A Taxonomy-Driven Approach to Visually Prototyping Pervasive Computing Applications

Various forms of pervasive computing environments are being deployed in an increasing number of areas including healthcare, home automation, and military. This evolution makes the development of pervasive computing applications challenging because it requires to manage a range of heterogeneous entities with a wide variety of functionalities. This paper presents Pantagruel, an approach to integrating a taxonomical description of a pervasive computing environment into a visual programming language. A taxonomy describes the relevant entities of a given pervasive computing area and serves as a parameter to a sensorcontroller-actuator development paradigm. The orchestration of areaspecific entities is supported by high-level constructs, customized with respect to taxonomical information. We have implemented a visual environment to develop taxonomies and orchestration rules. Furthermore, we have developed a compiler for Pantagruel and successfully used it for applications in various pervasive computing areas, such as home automation and building management.