Task-Oriented Systems for Interaction with Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Abstract. We present the design and implementation of a task-oriented system, that dynamically binds user tasks to available devices and ser-vices within a ubiquitous environment. The system provides users with a task-based interface for interacting with the environment. This inter-face is re-oriented around user tasks, rather than particular functions of individual devices or services. The system has two main feature: (1) context-aware task recommendation and (2) task guidance, execution, and management. The fundamental input into the system is task de-scriptions, XML specifications that describe how tasks are executed. The abstraction of these descriptions allows tasks to be executed in diversely ubiquitous computing environments