Mobile Computing Books

It is interesting that the pi-calculus, which on first inspection can be viewed as a highly abstract formalism somewhat removed from reality, has now found application in a variety of fields, such as business process modeling, computational biology, artificial intelligence, and network modeling. It is one of the many examples of process algebra that have appeared in the last two decades, and has been the subject of intense research. This book gives an overview of the formalism of pi-calculus, both in its original form as envisaged by its creator Robin Milner, and from the standpoint of its variations and extensions. For readers (such as this reviewer) who are relatively new to process algebra, the writing may be somewhat difficult to follow, this due mostly to the choice of notation. On the other hand, readers (such as this reviewer) who are familiar with the lambda calculus or functional programming will find familiar territory in the book, and will more fully appreciate the sixth part of the book, which deals with the interpretation of functions as processes. Those readers interested in applications will have to consult other books and papers.

Conceptually the pi-calculus is fairly easy to understand: it is a method of passing values that can respect the local scope. This ability distinguishes it from being merely a value-passing process algebra, which would be helpful in some contexts but not of much use in applications. The authors describe pi-calculus as being a theory of mobile systems, in that one can use it to understand mobility and to study the patterns executed by mobile systems. They distinguish between two kinds of 'mobility', one being that of 'links' that can move in an abstract space of 'linked processes', while the other deals with 'processes' that can move in an abstract space of linked processes. The (first-order) pi-calculus deals with the first kind of mobility, and does this via the manipulation of 'names' and 'processes.' A 'name' in the pi-calculus is the name of a link, and a process can interact with another one via the names that they share. When a particular process receives a name, it can then interact with processes that were unknown to it. The authors do treat the second kind of mobility in the book in the guise of 'higher-order' pi-calculus.

Of particular importance to the pi-calculus is in the binding of names in a process. Remembering the same concepts in mathematical logic, particularly in the lambda calculus, one speaks of the occurrence of name in a process as 'bound' if it lies within the scope of a binding of occurrence of the name; it is 'free' if it is not bound. The interaction of two processes via a name can only occur if that name occurs freely in both of them. But the pi-calculus also has the notion of 'scope extrusion', wherein the scope of a restricted name is extended to include only the process that receives the name. Therefore in the pi-calculus a restricted name can move as long as it is renamed. The ability of the pi-calculus to do scope extrusion has been one of its major selling points.

Processes no matter how they look syntactically may have essentially the same behavior. The pi-calculus has a few notions of behavioural equivalence and these are discussed in great detail by the authors. A process can be classified according to its 'internal' behavior as well as how it is 'observed' to behave. The authors describe, and then reject, the notions of 'reduction bisimilarity'of two processes, for two processes can be related if they have no internal actions. To mend this triviality, the authors introduce a notion of the 'observable' of a process. The observables of a process are viewed as the collection of names that it can use for sending and for receiving. Using the construction of an 'observability predicate', the reduction bisimilarity relation is modified to that of the 'strong barbed bisimilarity' between two processes. The observability predicate is a kind of measure as to whether a process can perform an input or output action. Two processes are 'strong barbed bisimilar' if they have the same observables and to each internal transition of one there is an internal transition of the other to a process that is strong barbed bisimilar. Using an example as motivation, the authors go on to reject strong barbed bisimilarity as being a satisfactory notion of equivalence of processes. This leads them to the notion of 'strong barbed congruence', where two processes are strong barbed congruent if they are strong barbed bisimilar in all contexts.

For this reviewer, who prefers to view all processes as applications of functions, the most interesting part of the book was Part 6, which deals with the relation between the pi-calclulus and the lambda-calculus, the latter of which has resulted in many successful (functional) programming languages. The authors study how functions in the lambda-calculus can be represented as processes in the pi-calculus. Their discussion is very interesting, in that it sheds light on to what extent the lambda-calculus can be used to model concurrency. The lambda-calculus is traditionally been viewed as one that involves only sequential operations, so this discussion may point the way in using it to deal with concurrent processes. One should not expect that both of these calculi are the same in terms of their semantics, and this is born out in the authors' proof that the semantics of the pi-calculus is strictly finer than the operational semantics of the lambda-calculus. The encoding of the lambda-calculus into the pi-calculus also involves some rather interesting mathematical constructions, such as the Levy-Longo and Bohm trees. The authors use these trees to show that the equality induced by the pi-calculus is the same as that induced by certain models of the lambda-calculus. Functions are therefore processes.

