Augmenting the Physical Environment Through Embedded Wireless Technologies

Emerging pervasive computing technologies such as sensor networks and RFID tags can be embedded in our everyday environment to digitally store and elaborate a variety of information about the surrounding. By having application agents access in a dynamic and wireless way such distributed information, it is possible to enforce a notable degree of context-awareness in applications, increase the capabilities of interacting with the physical world, and eventually give a concrete meaning to the abstract concept of agent situatedness. This paper discusses how both sensor networks and RFID tags can be used to that purpose, outlining the respective advantages and drawbacks of these technologies. Then, to ground the discussion, it presents a multiagent application for physical object tracking, facilitating the finding of forgot-somewhere objects in an environment.