Today a variety of terms - like Ubiquitous Computing, Pervasive Computing, In-visible Computing, Ambient Intelligence, Sentient Computing, Post-PC Computing, etc. - refer to new challenges and paradigms for the interaction among users and mobile and embedded computing devices. Fertilized by a vast quantitative growth of the Internet over the past years and a growing availability of wireless communication technologies in the wide, local and personal area, a ubiquitous use of ”embedded” in-formation technologies is evolving. Most of the services delivered through those new technologies are services adapted to context, particularly to the person, the time and the place of their use. The aim for seamless service provision to anyone (personalized services), at any place (location based services) and at any time (time dependent services) has brought the issues of software framework design and middleware to a new discussion: it is expected that context-aware services will evolve, enabled by wire-less ad-hoc networked, autonomous special purpose computing devices (i.e. “smart appliances”), providing largely invisible support for tasks performed by users. It is further expected that services with explicit user input and output will be replaced by a computing landscape sensing the physical world via a huge variety of electrical, magnetic, optical, acoustic, chemical etc. sensors, and controlling it via a manifold of actuators in such a way that it becomes merged with the virtual world. Applications and services will have to be greatly based on the notion of context and knowledge, will have to cope with highly dynamic environments and changing resources, and will need to evolve towards a more implicit and proactive interaction with users. The research work will be based on the concept of ubiquitous, ambient information technology which adds the concepts of awareness and smartness to the any time any place paradigm of mobile computing.

This research effort aims to achieve excellence in the topical area of Pervasive computing on an international scale, involving all computer science departments present at the Johannes Kepler University. Research activities will include the concept and design of mobile and pervasive system architecture, development methodologies for coordination and interaction oriented applications, context sensitive applications, information appliances, smart systems, natural interfaces, and qualitative system evaluation.