Aura Contextual Services

Contextual Services for Project Aura

[Purpose]

This page is intended to provide a clearinghouse for links and documents related to constructed and underway Contextual Services in Project Aura.

[Introduction]

To realize context-aware applications for mobile users, Project Aura is deploying numerous campus-wide contextual services. These services are constructed on top of Contextual Service Framework[1]. (Techical Report on it) Client programs interact and collaborate with contextual services through the Aura Service API [1] (Java and C library versions available) to realize intelligent, proactive, adaptive applications. As depicted in the following figure, contextual services in Aura fall into two categories, one manages information about entity, such as people, device, space; the other maintains information about relationship between entities, such as people-location, device-carrier, etc.

Folks interested in contributing by building new contextual services or applications which take advantage of them, please read the Technical Report on Contextual Service Framework and javadoc on Aura Service API to obtain preliminary knowledge before you proceed. If you want to be added to the access list to be able to add documents to or update this online website, please contact Changhao Jiang (Joe)

[Software]

Space Service	Space Services, a series of services handling location-related queries, such as calculating distance bewteen two locations,pinpoint a position in a building, etc. Implementer: Joe
Network Services	APSegService, provides bandwidth related information about a single cell of the wireless network. This service supports a large amount of the the contextual service interface functionality. Implementer: Glenn
	ApDevService (previously ApSegDevService) , provides information on the relationships between access points and devices. The complexity and cost of gathering this information is large. As a result, this service supports less functionality than APSegService. Implementer: Glenn
	Access Point Location Service, mapping between host name of wireless access points and corresponding locations. Implementer: Joe
Device Services (mainly on printers)	Device Service, find devices of particular type (and within a particular spaces ), Implementer, Joe
	Printer Location Service, Given a mobile user's location, providing information some nearby printers and their attributes, Implementer: Joe
	Printer Query Service, Working like lpq; given a printer's name it determines the queue size.Implementer. Dominic
	Printer Finder Service,Given a user's location, determine the closest, fastest, public printer.Implementer. Dominic
People Services (locator)	People Location Service, locating mobile-user's position by wavelan triangulation. Implementer: Joshua (service), Joe(wrapper)
People Services (locator)	People Locator Service, locating mobile user's position through information from finger, calendar, access point etc. Implementer: Urs (Note: client of this service requires a special, security-enhanced version of the CSI, contact Urs to get it)

Project Aura Distraction- free Ubiquitous Computing	Carnegie Mellon University