TAP Core Projects 2006: Technology Assessment and Planning

TAP Core Projects - Spring 2006

Spring 2006 Core Projects Wrapping Up

The Spring 2006 Core Projects are moving into a wrap-up and review phase. This section of the TAP web site will be updated as this review proceeds to reflect the conclusions and products of this planning and project cycle.

One portion of this project cycle included a research assistant from Computer Science, who reviewed some of the work in context-aware computing. This review is available here. Watch this section of the web site for more information on the Spring 2006 Projects.

The following content describes the planning for the Spring 2006 Core Projects.

With the completion of a first phase of core projects, TAP is beginning a series of collaborative projects, and also is beginning a new phase of core projects for the Spring 2006 time frame. These new core projects are designed to serve muliple ends:

Expand the scope of core technology coverage to incude important trends and developments.
Develop a new set of prototypes that will be applied to new services and collaborations within ITS.
Support collaborative projects that have been launched based on previous core projects.
Develop the CoLab and Living Lab concepts, and enrichen those environments.

The Spring 2006 set of core projects expand research into Ubiquitous and Pervasive computing, and add many new elements. The current projects emphasize the intelligent delivery of services in a "smart room" environment, and also the delivery of intelligent services to mobile users. The emerging ideas around Web 2.0 are stressed in this round of projects as part of a larger "information field," a concept coined by Wade Roush in MIT Technology Review.

The new set of core projects includes these key elements:

An expansion and refactoring of our context-aware framework, based on the CoBrA framework. This framework serves as an experimental tool and test-bed for many prototype services.
An expansion of the context attributes maintained by our framework. In the previous phase of core projects, we concentrated on location and people. In this phase, we add awareness of schedules (class, meeting, etc.), roles, organizational relationships, and also an awareness of the beliefs, goals, and intentions of various agents within our framework.
The development of a "context browser" concept. The context browser was developed in a crude form in the first project, and we will begin using Web2.0 techniques to integrate context-awareness into the Firefox browser using techniques such as AJAX and XUL.
The development of the Memex concept, implemented in intelligent capture of room data, and also in the development of a personal Memex utilizing the Microsoft SenseCam and MyLifeBits software, married to our experimental context-aware framework.
The establishment of a "living lab" environment, with enhanced sensors and actuators. This environment will be a test-bed for task-aware computing prototypes, and will include agent-based pro-active control of services, based on context.
Expanded sensor networks in the "living lab," and also in the mobile environment. This expansion includes active RFID and facial recognition in our lab environment, as well as Wi-Fi triangulation and GPS in our "mobile" prototypes.