Taxonomy, technology and applications of smart objects

Deployment of embedded technologies is increasingly being examined in industrial supply chains as a means for improving efficiency through greater control over purchase orders, inventory and product related information. Central to this development has been the advent of technologies such as bar codes, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems, and wireless sensors which when attached to a product, form part of the product’s embedded systems infrastructure. The increasing integration of these technologies dramatically contributes to the evolving notion of a “smart product”, a product which is capable of incorporating itself into both physical and information environments. The future of this revolution in objects equipped with smart embedded technologies is one in which objects can not only identify themselves, but can also sense and store their condition, communicate This work was partly funded as part of the BRIDGE project by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) IP Nr. IST-FP6-033546. T. Sánchez López (B) · B. Patkai · D. McFarlane Engineering Department, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1RX, UK e-mail: [email protected] B. Patkai e-mail: [email protected] D. McFarlane e-mail: [email protected] D. C. Ranasinghe The School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia e-mail: [email protected] with other objects and distributed infrastructures, and take decisions related to managing their life cycle. The object can essentially “plug” itself into a compatible systems infrastructure owned by different partners in a supply chain. However, as in any development process that will involve more than one end user, the establishment of a common foundation and understanding is essential for interoperability, efficient communication among involved parties and for developing novel applications. In this paper, we contribute to creating that common ground by providing a characterization to aid the specification and construction of “smart objects” and their underlying technologies. Furthermore, our work provides an extensive set of examples and potential applications of different categories of smart objects.