Use of ontologies in a pervasive computing environment

This study reports an emerging application of Semantic Web technologies. The Semantic Web has emerged from Knowledge Engineering and Intelligent Agents, and has been primarily aimed at improved Web Search and Web Services. This study has applied this technology to solve important problems in a CORBA-based Pervasive Computing Infrastructure. Pervasive Computing Environments consist of a large number of independent entities that help transform physical spaces into computationally active and intelligent spaces. These entities could be devices, applications, services or users. A lot of work has been done to enable the different entities to interact with each other. However, not much work has been done in ensuring that the different entities are on the same semantic plane when they interact with each other. To tackle this problem, we have used semantic web technologies to attach semantics to various concepts in Pervasive Environments. We have developed ontologies to describe different aspects of these environments.