Robots in smart spaces - A case study of a u-object finder prototype - A C

A smart space is a physical spatial environment such as a room that can provide automatic responses according to the contextual information occurring in an environment. The context data is usually acquired via various devices which are installed somewhere in the environment and/or embedded into some special physical objects, called u-objects, which are capable of executing computation and/or communication. However, the devices used in current researches on smart space are either fixed or residing in real objects, which are incapable of moving by themselves. Likewise, more and more robots have been produced, but most of them are designed and developed based on the assumption that the space surrounding a robot is an ordinary one, i.e., a non-smart space. Therefore, it is necessary to study what additional services can be offered and what specific technical issues will be faced when adding robots to smart spaces. To identify the potential novel services and technology problems, this research is focused on a case study of a u-object finding service performed by a robot in a smart space. This paper presents the design and development of the system prototype robot which can communicate with other devices and can find a u-object with attached RFID tag in a smart room. Some preliminary experiments were conducted and the results verified the functionalities of the system.