A middleware to integrate robots, simple devices and everyday objects into an ambient ecology

The fields of ambient intelligence, distributed robotics and wireless sensor networks are converging toward a common vision, in which ubiquitous sensing and acting devices cooperate to provide useful services in the home. These devices can range from sophisticated mobile robots to simple sensor nodes and even simpler tagged everyday objects. In this vision, a milkbox left on the table after the user has left the home could ask the service of a mobile robot to be placed back in the refrigerator. A missing ingredient to realize this vision is a mechanism that enables the communication and interoperation among such highly heterogeneous entities. In this paper, we propose such a mechanism in the form of a middleware able to integrate robots, tiny devices and augmented everyday objects into one and the same system. The key moves to cope with heterogeneity are: the definition of a tiny, compatible version of the middleware, that can run on small devices; and the concept of object proxy, used to make everyday object accessible within the middleware. We describe the concepts and implementation of our middleware, and show a number of experiments that illustrate its performance.