Middlewhere: A middleware for location awareness in ubiquitous computing applications

Anand Ranganathan, Jalal Al-Muhtadi, Shiva Chetan, Roy Campbell, M. Dennis Mickunas

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Location awareness significantly enhances the functionality of ubiquitous computing services and applications, and enriches the way they interact with users and resources in the environment. Many different alternative or complementary location sensing technologies are available. However, these technologies give location information in different formats and with different resolution and confidence. In this paper we introduce "MiddleWhere" a distributed middleware infrastructure for location that separates applications from location detection technologies. MiddleWhere enables the fusion of different location sensing technologies and facilitates the incorporation of additional location technologies on the fly as they become available. MiddleWhere utilizes probabilistic reasoning techniques to resolve conflicts and deduce the location of people given different sensor data. Besides, it allows applications to determine various kinds of spatial relationships between mobile objects and their environment, which is key in enabling a strong coupling between the physical and virtual world, as emphasized by ubiquitous computing. We have integrated MiddleWhere with our ubiquitous computing infrastructure, and have verified its flexibility and usefulness by incorporating various location sensing technologies and building a number of location-sensitive applications on top of it.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
EditorsHans-Arno Jacobsen
PublisherSpringer
Pages397-416
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)3540234284, 9783540234289
DOIs
StatePublished - 2004

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume3231
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Middlewhere: A middleware for location awareness in ubiquitous computing applications'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this