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Chapter XIX

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Towards an Innovative Digital Era Spyros P. Angelopoulos Technical University of Crete, Greece Fotis C. Kitsios Technical University of Crete, Greece Eduard Babulak Fairleigh Dickinson University, Canada

ABSTRACT Telecommunications and Internet Technologies have evolved dramatically during the last decade, laying a solid foundation for the future generation of Ubiquitous Internet access, omnipresent Web technologies and ultimate automated information cyberspace. Ubiquitous computing has been investigated since 1993. As a result, current efforts in research and development in the areas of Next Generation Internet and Telecommunications Technologies promote the formation of inter-disciplinary international teams of experts, scientists, researchers and engineers to create a new generation of applications and technologies that will facilitate the fully-automated information cyberspace systems, such as Future House 2015. The authors discuss the current state-of-the-art in the world of Telecommunications and Internet Technologies, new technological trends in the Internet and Automation Industries, E-manufacturing, Ubiquity, Convergence, as well as the concept of the Fully-automated Future House 2015, the 2006 Web Report with the Microsoft project on Easy Living, while promoting research and development in the interdisciplinary projects conducted by multinational teams world-wide.

Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

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INTRODUCTION The past century left us with the legacy of the global Internet, the final flight of Concord Air, CISCO monopoly in computer networking, etc., while large, medium and small corporations alike have discovered the need to adapt to the new technologies, or sink in the emerging global knowledge economy. There is no facet of life in the industrialized world that has not undergone some form of shift. The resultant new information economy has brought with it different approaches to work. The dawn of 21st Century has come up with new models of Economics, where global barriers are falling, economies are merging, communication is getting better and cheaper (Salvi & Sahai 2002) and “knowledge in the world” becomes more important (Dix et al., 2004). The current 21st century is perhaps one of the most interesting times in history to be alive. We are witnessing a phenomenal abundance of change in societies around the world in a very short period. The sources of most of this change are new technologies and the Internet. In the past decade we have seen every aspect of the lives of individuals and organizations go through many evolutions and uncertainties (Technology Advancements and Government Policies in Canada). There are plenty of publications on the subject of futuristic and ubiquitous computing for the 21st century presenting excellent discussion and possible scenarios in the subject area (Ubiquitous Security; Xerox Paul Alto Research; Course on Ubiquitous Computing; Mark Weiser’s Vision; Bluetooth). History proved that one must look forward and accept the futuristic vision as possible scenarios of tomorrow’s reality. Nowadays, technologies such as TV, Internet, Mobile Phone, Traffic lights, and cameras are essential part of daily life (AMR Research; Toyota; Military Agile Manufacturing Pilot Program; Convergence; Pervasive Computing; Distributed Systems Online). However, if one would suggest hundred years ago what would be the reality of 2005, surely he or she would be considered “with great caution” (Stajano, 2002; Weiser, 1996). In this chapter, we seek to contribute to the Ubiquitous Computing agenda (Tolmie et al., 2002).

PERVASIVE COMPUTING Ubiquity postulates the omnipresence of networking. An unbounded and universal network. Omnipresence is the ability to be everywhere at a certain point in time. The widely used definition of ubiquitous computing is the method of enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user (Wang, et. al., 2007). Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. As opposed to the desktop paradigm, in which a single user consciously engages a single device for a specialized purpose, someone “using” ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, in the course of ordinary activities, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so. Ubiquitous computing integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Ubiquitous activities are not so task-centric while the majority of usability techniques are. It is not at all clear how to apply task-centric techniques to informal everyday computing situations (Abowd & Mynat 2000). Other terms for ubiquitous computing include pervasive computing, calm technology, things that think and everyware. Promoters of this idea hope that embedding computation into the environment and everyday objects would enable people to interact with information-processing devices more naturally and casually than they currently do, and in whatever location or circumstance they find themselves (Ubiquitous Computing, 2007). 

