Architecture to Enable Dual Reality for Smart Environments

In this paper, we describe an architecture that brings the Dual Reality paradigm into intelligent environments also referred to as smart spaces. This architecture aims at enhancing the development of already existing and of new (or future) assistance systems for these smart spaces including the possibility for pre-testing without installing them in the real environment. All information, either really sensed or simulated, can be transmitted in real time from the intelligent environment to a corresponding virtual representation reflecting the real world and vice versa based on an event-based communication infrastructure. Users can interact with the virtual model using a dashboard-like visualization, which also offers the possibility to run simulators and other services that are probably not yet installed in the smart space. The advantages of both worlds can be used to enrich assistance systems and to improve the adaptation of these systems taking the current context into account. We describe a smart space running this new infrastructure. In this instrumented shopping environment, all sensors and actuators can communicate with each other using the event-based infrastructure. Besides that, all data is also transmitted to a Management Dashboard and visualized adequately. In this dashboard-like visualization, a store manager can access all data sensed in the environment and control some installed actuators. We describe briefly how this infrastructure can be used for testing a price tag framework, which offers the ability to generate images that can be transferred to and displayed at electronic shelf labels. Before installing this service in the real environment, the testing is performed in the virtual model using data from the real world. After a successful test phase, the service can be established in the smart shopping environment with very little effort.