Rover Technology

Abstract

Rover technology adds a user's location to other dimensions of system awareness, such as time, user preferences, and client device capabilities. The software architecture of Rover systems is designed to scale to large user populations.

System Scalability

Two potential bottlenecks can hinder the system's scalability. One is the server system, which must handle a large number of client requests with tight real-time constraints. The other is the wireless access points, which have limited bandwidth. 

Actions Versus Threads 

There are several ways to implement the Rover controller using a thread model. For example, each server operation could have a separate thread, or each user could have a separate thread handling all its operations.

 Introduction

Rover technology adds a user's location to other dimensions of system awareness, such as time, user preferences, and client device capabilities. The software architecture of Rover systems is designed to scale to large user populations. The part of this system that automatically tailors information and services to a mobile user's location is the basis for location-aware computing. This computing paradigm augments the more traditional dimensions of system awareness, such as time-, user-, and device-awareness. All the technology components to realize location-aware computing are available in the marketplace today. 

Rover Services

Rover offers two kinds of services to its users' basic data services and transactional services. Basic data services use text, graphics, audio, and video formats. Users can subscribe dynamically to specific data components through the device user interface. Rover filters the available media formats according to the device's capabilities. The basic data service involves primarily one-way interaction.

Location is an important attribute of all objects in Rover. Several techniques exist for estimating an object's location, including the GPS and radio-frequency techniques based on signal strength or signal propagation delays. The choice of technique significantly affects the granularity and accuracy of the location information. Rover therefore uses a tuple of value, error, and time stamp to identify an object's location1. The value is an estimate of the object's location (either absolute or relative to some well-known location). The error identifies the uncertainty in the estimate. The time stamp identifies when the estimate was made.

Conclusion

Rover is currently available as a deployable system using specified technologies, both indoors and outdoors. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a completely integrated system that uses different technologies and allows a seamless experience of location-aware computing to clients as they move through the system.