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In the ubiquitous computing era, we can expect that computing systems become smaller and smaller, eventually invisible. They will be pervasive into our daily lives (Van de Kar, 2005). With the invention of new interaction devices and the requirements for ubiquitous access to application systems, user’s interactions have moved beyond the desktop and evolved into a trend of ongoing development (Hong, Chiu & Shen, 2005). The purpose of ubiquitous computing is anywhere and anytime access to information within computing infrastructures that is blended into a background (Wang, et. al., 2007). The pervasive computing vision is increasingly enabled by the large success of wireless networks and devices. It seems then that routines are invisible in use for those who are involved in them. Contributing to the agenda set by Mark Weiser we wish to consider what it is about this unremarkable aspect of routines that could help us develop Ubiquitous Computing that is invisible in use and in its own way unremarkable (Tolmie et al., 2002). In pervasive environments, heterogeneous software and hardware resources may be discovered and integrated transparently towards assisting the performance of users’ daily tasks. An essential requirement towards the realization of such a vision is the availability of mechanisms enabling the discovery of resources that best fit the client applications’ needs among the heterogeneous resources that populate the pervasive environment (Mokhtar et al., 2007). At their core, all models of ubiquitous computing share a vision of small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices, distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally turned to distinctly quotidian ends. Contemporary human-computer interaction models, whether command-line, menu-driven, or GUI-based, are inappropriate and inadequate to the ubiquitous case. This problem includes multiple machines per user, small devices attached to the network, and new services like location and context handling that are necessary for its applications. The environment is also highly dynamic, and includes mobile users and devices. Therefore, the system must enable adaptation (Ballesteros et al., 2006). This suggests that the “natural” interaction paradigm appropriate to a fully robust ubiquitous computing has yet to emerge - although there is also recognition in the field that in many ways we are already living in a “ubicomp world”. Contemporary devices that lend some support to this latter idea include mobile phones, digital audio players, radio-frequency identification tags and interactive whiteboards. Resources and information in ubiquitous computing environments are shared by users, heterogeneous sensors and so on. Security becomes vital in the environments since contextual information such as sensor locations and applications become an integral part of the system authorization. On the other hand, a variety of applications and users interaction with the pervasive environment poses new security challenges to the traditional user-password approach for computer security. The heterogeneous devices and mobile users in such dynamic pervasive computing environments make security management difficult, especially the access to authorized users since it is a basic security requirement for guaranteeing user’s privacy, information confidentiality, integrity and availability (Wang et al., 2007). Pervasive computing is considered roughly as the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, pervasive computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Visualization and interaction of pervasive services can be implemented using context-aware augmented reality (Van de Kar, 2005). Thus, pervasive computing is considered a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences (Weiser, 1991). On the other hand, augmented reality (AR), another type of virtual reality, is considered as an excellent user interface for pervasive computing applications, because it allows intuitive information browsing of location-referenced information (Lee, Ju & Jeong, 2006; Schmalstieg & Reitmayr, 2005).



