Demo: Ubiquitous interaction with smart objects

Abstract

Increasingly, everyday physical objects become “smart” by making their functionality accessible, controllable, and extensible for Internet-based users and services via a connection to the digital world. Deployed in scenarios that range from private households over offices to public spaces, smart objects enable ubiquitous “smart spaces” that build on interaction with mobile users. However, ubiquitous interaction with smart objects is currently complicated by three factors. 1) Communication with objects requires Internet or local network access, a requirement that is not met under ground, abroad, or when lacking access credentials to 802.11 networks. 2) Identifying a specific object from the envisioned billions of objects requires a suitable discovery mechanism, introducing delays and mandating object owners to disclose object semantics. 3) Interacting with object functionalities mandates an a-priori installation of a specific app, that provides a human-usable interface, per object and use case, resulting in an abundance of (redundant) apps. We argue that smart object interaction is thereby restricted to pre-defined scenarios and objects, e.g., at home or in offices. In this demonstration, we strive to make smart object interaction ubiquitous. Current approaches abstract from user locations and contexts via the Internet but lack support for spontaneous discovery and interaction with possibly unknown objects in the immediate vicinity of the user. In order to enable such interaction, we address the aforementioned factors by 1) enabling direct communication and interaction with objects over Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (BLE), removing the need for network access and reducing the discovery scope to the intuitive local interaction scope of the user and 2) enable