Opportunities and obligations for physical computing systems

The authors envision data and services that will be available any place, any time, to all people. Major systems such as those in transportation, manufacturing, infrastructure protection, process control, and electricity distribution networks will become more efficient and capable. People will be safer and experience an improved standard of living. New applications not even imagined today will become a reality. Although ingredients of this vision have existed for several years, the authors believe that developers must focus on the physical, real-time, and embedded aspects of pervasive computing. They refer to this domain as physical computing systems. For pervasive computing to achieve its promise, developers must create not only high-level system software and application solutions, but also low-level embedded systems solutions.