SciencePad
Recent and anticipated technological advances in wireless computing will
permit users to compute ubiquitously, ``anywhere'' and ``any time.''
However, mobile platforms are unlikely to have the
computational resources to solve even moderately complex problems that
users routinely solve on static workstations today. The hardware
involved in the mobile scenario has inherent restrictions, like limited
amounts of communication bandwidth, memory, and power. Another critical
issue is the nature of the interfaces, which will need to operate with
limited screen space and pen devices. Still other issues arise because
of the interaction and collaboration that such a paradigm foresees.
All these factors have contributed to a situation where most truly mobile,
hand-held devices do very little by way of actual computation. Unlike their
static cousins, they neither have adequate compute power on
board, nor do they allow us to access the compute power distributed across
the network. This is perhaps a major contributing factor to the relatively
slow increase in their use, despite predictions to the contrary.
In the SciencePad project our aim is to develop ``ubiquitous'' problem
solving environments (UPSEs) to support mobile access to applications,
especially in the Scientific Computing domain. There is extensive
literature dealing with networking and data management issues in mobile
computing. It is evident, though, that merely solving these problems does
not, by itself, lead to applications that can run on mobile platforms.
For applications to truly thrive in this environment, they must be mobile
aware at all levels. The aim of our research is the design and implementation
of software environments that would allow users to
not just fetch information but do useful computations from mobile platforms.
Specifically, we envision a scientist or engineer will ubiquitously access
high performance (scientific) computing resources spread across the network
via mobile platforms. This will be realized by building ubiquitous problem
solving environments (UPSEs), which in turn will build upon our prior work
on PSEs for Scientific Computing.
Classroom of the Future
The advent of mobile and ubiquitous computing, in conjunction with
multimedia, high performance computing, and high speed communication backbones,
shall bring about a new paradigm that will strongly influence the way teaching
is done. SciencePad is being used in developing the classroom of
the future. A room in Purdue's CS building has been designated for this
purpose, and has been used to teach classes such as Mobile
Computing and Introduction
to Programming.
Research Areas
Work on SciencePad involves research into various areas of Computer Science.
These include
-
Wireless/Mobile Computing
-
Intelligent Agents, AI & CI
-
Distributed Problem Solving
-
Scientific Computing
Here is a list
of some other sites with information about mobile computing.
Last modified: Mon Aug 31 98 11:59:57 EDT
