28-11-2012, 02:24 PM
Mobility, Context and Cloud – Exploring Integration Issues in a Meeting Room Scenario
Mobility, Context and Cloud.pdf (Size: 727.18 KB / Downloads: 27)
Abstract
In this paper we pursue the context-aware paradigm
in a distributed mobile environment. Contextawareness
plays a significant role in the domain of implicit
human computer interaction and we present an intelligent
context-aware meeting room application. The distributed
mobile application consists of multiple mobile operating
system clients, a Google Android based presenter that,
through proximity technology, communicates with a server
in the meeting room, and a Google Cloud backend server.
Over 40 users have evaluated the application. Results show
that the context aware meeting room was well received by
users who displayed a strong positive bias towards cloud
integration and, in particular, automatic meeting-note push.
We conclude that our context-aware meeting assistant can
provide valuable assistance to end users and that there is
promise for such use of heterogeneous mobile context-aware
platforms.
INTRODUCTION
Context-sensitive (or aware) applications have, in recent
years, moved from the realm of possibilities to that of
ubiquity. One exciting research area that is still very much
in the realm of possibilities is that of cloud computing. In
this paper we present our work, which explores the overlap
of these two research areas, specifically through the
prism of an application integrating heterogeneous mobile
devices in a meeting room scenario.
There are several contributions that focus on context
aware applications in a meeting. Chen et al. [1] propose
the use of Bluetooth by creating a smart meeting room.
The idea is to provide relevant services and information to
the meeting participants based on their context. The
services include presentation-, lighting control- and greeting
service, where Bluetooth is used to register the participants
that are in the meeting room. Another research
contribution investigating the aspects of localization and
identification is that of Bourcier et al. [2], who focus on
the notion of service oriented computing in the meaning of
automated discovery and connection to devices. Through
the work presented, Bourcier et al. [2] highlight the importance
of connecting heterogeneous devices through a
generic protocol and strategy.
PROJECT ARCHITECTURE
A. Scenario Description
A daily activity at a work place is to attend meetings.
Moreover, this activity includes the workload necessary in
the administration of the meetings. Not only does one
have to attend a meeting, but also s/he is also required to
keep track of the daily schedule, meeting subjects, write
meeting minutes and more. Applications like Microsoft
Outlook or Lotus Notes can help with some of the tasks,
like keeping track of the schedule and administrating
meeting invitations and responses.
Process of User Evaluation
Participants were presented with the application and
then instructed to register their mobile device by entering
Bluetooth id and their respective email addresses. Email
addresses were used to keep a mapping between the
Bluetooth id and the respective user. Thereafter, users
approached the meeting room area, where the server used
proximity information as well as information from the
Google cloud to identify meeting participants. Those
eligible for the meeting received information, a welcome
message, on this in their context-aware meeting.
When all participants were present, the presentation
started. During the 30-minute presentation, meeting notes
from the 12 slides were pushed to the participants’ devices.