquitous
computing environment and the current technology, then presents the smart space andsmart furniture projects we are involved. Finally we describe ubiquitous applications
we have developed using the Smart Space and Smart Furniture.
2.1 Mark Weiser’s Vision and its Gap
Mark Weiser once stated the Silicon-based information technology is far behind interms of supporting our everyday activities in a natural way[4]. By comparing old technology like writing with a pen, our PC-based word processor solution did not give us
calm interface at all. We must know so many things before an ordinary person can start
to write a letter with a PC.
The gap between Silicon-based information technology and calm technology was
not reduced dramatically, however the computer scientists made some progress such asuse of pointing devices, a WSIWYG frame work, real world oriented interface, voicecontrolled interface technology.
The current progress of wireless mobile networks and pervasive devices will narrowing the gap between Mark Weiser’s vision and the Silicon-based information technology. Among new information technology many researchers are working on, in particular, the following key technology would contribute the progress towards the ubiquitous network society.
– 3G and 4G mobile wireless phones– passive, active, and smart tags
– GPS and indoor-location systems– sensor networks and smart dusts– mobile ad hoc networks– HCI technologies– personalization technologies– context-aware applications– location-aware applications– p2p technologies
By having these technology ready, new application domains could appear in oursociety. First, we may see new ubiquitous platforms, appliances, and networks. Wewill then expect new applications in new life style, health care and nursing, education,
employment, environment, participation in society, consumption domains. We will beable to enjoy new types of services, commerce and contents in each domain. As wesummarized in the ubiquitous networking forum[6], these new domains are shown in
Figure1.

Fig. 1. Ubiquitous Application Domains
Web technology give us yet another active work space, namely a cyberspace. The
ubiquitous technology will narrow the gap between the cyberspace and real physicalspace we are living on. In the following subsections, we will describe some of ourexperimental results towards creating such ubiquitous applications.
2.2 Smart SpaceThe goal of the Smart Space project is to create a smart environment where many
appliances, embedded devices and sensors are seamlessly connected for supporting
human-to-human, human-to-device, device-to-device collaboration[7, 8]. In such smart
environment, “computational intelligence” is embedded into surrounding environment
and wearable devices of human could communicate in an ad hoc manner. In order toutilize real-time environmental information for various types of collaboration, we needto develop a real-time sensor/device networks, integrated sensor processing module,
efficient wireless networking, wearable networking, dynamic e-directory services, andnew software framework.
We have built “Box-in-the-Box” shown in Figure2 as a testbed for performing experimental tasks in the Smart Space project. It is designed as a cage constructed inside
the room of the building without any additional supporting materials. We have createdartificial walls where we could embed various types of sensors, devices and embedded
servers.
The space in the Box-in-the-Box is divided into five regions, each of which is a basic
unit of the control domain in Smart Space. Regions are used not only as the different

Fig. 2. Structure of the Box-in-the-Box

location in the Smart Space, but as those in the assumed distance field. A PC and afactory control computer, called DUONUS are configured in each region to manage
local sensors and appliances.
Various kinds of sensors, audio/visual equipments, and lighting equipments shownin Figure 3 are connected to each network system, and all systems are connected witheach other through the backbone, 100Base-TX Ethernet. The location sensors using
RFID, called E-code spider recognizes the position of a person or a device on the magnitude of the region.

ControllerLighting
Plane

Light
PDP&
TouchPanel

A/Vs

Audio/Visual
Plane

CameraSpeaker

LCD&
Touch PanelMic

SensorPlane

Location
MotionProcessor Sensor
Illuminometer

PC(L)
FC3

Backbone
(LAN)

FC5
FC2

“Regions”
in SSLab

thermometer

PC2

PC5

PC3
WaveLAN
Base Station

Region Servers(PC & FC)

2

FC4
FC1

3
5 1

LAN Switch

PC4

PC1

4

Fig. 3. Embedded Sensors, Appliances, and Networks in B-in-B

2.3 Smart Furniture
The Smart Furniture project aims to extend non-smart space to have smart functionality by simply putting Smart Furniture in a public or private space[9]. Smart Furniturecontains computing units, communication units, sensor units and actuation units. Userscan use Smart Furniture as a gateway to the cyberspace, as a service operator, or as aservice receiver. We have also designed and implemented middleware and application
software required for smart hot-spot services. By the smart hot-spot service means thatit can provide not only the gateway to the cyberspace, but also various services in thereal space. In smart hot-spot environment, services have several aspects such as personalization, context awareness or device coordination. The combination of the Smart
Furniture’s physical structure, hardware devices, and its software technology can transform the legacy space into a smart space instantaneously
We have designed and developed four types of Smart Furniture, namely a pole type,message board type, lamp type, and mirror type.

Fig. 4. Lamp, Mirror, and message board type Smart Furniture

2.4 Experiments
To demonstrate many features of the Smart Space Lab. and Smart Furniture, we havedeveloped several prototype systems including Virtual Network Appliances and a ZeroStop Authentication System.
Virtual Network Appliances
Virtual Networked Appliance (VNA)[10] is an adaptive middleware architecture wehave tested in the Smart Space Lab. Its goal is the realization of “virtual” networked
appliances based on dynamic integration of distributed functional components of networked appliances. Unlike other networks of appliances, VNA allow us to create anetwork of functional components of the appliances. A user then creates a virtual appliances based on the existing appliances. It is called the bottom-up integration. The
top-down integration, on the other hand, constructs the requested virtual appliance bydynamically binding the compatible function components for the user. The VNA may
reconstruct the appliances whenever availability of required function components haschanged. Figure 5 depicts VNA architecture.

