Middleware for Building Ubiquitous Computing Applications Using Distributed Objects

Ubiquitous systems are characterized by multi-fold complexity, stemming mainly from the vast number of possible interactions between many heterogeneous objects and services. Devices ranging from simple everyday objects populated with sensing, actuating and communication capabilities to complex computer systems, mobile or not, are treated as reusable “components” of a dynamically changing physical/digital environment. As even an individual object with limited functionality, may present advanced behavior when grouped with others, our aim is to look at how collections of such distributed objects can collaborate and provide functionality that exceeds the sum of their parts. This paper presents GAS-OS, a middleware that supports building, configuring and reconfiguring ubiquitous computing applications using distributed objects.