Toward a Shared Model for Wide Area Interoperability of Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Despite many years of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) middleware research, deployment of such systems has not been widespread. For such systems to become more widely adopted, we argue that a shared model for ubicomp environments, and a system to bridge such environments between network and administrative domains is needed. This paper presents work in progress toward deriving a shared environment model based on an analysis of several existing ubicomp systems. This model is designed for use in an integrated middleware platform used to adapt existing ubicomp systems for wide area application interaction. Together the model and platform highlight the benefits of Web Services and Semantic Web technologies for exposing ubicomp environments to applications outside administrative domains.