Fig. 5. Virtual Networked Appliance Architecture

The VNA’s template is defined with an XML-based markup language (VNA Markup
Language, VML). To make VNAs portable among various physical appliances, we introduced a new mechanism called Virtual Plug&Play[11]. The key advantage in ourarchitecture is a property of a server-less distributed configuration.
Zero-Stop Authentication System
Existing authentication systems require users to input their names and passwords orshow their identification cards to access computers and software. Let us assume, forexample, that a user borrows books, and checks out of a library. In the library, the userneeds to show an identification card to a librarian, and the librarian checks whether theuser is valid. After authenticating the user, the librarian checks books to lend. In thisprocess, both the user and the librarian need certain time for the authentication.
The key challenge is to eliminate users’ waiting time for authentication with security levels of authentication kept. This system realizes a sensor-based automatic authentication: zero-stop authentication, which diminishes user-computer or user-software interaction mentioned above, providing “zero-stop” property[12]. We define “zero-stop”
property as a property of an authentication system not to make moving users pause
during authentication process. To achieve this property, a system needs to meet the following four functionalities:

– Correctly detecting users and objects.
– Providing active authentication that requires no input from users.
– Providing real time response.
– Presenting feedback of authentication results.

Two types of sensors are equipped with the gate server, and they are RF-based
sensor devices; a wireless LAN device to detect users and an RFID tag sensor to detectobjects. Hardware composition is explained in Figure 6 with its specification in Table 1
and Table 2.

Fig. 6. Hardware Configuration of the Prototype System

Table 1. Computing Devices Used in the Prototype System
item

iPAQ
ThinkPAD
Type
User Terminal (PDA) Gate Server (notebook PC)
CPU
StrongARM
Intel PentiumIII
206MHz
850MHzMemory
64MB
256MB
OS
Familiar Linux v0.5.1 FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT
Network Interface 802.11b
802.11b (IBSS-Mode)
OthersTFT Display

Table 2. Sensor Devices Used in the Prototype System
item

Wireless LAN
RFID Sensor
Type
User Terminal (Wireless LAN) Gate Server (RFID Reader)
Detection Range
160m(outside),50m(indoor)
15m(indoor)
Read Rate
75 tags / second
Operating Frequency 2412-2484 MHz
303.8 MHz
Others3 Social Concerns and Technical Issues
We may face many social concerns and technical problems in evolving to the ubiquitous
computing environment. Pervasive nature of cell phones have been changing a life styleof young folks already[13]. The social implication of such cell phones are not wellanalyzed yet, but we need to foresee potential issues[14]. It is not a trivial task to forcast
various social concerns and technical issues, but we will attempt to enumerate some ofthese.
The digital divide problem is still the well-known social concern when everyone waswilling to use the Internet and PC technology in the world. In the ubiquitous network
society where many wireless mobile communications, pervasive devices, and tags are in
daily use, people are more concerned about the privacy and security in our community.
Let us enumerate the following questions. It is still not clear to produce a common
answer to these questions yet. It may depend upon how we govern the use of technology
in our community.
– Who can access who’s private information and why?
– Who has a right to control IC tags and its information?
– How to reduce the anti-social activities and vandalism in the network?
– How to establish the trust and credibility in our community?
– How to bootstrap ubiquitous services?
– What kind of society we would like to design when the use of these technology
becomes natural.
For instance, a surveillance camera network is one of the sensor network systems
becoming popular in many cities. Some communities are willing to install to increase
the safety of their community. However, if we have too many camera network systems,
it is not clear whether we can increase the safety or not. The potential risk of abusing
such camera networks may increase, then we must minimize the privacy risk of thecommunity. Use of IC tags technology may face the similar concerns. The increased
traceability and tracking ability of ordinary objects in our society may increase thepotential abuse of the technology. We need to produce a better solution to reducing
everyone’s privacy risk and increasing the social safety.
The ubiquitous computing technology is still in early stage of its development. We
need to develop better solutions to following issues.
– Safety and reliability of embedded software

– Energy performance of many sensor systems and tags
– Reliablity and security of authentication systems– Robustness and Safety of the networks– Software architecture for context-aware applications– Service finding, binding, and rebinding– Natural and Calm Service Interface– Interoperability of various services
Even now, it is a serious problem to cope with computer viruses and distributed
denial service (DDOS) attacks to the Internet. The large number of spam mails are also
reducing the usability of the network. We need to solve these issues from the both sideof social aspects as well as the information technology aspects.

4 summaryIn 90’s, the evolution of the Internet gave us a new dimension of an information infrastructure in the cyberspace era. The pervasive nature of the ubiquitous computing
technology may give us yet another impacts on our life style. The calm nature of thetechnology will empower a person’s, group’s, and community’s capabilities dramatically over the next few years.
New applications which we can expect in the ubiquitous computing are very wide
including health care and nursing, education, employment, environment, participation
in society, and consumption domains. Every daily objects will be connected to various
types of networks seamlessly, we will be able to get various services at anytime andfrom anywhere. Any information or services users need will be dynamically adjusted
in a context-aware (situation-dependent) and a personalized fashion.
The increase use of the ubiquitous computing technology such as wireless mobile
communications, pervasive devices, and IC tags may introduce new social concerns.
It is, however, our responsibility to understand the essential problems and foresee thepotential side effects in our society. We need to produce a better solution to reducing
everyone’s privacy risk and increasing the social safety in the ubiquitous network era.

Acknowledgement
We thank all members of the Tokuda Lab. and Uchida Yoko Corporation for their collaborating work on ”Smart Furniture”.

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