Activity-oriented Context-aware Adaptation Assisting Mobile Geo-spatial Activities

We are developing agent-based context-adaptation techniques in mobile mapping applications. The contexts of mobile computing are extremely complex and dynamic, making it difficult to prescribe adaptation strategy at the design time. It is often unclear how contexts (physical, cognitive and social contexts) influence behavior of mobile applications.

Traditional models treat diverse set of contexts as factors as if they operate in isolation, and context adaptation strategies are often selected by ad hoc rules. Towards a more structured approach for organizing mobile contexts, this paper proposes an activity-oriented context model that establish late (run-time) binding of contexts to the ongoing activity according to how they contribute to the success of the activity.

We conceptualize information systems and information displays as part of the ‘Information Contexts’ (see Figure 1) that provide support to an ongoing activity. Using our activity-based model of contexts, adaptation of mobile map display to the changes of other contexts is based on the knowledge of ongoing task (within an activity). Our model addresses two aspects of context-adaptation in novel ways. First, it enables reasoning about the moment-to-moment changes of relevant contexts according to the roles contexts play in advancing the activity. Second, adaptation of information displays in the event of other contextual changes is mediated by the process of re-planning on the whole or part of the activity. This plan-based approach is in contrast to those simple rule-based adaptation strategies. We have applied the approach to enable intelligent context-adaptation of map displays.

Full text of the article " Activity-oriented Context-aware Adaptation Assisting Mobile Geo-spatial Activities."

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.