Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

hardware engineering Hardware may refer to: Technology Computing and electronics * Electronic hardware, interconnected electronic components which perform analog or logic operations ** Digital electronics, electronics that operate on digital signals *** Computer hardw ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

where

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

is made to appear seamlessly anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing,

ubiquitous Omnipresence or ubiquity is the property of being present anywhere and everywhere. The term omnipresence is most often used in a religious context as an attribute of a deity or supreme being, while the term ubiquity is generally used to describ ...

computing implies use on any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including

laptop computers A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a clamshell form factor with a flat-panel screen on the inside of the upper lid and an alph ...

, tablets, smart phones and terminals in everyday objects such as a

refrigerator A refrigerator, commonly shortened to fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermal insulation, thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to ...

or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, advanced

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software program that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to imple ...

, kernels,

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

mobile code In distributed computing, code mobility is the ability for running Computer program, programs, code or objects to be data migration, migrated (or moved) from one machine or application to another. This is the process of moving mobile code across t ...

sensor A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a devi ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

s, new I/Os and

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

s, mobile protocols, global navigational systems, and new materials. This

paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm ( ) is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word ''paradigm'' is Ancient ...

is also described as pervasive computing,

ambient intelligence Ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to environments with electronic devices that are aware of and can recognize the presence of human beings and adapt accordingly. This concept encompasses various technologies in consumer electronics, telecommunic ...

, or "everyware". Each term emphasizes slightly different aspects. When primarily concerning the objects involved, it is also known as

physical computing Physical computing involves interactive systems that can sense and respond to the world around them. While this definition is broad enough to encompass systems such as smart automotive traffic control systems or factory automation processes, it i ...

, the

Internet of Things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

, haptic computing, and "things that think". Rather than propose a single definition for ubiquitous computing and for these related terms, a

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

of properties for ubiquitous computing has been proposed, from which different kinds or flavors of ubiquitous systems and applications can be described. Ubiquitous computing themes include:

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

mobile computing Mobile computing is human–computer interaction in which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage and allow for transmission of data, which can include voice and video transmissions. Mobile computing involves mobile commun ...

, location computing, mobile networking,

sensor network Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental ...

human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is the process through which people operate and engage with computer systems. Research in HCI covers the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and comp ...

, context-aware smart home technologies, and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

Core concepts

Ubiquitous computing is the concept of using small internet connected and inexpensive computers to help with everyday functions in an automated fashion.

Mark Weiser Mark D. Weiser (July 23, 1952 – April 27, 1999) was an American computer scientist and chief technology officer (CTO) at Xerox PARC. Weiser is widely considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing, a term he coined in 1988. Within S ...

proposed three basic forms for ubiquitous computing devices: *''Tabs'': a wearable device that is approximately a

centimeter upright=1.35, Different lengths as in respect to the electromagnetic spectrum, measured by the metre and its derived scales. The microwave is in-between 1 meter to 1 millimeter. A centimetre (International spelling) or centimeter (American ...

in size *''Pads'': a hand-held device that is approximately a decimeter in size *''Boards'': an interactive larger display device that is approximately a

meter The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

in size Ubiquitous computing devices proposed by Mark Weiser are all based around flat devices of different sizes with a visual display. Expanding beyond those concepts there is a large array of other ubiquitous computing devices that could exist.

History

Mark Weiser coined the phrase "ubiquitous computing" around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Both alone and with PARC Director and Chief Scientist John Seely Brown, Weiser wrote some of the earliest papers on the subject, largely defining it and sketching out its major concerns.

Recognizing the effects of extending processing power

Recognizing that the extension of processing power into everyday scenarios would necessitate understandings of social, cultural and psychological phenomena beyond its proper ambit, Weiser was influenced by many fields outside computer science, including "

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

post-Modernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wor ...

sociology of science The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociolo ...

and

feminist criticism Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to an ...

". He was explicit about "the humanistic origins of the 'invisible ideal in post-modernist thought'", referencing as well the ironically

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n Philip K. Dick novel ''

Ubik ''Ubik'' ( ) is a 1969 in literature, 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while Cryonics, cryonic technology allows recently d ...

''. Andy Hopper from Cambridge University UK proposed and demonstrated the concept of "Teleporting" – where applications follow the user wherever he/she moves. Roy Want, while a researcher and student working under Andy Hopper at Cambridge University, worked on the "Active Badge System", which is an advanced location computing system where personal mobility that is merged with computing. Bill Schilit (now at Google) also did some earlier work in this topic, and participated in the early Mobile Computing workshop held in Santa Cruz in 1996. Ken Sakamura of the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

leads the Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory (UNL),

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

as well as the T-Engine Forum. The joint goal of Sakamura's Ubiquitous Networking specification and the T-Engine forum, is to enable any everyday device to broadcast and receive information.

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

has also contributed significant research in this field, notably ''Things That Think'' consortium (directed by Hiroshi Ishii, Joseph A. Paradiso and

Rosalind Picard Rosalind Wright Picard (born 1962) is an American scholar and inventor who is Grover M. Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-founder ...

) at the Media Lab and the CSAIL effort known as Project Oxygen. Other major contributors include

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

( Shwetak Patel, Anind Dey and James Landay),

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...

