The Influence of Mobile Computing to Information Systems Technology

Abstract

The vision of Mobile and Wearable Computing is motivated by the observation that the simple transfer of the desktop paradigm is not sufficient in situations where the user needs to focus on a task related to the real world.

Thus a new Mobile Computing paradigm is required. A functional definition is a system that can be used at any time and anywhere and does not in any way disturb the user’s interaction with the real world.

Key properties required to achieve this are

• (1) non- disruptive user interfaces characterised by a low cognitive load,

• (2) hands-free operation,

• (3) an unobtrusive form factor,

• (4) the ability to model, recognise and act upon events in the environment (context sensitivity), and

• (5) seamless, ubiquitous connectivity.

On a certain high level the above requirements are fairly obvious. From the application point of view it is equally obvious that today no system really fulfils them. What is less obvious is how the above functional definition translates into a technical specification and how the development towards fulfilling such specification should best proceed in the near future.

In the technical and scientific community there is a heated debate about what constitutes such systems with visions ranging from building upon commercially available ‘PC on a belt’ and PDA solutions to integrate concepts of transistor level integration of electronics into textiles.

The talk will describe in detail the new requirements for user interfaces and the state of context detection. The architecture of Mobile and Wearable Computing systems, the middleware and applications in domains like healthcare, production, maintenance will be outlined in some detail based on the experience of the authors from different research projects on the national and European level.