ASTRA

_ Description

ASTRA examines mediated interpersonal awareness, addressing the need to stay in touch with family and friends or the need to be reassured regarding their well-being. Important aspects of communication are examined, such as connectedness or plausible denial of presence, with the ultimate aim to define a framework for supporting the design of Pervasive Awareness systems intended to support social relationships. The framework consists of:

• A theory to guide the design and the evaluation of pervasive awareness systems for supporting social communication
• Supporting technology (service oriented architecture, tools and applications that support communities to appropriate Pervasive Awareness applications)

_ Outcomes

• To develop an integrated “theory of connectedness and awareness”
• To develop a descriptive model and a design theory/framework for awareness mechanisms
• To design an integrated service oriented architecture and implement a platform for supporting end-user development of awareness systems
• To design and develop a set of tools that will support the composition of awareness applications by end-users
• To develop proof-of-concept awareness applications by end-user communities using the experimental ASTRA technology

Studies & Publications

ASTRA Publishable Executive Summary

Social Intelligence as the Means for Achieving Emergent Interactive Behaviour in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Proactive Agriculture: An Integrated Framework for Developing Distributed Hybrid Systems

Awareness applications for connecting mobile students

End User Tools for Ambient Intelligence Environments: An Overview

Creating social presence through peripheral awareness