Smart device

A smart device is an electronic device, generally connected to other devices or networks via different wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi, 3G, etc., that can operate to some extent interactively and autonomously. Several notable types of smart devices are smartphones, phablets and tablets, smartwatches, smart bands and smart key chains. The term can also refer to a device that exhibits some properties of ubiquitous computing, including—although not necessarily—artificial intelligence.

Smart devices can be designed to support a variety of form factors, a range of properties pertaining to ubiquitous computing and to be used in three main system environments: physical world, human-centered environments and distributed computing environments.

Form factors

In 1991 Mark Weiser proposed three basic forms for ubiquitous system devices: tabs, pads and boards.[1]

These three forms proposed by Weiser are characterised by being macro-sized, having a planar form and by incorporating visual output displays. These were also envisioned more as information appliances. If we relax each of these three characteristics we can expand this range into a much more diverse and potentially more useful range of Ubiquitous Computing devices. Hence, three additional forms for ubiquitous systems have been proposed:.[2]

Characteristics

Smart Devices can be characterised as follows:

Common types of smart devices include:

Ubiquitous Computing Properties

Weiser’s vision for ubiquitous computing can be summarized in terms of three core properties:

It is proposed that there are two additional core types of properties for UbiCom systems:[2]

However, It is hard to fix a closed set of properties that define all ubiquitous computing devices because of the sheer range and variety of ubiquitous computing research and applications. Rather than to propose a single definition for ubiquitous computing, a taxonomy of properties for ubiquitous computing has been proposed, from which different kinds or flavours of ubiquitous systems and applications can be composed and described.[2]

Environments

The term Smart Device Environments has two meanings. First, it can refer to a greater variety of device environments. Three different kinds of environments for devices can be differentiated:[2]

Second, the term Smart Device Environments can also refer to the concept of a smart environment which focuses more specifically on the physical environment of the device. The physical environment is smart because it is embedded or scattered with smart devices that can sense and control part of it.

Information Appliances versus Smart Devices

Although smart devices partially overlap in definition with specific types of appliance such as Information appliances, Smart Devices are characterised and differ in several key ways. First, Smart Devices in general can take a much wider range of form-factors than appliances. Second, Smart Devices support the ubiquitous computing properties. Third information appliances focus on remote interaction with computing environments that tend to be personalised whereas Smart Devices can also focus heavily on impersonal physical world interaction. Four, the term appliance generally implies that devices are task specific and under the control of some embedded system or application specific operating system, whereas Smart Devices may support multiple tasks, e.g., a mobile phone can act as a phone but also as a games console, music player, camera, etc.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Weiser, Mark (1991). "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century". Scientific American. 265 (3): 94–104. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0991-94.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Poslad, Stefan (2009). Ubiquitous Computing Smart Devices, Smart Environments and Smart Interaction. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-03560-3.
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