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Pervasive information systems (PIS) constitute an emerging class of information systems (IS) where information technology (IT) is gradually embedded in the physical environment, capable of accommodating user needs and wants when desired. PIS differ from desktop information systems (DIS) in that they provide new means of interaction and can generate new experiences for their users (Kourouthanasis, Giaglis & Vrechopoulos, 2007). A new generation of information appliances has emerged (Roussos, 2003), differing from traditional general-purpose computers in what they do and in the much smaller learning overhead they impose on the user. This new class of IS has been called ‘pervasive information systems’ (PIS) (Birnbaum, 1997) and enables new interaction means beyond the traditional desktop paradigm. Ubiquitous embedded devices are the backbone of the pervasive computing world (Paar & Weimerskirch 2007). Embedded systems have become an integral part of our everyday life. Devices like vehicles, household appliances, and cell phones are already equipped with embedded microcontrollers. The networking of the myriads of embedded devices gives rise to the brave new world of pervasive computing. Pervasive computing offers enormous advantages and opportunities for users and businesses through new applications, increased comfort, and cost reduction. One often overlooked aspect of pervasive computing, however, are new security threats (Paar & Weimerskirch 2007). Embedded controllers are said to have a market share of 98% or more of the global processor market, implying that less than 2% of all processors are employed in traditional computers (Estrin, Govindan & Heidemann, 2000). Different kinds of models are built for ubiquitous computing (Wang et al., 2007) and several papers have analysed the security requirements for ubiquitous computing (Seigneur & Jensen 2004; Sampemane, Naldurg & Campbell, 2002; Viswanathan, Gill & Campbell, 2001; Jai-muhtadi et al., 2002; Wang, Cao & Zhang, 2006). Research and development trends in the field of computing industry promote a vision of smart spaces, smart devices, clothing, fully automated houses etc., which create an environment where computers are everywhere and provide ultimate access to Internet. Pervasive computing (Satyanarayanan, 2001) envisions the unobtrusive diffusion of computing and networking resources in physical environments, enabling users to access information and computational resources anytime and anywhere, and this in a user-centric way, i.e., where user interaction with the system is intuitive, pleasant and natural. Pervasive computing environments are populated with networked software and hardware resources providing various functionalities that are abstracted, thanks to the Service Oriented Architecture paradigm, as services. Within these environments, service discovery enabled by service discovery protocols (SDPs) is a critical functionality for establishing ad hoc associations between service providers and service requesters. Furthermore, the dynamics, the openness and the user-centric vision aimed at by the pervasive computing paradigm call for solutions that enable rich, semantic, context- and QoS-aware service discovery (Mokhtar et al., 2007). The conventional approach to building pervasive environments relies on middleware to integrate different systems (Ballesteros et al., 2006). Systems that support ubiquitous computing are too abundant to be appropriately described here, however, some of them are: Plan 9 (Pike, et al., 1995), Plan B (Ballesteros et al., 2006), Odyssey (Noble, et al., 1997), Khazana (Carter, Ranganathan & Susarla, 1998), Semantic File system (Gifford, et. al., 1991), Gaia’s Context File System (Hess & Campbell 2002), Globe (Kuz, van Steen & Sips, 2002), Speakeasy (Edwards et al., 2002), Ninja (Gribble et al., 2000), IWS (Johanson, Fox & Winograd, 2002), Gaia (Roman, et al., 2002), One.World (Grimm & Bershad, 2002) and WebOS (Vahdat et al., 1998). The problem they all address is how to provide a convenient operating system for a ubiquitous computing environment (Weiser, 1991). A recent computing paradigm particularly appropriate for pervasive systems is Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) (Papazoglou &



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Georgakopoulos, 2003), however, in Zhu, Mutka & Ni (2005), a classification of academic and industrysupported SDPs, specifically for pervasive environments, is proposed. A number of research efforts have been conducted in the area of matching semantic Web services based on their signatures. Signature matching deals with the identification of subsumption relationships between the concepts describing inputs and outputs of capabilities (Zaremski & Wing, 1995). A base algorithm for service signature matching has been proposed by Sycara et al. (2003), Paolucci et al. (2002). Other solutions based on the signature matching of semantic Web services have been proposed in the literature (Majithia, Walker & Gray, 2004; Trastour, Bartolini & Gonzalez-Castillo, 2001; Filho & van Sinderen, 2003). A more practical way to perform specification matching is to use query containment (Sirin, Parsia & Hendler, 2005; Sycara et al., 1999). Pervasive computing environments provide many kinds of information and has become so popular for two main reasons. First, users desire natural interfaces that facilitate a richer variety of communication capabilities between humans and machines (Abowd & Mynat 2000). Second, the various contexts need a good representation model and a good reasoning model to enhance system and work efficiency by matching users’ intentions (Hong, Chiu & Shen, 2005). Some of this information should be accessible only to a limited set of people. For example, a person’s location is a sensitive piece of information, and releasing it to unauthorized entities might pose security and privacy risks. For instance, when walking home at night, a person will want to limit the risk of being robbed, and only people trusted by the person should be able to learn about his or her current location. The access control requirements of information available in a pervasive computing environment have not been thoroughly studied. This information is inherently different from information such as files stored in a file system or objects stored in a database, whose access control requirements have been widely studied. The market is evolving from wired computing to pervasive computing, mobile and wireless, any time at any place. Many types of information available in a pervasive computing environment, such as people location information, should be accessible only to a limited set of people. Some properties of the information raise unique challenges for the design of an access control mechanism: Information can emanate from more than one source, it might change its nature or granularity before reaching its final receiver and it can flow through nodes administrated by different entities (Hengartner & Steenkiste, 2003). The emergence of ubiquitous computing brings context as part of implicit input, which effectively improves the interaction between human and computing devices (Hong, Chiu & Shen, 2005).

