Personalized Service Discovery in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

In ubiquitous computing environments, users want to discover the most appropriate service to support their tasks. Because the most appropriate service depends on user preferences and context, service discovery protocols should personalize results. A service discovery framework based on the virtual personal space (VPS)-that is, a virtual administrative domain of services managed for the user-aims to provide this personalization. In this framework, personal operating middleware embedded in a personal device manages a set of contextually close services in the user's VPS. An inference module supports this management. Laboratory evaluations show that the VPS framework helps users find high-quality, appropriate services.