TITLE:
A Generic Platform for Sharing Functionalities among Devices
AUTHORS:
Remi Nguyen Van, Hideki Shimada, Kenya Sato
KEYWORDS:
Home Network, Sharing, Application, Deployment, Cross-Platform
JOURNAL NAME:
Communications and Network,
Vol.6 No.2,
May
8,
2014
ABSTRACT:
With so
many potentially interconnected electronic devices in today’s homes,
manufacturers have to think of theirs as only one of the components involved in
a general user experience, and not as an isolated device. Users are likely to
be using several devices at the same time, either actively through immediate
interaction, or passively by expecting devices to give them notifications when
necessary, for example. Thus, having cross-devices functionalities is often
necessary for a product to be really adapted to its usage situation. Moreover,
just as we install software on computers, smartphones and tablets for
additional functionalities to use their own hardware, it would be logical to
install cross-devices software to use the combined hardware of several home
devices for a better user experience. However, even though a number of
technologies can be used to transmit data or commands between devices, UPnP
being a widespread example, it is not possible to access the behavior of remote
devices and add functionalities to them this way. Thus, when manufacturers
design their products, there is no way for them to make full use of the other
appliances at the user’s home without developing and deploying specific
software on each of them. In order to address this issue, this paper discusses
a platform for generic development and on-the-fly deployment of applications on
home devices. This system aims at letting device vendors deploy innovative
features across devices in a home network, without requiring prior knowledge or
control over devices already present in the user’s environment. For this
platform to be fit for consumer devices, it is designed to be cost-effective,
use recent and widespread technologies, and be fast to implement and work with.