CONTEXT What is context and why is it so important in ubiquitous environments and pervasive computing? Schilit, Adams & Want (1994) claimed that the three important aspects of context are: where you are, who you are with, and what resources are nearby. Chen, Li & Kotz (2000) redefine context as the set of environmental states and settings that either determines an application’s behaviour or in which an application event occurs and is interesting to the user. Moreover, Dey, Abowd & Salber (2001) define it as any information that can be used to characterize the situation of entities (i.e., whether a person, place, or object) that are considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and the application themselves. A system is context-aware if it can extract, interpret, and use context information and adapt its functionality to the current context of use (Korkea-aho, 2000). In particular, context-awareness is also considered as one of the most important issues in pervasive



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computing, which is used to provide relevant services and information to users by exploiting contexts. By contexts, we mean information about locations, software agents, users, devices, and their relationships (Daftari, et. al., 2003; Wang, et. al., 2004). Recently, several researches have been in progress for developing flexible middlewares which can supply context-aware service infrastructure such as Context Toolkit (Dey & Abowd, 2000), Reconfigurable Context-Sensitive Middleware for Pervasive Computing (Yau, et. al., 2002), and SOCAM (Service-oriented Context-aware Middleware) (Gu, Pung, & Zhang, 2004), and GAIA (Biegel & Cahill, 2004). There are three main reasons why context is important. First, context reduces the input cost. Second, context may provide an exciting user experience without much effort on the users’ part. Third, users benefit through context sharing (Hong, Chiu & Shen, 2005). User preferences and security may vary depending on the device capabilities and other context conditions. Therefore, the context adaptability should provide for means to express conditions and reason them applicable to adaptable ubiquitous services (Gandon & Sadeh, 2004; Held, Buchholz, & Schill, 2002). One particular important issue is to combine context awareness with more natural and intuitive interfaces like augmented reality for providing more human-oriented visualization, interaction and collaboration of various pervasive services (Lee, Ju & Jeong, 2006). Further, in a dynamic heterogeneous environment, context adaptation for user-oriented services is a key concept to meet the varying requirements of different clients. In order to enable context-aware adaptation, context information must be gathered and eventually presented to the application performing the adaptation (Held, Buchholz, & Schill, 2002).

