Keynote: From context aware smart environments to socially interactive computing

Abstract

The core of current work on context aware systems involves small groups of devices interacting with a single user or a small groups of users in system configurations specifically designed for often narrowly defined applications. On the other hand, smart phones, home automation devices, robots and other intelligent systems are becoming ubiquitous and are increasingly equipped with flexible networking capabilities. Thus, looking at the future of context aware systems we need to consider large collectives of such devices dynamically forming, cooperating, and interacting with large user populations over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. From the application point of view such systems are attractive for two reasons