Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing: building smart environment in real and cyber space

Abstract

Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC) is emerging rapidly as an exciting new paradigm including technologies of pervasive computing, wireless communication and ambient intelligence to provide computing and communication services any time and anywhere. It usually refers to the creation and deployment of computing technology in such a way that it becomes an invisible part of the fabric of everyday life and commerce. As ubiquitous computing presents a new trend of information and communication technologies for connecting cyber and physical domains, in such era, computers in the traditional sense gradually fade from view. Namely, information and communication mediated by computers is available anywhere and anytime through devices that are embedded in our environment, completely inter-connected, intuitive, effortlessly portable and constantly available. Ubiquitous sensors, devices, networks and information are paving the way towards a smart world in which computational intelligence is distributed throughout the physical environment to provide reliable and relevant services to people. This ubiquitous intelligence will change the computing landscape because it will enable new breeds of applications and systems to be developed and the realm of computing possibilities will be significantly extended. This special issue is intended to foster the dissemination of state-of-the-art research in the area of UIC and present exciting enabling opportunities/technologies. To this end, this special issue includes eight extended versions of selected papers originally presented at the 7th international conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2011), held in Xian, China. The papers selected for this issue not only contribute valuable insights and results, but also have particular relevance to ubiquitous multimedia, services, environments, systems, objects and safety aspects. They all present high quality results for tackling problems arising from the ever-growing fields of ubiquitous intelligence computing. Ivan Lee and Ling Guan in their paper entitled ‘‘InterFrame Dependency in Multi-view Multi-Description Video Streaming’’ investigates video frame dependencies in multi-view multiple description video streaming. Interframe video dependencies for single-path and multi-path video streaming are analyzed. Numerical evaluation demonstrates that inter-dependency between viewpoint helps improving the coding efficiency at the cost of coding delay and streaming performance. Comparing the impact of different state transition probability of the evaluation model, it is found that ensuring successful transmission of subsequent video frames is more important than ensuring a rapid recovery from error states. The paper by Simen Hagen and Frode Eika Sandnes entitled ‘‘Visual Scoping and Personal Space on Shared Tabletop Surfaces’’ explores a shared surface prototype for collaborative work that allows information hiding and personal space for individual participants. The approach allows the participants in a meeting or conference the ability to remove information of no interest, or add information as it becomes relevant. Using this technique, two or more participants can work together on the same surface, without being disturbed by the actions of the other participants. As the technique allows certain display areas to be used for personal space simultaneously by the participants, the overall available display real estate is exploited more efficiently. C.-H. Hsu (&) Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Chung Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan e-mail: chh@chu.edu.tw