Virtual Machines for Ambient Computing: A Palpable Computing Perspective

Ambient computing promises to deliver a smooth end-user experience where computers integrated into the environment automatically and transparently support users in their daily tasks. Users must however always remain in control; balancing transparency and automation with awareness and control is the goal of the “Palpable Computing” project (http://www.ist-palcom.org). As an extension of ambient computing, PalCom places requirements on many parts of the system architecture; we here address the requirements placed on the underlying virtual machine. Specifically, we describe the overall design and features of our current prototype implementation of a virtual machine for palpable computing systems, and outline our approach to resolving critical issues within reflection, scalability, and stability.