Algorithms to Resolve Conflict in Multiuser Context Aware Ubiquitous Environment

Conflict resolution in context-aware computing is getting more significant attention from researchers as pervasive/ubiquitous computing environments take into account multiple users and multiple applications. In multi-user ubiquitous computing environments, conflicts among user’s contexts need to be detected and resolved. Conflicts arise when multiple users try to access or try to have a control on an application. In this paper, the authors propose a series of algorithms to resolve conflict which can be embedded in different context aware applications like context aware devices (say TV, Mobile, AC, and Fan) and Context Aware Ambient (like Meeting Room, Living Room, Restaurant, Coffee Shop, etc.). The algorithms discussed in this paper make use of different tools like Probability, Fuzzy Logic, Bayesian Network and Rough set theory. In addition the algorithms utilize various factors like social, personal and environmental. The motto of this paper is to enable context aware applications to offer socialized and personalized services to multiple users by resolving service conflicts among users. DOI: 10.4018/japuc.2012070103 International Journal of Advanced Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, 4(3), 42-62, July-September 2012 43 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. the environment related to the object. It includes background information (such as history), specification of user and application requirements as well as measurements of physical entities in the environment. This paper proposes a series of algorithms for conflict resolution in a context aware ubiquitous environment. Humans resolve conflicts with heuristics such as starting a discussion, compromising the agreement, retiring gracefully, or ignoring the conflict altogether (McLaughlin & Herlocker, 2004; Sunir & Adams, 2001). Unlike computational objects, humans dispute and argue contradictory, incomplete, irrelevant, ambiguous, inaccurate or false proposition. Computational devices are less likely to resolve such conflict through mediation or argumentation, because they are limited to rule-based reasoning (Chen, Jiang, & Zhao, 2010). The paper proposes a series of methods based on different techniques like Rule base, Bayesian Probability based and Rough set theory approach to resolve conflict in multiuser environment.