Infrastructure for Virtual Counterparts of Real World Objects

Based on our experience with a collection of prototypical ubiquitous computing applications, we have identified a number of common basic tasks which led to the design of some simple mechanisms that we have found useful for structuring and implementing such applications. Building upon these mechanisms, we have created a software infrastructure to support the development of tag-based ubiquitous computing applications. Our framework is targeted at applications where objects are tagged with Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFIDs), a simple but powerful means of bridging the gap between the physical and the virtual world. A central feature of our infrastructure are virtual counterparts. They form augmented representations of real world objects and encapsulate their state and behavior. This paper presents the rationale, design, and implementation of our prototype infrastructure.