Representing RFID-tagged physical objects as mutable software objects.

The RFID-enabled library is a mobile RFID-enabled application and illustrates the kind of application we target. The application runs on a mobile device, such as a smartphone and shows the books that are in the vicinity of the user and allows certain operations to be performed on them. Users can attach a small review message to a book, rate a book or associate keywords with the book, etc. The application lets the user also filter the books based on rating or comparison with a keyword profile describing the user's preferences. For example, the user could just swipe his smartphone over a shelf of books and discover which books on the shelf are must-read books!

Developing such mobile RFID-enabled applications with traditional software abstractions is a daunting task given the extreme volatility of connections to RFID tags. Simple repositioning of the mobile (reader) device, interference, etc. cause such applications to be very prone to failures. Currently the programmer is left to deal with these issues manually.

The movies below show a small prototype showing discovery of books on a shelf and a user adding a comment to a book.

• Distributed Object-Oriented Programming with RFID Technology. Andoni Lombide Carreton, Kevin Pinte, Wolfgang De Meuter. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6115, Eliassen F, Kapitza R (eds.), 2010; 56–69. [download¹⁾].