E-COMMERCE VIA UBIQUITOUS INTERNET The most important benefit deriving from the deployment of pervasive retail systems is the creation of new shopping experiences and consequently, enthusiasm for the consumers. This is particularly important in the competitive retail sector where the provision of complimentary shopping schemes the advent of the Internet, and the urbanization of nowadays society have created the new consumer who is more knowledgeable about comparable product costs and price; more changeable in retail and brand preferences; showing little loyalty; self-sufficient, yet demanding more information; who holds high expectations of service and personal attention; and is driven by three new currencies: time, value, and information (Kourouthanassis, Giaglis & Vrechopoulos, 2007). The manufacturing and automation technologies have crossed the frontiers from nanotechnology to Giga Networks Infrastructures that are essential in enabling the information flow between robots, powerful computing centres and manually controlled stations. Automated negotiations among multiple participants have been researched as one of the prominent fields in ecommerce (Kraus, 2001; Jennings et al., 2002). The current merger of current Computer Integrated Manufacturing Technologies and DataTelecommunications Technologies present a new challenge to community of engineers and scientists in the manufacturing sector as well as, mathematics and computing science and engineering sector (Babulak, 2004; Babulak, 2005). The economic prospects, for the years to come, remain particularly hard to predict. Whilst the markets for Control and Power industry proved to be challenging for the companies, the Software and Automation industry have grown, particularly those businesses serving the oil, gas, power generation and auto markets (Babulak, 2004). What gives rise to pressures in the market place are company drivers in conjunction with the industry drives. Globalization of the market with accelerating technological changes such as digital



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Figure 1. What is e-manufacturing (credit to Ivensys)

Figure. 2. E-manufacturing hierarchy (credit to Ivensys)

revolution and mobile technologies in conjunction with the customer demands represent main industrial drivers (Wohlwend, 2001). On the company site it is the cost efficiency combined with the new lines of products that give rise to business complexity. The major forces in industry today are e-commerce and e-manufacturing (AMR Research). E-manufacturing illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, has been well adopted in industry overseas and the next wave of the e-manufacturing is driven by customers utilizing full capacity of e-commerce (Toyota). Toyota is one of many examples where e-manufacturing has become a major force for their productivity and business success. Future technological advancements open a new avenue for multidisciplinary development and research teams consisting of IT professionals, such as software developers, telecommunications engineers, production engineers and business managers to work closely with academics and industrial research teams on new e-manufacturing solutions. Sales marketing forces combined with the manufacturing and operation teams work together to plan the dynamics for future vision and the current reality, while facilitating the supply chain of products in response to customer chaotic orders.



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A firm’s ability to serve its customers needs determines its success. Initially, firms needed to meet face-to-face to meet most of their customer’s needs; however, with the development of information technology, the requirement for face-to-face interaction has gradually declined. The Internet opened up a new channel for firm-customer interaction that has significantly changed the customer relationship equation. Now, cell phone networks are enabling m-commerce and further changes in the firm-customer dynamics (Watson, 2004). Traditionally, business has been biased by geography and located near rivers, roads, and other transport services so that the cost of being reached by or reaching customers is lowered. Now, business is increasingly using electronic networks (e.g., the Internet and mobile phone networks) to interact with customers. Thus in the next few years, it is likely that we will see the emergence of ucommerce, where u stands for ubiquitous, universal, unique, and unison. U-Commerce represents the use of ubiquitous networks to support personalized and uninterrupted communications and transactions between a firm and its various stakeholders to provide a level of value over, above, and beyond traditional commerce. Ubiquitous represents the concept of having (Watson, 2004) a network connection everywhere with all consumer devices, with the intelligence and information widely dispersed and always accessible, as well as smart entities including appliances, buildings, signs, street smart communities, etc. The main focus is to enable one global network that would be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whole year round and will provide best quality of services to anyone, anywhere and anytime (Figure 3). There is a burgeoning population of ‘effectively invisible’ computers around us, embedded in the fabric of our homes, shops, vehicles, farms and some even in our bodies. They are invisible in that they are part of the environment and we can interact with them as we go about our normal activities. However they can range in size from large Plasma displays on the walls of buildings to microchips implanted in the human body. They help us command, control, communicate, do business, travel and entertain ourselves, and these “invisible” computers are far more numerous than their desktop counterparts. The mobile telecommunications industry is searching for new services, not only to regain its investments in licenses but also to stay competitive in the future (Van de Kar, 2005). World’s telecommunications providers are looking for ways to merge together all digital and analogue services (voice, video, data) on one common network, which would provide users with unlimited access to online information, business, entertainment, etc. Convergence’s goal is to provide corporations with a highly secure and controllable solution that supports real-time collaborative applications (Convergence). In 2003, manu-

Figure 3. What is ubiquity (credit to www.ubicom.org)



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Figure 4. Convergence (credit to CISCO)

facturers were delivering the first network systems and terminals were making their appearance on the market. However, the new services that had to be delivered, were - and still are - in the development stage (Van de Kar, 2005). The current trends in communications technologies are driven by convergence and ubiquity, as shown in Figure 4.

