Problems in Context-Aware Semantic Computing

Acknowledging the user context, e.g., position and activity, provides a natural way to adapt applications according to the user needs. How to actually capture and exploit context, however, is not self-evident and it is tempting to assign the related responsibilities to individual context-consuming applications. Unfortunately, this confuses the user, complicates application development and hinders context-aware semantic computing as a research discipline. In this article, we outline context-aware semantic computing research topics and the state-of-the-art mobile application development frameworks of special interest to us, acknowledging best practices for accessing and modeling sensor context. From the integrated point of view, context-aware semantic computing is demonstrated in terms of a software component called context engine. In order to better understand how theory is tied with practice, we also introduce a simple context engine prototype. Finally, we use the research background and the empirical setting to discuss the significant problems and relevant research directions in context-aware semantic processing.