Trends and Future of Mobile Computing

Networking homes, offices, cars and hand-held computers is the current trend of distributed mobile computing. The ever growing demand of the enterprise for integrating new technologies and new services requires a generic infrastructure. An infrastructure that allows its components to be accessed, packaged, self described, dynamically configurable, moved over wired or wireless network, deployed either in a workstation or a mobile device from anywhere at anytime. An infrastructure that can be used with new alternatives to current human-machine interfaces applicable in diverse environment.1 1 A scenario of the near future Fri Sept 19 10:29:22 EST 2003 somewhere on a freeway. In a comfortable car, on a trip to a meeting at the Mercury Hotel, a voice generated by a hand-held computer named Cheetah, interrupts the 1 movement of Mahler’s 5 symphony from the HIFI speakers and says: Cheetah: Good morning John, Good morning Jane. I have cancelled your next meeting at the Mercury Hotel due to a severe storm hitting the road to the Mercury Hotel and the late cancellation of one of the attendees. I’m waiting for new instructions. Cheetah and Jane’s computer, named Blacky have infraed their ID to the car’s computer. A speech recognition device also confirmed their IDs. Now, Cheetah and Blacky are connected to the car’s computer and have the privilege to use all available resources such as the speakers and all navigation services. 1The work reported in this paper has been funded in part by the Cooperative Research Centre Program through the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism of the Commonwealth Government of Australia. John: Cheetah, re-schedule the rest of the meeting as early as possible. Show me the direction to my next appointment. John has programmed a set of alternative policy rules for re-scheduling, such as delegating the responsibility to a remote agent when the bandwidth is low or disconnection rate is high or selecting the appropriate interface based on the result and the characteristics of the environment. Cheetah launches a workflow that (1) calculates the time that it takes to go to John’s meeting based on the weather report, distance, available fuel etc ... and (2) negotiates a new schedule with the remote scheduler agents of each meetings attendee via the available public wireless network. Few seconds later a voice announces. Cheetah: Please listen to the new schedule I prepared for you. Monday 10.AM meeting with... A detailed schedule will be displayed on your rear view mirror once your car is stopped. Please confirm. John: Cheetah, confirmed. During the the 2 movement of Mahler’s symphony, Cheetah faintly displayed the new direction and the map to the next meeting on the front wind-screen as Cheetah detected that the rear mirror is not appropriate to display detailed maps. A voice interrupts the music again. Cheetah: John, I credited 30 dollars off your business credit card to pay the required road toll. A voice interrupts the 3 movement of the symphony. It is Blacky. Blacky: Jane, Your son Tom is watching a movie called Terminator 12 on the home DVD. The movie is classified adults only. Tom had IDed the DVD to use it. The DVD automatically notify Jane each time Tom is watching a movie that is against the policy specified by Jane. Jane: Blacky, check if Tom has finished his home work. If not then stop the DVD and forbid Tom to use the DVD till further notice. Otherwise suspend the movie and send me 3 minutes play of the hottest sequences of the film . Depending on how severely Jane’s policies are crossed and the reachability of Jane, a home proxy can either take a local decision or ask Jane for instructions. In our scenario Jane was reachable. Blacky checks the status of Tom’s homework either by enquiring Tom’s hand-held or by simply trusting him and displaying an interactive message such as “Tom, have you done your homework (YES/NO)” on a screen where Tom is looking. Knowing that Tom was prompt to finish his homework the last two weeks, Blacky decided to send the interactive message on the screen and Tom answered YES During the last movement of the symphony, Jane watches the hottest sequences on the front visor’s screen. Then, she browses the web with a voice command interface to find different reviews of Terminator 12. Jane learns that the leading role in Terminator 12 is played by M. Lewinski. Blacky: Jane, Tom has finished his homework. Jane: Blacky, permission to watch Terminator 12 granted to Tom.