Task-Oriented Systems for Interaction with Ubiquitous Computing Environments

We present the design and implementation of a task-oriented system, that dynamically binds user tasks to available devices and services within a ubiquitous environment. The system provides users with a task-based interface for interacting with the environment. This interface is re-oriented around user tasks, rather than particular functions of individual devices or services. The system has two main feature: (1) context-aware task recommendation and (2) task guidance, execution, and management. The fundamental input into the system is task descriptions, XML specifications that describe how tasks are executed. The abstraction of these descriptions allows tasks to be executed in diversely ubiquitous computing environments.