The combination of the Internet and emerging technologies such as near-field communications, real-time localization, and embedded sensors lets us transform everyday objects into smart objects that can understand and react to their environment. Such objects are building blocks for the Internet of Things and enable novel computing applications. As a step toward design and architectural principles for smart objects, the authors introduce a hierarchy of architectures with increasing levels of real-world awareness and interactivity. In particular, they describe activity-, policy-, and process-aware smart objects and demonstrate how the respective architectural abstractions support increasingly complex application.

Equipment used in the construction domain is often hired in order to reduce cost and maintenance overhead. The cost of hire is dependent on the time period involved and does not take into account the actual use equipment has received. This paper presents our initial investigation into how physical objects augmented with sensing and communication technologies can measure use in order to enable new pay-per-use payment models for equipment hire. We also explore user interaction with pay-per-use objects via mobile devices. The user interactions that take place within our prototype scenario range from simple information access to transactions involving multiple users. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a prototype pay-per-use system motivated by a real world equipment hire scenario. We also provide insights into the various challenges introduced by supporting a pay-per-use model, including data storage and data security in addition to user interaction issues.

A smart home is a house that is responsive to its inhabitants and their actions by being aware of their context. Potential applications for smart homes address economic and comfort aspects of living, or could provide unobtrusive support for the elderly or disabled to promote independent living. The basic building blocks of such a smart home is a computing system consisting of distributed sensors and actuators. Programming and maintaining such an infrastructure is challenging because suitable programming abstractions are currently missing. In this paper we introduce the notion of programmable space that lets the application developer perceive the smart home as an integrated runtime environment. This approach is implemented in a system called RuleCaster. Applications are developed in a high-level rulebased language. Our approach shows a notable simplification of application development and maintenance. To verify the utility of RuleCaster we use a scenario-based evaluation method.