Course Description

`The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.` … Mark Weiser, `Computer for the 21th Century`, Scientific American, September, 1991.

Pervasive & ubiquitous computing is how computing will be used in the future. It is about moving beyond the traditional desktop computing model, into embedding computing into everyday objects and everyday activities. The vision is that the virtual (computing) space will be seamlessly integrated with our physical environment, such that we as people cease to take notice of computing artifacts. In this course, we will focus specifically on the following topics to realize this vision of ubiquitous computing: (1) location systems, (2) making everyday objects into intelligent artifacts, embedding computing into everyday objects, (3) user interfaces for ubiquitous computing, (4) ubiquitious healthcare, and (5) security and privacy to protect access to user context information.

This is a graduate-level course with the goal to prepare undergraduate seniors and graduate students for research in the ubiquitous computing. This course will have two main components: paper readings and hands-on projects. The papers will be drawn mainly from top conference proceedings. In the hands-on projects, students will form teams to explore actual design and prototype of ubiquitous computing systems or applications.

This course will be taught in English.

Course Pre-requisite

Students should have some background in operating systems, distributed systems, computer networks, and mobile computing. Students are expected to have (or learn on their own) necessary programming skill to implement their projects.

Evaluation

Class participation will account for 30% of the overall grade. The other 70% will come from your project.