The Event Heap: a coordination infrastructure for interactive workspaces

Abstract

Abstract. Coordinating the interactions of applications running on the diversity of devices that will be common in ubiquitous computing environments is still a difficult and not completely solved problem. We look at one such environment, an interactive workspace, where groups come together to collaborate on solving problems. Such a space will contain a heterogeneous collection of both new and legacy applications and devices. We propose that a tuplespace model with several extensions is ideal for coordination in this environment. We present a prototype implementation of such a model called the Event Heap. Finally, we show that the system has performed well in actual use over the last year and a half in our prototype interactive workspace, the iRoom.

A Middleware for Context-Aware Agents in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

“…Terry Winograd compares different architectures for context [6] and proposes one that uses a centralized Event Heap [7]. Our system, however, provides a framework where distributed reasoning can take place.…”

Plethora: a framework for converting generic applications to run in a ubiquitous environment

“…Stanford's Interactive Workspace project uses an Event Heap to allow application interaction with decoupled applications [8]. The Event Heap is derived from a tuplespace.…”

Field-Based Motion Coordination in Pervasive Computing Scenarios

“…These data structures can be hosted in some data-space (e.g., tuple space), as in EventHeap [14], JavaSpaces [10], or they can be carried on by agents themselves and dynamically merged to enable interactions, as in Lime [25] or XMiddle [21]. In these cases, agents are no longer placed in a totally void space, but live in an environment that can be modeled and described in terms of the information stored in the data spaces.…”