Context-aware Service Platform Research Articles

An industrial Internet of things based platform for context-aware information services in manufacturing

ABSTRACTIn a manufacturing shop floor, context-aware intelligent service systems can be used to provide information services to shop floor personnel, according to their situation. This article presents an industrial Internet of things (IIoT) context-aware information system that provides decision support for mobile or static operators and supervisors. The system uniquely combines key IIoT concepts such as multi-layered, service-oriented architecture, which integrates several subsystems, such as sensor data acquisition together with concepts for developing context-aware systems such as context modelling and contextual data information provision. The proposed solution is relevant for several manufacturing environments. However, in dynamic, semi-structured manufacturing environments that the workstations are not fixed but dynamically change over time and in which the workers are mobile and not static to some predefined workstations, the utilisation of context-aware information delivery is considered as even more relevant. For that reason, a case study with a medium-sized shipyard has been selected and conducted. Industrial requirements were gathered and led to use cases for a customised implementation of the proposed solution into a shipyard. The proposed solution includes a number of context-aware apps that support the users in carrying out production tasks. The study provided insights into the suitability of the solution presented in the shipyard environment and brought to light further aspects that would improve the proposed context-aware system.

Zone-Aware Service Platform: A New Concept of Context-Aware Networking and Communications for Smart-Home Sustainability

Recent advances in networking and communications removed the restrictions of time and space in information services. Context-aware service systems can support the predefined services in accordance with user requests regardless of time and space. However, due to their architectural limitations, the recent systems are not so flexible to provide device-independent services by multiple service providers. Recently, researchers have focused on a new service paradigm characterized by high mobility, service continuity, and green characteristics. In line with these efforts, improved context-aware service platforms have been suggested to make the platform possible to manage the contexts to provide the adaptive services for multi-user and locations. However, this platform can only support limited continuity and mobility. In other words, the existing system cannot support seamless service provision among different service providers with respect to the changes of mobility, situation, device, and network. Furthermore, the existing context-aware service platform is significant reliance on always-on infrastructure, which leads to great amounts of energy consumption inevitably. Therefore, we subsequently propose a new concept of context-aware networking and communications, namely a zone-aware service platform. The proposed platform autonomously reconfigures the infrastructure and maintains a service session interacting with the middleware to support cost- and energy-efficient pervasive services for smart-home sustainability.

Novel Applications Integrate Location and Context Information

New applications and services aim to adapt themselves to the user's context and thus require platforms that can collect, distribute, and exchange contextual information. The Context-Aware Service Platform (CASP) can help, as exemplified here in three different use cases.

An ontology-based nurse call management system (oNCS) with probabilistic priority assessment

BackgroundThe current, place-oriented nurse call systems are very static. A patient can only make calls with a button which is fixed to a wall of a room. Moreover, the system does not take into account various factors specific to a situation. In the future, there will be an evolution to a mobile button for each patient so that they can walk around freely and still make calls. The system would become person-oriented and the available context information should be taken into account to assign the correct nurse to a call.The aim of this research is (1) the design of a software platform that supports the transition to mobile and wireless nurse call buttons in hospitals and residential care and (2) the design of a sophisticated nurse call algorithm. This algorithm dynamically adapts to the situation at hand by taking the profile information of staff members and patients into account. Additionally, the priority of a call probabilistically depends on the risk factors, assigned to a patient.MethodsThe ontology-based Nurse Call System (oNCS) was developed as an extension of a Context-Aware Service Platform. An ontology is used to manage the profile information. Rules implement the novel nurse call algorithm that takes all this information into account. Probabilistic reasoning algorithms are designed to determine the priority of a call based on the risk factors of the patient.ResultsThe oNCS system is evaluated through a prototype implementation and simulations, based on a detailed dataset obtained from Ghent University Hospital. The arrival times of nurses at the location of a call, the workload distribution of calls amongst nurses and the assignment of priorities to calls are compared for the oNCS system and the current, place-oriented nurse call system. Additionally, the performance of the system is discussed.ConclusionsThe execution time of the nurse call algorithm is on average 50.333 ms. Moreover, the oNCS system significantly improves the assignment of nurses to calls. Calls generally have a nurse present faster and the workload-distribution amongst the nurses improves.

A Data Fusion Approach to Context-Aware Service Delivery in Heterogeneous Network Environments

Context-awareness is a key ingredient in any ubiquitous and pervasive system and provides intelligence to the system, allowing computing devices make appropriate and timely decisions on behalf of users. Context-awareness in mobile computing refers to internal and external adaptation of the environment and applications to the context state of each other. Such systems should adapt to the changes and variations of user's context such as location, device status, connectivity and etc. In this paper we present our perspective of a context-aware service platform which is based on the idea of utilizing network information as services that is delivered via application programming interfaces and propose a fuzzy MADM method and a context similarity measure. We take into account the quality of contextual information in aggregating contextual information from different sources.

