1. Supporting Mobile Collaboration with Service-Oriented Mobile Units
Andrés Neyem, Sergio F. Ochoa
Computer Science Department
Universidad de Chile

2. Outline Motivation Challenges for Mobile Collaboration Related Work
The SOMU Platform
Application Example
Conclusions and Future Work

3. Motivation
Wandering
Education Scenarios
Service Providers
Productive Scenarios
Mobile computing devices and wireless technologies are promoting new collaboration scenarios.
Now we can support interaction among people while walking…
… this paper is focused on the mobile collaboration scenarios were not fixed communication infrastructure can be used.. And where there are participants of heterogenous sources are involved in the process.
Disaster Relief

4. Mobile Collaboration – Scenario I
Construction Management
Dispersed teams working on the construction site.
Teams do not belong to the same company.
Inspectors records the advances and problems in the infrastructure.
They need to be on the move to carry out the assigned work.
They are not able to use fixed communication infrastructure.
They have to communicate and share such information.
In order to explain the mobile workers activities I will explain two work scenarios…
There are several teams in charge of civil/electrical infrastructure, security issues, …
Inspector using mobile computing devices Record the data and integrate the results in order to keep the control of the projects and to make the appropriate and on-time decisions.
Mobility, data synchronization, interoperability.Limited hardware resources..

5. Mobile Collaboration – Scenario II
Disaster Relief
Dispersed teams working on the affected area.
Teams do not belong to the same organization.
First responders records the advances and problems in the relief process.
They need to be on the move to carry out the assigned work.
They are not able to use fixed communication infrastructure.
They have to communicate and share such information.
- Diversity of actors: firefighters, police officers, medical personnel, civil engineers.
- Highly mobility of actors.
- Strong communication restrictions (data transmission, routing, obstacles).
High information availability.
Interoperability..
Limited hardware resources..
interoperabilty

6. Outline Motivation Challenges for Mobile Collaboration Related Work
The SOMU Platform
Application Example
Conclusions and Future Work

7. Mobile Collaboration - Challenges
Actors have to be on the move to carry out their activities.
They need autonomous solutions.
They need interoperable solutions.
They need a space to share and synchronize data.
They have to deal with limited hardware resources.
Well in scenarios like these…

8. Outline Motivation Challenges for Mobile Collaboration Related Work
The SOMU Platform
Application Example
Conclusions and Future Work

9. Related Work LaCOLLA JXTA iClouds Nokia Framework
Middleware for Mobile Collaboration
LaCOLLA
iClouds
YCab / YCab.Net
JXTA
Nokia Framework
PASIR
Middleware for Peer-to-Peer Data Sharing
LIME
JavaSpaces
Grace
FT-Linda
T-Spaces
XMiddle

10. Outline Motivation Challenges for Mobile Collaboration Related Work
The SOMU Platform
Application Example
Conclusions and Future Work

11. The SOMU Platform
Wandering
A lightweight software platform that allows to autonomous units:
Productive Scenarios
Interoperate in ad-hoc wireless settings.
Share/synchronize data.
Detect peer proximity.
Manage asynchronous interactions.
To deal with the problems of autonomy, interoperability, data sharing and limited hardware resources we are proposing SOMU
Disaster Relief

12. SOMU Design Decisions How to support: the users mobility?
applications and information interoperability?
the users autonomy?

13. Support for Users Mobility: MANET
What is an ad-hoc network?
A collection of wireless nodes that can be dynamically self-organized into an arbitrary and temporary topology to form a network without necessarily using any pre-existing infrastructure. B A

14. Support for Users Mobility: MANET
What is an ad-hoc network?
A collection of wireless nodes that can be dynamically self-organized into an arbitrary and temporary topology to form a network without necessarily using any pre-existing infrastructure.
At the same time we have: B
wireless communication
nodes mobility
connectivity and routing
infrastructureless network
Why ad-hoc networks?
Potential easy deployment
Not expensive
Self-organizing
Decreased dependence of infrastructure A