FUTURE HOME 2015 The vision of pervasive computing consists of unobtrusively integrating computers with people’s everyday lives at home and at work (Chen, Li & Kotz, 2007) and has inspired many researchers to work on new hardware, networking protocols, human-computer interactions, security and privacy, applications, and social implications (Weiser, 1991; Satyanarayanan, 2001). In the last decade, a number of researcher articles presented the vision and illustrated the scenarios of futuristic computing systems in the year 2005 (Babulak, 2005). Much of the research on Ubiquitous Computing has been dominated by a focus upon the office environment since when Mark Weiser articulated the notion of Ubiquitous Computing back in 1994, the office has been the default domain. However, today, we are in 2007 and much of the foreseen technology is already implemented and fully integrated in industry, military, businesses, education and home. Mark Weiser in his article which was written back in 1996 wrote about futuristic computer technologies applied in “Smart House in the year 2005” (Weiser, 1996). Mark Weiser’s vision did indeed materialise and some of his concepts are currently part of ongoing research and implementation projects. Ultimately the ubiquitous computer and Internet technologies should make everyday life more comfortable for all. As a distinguished Professor of Computer Science quite aptly once said: “Computer technology today has influenced almost every aspect of our lives, industry, business, and education. However, most unfortunately computer technology have mechanised the relationship between people due to e-mail and Internet technologies. It is important that the research, academic and industrial community work together to reverse that equation, whereby computer technology will be a tool that will



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improve human lives and mutual interaction.” The authors encourage reader to reflect on that statement. In our current research we have been considering the notion of Ubiquitous Computing in the context of another domain – the home (Tolmie et al., 2002). Let us imagine a scenario where a person lives in the “Smart House 2015”. It is already 8:00 am and the alarm clock wakes Alice up while half opening the blinds to let the morning light enter her bedroom. The soundtrack of her favourite music station plays on the home cinema set while she takes her bath and a cup of fresh coffee waits for her at the kitchen. She dresses up and leaves home on time while pressing the button “exit” on the touch panel. The door closes behind her and immediately, all unnecessary lights as well as the toaster that she forgot switched on, turn off. The security alarm sets on and waits for Alice to get back. As soon as Alice arrives from work, she gets in her house using the fingerprint reader at the front door. At the very same time, the in-house lighting is set in the “welcome mode” and the air-conditioning system is set to suit her preferences. While she is entering the living room, TV switches on her favourite news station in order to inform her about the current affairs. She takes a look at the remote control, in order to check that everything is perfect and she initializes the multizone entertainment system. Her favourite music plays on the home cinema set and she is now ready to enjoy her bath, since the water is ready at the desired temperature. The ventilation works silently in order not to disturb the music listening, and it maximizes its power only when Alice gets out of the bathroom. She has not had the time to cook and the delivery boy rings the bell to deliver her favourite Chinese food. Immediately, the monitor that can be found closer to her location, shows the view of the man smiling at the front door and with the touch of a button, she opens the door and the front lighting to facilitate his entrance into the house. We have provided an example that helps reveal what ‘invisible in use’ might mean but acknowledge that a great deal of research remains to be done in order to move from this to actual designs (Tolmie et al., 2002). Naturally, there are issues related to the “House Automatic Positioning Systems” and “Security Systems”, which will be carefully monitored and controlled remotely by the house owner or if necessary by the “Local Weather Centre”. In case of natural disasters these systems will protect the house and its members while switching to contingency plan B. Figure 5 illustrates a simple set of some basic attributes for the Future Cyber Home 2015. Pervasive computing will introduce new security threats, ranging from loss of privacy and financial damages, to bodily injuries. Some of the new security threats are well known from conventional IT

