Scalable Ubiquitous Computing Systemss

We are all acquainted with the Personal Computer. We are less aware of the burgeoning numbers of invisible, embedded computers around us in the fabric of our homes, shops, vehicles and even farms.

They help us command, control, communicate, entertain, and commerce, and these invisible computers are far, far more numerous than their desktop cousins.

The visible face of computing, the ubiquitous PC, is nowadays generally networked. To date, embedded computing systems have been largely used to
replace analog control systems (for reasons of price, performance and reliability). Increasingly, however, we will find systems are integrated into a whole. This will lead to a challenge for Computer Science in the form of system
complexity. Complexity is at the core of the skill-set of computer science
and engineering, but it is also becoming a key piece of the formalisms used
to understand other systems in the natural world, in ecology and biology and
in physics. With the Internet as large and organic as it already is, we see
a complex set of interactions with graph theory, control theory, economics
and game theory, and a number of other disciplines being bought to bear and
even extended to understand its behaviour. We also see a set of engineering
rules of thumb maturing into design principles, which can be applied to
other systems…