...I'm a bit biased, but having seen the competition in bookstores, I can honestly say that this book packs more hacks per page with more details and more interesting projects than anything else I've seen. The book is a good balance between beginning level bits explaining how to get the most out of regular use of the PSP, troubleshooting problems with the PSP, peripheral hacks explaining how to build your own case for the PSP or an articulating stand for the PSP complete with AC adapter, hacks that will let you share one UMD disk among several friends (either for individual free play or to share a wireless game) and play games over the Internet with a long-distance friend, and more advanced hacks, like full disassembly and reassembly instructions, instructions for adding an external wifi antenna to boost your PSP's wireless range, and even programming your own home brew code or building and programming an infrared peripheral interface.

If you like your PSP and you like tinkering, you should buy my book. It's 281 pages of useful tips, tricks, and hacks written by myself and contributors like Phillip Torrone and Seth Fogie. Check it out.

I ordered this book to help prepare our entry in next year's competition. It looks like we are not going to make it, but I am still glad I ordered RoboCup. Almost 800 pages of robot know-how plus tons of illustrations - it just keeps on giving! This has been and will continue to be a great source of information for my other robotics projects. The RoboCup books are one of the best-kept secrets to success in amateur robotics.

This three section collection of papers is for advanced architects who are exploring contemporary security strategies. The collection is divided into foundation material, concepts and implementation. The book has a fourth section, but it's an appendix that lists the author bios.

The papers in this book are based on presentations given at two ECOOP'98 workshops: the Workshop on Distributed Object Security and the Workshop on Mobility: Secure Internet Mobile Computation. Unlike many books that are based on workshops and lecture notes, this one is more practical than academic. I like the fact that XML and Java are covered, and found the papers that deal with access controls filled with useful information. The paper by Blaze, Feigenbaum, Ioannidis, and Keromytis on the role of trust management in distributed systems, and Roth's paper on mutual protection of cooperating agents gave information that me and my team used to solve a design problem.

Like most collections of computer science lecture notes the writing is vastly different from more popular books, but the information is there if you're willing to dig through dry writing. Also, this book is not for programmers who either don't have a computer science degree or are not familiar with computer science and software engineering.

Siciliano and Khatib have assembled a massive and comprehensive tome on robotics, circa 2008. Sections of the book can be read by a diverse audience of undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and even the general public. Spanning any field associated with the subject.

There is considerable maths in the modelling of robots. Often to understand and control an arm. The multiple degrees of freedom of joints are wonderful for dexterity. But these often give an excursion into advanced linear algebra and control systems theory. Several chapters go into the necessary maths. You probably need at least 2 years of undergraduate engineering maths as preparation.

The myriad applications in which robots have been deployed is amply surveyed in Part F, Field and Service Robotics. In the household, there is of course the floor cleaning Roomba. A cute little gizmo, but it is not a toy; a genuine robot in its own right. The chapter mentioning it also describes an entire genre of competitors; mostly lesser known to the public.

Another chapter on agriculture and forestry talks about using robots for tasks like harvesting. Usually more successful when the terrain is flat and well defined; ie. having only one crop present. While the general case of a robot in hilly, wooded terrain with multiple obstacles and different species of trees is much harder to program.

I also ran into something in this chapter from my past, and it impressed me as to the book's comprehensiveness. At the University of Western Australia, there was a long running program to devise a robot sheep shearer. It started in the 70s and I met several of its researchers. I lost track of it after 1983, but I'd wondered whatever became of it. The book takes up the thread, explaining that the program took on the name Shear Magic, and was ultimately discontinued because it was never fast enough. But even in failure, this robotic application had a side effect. The demonstration of the technology was used by farmers to browbeat human shearers into moderating their wage claims, by playing off longstanding fears of workers about being replaced by machines. Of course, whether or not this was desirable may be a function of your political leanings.

To me, the most interesting section of the entire book concerned mirror neurons. This was a fundamental recent discovery in biology. The relevance to robotics is still perhaps speculative. Several robotics researchers have attempted to use it as inspiration for teaching a robot via its visual input and processing system. This contrasts greatly with the traditional teaching use of rule based formal logic, often involving the predicate calculus. The results described in the text are early but promising.

