Carlos Manuel Rodrigues Machado Autonomic Ubiquitous Computing

should be able to choose how that data is used, the period of time that is kept. The outside control
and access to the data should be avoided, by making only available to the outside the indicators
that are authorised by the users.
Users of this type of systems need to be aware that the system will learn there behaviour in
order to reproduce it later. In this way the system will reproduce the good user behaviours as well
as bad user behaviours. If users want the system to perform in a particular way, they need to give to
the system, day after day, good patterns, e.g., if a user desires that the system switches off the
lights that were left on, he needs to avoid leaving the lights on. In this way, if a user exceptionally
leaves a light activated, the system will not have any problems detecting it and consequently switch
off the correspondent light.
The autonomic ubiquitous system uses information gathered without a direct intervention of
the user and uses this information to act in the environment, estimating what the user is thinking in
that particular circumstance. This idea is very difficult to be achieved by a machine and even by any
human, without some degree of error. In conclusion, any decision made by the system to not act in
a particular situation is always preferable to an erroneous automatic action.
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