AbstractThis article describes how an experimental platform for social, mobile and ubiquitous computing has been used in a wide-ranging longitudinal “in the wild” case study of the platform with a set of third-party services. The article outlines some of the relevant aspects of the platform, including built-in support for community formation, for context sensitivity, automated learning and adaptation to the user, and for management of privacy and trust relationships. The platform architecture is based on the notion of Cooperating Smart Spaces (CSSs), where a CSS is a partition of the platform corresponding to a single user and distributed over the devices belonging to that user. Three of the case study services were intended for use in a physical environment specifically created to support ubiquitous intelligence; they were highly interactive and used shared screens, voice input and gestural interaction. Another three ubiquitous services were available throughout the university environment as mobile and desktop services. The case study exploited this architecture's ability to integrate multiple novel applications and interface devices and to deliver them flexibly in these different environments. The platform proved to be stable and reliable and the study shows that treating a provider of services and resources (the University) as a CSS is instrumental in enabling the platform to provide this range of services across differing environments.

Social networking systems and pervasive computing are two essential paradigms for systems for the futre. The former are well established and in use daily by mos t users. The latter are equally important although the ideas her e have not had the same take up. The aim of the Societies proj ect is to integrate the two concepts in a seamless way to cre at a new type of system with the benefits of both. Keywords-pervasive; social networking; community.

Whereas social networking has become an essential part of computing today, pervasive computing is seen as a key component for future systems. However, these two paradigms are complementary in many respects -- the former responsible for communication and interaction between people, the latter focused on interaction with devices and services in the environment surrounding the user. By combining these two different paradigms in an integrated and seamless fashion one may provide users with the advantages of each plus the power obtained from using them together. Thus one might combine personalization, context awareness, learning, access to a wide range of devices and services, etc., with the management and operation of communities of users. This is the goal of the SOCIETIES project. By building on recent developments in pervasive systems and mobile computing, a new type of system that combines pervasive with social networking functionality -- Pervasive Social Networking (PSN) -- has been developed based on cloud and mobile technologies. Implementation of the basic system is complete and as part of the evaluation of the system it is currently being used by a group of students in a real user trial. This paper focuses on the student aspect and describes the requirements gathering exercises conducted with students. It then describes the architecture of the final system developed to meet the requirements. It ends with a brief outline of the final trial.

We propose the development and deployment in the wild of a sensor network that will monitor pedestrian traffic rates and congestion. Three types of sensor are envisaged; fixed video cameras, wearable pedometers and GPS devices. The data captured data will facilitate applications such as route planning avoiding congested areas and warning the elderly and infirm of particularly congested areas. Processing of rates of travel and destinations will enable different types of pedestrian to be identified and plotted dynamically such as tourists, shoppers and individuals simply trying to get from A to B quickly. Looking beyond the immediate empirical scope of this workshop, we indicate how such a system could be deployed to take advantage of the benefits afforded by the Personal Smart Space of the EU FP7 PERSIST project and the Community Smart Space of the EU FP7 SOCIETIES project.

Context-aware user preferences play an important role in adapting the behaviour of pervasive systems to satisfy the individual user in different contexts. Most of the pervasive system prototypes that have been developed, incorporate context-aware user preferences, capturing them in an appropriate form and using them to personalize the behaviour of the prototype. However, the rapid rise in use of social networking systems has created a new possibility – that of combining this type of system with pervasive systems to create a new type of system with the benefits of both. The challenge lies in finding how to integrate these two different paradigms in a seamless way to create such a system. This introduces new challenges for the context-dependent user preferences for both individuals and communities. This paper describes briefly some of the ideas, especially as they relate to context-aware user preferences.

Despite the obvious importance of pervasive computing to help the user cope with the growing number of devices and services that surround her, thus far the take-up of developments emanating from research in this area has been somewhat limited. On the other hand Social Networking Systems have developed at an extraordinary rate with widespread take-up. By bringing together these two paradigms in an integrated and seamless way one can create a Pervasive Social Networking (PSN) system that can provide the benefits of both. To assist in developing pervasive systems the notion of a Personal Smart Space was introduced. This paper extends this notion to that of a Cooperating Smart Space and the accompanying Community Interaction Space which can be used as a basis for developing a PSN. The Societies project is currently using this to develop a PSN which will be evaluated in terms of its usefulness and effectiveness in a series of field trials with real users starting in the last quarter of 2012. The largest of these will involve a cohort of students and this paper also reports briefly on preparatory work leading to the implementation of the PSN system to be used in the student trials.

One approach to the development of pervasive systems is based on the notion of Personal Smart Spaces (PSSs). A PSS is implemented as an ad hoc network and may be either fixed or mobile. When one PSS encounters another, communication is established between them. This may be used to alert one user to the presence of another, or a fixed smart space to the presence of a mobile user. There is considerable potential for applications using this type of functionality and it could become an important component of pervasive systems in the future. However, one problem with this is that it is difficult to detect when one PSS is close enough to another to be relevant. The Persist project has built a pervasive system based on PSSs and investigated the problems of their interaction in order to demonstrate this functionality. This paper discusses the problem of proximity and attempts to address it.

One of the key objectives of a pervasive computing system is to provide appropriate support to enable the user to manage the increasingly complex environment surrounding her. This includes managing the ever-increasing number of devices which can be accessed wirelessly as well as the vast range of services at her disposal. The aim of the Persist project was to develop a pervasive system that would bridge the gap between fixed smart spaces (e.g. smart homes) and systems created for mobile users. Using the concept of Personal Smart Spaces the Persist project has built a prototype system to demonstrate some of the capabilities that this can provide. The Societies project is currently building on these ideas to develop a new type of system that combines pervasive with social networking functionality. Personalisation is an essential feature of any pervasive system and plays a key role in the prototype implemented in Persist. This will also play a key role in the new platform being developed in the Societies project. This paper describes how personalisation is handled within the Persist system and some ideas for the new platform.