Distributed Context Processing for Intelligent Environments

This book is one of the early efforts in building a real-life Intelligent Environment. The author dreams that one day not only smart devices could communicate with each other but also smart houses through Context-Aware Computing (CAC) approach. CAC is a new approach in software engineering for Intelligent Environment. It is an approach in the design and construction of a context-aware application that exploits rapid changes in access to relevant information and the availability of communication and computing resources in the mobile computing environment. The goal of CAC is to make interaction between users and computers easier in a smart environment, where technology is spread throughout (pervasive), computers are everywhere at the same time (ubiquitous) and technology is embedded (ambient) to the environment. Context-aware applications need not be difficult, tedious or require the acquisition of new skills on the user part. They should be safe, easy, simple to use and should enable new functionality without the need to learn new technology. This book also proposes the evaluation of context-aware application to determine what to test, how to test and the appropriate metrics to use.