The role of 'invisible' computers in our everyday life will be discussed by a leading expert at a public lecture held at De Montfort University (DMU) on February 15th.

Computer technology is now used in many aspects of our day-to-day lives, from mobile phones to car control systems, such as anti-lock braking controllers.

This form of integrated technology is known as 'ubiquitous computing'.

Professor Morris Sloman, of Imperial College London, will give a talk entitled Ubiquitous Computing: A Research Grand Challenge for this year's Annual Distinguished Seminar, organised by DMU's cutting-edge Software Technology Research Laboratory (STRL).

His lecture will look at the UK Computing Research Committee's Ubiquitous Computing Grand Challenge (UbicompGC), an initiative which aims to identify opportunities to advance research in this area within the UK and also to address the various challenges posed by this technology.

Professor Sloman is Chairman of the steering committee for UbicompGC and Professor of Distributed Systems Management at Imperial.

The lecture is free and will take place in room 1.05 in DMU's Hawthorn Building on Thursday 15 February at 2.00pm.

According to Professor Sloman, "Ubiquitous computing is likely to have a major future impact on our everyday lives by providing technology for healthcare, environmental monitoring, education, work and entertainment. There is considerable worldwide research on ubiquitous computing but most is focused on the engineering perspective - how to build systems from many small, wireless-based computing devices. The UK Ubiquitous Computing Grand Challenge is trying to establish collaboration between these researchers and the research communities addressing the experience perspective i.e. how people will interact with possibly thousands of ubiquitous computing devices and how they will change our everyday lives.

"In addition we need to involve theoreticians to develop the theoretical foundations to understand how these systems behave, how to make them reliable and safe, and to develop design principles underpinning the tools needed to build the technology which will affect so many of our future everyday activities."

For further information about attending the lecture: Lindsey Trent, (0116) 257 7579.

[This is an important emerging field, not least from a security point of view, and UbicompGC is a welcome initiative. As readers will know several papers in this area have been published in ISB over the past two years or so. --Ed].

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