- There are no general context-aware architectures to be useful which could be applied to full life cycle in ubiquitous VR, even though many context-aware architectures or middleware are proposed. In this paper, we propose a general approach of a context-aware architecture for ubiquitous virtual reality. We would discuss how to improve the intelligence ability in a context-aware architecture.
UVR(virtual reality) environments which make VR
biquitous VR is a concept of creating ubiquitous
pervasive into our daily lives and ubiquitous by allowing VR to
meet UbiComp(ubiquitous computing) [
There are many previous works related to a context-aware
architecture. CAMidO is a Context-Aware Middleware based
on an Ontology meta-model [
However there is still a need for a generic solution for seamless connection among users and real/virtual environments. Previous context-aware architectures are not proper to use and apply to real and virtual environments. Those should be considered more about connection among domain-free entities. Thus, more general approach to context-aware architecture should be developed. In this paper, we propose a general approach of a context-aware architecture for ubiquitous virtual reality. Also, we want to discuss some issues which are how to improve the intelligence ability in a context-aware architecture.
There are no general context-aware architectures to be useful which could be applied to full life cycle in ubiquitous VR, even though many context-aware architectures or middleware are proposed. Also, it’s hard to apply the working architectures or middleware to a new domain that is not mentioned in their original works. Thus, we should discuss how to build standardized and generalized context-aware architectures for various environments.
UCAM is a Unified Context-aware Application Model for
seamless human-content-environment interaction in ubiquitous
computing environment [
The proposed architecture can improve the awareness ability of context because the architecture can interpret, reason out, and learn contexts. The architecture can connect any tool for the awareness ability as an add-on feature. Also, the architecture manages social relationship among human, real objects, and virtual objects. For these aspects, our architecture is generalized as an open source code which is a library for basic features. An application developer can simply use our architecture by inheriting the library code.
UCAM (Service)
Context Manager
Application
Context Model in UCAM is defined a set of user contexts that supports ontological structure and reasoning operations. It has to know what kinds of operations are needed in each component in UCAM. It is related to all components in UCAM and generates and saves contexts.
Context Reasoning in UCAM is a logical process which extracts high-level(implicit) context from low-level(explicit) context and maintains context consistency in processing context modeling. For context reasoning, it is necessary to various kinds of sensors and information sources. Context reasoning process reuses context (context history) and adapts reconfigurable rules to the diverse environment. It is related to sensor part of UCAM and Context Integrator in UAM service.
Whether the context-aware application obtains its context information from environmental sensors, user input, VR applications, or some combination of these, it must perform a good deal of processing on the long-term context in order to be able to accurately evaluate the state of the environment, the intensions of the user, and avatar’s intelligent reaction. Thus, Context Learning in UCAM is required to context-aware applications. Context learning is related to Context Manager in UCAM, and uses classified learning mechanisms according to the characteristics of them.
Context Interpretation in UCAM is the way the entity generates conditional context for performing certain task, and the way the entity presents current context to the entity-readable way. It generates conditional context from user's direct input (Feedback) and do context-to-service parameter mapping (Domain Change). Context interpreter maps elements in context format to each application domain, and one application to another application. It requires knowledge about both context format and application parameters for interpretation.
Social Relationship Management in UCAM determines relationships among sensors and services which participating in ubiquitous VR environment (human, real/virtual env.). To manage social relationship among entities in ubiquitous VR environment, those entities (users, services and sensors) should collaborate each another in the created community. This process is done by Communicator in UCAM which takes charge of network configuration and sends messages to community members.
The proposed architecture can improve the awareness ability and extend to diverse application domains. Also, the architecture, UCAM, is generalized as a library in order to be used easily by application developers. However we still have many issues to be discussed. First issue is how to predict user’s behavior and connect to the other objects in real/virtual environment. Basically, UCAM can support the reasoning aspect, not prediction for user’s behavior. For more generalization, this issue should be considered. Second issue is full life cycle support for context-aware applications. Adding, deleting, replacing, modifying, and debugging entities should be supported. These functionalities are already supported by UCAM, but need to be improved for ubiquitous VR environment. Last issue is how to evaluate a context-aware architecture. There are good evaluation methods in HCI field. Thus, those methods should be applied to our UCAM with some evaluation factors, such as architecture structure, scalability, accountability, reconfiguration, reusability, debugging, openness, flexibility, etc. These evaluation factors could be useful to verify the general approach and intelligence ability of our UCAM.