Modeling adaptive behaviors in Context UNITY

Context-aware computing refers to a paradigm in which applications sense aspects of the environment and use this information to adjust their behavior in response to changing circumstances. In this paper, we present a formal model and notation (Context UNITY) for expressing quintessential aspects of context-aware computations; existential quantification, for instance, proves to be highly effective in capturing the notion of discovery in open systems. Furthermore, Context UNITY treats context in a manner that is relative to the specific needs of an individual application and promotes an approach to context maintenance that is transparent to the application. In this paper, we construct the model from first principles, introduce its proof logic, and demonstrate how the model can be used as an effective abstraction tool for context-aware applications and middleware.