Synthesizing context for a sports domain on a mobile device

Abstract

In ubiquitous computing environments there are an increasing number and variety of devices that can generate context data. The challenge is to timely acquire, process, and deliver these data to context-aware applications. The role of context synthesis is to generate new knowledge, as a result of a reasoning process applied to context information that is already present in the system. The success of this mechanism mainly depends on the response time that the end-user or an application must wait for the response to a context query. This paper describes and evaluates an approach to context synthesis on a mobile device to be used by a set of applications in a sports domain. A scenario based on a live race at the Super Prestige Cyclocross in Gieten, Netherlands demonstrates the use of context synthesis to dynamically compose gaps and groups of cyclists in order to provide a nearly real-time virtual ranking service. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.