Programming Environments...literally: Ubicomp's Grand Challenge

Gregory D. Abowd
Associate Professor
College of Computing & GVU Center
Director, Aware Home Research Initiative
Georgia Tech
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7:00pm
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
411 West Hall (Ehrlicher Room) directions...

In 1995, the College of Computing at Georgia Tech initiated a research effort aimed at building the kinds interactive environments that embody Mark Weiser's vision of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). While it is fun to contemplate what the future might bring, it is necessary to go beyond our dreams and push toward the development, evaluation and continued evolution of applications of these future technologies. In this talk, we will present some of the visions of the future created at Georgia Tech. These are presented as "living laboratories" and cover domains such as the classroom, office, home and our bodies. In order to advance the state of research in this important area, I will argue that there is a significant software engineering challenge to be met. Put succinctly, we need to provide the ability literally to program physical environments more easily. Advances in software engineering have greatly simplified the development of interactive services on desktop machines. I will discuss how we might begin to view the generalized input, output and interactive properties of physical environments in an effort to make it just as easy in the future to build interactive services off the desktop.

About the Speaker

Gregory D. Abowd is an Associate Professor in the College of Computing and GVU Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests include software engineering for interactive systems, with particular focus on mobile and ubiquitous computing applications. He leads a research group in the College of Computing focused on the development of prototype future computing environments which emphasize mobile and ubiquitous computing technology for everyday uses. The general themes he investigates include automated capture environments, context-aware computing, and natural interaction. He has focused his applications work in the domains of university education (the Classroom 2000 and eClass projects), the office (CyberDesk) and home (the Aware Home). Dr. Abowd has affiliations with several campus research groups, including the Graphics, Visualization and Usability (GVU) Center and the Broadband Institute. He currently serves as Director for the Aware Home Research Initiative.