What about collaboration in ubiquitous environments?

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing environments provide a wide range of new challenges and possibilities in Distributed Systems. Among these, collaborative activities involving several users present some complex issues. These activities are very dynamic and imply heterogeneous communications and devices, and therefore adaptive solutions are required. Moreover, context has to be taken into account in order to provide a satisfactory service. It is necessary to consider both high-level requirements and low-level constraints to adapt the system to context changes. This paper claims that collaborative applications for ubiquitous environments represent a very challenging and promising research field. It also proves the requirements of adaptability and context-awareness of such applications by exploring the state of the art in this field.