Hiding complexity and heterogeneity of the physical world in smart living environments

Abstract

Continuous technological advances lead to computerize all the electronic devices and connect them in a network, so that in the future physical and virtual worlds will be integrated and interoperate each other at the point that browsing the reality will be similar to browsing the Web. Heterogeneous networked devices, services satisfying needs of people and living environments equipped with devices and services, will have to collaborate instead of working independently for offering to the end-user a better quality of the daily life. As a consequence, developers of ubiquitous computing and communication software infrastructures should address their efforts toward the abstraction of the implemented concepts. They have to abstract concepts from direct and immediate human needs in specific smart environments, avoid undue assumptions about the available devices or services and promote decoupling among distinctive, physical and functional features of devices and services.This paper briefly describes the extensible software architecture for smart environments the authors designed and implemented and presents the approach used for representing the physical world in a useful, comprehensible and more abstract manner and facilitating connections with the virtual world.