Virtual appliances for pervasive computing: a deconstructionist, ontology based, programming-by-example approach

People are going to experience a revolution in the nature and capability of their home environment in a future where domestic electronic artefacts containing embedded computers and network connections opens up the possibility for hundreds of communicating devices cooperating in communities serving the occupant – this is the “Pervasive Computing” vision. This paper describes research in progress that takes the notion of collaborating home artefacts forward in four ways; (a) it introduces a model that promises to change the nature of home appliances - the deconstructed appliance model (b) it introduces a novel approach to programming pervasive computers called Task Oriented Programming (TOP), (c) it presents a Deconstruction and Community Programming (dComp) ontology supporting the formation and programming of coordinated communities of home appliances and (d) it describes the iDorm a test -bed for this work . We support the theoretical ideas in the paper with details of our implementation and initial evaluation work that shows that TOP operations, such as queries, can be completed in under a second. The work described in this paper is funded by the UK DTI Next Wave and Markets Technology programme.