One slight curiosity is the relative deprecating of military applications. These are numerous and scattered throughout various chapters. Covering uses like landmine detectors, or the aerial Predator and its relatives that have seen much recent use in Iraq and Afghanistan for surveillance and attack. But at the top level of the Contents, there is no section on the military. And if you go to the Index, "military" is absent, while, for example, "mind reading" gets 2 entries. The downplaying of the military is especially puzzling given the historically prominent role of the US military in funding advanced robotics research.

The rise of the Internet and e-commerce has, over the past decade, dramatically change the business models and basic assumptions of practically every business organization in the developed world. Today, mobile/unwired business is roughly at the same stage of development that e-commerce was 10 years ago. What is the current state of the art in unwired business, and where is it headed? Will it become a as large a transforming force as e-commerce before it did? The book Unwired Business, by Stuart Barnes and Eusebio Scornavacca, is an excellent starting point for answering these questions. The book's rich, illustrative set of case studies provide many insights for both managers and researchers to better understand the new and emerging world of mobile e-commerce.

Windows XP has one of the best fetures, i.e "native support" for LANs. Wireless support in XP makes upgrading to the new OS more appealing for all types of users who wants wireless connection availabe always. Users no longer need to worry about technical details of configuring wireless network, it is always available.

Windows XP Unwired explains what is wireless network and how to use wireless network in Windows XP. Author explained very well from the very basics about network, what is a network, uses. After that he explains about what are the advantages, challenges about wireless network, how to secure a wireless network, how to setup your own wireless network at home. Once you complete this book, you will be able to setup your own network without any expert help.

First it explains the fundamentals of network, like what is a TCP/IP, how it works, then radio waves. Then it explains what is Wi-Fi network, 802.11 Wirless standards, how to use 802.11 wireless on the road, wireless hotspots, how to find wireless hotspots. How to use Infrared port on your Palm / Pocket PC, Bluetooth technology, GPS, and Cellular Networking.

The entire book is organized to explain you about What a specific Technology is (for example Blue Tooth), what are the current standards, how to use that technology, advantages and disadvantages (if any), limitations, and how XP supports that technology.

The best part about this book is, though it says Windows XP unwired, it explains about wireless adapters, NIC. It has case studies on how to setup Home Network.

Other topics conved in this book includes, XP default firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN), Remote Desktop. It is like a complete reference for wirelss networking technology.

I strongly recommend this book to everyone who wants to understand wirless networking.

It is a good and informative books with case studies and introduction of the various wireless technologies and guidelines of implementation. Unfortunately, the Appendix that was mentioned in the book was not to be found at all. Wonder if it was accidentally missed out during the printing. It would be nice if the missing appendix can be located as there is a lots of reference from the various chapters of the books to these appendices, which contain vast useful information. thanks

One of the rapidly developing research areas in the computer field today, Wireless Mesh Networking is applying mesh techniques to the wireless world. This is providing fault tolerence, broadband capability, and simplicity in setting up a network.

This book describes the state of the art in Wireless Mesh Networking as it exists today. It is written by a series of researchers from around the world. The book is presented in three sections:

Part I: Architectures, which describes the various issues and solutions that are being developed, mostly in conjunction with the IEEE 802.11 standard.

Part II: Protocols, routing, access control, security, scalability, load balancing, optimization, multimedia, multiple antenna techniques.

Part III: Standardization and Enabling Technologies, IEEE 802.11s, IEEE 802.16, and additional chapters.

This is a rapidly developing area that is likely to see tremendous growth in the next few years.

Salmre gives a very thorough exposition of the issues involved in writing applications for mobile devices. Where you face strong constraints in available memory, screen size and lack of a mouse. Plus network connectivity might be low bandwidth and intermittent.

His analysis is mostly within the context of .NET Compact Framework. You can regard this as a slimmed down .NET/C#, analogous to the way that J2ME/MIDP is a reduced J2SE.

Several chapters transcend the Compact Framework context and apply equally well to any development environment for mobile code. Like the chapter on using a state machine to model your application. Or the chapter on whether to use XML for data interchange. These chapters, like the rest of the book, have examples in C#. But the examples are short and clearly enough written to be understandable even if C# isn't your cup of tea. So you can use the examples as pseudocode, to port to other languages.

Actually, a closer scrutiny of the book reveals that most of it is written in a logical and general enough manner to be handy for any mobile development. The guidelines in most chapters can be thusly used.