Tutorials
We are proud to offer two tutorials that give attendees an excellent introduction to two very hot topics in the realm of the "Internet of Things". Below please find the titles and abstracts as well as short biographies of the presenters. The tutorials will be held on Wednesday, March 26, 2008, in the Conference Hotel.
09.00 - 12.30: Tutorial 1 on Smart Items - Business Logic on the Items14.00 - 17.30: Tutorial 2 on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Application Development with the Accada Open Source Middleware Platform
Tutorial 1: Smart Items - Business Logic on the Items
The slides of this tutorial can be found here.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008, 09:00-12:30
Smart Items are wireless sensor networks embedded into physical goods, items and assets. Smart Items enabled perishable goods autonomously and continuously monitor and report their transport conditions. Complex conditions, such as the integrity of a compound of several items, are supported through instantaneous collaboration among Smart Items in order to prevent the loss of goods in transit. The items themselves provide this functionality; hence, no infrastructure support, e.g. reader installation, is required. Smart Items enable a novel form of business information systems by re-locating business process logic down to the items. As a result, the items operate as a partly autonomous and process-embedded real-world interface of a business information system.
The tutorial's objective is to enable the attendees to design, implement and integrate Smart Items appliances for their field of work. We will study various available wireless sensor network platforms for building Smart Items and explain programming concepts for implementing business logic on these platforms as well as collaboration concepts to let Smart Items collectively work together. We will also review modern state-of-the-art technologies, such as UPnP and webservices, as candidates for the integration of Smart Items with business information systems and investigate how they cope with the scalability, mobility and process dynamics of Smart Items appliances. Finally, the tutorial offers the possibility to exercise hands-on the design, implementation and integration of a Smart Items appliance using the Particle sensor network platform.
The tutorial is split into a theoretical and a practical part. In the latter part the attendees have the possibility to implement a Smart Item business appliance directly on the Particle sensor network platform using the Java programming language.
Smart Items Fundamentals
- Representative Smart Items applications in the business and research community
- Smart Items hardware platforms
- Programming collaborative business logic on the items
- Integration with business information systems
- Design options
- Implementation of the Smart Item eSeal
- Integration with back-end systems using webservices
- Presentation and discussion with attendees
The target audience of this tutorial are primarily
- Practitioners from the industry who are interested in upcoming wireless sensor networks, their back-end integration and their applications,
- Researchers who are interested in wireless sensor network programming, and
- Everyone who is interested to learn novel technologies and their working principles
Christian Decker is a researcher in the field of ubiquitous computing at the Telecooperation Office (TecO) of the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. His research interests are collaboration concepts and operating systems for networked embedded sensor platforms. As part of his research Christian designed, implemented and evaluated various Smart Item appliances, which were utilized in industrial and business applications. Christian holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is also a co-founder of the Particle Computer GmbH - a joint spin-off of the University of Karlsruhe and SAP AG – which is commercializing wireless sensor networks solutions.
Tutorial 2: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Application Development with the Accada Open Source Middleware Platform
Wednesday, March 26, 2008, 14:00-17:30
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has evolved from a tool mainly used to facilitate niche applications, such as cattle tracking, into a general purpose identification technology that is expected to become as omnipresent as the barcode. As interest in RFID is no longer limited to a few industries, there is a growing need for standardization. While standardization initially focused on RFID hardware and tag organization, it today also covers RFID-related information systems. The most widely used software standard in this domain is the EPC Network by EPCglobal, which allows businesses to capture and share RFID data in a unified way. The complete RFID software stack as specified in the EPC Network standards has been implemented in the Accada RFID middleware. Accada is an open source project that allows researchers, application developers, or system integrators to rapidly prototype EPCglobal-compliant RFID solutions.
In this tutorial, participants will learn how to build their own RFID systems based on current RFID industry standards. While the focus will be on the three major concerns of the EPC Network, i.e., reader access, data filtering, and data exchange, we will also give a brief introduction into RFID basics, including hardware aspects and transmission technologies. In the second part of this tutorial, we will demonstrate how participants can take advantage of Accada by integrating it into their own projects.
The tutorial will cover the following aspects:
- RFID technology overview
- RFID standards
- EPC Network standards
- Open source RFID middleware Accada (including hands-on exercises)
Participants are not required to be experienced with the development of RFID systems. For following the practical examples, basic knowledge of the Java platform including Java EE technologies such as Servlets, Web applications, and Web Services are helpful. The number of attendees is limited to max. 50.
Matthias Lampe holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon and is currently a researcher at the Institute for Pervasive Computing at ETH Zurich. As part of the industry sponsored research program M-Lab, he was involved in the design and implementation of various RFID-based applications. He is also member of the research staff at the Auto-ID Lab in Switzerland and one of the co-founders of the Accada open source project. Matthias' main research interests are concepts and design issues for RFID middleware and application level system support for RFID applications.
Christof Roduner is a researcher at ETH Zurich's Institute for Pervasive Computing. His research interests include infrastructures for smart objects as well as human-computer interaction in ubiquitous computing. As a member of Auto-ID Switzerland, he is one of the co-founders of the Accada open source project. Christof studied computer science and business administration at the University of Zurich, Switzerland and the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Before joining the computer science faculty at ETH Zurich, he was responsible for the Internet business unit at a Zurich-based IT services company.