's HealthX Lab (directed by Andrew Campbell),

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

's College of Computing ( Gregory Abowd and Thad Starner),

Cornell Tech Cornell Tech is a graduate campus and research center of Cornell University on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, New York City. It provides courses in technology, business, and design, and includes the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a partners ...

's People Aware Computing Lab (directed by Tanzeem Choudhury), NYU's

Interactive Telecommunications Program The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, as the School of the Arts at New York University, Tisch ...

UC Irvine UC may refer to: Education In the United States * University of California system * University of Charleston, West Virginia * University of Chicago, Illinois * University of Cincinnati, Ohio * Upsala College, East Orange, New Jersey (''defunct ...

's Department of Informatics,

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

, Intel Research and Equator, Ajou University UCRi & CUS.

Examples

One of the earliest ubiquitous systems was artist Natalie Jeremijenko's "Live Wire", also known as "Dangling String", installed at Xerox PARC during Mark Weiser's time there. This was a piece of string attached to a

stepper motor A stepper motor, also known as step motor or stepping motor,Clarence W. de Silva. Mechatronics: An Integrated Approach (2005). CRC Press. p. 675. "The terms ''stepper motor'', ''stepping motor'', and ''step motor'' are synonymous and are often u ...

and controlled by a LAN connection; network activity caused the string to twitch, yielding a ''peripherally noticeable'' indication of traffic. Weiser called this an example of '' calm technology''. A present manifestation of this trend is the widespread diffusion of mobile phones. Many mobile phones support high speed data transmission, video services, and other services with powerful computational ability. Although these mobile devices are not necessarily manifestations of ubiquitous computing, there are examples, such as Japan's Yaoyorozu ("Eight Million Gods") Project in which mobile devices, coupled with radio frequency identification tags demonstrate that ubiquitous computing is already present in some form. Ambient Devices has produced an "orb", a "dashboard", and a "

weather beacon A weather beacon is a beacon that indicates the local weather forecast in a code of colored or flashing lights. Often, a short poem or jingle accompanies the code to make it easier to remember. The beacon is usually on the roof of a tall build ...

": these decorative devices receive data from a

wireless network A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks, and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables int ...

and report current events, such as stock prices and the weather, like the Nabaztag, which was invented by Rafi Haladjian and Olivier Mével, and manufactured by the company Violet. The Australian futurist

Mark Pesce Mark D. Pesce ( ; born 1962) is an American-Australian author, researcher, engineer, futurist and teacher. Early life Pesce was born in Everett, Massachusetts in 1962. In September 1980, Pesce attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M ...

has produced a highly configurable 52-

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corresp ...

LAMP enabled lamp which uses

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

named ''MooresCloud'' after

Gordon Moore Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors i ...

. The Unified Computer Intelligence Corporation launched a device called '' Ubi – The Ubiquitous Computer'' designed to allow voice interaction with the home and provide constant access to information. Ubiquitous computing research has focused on building an environment in which computers allow humans to focus attention on select aspects of the environment and operate in supervisory and policy-making roles. Ubiquitous computing emphasizes the creation of a human computer interface that can interpret and support a user's intentions. For example, MIT's Project Oxygen seeks to create a system in which computation is as pervasive as air:

In the future, computation will be human centered. It will be freely available everywhere, like batteries and power sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe...We will not need to carry our own devices around with us. Instead, configurable generic devices, either handheld or embedded in the environment, will bring computation to us, whenever we need it and wherever we might be. As we interact with these "anonymous" devices, they will adopt our information personalities. They will respect our desires for privacy and security. We won't have to type, click, or learn new computer jargon. Instead, we'll communicate naturally, using speech and gestures that describe our intent...

This is a fundamental transition that does not seek to escape the physical world and "enter some metallic, gigabyte-infested cyberspace" but rather brings computers and communications to us, making them "synonymous with the useful tasks they perform". Network robots link ubiquitous networks with

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

s, contributing to the creation of new lifestyles and solutions to address a variety of social problems including the aging of population and nursing care. The "Continuity" set of features, introduced by

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and re ...

, can be seen as an example of ubiquitous computing.

Issues

Privacy is easily the most often-cited criticism of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), and may be the greatest barrier to its long-term success.

Research centres

This is a list of notable institutions who claim to have a focus on Ubiquitous computing sorted by country: ;Canada Topological Media Lab, Concordia University, Canada ;Finland Community Imaging Group,

University of Oulu The University of Oulu () is one of the largest universities in Finland, located in the city of Oulu. It was founded on July 8, 1958. The university has around 14,200 students and 3,800 staff. 21 International Master's Programmes are offer ...

, Finland ;Germany Telecooperation Office (TECO),

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Karlsruhe (), founde ...

, Germany ;India Ubiquitous Computing Research Resource Centre (UCRC),

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is an Indian autonomous scientific society, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. History C-DAC was created in November 1987, initially as the Centr ...

;Pakistan Centre for Research in Ubiquitous Computing (CRUC), Karachi, Pakistan ;Sweden Mobile Life Centre, Stockholm University ;United Kingdom Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham

References

External links

International Conference on Pervasive Computing
(Pervasive)
Pervasive and Mobile Computing journal, PMC (Elsevier)
*
University of Siegen, ubicomp home publications
{{Authority control Ambient intelligence Human–computer interaction Ubiquitous computing research centers