Ubiquitous Service Regulation Based on Dynamic Rules

Ubiquitous computing systems can be regarded as open systems where heterogeneous and previously unknown entities may spontaneously interact, due to intrinsic mobility of users and their devices. In this highly dynamic and heterogeneous scenario, applications must be capable of accessing the appropriate instances of the required services in each visited network or region. Some services, however, must be made available only to users and applications that fulfill some conditions. In ubiquitous systems the interaction between client and server applications happens in a physical space, involving human and artificial agents that act under social and administrative rules. We propose the integration of context-awareness with a social regulation approach to control the interaction of users and their applications in such environments. This has the advantage that access policies and rights can be defined and monitored independently of the applications for the ubiquitous system.