05th Dec 2008
Pervasive Detection
In this blog, collection of information, application of pervasive detection – of people, things, and services.
Detection has been the key to context. Context helps to create situation, applications, conversations and experience.
Detection, if make pervasive, will enable lot more interesting experiences. Human beings are very good in adjusting to detection of things around them. Once things (including people, surroundings, and services) are detected and possibly identified, without much (or no) effort, could lead to compelling services and applications.
In control theory terms, detection, identification and measurement helps in creating a feedback loop to adjust the system.
There have been a number of examples of pervasive detection (and sometime identification) that has led to useful applications. Here are few examples:
- In the 70′s the volume level of the radio in the car would automatically adjust to the ambient road noise.
- Street lights turned on at dusk.
- Handheld computers and mobile phones got connectivity to WiFi services by detecting wireless signals.
- Heating and Cooling systems adjusted the temperature based on outside temperature and number of people in the room.
- Escalators and Elevator adjusted their performance based on number of people using them at any given time.
- In the Web2.0 world, applications are smart enough to detect availability of services. In distributed computing, detection of multiple resources to performa particular task was employed to get fast results.
The best example of detection is the human system, constantly our body detects temperature, danger, emotions, sounds, etc. and reacts to it. Most of the detection is automatic and we don’t even think about it – that is the definition of ‘pervasive’. ‘Pervasive’ is something we notice only when it is absent.
DETECTION:
There are various ways of detection. Here we will assume what we are detecting include people, things, and services. We will call them objects.
Detection can be ‘announced’ or ‘found’
Detection can be done by announcement. The object that wants to be detected announces itself. Examples of this are beacons, pingers, and similar techniques. This mechanism is static and the object has to continuously announce its presence. This method is also nice, because the absence of announcement can automatically mean that the object is not-present.
Automatically detecting the presence of an object is more interesting. Here the detection takes place with no effort on the part of the object.
We will introduce another set of terms – observer and observered. Both observer and observed can be objects. As defined above objects can be people, things or services.
Technologies for Detection
I will cover this in the next blog…
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