Context-aware computing refers to a general class ofmobile systems that can sense their physical environment, and adapt their behavior accordingly.[1]
Three important aspects of context are: where you are; who you are with; and what resources are nearby.[2] Although location is a primary capability,location-aware does not necessarily capture things of interest that are mobile or changing. Context-aware in contrast is used more generally to include nearby people, devices, lighting, noise level, network availability, and even the social situation, e.g., whether you are with your family or a friend from school.[citation needed]
The concept emerged fromubiquitous computing research atXerox PARC and elsewhere in the early 1990s.[citation needed] The term 'context-aware' was first used by Schilit and Theimer in their 1994 paperDisseminating Active Map Information to Mobile Hosts where they describe a model of computingin which users interact with many different mobile and stationary computers and classify a context-aware systems as one that canadapt according to its location of use, the collection of nearby people and objects, as well as the changes to those objects over time over the course of the day.[3][4]
Context-Aware Computing ApplicationsArchived 2008-04-25 at theWayback Machine. Bill N. Schilit, Norman I. Adams, and Roy Want. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, Santa Cruz, CA, December 1994. Pages 85–90. IEEE Computer Society.
X. Wang, J. S. Dong, C. Chin, S. R. Hettiarachchi and D. Zhang. Semantic Space: A Semantic Web Infrastructure for Smart Spaces. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 3(3):32-39, July–September 2004
There is more to context than location. Albrecht Schmidt, Michael Beigl and Hans-W. Gellersen. In: Computers & Graphics Journal, Elsevier, Volume 23, No.6, December 1999, pp 893–902.
A data-oriented survey of context models. Cristiana Bolchini, Carlo Curino, Elisa Quintarelli, Fabio A. Schreiber, Letizia Tanca. In: SIGMOD Record 36(4): 19-26 (2007)
