A communication middleware for smart room environments

Abstract

Processing sensor data to recognize and interpret human activity and human-human interaction in smart room environments is a computationally intensive task. Thus, processing components in smart rooms must be spread over multiple computers in a network. Dealing with the complexity of distributing and managing these components puts a considerable burden on these components' developers. In this paper we introduce ChilFlow, a distributed data-transfer middleware specifically designed to ease the work of smart room developers. We describe flows, the network-transparent, typed, one-to-many communication channels used for communication between processing components. We also present ChilFlow's programming interface for flows and demonstrate how it assures type-safety and network-transparency. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.