Mission

To investigate ways of adding business value through RFID & sensor technology and the opportunities offered by the convergence of mobile smart technologies.  Research problems of interest include data modelling, manipulation and storage techniques, uCommerce applications, super distributed data storage and smart office entities.

What is it all about?

Essentially, it's about opportunities to create business value by finding new and innovative ways to manage data in ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments.  

What is the nature of this new pervasive environment?  Bruce Sterling writes in his book  ‘Shaping Things’ that there are six trends in the pervasive environment: 

1. interactive chips,

2. geolocalisation and precise positioning systems,

3. powerful search engines,

4. 3D virtual models of objects,

5. rapid prototyping of objects, and

6. cradle to cradle recycling.  

The foundation of pervasive computing is the connectivity of the environment.  It is likely that such connectivity will be provided by the ‘Internet of Things’.  The term "Internet of Things" describes a number of technologies and research disciplines that enable the Internet to reach out into the real world of physical objects. Technologies like RFID, short-range wireless communications, real-time localization and sensor networks are now becoming increasingly common, bringing the Internet of Things into commercial use.  In order to provide the infrastructure of the Internet of Things, an enormous expansion of available address space will be provided via IPv6.

Centralised data storage models were designed to work within the confines of limited distributed processing capability and limited storage capacities.  Computer engineers worked to design systems that would work within these boundaries of limited processing power and limited storage capacity.  In the modern day technical environment, these barriers have been removed.  Specifically, the convergence of computing technology has brought: powerful processing capability; inexpensive large capacity storage; smart micro-devices.  The next logical step is to think about how this type of computing technology might add value within an enabled pervasive computing environment

‘Invisible’ computing for the home and the concept of the “intelligent home” is the brainchild of Mark Weiser“Smart House” develop, homes are becoming  networked in other ways. Personal electronics such as ipods, mobile phones, DVD recordable devices, TV set top boxes, MP3 music storage and game consoles have opened the way for personal area networks in the home.  In contrast, commerce has yet to take full advantage of pervasive computing environments.  Recent advances and convergences of technology offer the opportunity to store more data locally and to benefit from super-distributed data storage and smart entities.

A smart entity is defined as a physical artefact that is ‘enhanced by embedded computing technology in such a way that it has a globally unique identifier, a built-in memory with data read/write capabilities and support for close-range wireless ad-hoc communication (Bohn).  The ability to store data records with the related object and process that information locally using smart business entities opens up several new and exciting opportunities by overcoming problems of traditional data/product separation that is the norm when using central data storage.  For example, common business furniture such as packing pallets and shelving and storage bins might become equipped with a small storage area and some processing capacity and be smart enough to undertake a perpetual stock-on-hand record generated from data stored on the product units within them and to produce stock on hand reports as and when needed. 

Projects

Zespri Ethylene concentrator (in collaboration with AUT Engineering)

Contact:  Judith Symonds

Laundry smart bin

Contact:  Judith Symonds

Mobile social network bus arrival prediction (pxt project)

Contact:  Judith Symonds

Partners

What’s Coming Up?

            Special Issue eJHI – Health Information Systems eJHI

            Edited Book - RFID and Smart Technologies for Information Convergence

New Journal - International Journal of Advanced Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing – published quarterly, new in 2009.

RFID Workshop – planned for 2/12/08 in conjunction with the Australasian Conference on Information Systems Conference to be held at University of Canterbury.

RFID Pathfinder After 5s  - Hosted by Revolution ID on carbon credits and how RFID fits in.  here