The Smart Box Concept for Ubiquitous Computing Environments

In everyday life we are often faced with the need to monitor the contents of some kind of container e.g. the contents of a medicine cabinet or a tool box. In this paper we show that this entire class of scenarios has similar features and properties. To remove the annoyance associated by the user with this monitoring task we propose a smart box concept. In this concept the monitoring is facilitated by any automatic identification technology. RFID technology proved to be a suitable means to invisibly monitor the contents of the box without requiring the user to adapt the way he interacts with the smart objects. We describe the characteristics of the smart box concept and then demonstrate the usability of the smart box concept with three applications: the smart toolbox, the smart medicine cabinet and the smart surgical kit.

[1]  Dadong Wan,et al.  Magic Medicine Cabinet: A Situated Portal for Consumer Healthcare , 1999, HUC.

[2]  James H. Aylor,et al.  Computer for the 21st Century , 1999, Computer.

[3]  Karl Ernst Osthaus.  Van de Velde , 1920 .

[4]  Albrecht Schmidt,et al.  Mediacups: experience with design and use of computer-augmented everyday artefacts , 2001, Comput. Networks.

[5]  Harald Vogt,et al.  Efficient Object Identification with Passive RFID Tags , 2002, Pervasive.

[6]  Kay Römer,et al.  Smart identification frameworks for ubiquitous computing applications , 2003, Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, 2003. (PerCom 2003)..

[7]  Albrecht Schmidt,et al.  Advanced Interaction in Context , 1999, HUC.

[8]  Roy Want,et al.  Bridging physical and virtual worlds with electronic tags , 1999, CHI '99.

[9]  Christian Floerkemeier,et al.  Interaction in pervasive computing settings using Bluetooth-enabled active tags and passive RFID technology together with mobile phones , 2003, Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, 2003. (PerCom 2003)..

[10]  Kay Römer,et al.  Smart Identification Frameworks for Ubiquitous Computing Applications , 2004, Wirel. Networks.