Ad Hoc Gateway Service for Automatic Package Delivery using Networked Appliances

Current networked appliance technologies enable devices to communicate seamlessly with one another; for example, the refrigerator at your home might communicate with your mobile phone when you are visiting the supermarket to prompt you about a shortage of food. The devices can communicate with each other irrespective of their location. A great deal of work has been done in networked appliances, but most of this has been undertaken in the field of multimedia. In this paper we used networked appliance technology in a home automation system, to avoid the problems associated with the delivery of packages while the homeowner is away. We use a peer-to-peer distributed gateway service to allow networked appliances to reach beyond the household boundary, thereby providing location independence. The use of the ad hoc gateway allows the utilisation of existing networked appliance services, which would not otherwise be possible. Users can interact with the postman and allow him access while they themselves are absent; functionality that would not otherwise be possible. We demonstrate the viability of our package delivery framework using case studies and a prototype implementation.