Experiences in Developing Ubiquitous Applications

Ubiquitous computing aims at making our lives easier by creating smart environments that are able to adequately react according to the context, the user, and the available devices. This chapter describes a set of prototype applications developed for a wide set of ubiquitous computing environments. These applications provide solutions to improve different kinds of environments, such as academic, business, museum and hospital environments. Since wireless networks are a key component in pervasive applications, a careful selection must take place to find which one suits better the characteristics required, depending on the objective of each case. In the authors’ case studies they have mainly concentrated on IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth technologies. The work has enabled them to translate theoretical concepts to real scenarios, while identifying specific needs in different types of ubiquitous computing applications.