A Document Centric Framework for Building Distributed Smart Object Systems

We present an architectural framework that provides the foundation for building smart object systems and uses a document centric approach utilizing a profile based artefact framework and a task based application framework. Our artefact framework represents an instrumented physical smart objects as a collection of service profiles and expresses these services in generic documents. Applications for smart objects are expressed as a collection of functional tasks (independent of the implementation) in a corresponding document. A runtime component provides the foundation for mapping these tasks to the corresponding service provider smart objects. There are three primary advantages of our approach- firstly, it allows developers to write applications in a generic way without prior knowledge of the smart objects that could be used by the applications. Secondly, smart object management (locating/accessing/etc.) issues are completely handled by the infrastructure thus application development becomes rapid and simple. Finally, the programming abstraction used in the framework allows extension of functionalities of smart objects and applications very easily. We describe an implemented prototype of our framework and show examples of its use in a real life scenario to illustrate its feasibility.