PALLAS: A Querying Interface for Pervasive Computing using Handheld Devices

Abstract

In this paper we describe PALLAS (PALm Logic-based Algebraic Search), a prototype architecture, design and implementation for a search interface on a portable digital assistant. PALLAS is part of the UbAgent, a middleware infrastructure that provides an efficient way of handling the back-end processing of Pervasive Computing: accessing information from distributed databases, computation processing, and location specific services. The goal of the PALLAS' design is to offer the flexibility of advanced searches by exploiting the metadata and inferencing capabilities of the semantic web, whilst maintaining ease-of-use to a level such that it would be accessible to an end-user without expansive technical knowledge, much like the typical users of the world-wide web today. A prototype of PALLAS have been developed and tested for the PALM OS. The pervasive computing test bed used was the UbAgent infrastructure.