Gaia: enabling active spaces

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing promotes physical spaces with hundreds of specialized embedded devices that increase our productivity, alleviate some specific everyday tasks and provide new ways of interacting with the computational environment. Because the computational environment is spread across the physical space, personal computers lose the focus of attention. Therefore, the users' view of the computational environment is finally extended beyond the physical limits of the computer. Physical spaces become computer systems, or in other terms, Active Spaces. However, these Active Spaces require novel system software capable of seamlessly coordinating their hidden complexity. Our goal is to extend the model provided by current computer systems to allow interaction with physical spaces and their contained entities (physical and virtual) by means of a single abstraction called Active Space.