Figure 5. Cyber home 2015

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Figure 6. Web report 2006.

systems, whereas others are unique to the pervasiveness of the devices. At the same time, strong security in pervasive applications, e.g., fee-based feature activation in products, offers new opportunities for businesses and users. Pervasive security is an emerging discipline and there is an active academic and industrial community working on strong security solutions (Paar & Weimerskirch 2007). Several approaches are developed to protect information for pervasive environments against malicious users. However, ad hoc mechanisms or protocols are typically added in the approaches by compromising disorganized policies or additional components to protect from unauthorized access (Wang et al., 2007). All we need is to wait until 2015 and see if this vision will materialise. Fully automated environments will require sophisticated MIMO antenna systems and small smart devices that will be able to communicate within themselves all the time. These devices will have self healing capabilities to make sure that they are recharged regularly and will be operational without any interruption. In contrast to humans who have breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack on accession to make sure that they are able to do their job, and yet they sleep anywhere from 6 to 14 hours each day, the devices creating the fully automated space can not sleep, perhaps they may wait or be on pause mode, but as soldiers they must be in full operational readiness at any time and anywhere. The current efforts in Home automation and ubiquity are well on the way at many research centres and industries such Microsoft, Phillips, Sony, etc. Figure 6, illustrate some recent efforts and products that are available to public. For a smart home, Easy Living (Brumitt et al., 2000; Shafer et al., 1998) is an intelligent system environment by Microsoft Research. It focuses on applications that can make computers easier to use and able to perform more tasks than traditional desktop computers. The system has information about the state of the world, such as locations of people, places, things, and other devices in space. The context, which could be interpreted by the system, helps users directly access all available devices, control some devices remotely, and control media players according to user preference. eHome or the Smart Home Usability and Living Experience project (Koskela & Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, 2004) was carried out from May 2002 to March 2003 at the Institute of Software Systems at the Tampere University of

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Figure 7. Easy living (credit Microsoft)

Technology, Finland. The system supports users in controlling everyday “smart objects” such as moving curtains and status-aware pot plants through three user-interface devices: a personal computer, a media terminal (i.e., the TV), and a mobile phone. In the system, the PC acts as the central control unit. A mobile phone is a suitable remote controller when users are away from home. The Microsoft research group is working on the project of Easy Living while applying the cutting edge technology with the modern home environment and the home working. Figure 7, illustrates the basic elements of easy living, including user interface and applications of computing in the physical world with distributed system architecture and research in sensing and world modelling. Working from home example illustrated in Figure 8 facilitates: • • •

A person working from home engages in an augmented video- teleconference with a (A) colleague at the office. The various PCs, sensors, displays, and devices are integrated with the existing home environment. For example, (B) switch plates near the door of each room show the privacy-state of each room, and provide simple touch-screen interfaces to common room controls. (C) The room is aware of where people are and automatically switches to use the best video feed.

The advancement of current technologies in the fields of data and telecommunications, ubiquitous Internet access and sensor technologies combined with the new revolutionary explorations and concepts in biotechnology and nanotechnology, computer human interface-interaction, etc., present a great challenge for the research community not only as a result of mathematical complexity, but most of all as a result of the user’s perception (Babulak, 2005). 12

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Figure 8. Working from home (credit to Microsoft).

