Description: Context-aware applications use sensors and complex inferencing techniques to detect what is happening, and adapt their behavior to facilitate everyday tasks.
When context-aware adaptive applications behave well (i.e. they adapt well to the context of their end-users), the context sensing and processing remains implicit to the end-users. However, if the applications behave in unexpected ways, end-users often do not understand what is going on, why the applications exhibit this kind of behavior. This could lead to people no longer using, or even mistrusting the application. Intelligibility is a feature of applications that are capable of generating explanations for their behavior. Intelligible context-aware adaptive applications can represent what they know, how they know it, and what they are doing about it.
Context-driven adaptation is generally implemented through middleware layers that hide the complexity of context sensing and processing. DistriNet, and more particularly the research team on embedded and ubiquitous systems, has experience with the development of middlewares for context-aware, adaptive and mobile applications. In this research, the candidate will investigate a middleware driven approach to embed intelligibility in the application.
As applications will need to offer different kinds of explanations for their behavior, the candidate will investigate how intelligibility can be generalized into reusable middleware building blocks, so that from a developer's perspective it is far less complex to build context-aware applications where end-users can gain more effective control over the behavior of the applications.
Applicants should have a MSc in computer science or similar and should be highly motivated to work in the field of software engineering and preferably be familiar with middleware for distributed systems. Basic knowledge of artificial intelligence techniques is strongly encouraged.
Key words: middleware, ubiquitous computing, distributed systems
Latest application date: 2011-10-03
Financing: available
Type of Position: scholarship
Duration of the Project : 4 years
Research group: Department of Computer Science
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