A Framework for Connecting Home Computing Middleware

In the future, micro processors will be embedded in various appliances such as home appliances, digital AV appliances, and personal appliances. These appliances will be connected to various types of networks, such as Internet, and communicate with each other. The communication of appliances would integrate some services provided by these appliances and make new services. The future home computing environment requires home computing middleware on which we can control home appliances easily and develop new services without a great effort. Most of recent middleware for home computing such as Jini and HAVi has no compatibility and adaptability with each other. Therefore it is not easy for these appliances to communicate with other appliances which are controlled by any other middleware. Although there are some protocol bridges such as bridge between HAVi and Jini by Philips, Sony and Sun, these are almost only bridges of one and one. We need a framework with which we can integrate any middleware in a simpler way. In this paper, we propose a framework for connecting home computing middleware. It enables any appliance under any middleware’s control to communicate any other appliances. We show also a service integration framework with Internet service and home computing middleware.