Design of a semantic person-oriented nurse call management system

Context information is becoming increasingly important in a world with more and more wireless devices that have to be in touch with the environment around them. In this paper, we focus on how this context information can be efficiently modelled by employing an ontology. This ontology can then be used by reasoning algorithms (e.g., Rules) which are based on this context information. This way, the algorithm is more sensitive to the varying conditions of the environment. This is illustrated with a use case which studies the transition from a place-oriented to a person-oriented nurse call system. The Context-aware Service Platform (CASP) context framework (Strobbe et al., 2007; 2006) was extended to implement the use case. A web service interface was designed which allows the insertion or extraction of new information into the Knowledge Base. Finally, a simulation was set up to illustrate the advantages and the performance of the new person-oriented approach.

ERMHAN: A Context-Aware Service Platform to Support Continuous Care Networks for Home-Based Assistance

Continuous care models for chronic diseases pose several technology-oriented challenges for home-based continuous care, where assistance services rely on a close collaboration among different stakeholders such as health operators, patient relatives, and social community members. Here we describe Emilia Romagna Mobile Health Assistance Network (ERMHAN) a multichannel context-aware service platform designed to support care networks in cooperating and sharing information with the goal of improving patient quality of life. In order to meet extensibility and flexibility requirements, this platform has been developed through ontology-based context-aware computing and a service oriented approach. We also provide some preliminary results of performance analysis and user survey activity.

Pervasive Health Care Services and Technologies

Pervasive Health Care Services and Technologies

Hybrid Approach to Collaborative Context-Aware Service Platform for Pervasive Computing

The behavior of pervasive applications depend not only on their internal state and user interactions but also on contexts sensed during their execution. In this work, we present a collaborative context-aware service platform based on hybrid context management model (enhanced CoCA). It performs reasoning and decisions based on context data, context semantics, and related rules and policies. Such data is organized into a hybrid context management model (HCoM). The platform also introduces a neighborhood collaboration mechanism to facilitate peer collaboration in order to share their resources. We have developed an initial prototype of the platform. Our preliminary test shows that the platform is a promising data independent development environment for pervasive context-aware applications and it possesses good standard of scalability.

Reference model of future ubiquitous convergent network and context-aware telecommunication service platform

A reference model for future ubiquitous convergent network is analyzed. To provide user-centric, intelligent, personalized service, this article presents a context-aware telecommunication service platform (CaTSP) to adapt to dynamically changing context. This article focuses on the new design method of context-aware telecommunication service platform and its architecture. Through the use of model-driven architecture (MDA) and semantic web technologies, CaTSP can enable context reasoning and service personalization adaption. This article explores a new approach for service intelligence, personalization, and adaptability in the semantic web service computing era.

Context-aware systems — a primer for user-centred services

Convergence in the telecommunications industry provides an excellent platform and opportunity for new context-aware services. Context awareness, i.e. being able to harvest environmental information and use it to meet or anticipate user needs, is a key enabler for personalised applications and services that will be attractive to users in the future. This paper explores relevant research studies that have been undertaken, and proposes a new architecture for realisation of a context-aware system.

IntGuide: A platform for context-aware services featuring augmented-reality, based on the outcome of European Research Projects

As people become increasingly acquainted with information technology, they demand continuous availability of services related to their work or leisure. The era of ubiquitous computing announced long ago is currently turning into an everyday reality at an ever-increasing pace. Alongside the evolution of ubiquitous and nomadic computing, the need of people to access vast amounts of information in a comprehensive and efficient way gives rise to the areas of information visualization and augmented-reality. Such technologies allow for the comprehensive presentation of visual information equally addressing the needs of different categories of people. In the past 5 years, we have been active in a set of European Research Projects addressing the above-mentioned research directions, with the long-term goal to develop a software platform that will enable context-aware services deploying advanced visualization technology in a series of application domains, such as cultural heritage dissemination, interactive television and retail industry. The multitude of the application domains addressed, as well as the multidisciplinary expertise necessary to create a generic platform was successfully addressed in complementary research activities. In this paper, we present the idea of a platform for context-aware services by exploiting advanced visualization technology and subsequently we briefly review the research projects that delivered valuable pieces in the overall puzzle. Emphasis is put on the practical issues of the implementation and deployment in different application scenarios.