OPEN · Open Pervasive Environments for migratory iNteractive Services

The objective of OPEN is to provide users with migratory interactive services, which enable users to change interaction platform and still continue their tasks through an interface adapted to the new context of use. The benefits of this type of service are multifaceted: migration can be used to improve user experience by switching to a more suitable device (bigger screen, better resources, ...) and/or to a communication channel that can guarantee better Quality of Service (shorter delays, higher bandwidth, ...). <br/><br/>In order to address such complex issues there is a need for middleware able to consider and integrate various aspects: adapt and preserve the state of the software application parts dedicated to interacting with end users; support mechanisms for application logic reconfiguration; and identify suitably flexible mechanisms available in the underlying network layers. The resulting middleware should be able to interoperate with existing technologies.<br/><br/>Thus, OPEN will aim to offer an intelligent infrastructure able to: provide and coordinate reliable, dynamically changing/reconfiguring services; deliver seamless and transparent support to users in carrying out their tasks when changing available services and/or devices, even in multi-user interactive applications; offer personalised user interaction by exploiting different interaction modalities and network technology.<br/><br/>To achieve such goals, we will develop an intelligent middleware solution supporting reconfiguration of both the application logic and the user interface software by means of an infrastructure providing the necessary context information regarding the available devices, connectivity, users. We also plan to apply the middleware solutions developed to a couple of example applications from different domains (business applications and gaming), to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, the limited effort required of application developers, and its ability to enable new application services.