Ambient Interaction Framework – Software Infrastructure for the Rapid Development of Pervasive Computing Environments

The Ambience project aims to develop and implement ambient computing – pervasive devices that blend naturally into the normal interactions and physical space of human work practice. Towards this end, the Ambient Interaction Framework (AIF) has been developed. The AIF is a software toolkit to facilitate the rapid development of pervasive computing environments through the integration of physical devices. The AIF supports various input and output devices, allowing them to work together in a cohesive manner. The extensible framework is supported by a Java API and relies on the decoupled nature of the communication provided by the Elvin content-based messaging service. The AIF eases the task of constructing new pervasive computing environments by encapsulating the data input and output capabilities of physical devices and automating the production and receipt of Elvin notifications. The encapsulated devices can then be integrated into new environments by writing a minimal amount of applicationspecific Java code. The paper also describes a proof-of-concept implementation an Ambient Café.