Exploring the grid's potential for ubiquitous computing

In contrast to many scientific disciplines embracing the vision of a uniform global distributed infrastructure to support their activities, ubiquitous computing is currently characterized by an extremely diverse set of infrastructure platforms. Such heterogeneity makes conducting large-scale wide-area experiments extremely difficult - most researchers choose instead to construct their own ubiquitous computing environment within which they can run their experiments. This heterogeneity makes the basic vision of ubiquitous computing difficult to realize because interworking between components at different sites isn't possible. One suggestion is that grid technologies will make an ideal starting point for developing future infrastructure support for ubiquitous computing, facilitating the deployment of ubiquitous computing technologies.