15. Support for Users Interoperability:
Web Services
Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a paradigm which emphasis on highly specialized, modular and platform agnostic code facilitating interoperability of systems.
Registry
discovery
publish
The service model is composed of three components: Provider, Consumer and Registry.
Consumer
Provider
use service

16. Service-Oriented Computing in MANET
The service model needs to adapt itself to the new networking conditions
Registry
cannot lookup
cannot register
Consumer
Provider
The service model is composed of three components: Provider, Consumer and Registry.
could use service
communication
range

17. Service-Oriented Computing in MANET
The service model needs to adapt itself to the new networking conditions
Registry
lookup
publish
Consumer
Provider
The service model is composed of three components: Provider, Consumer and Registry.
cannot use service
communication
range

18. Support for Users Autonomy:
Fully Distributed
Mobile Collaborative Application A
Mobile Collaborative Application B
Mobile Collaborative Applications
Mobile Collaborative Applications
API
SOMU Platform
SOMU Platform
TCP/IP

19. Support for Users Autonomy:
Fully Distributed
Mobile Collaborative Application A
Mobile Collaborative Application B
We design a lightweight and fully distributed middleware, able to expose and consume Web services.
Mobile Collaborative Applications
Mobile Collaborative Applications
API
SOMU Platform
SOMU Platform
TCP/IP

20. Mobile Collaborative Applications Mobile Units Profile Manager
The SOMU Architecture
Mobile Collaborative Applications
API
SOMU Platform
Local Storage
Web Services
Shared Files
Units Profiles
Work Items
WebServer
SOAP
Component
HTTP
Component
Mobile Units Profile Manager
SOMU
Manager
Mobile Units Near Me
Listener
Multicast
TCP/IP

21. Mobile Collaborative Application A Mobile Collaborative Application B
The SOMU Architecture
Mobile Collaborative Application A
Local request to invoke the remote service 1
Mobile Collaborative Application B
Manager create the work item 2
Manager asks if node “B” is in online 3
Invoke the remote service 4
μWebServer receive the invocation 5 1 8
6.2
6.1
μWebServer returns the results
μWebServer send an event
μWebServer activate the WS 6
μWebServer
Mobile Units Near Me
Web Services
Manager remove the work item 7
SOMU
Manager 6
Manager notifies the finalization of the invocation process 8 2
SOMU Platform
SOMU Platform 7 3 4 5
Mobile Units Near Me
TCP/IP
Multicast

22. Outline Motivation Challenges for Mobile Collaboration Related Work
The SOMU Platform
Application Example
Conclusions and Future Work

23. Application Example Disaster Relief Command Post Civil Engineers
Police Officers
Medical
Firefighters

24. Mobile Collaborative Application B
Application Example
Local request to invoke the synchronization 1
Mobile Collaborative Application B
Manager create the work item 2
Manager asks if node “B” is in online 3
Invoke the remote service 4
μWebServer receive the invocation 5 1 8
6.2
6.1
μWebServer returns the results
μWebServer send an event
μWebServer activate the WS SyncXML 6
μWebServer
Mobile Units Near Me
Web Services
Manager remove the work item 7
SOMU
Manager 6
Manager notifies the finalization of the invocation process 8 2
SOMU Platform
SOMU Platform 7 3 4 5
Mobile Units Near Me
TCP/IP
Multicast

25. Outline Motivation Challenges for Mobile Collaboration Related Work
The SOMU Platform
Application Example
Conclusions and Future Work

26. Conclusions
The SOMU platform proposes a lightweight and fully decentralized solution.
It allows mobile devices to act as autonomous units.
It allows to share data and synchronize XML documents.
It allows interoperability exposing and consuming Web services.

27. Future Work
Consider the context information to support self-organization.
Design and embed context-aware solutions for several groupware design issues, such as: floor control, session management and roles support.
Formal experimentation to understand the SOMU contributions and limitations.

28. Thank you …