CONCLUSION Automation did inspire a number of outstanding scientists and engineers in the past centuries to find new solutions to make life easier for all mankind. The emergence and accessibility of advanced data and telecommunications technologies combined with the convergence of industry standards, as well as the convergence of data and telecommunications industries contribute towards the ubiquitous access to information resources via the Internet (Pervasive Computing; Distributed Systems Online). The automated environment and cyberspace systems for the 21st century entered a new era of innovation and technological advancements. The world’s industry and commerce are becoming increasingly dependent on Web-based solutions, with regards to a global vision for the future. With increased benefits and improvements in overall information technology, the benefit-to-cost ratio has never been higher. It is essential to continue the development of industry standards and application of information technologies in order to increase the automation and ultimate success of modern logistics, the E-Commerce and E-manufacturing industries (Kropft, 2002; Shade 2001). The authors present their own vision on future automated environment via information cyberspace for the year 2015. This chapter suggests the integration of automated environments and intelligent cyberspaces in light of applied robotics, logistics, smart devices, smart antennas and intelligent systems. The authors hope that this chapter will encourage the research and industrial community to invest their efforts in implementing fully automated environments via intelligent cyberspaces. Future efforts should be focused on designing a communication language and transmission media that will allow for instantaneous communication transfer and control between smart devices and humans.

REFERENcES Abowd, G.D. & Mynatt, E.D. (2000). Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7(1): 29–58.

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Assimakopoulos, A.N., Angelopoulos, P.S. & Riggas, N.A. (2007). Development and analysis of a virtual enterprise that constructs wireless payment mechanisms using open source content management systems. Accepted for publication in International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies (IJASS) (http://www.inderscience.com/ijass). AMR Research: http://www.amrresearch.com/ Babulak, E. (2005). Automated Environment via Cyberspace. Proceedings of the International Conference on Applied Computing (IADIS), Algarve, Portugal. Babulak, E. (2004). Manufacturing for the 21st Century, 1st International Conference on Manufacturing Management, Presov, Slovakia. Babulak, E. (2005). Next Generation of Internet & Telecommunications Technologies for Fully Automated Cyberspace. Keynote Speech, the 7th International Conference on New Trends in Technology System Operation, Presov, Slovakia. Babulak, E. (2005). Quality of Service Provision Assessment in the Healthcare Information and Telecommunications Infrastructures. Selected for publication in the International Journal of Medical Informatics, Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Ballesteros, F.J., Guardiola, G., Leal, K. & Soriano, E. (2006). Omero: Ubiquitous user interfaces in the Plan B operating system, in: Proceedings of IEEE PerCom. Ballesteros, F.J., Soriano, E., Leal, K. & Guardiola, G. (2006). Plan B: An operating system for ubiquitous computing environments, in: Proceedings of IEEE PerCom. Birnbaum, J. (1997). Pervasive information systems. Communications of the ACM, 40(2), 40–41. Bluetooth: http://www.bluetooth.com Brumitt, B., Meyers, B., Krumm, J., Kern, A. & Shafer, S. (2000). Easyliving: Technologies for intelligent environments. In The Second International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (HUC2000), pages 12–29, Bristol, UK. Springer-Verlag. Carter, J., Ranganathan, A. & Susarla, S. (1998). Khazana. An infrastructure for building distributed services, in: Proceedings of ICDCS’98, IEEE, Amsterdam. Chaikalis, C. (2007). Turbo decoder dynamic reconfiguration in urban/suburban outdoor operating environment for 3GPP. in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC 2007), Athens, Greece. Chaikalis, C. (2007). UMTS implementation issues. Chapter in book entitled: Progress in Wireless Communications Research, Editor: Alfred P. Martinhoff, Nova Science Publishers, New York, Invited, ISBN 1-60021-675-7. Chen, G. & Kotz, D. (2000). A survey of context-aware mobile computing research. Technical Report TR2000-381, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College.

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key TERMS Cyberspace: Domain characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modifies, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures. E-Commerce: Buying and selling products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Everyware: Computing that is everywhere yet is relatively hard to see, both literally and figuratively.

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ICT (Information Communications Technology): An umbrella term that includes all technologies for the communication of information. It is apparently culminating to information communication with the help of personal computers networked through the Internet through information technology that can transfer information using satellite systems or intercontinental cables. Innovation: The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes or in services. Invention that gets out in to the world is innovation. Internet: A worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol. Ubiquitous Computing: A post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities.

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