Touch & Compose: Physical User Interface for Application Composition in Smart Environments

In this paper, we sketch a model for interaction between smart environment and their inhabitants. We also introduce Touch & Compose, a concept for composing applications which utilizes this interaction model. The basic idea of Touch & Compose is to assemble applications from the resources that the user has selected manually by touching them with her mobile terminal. Resources (devices, services, files, etc.) are represented with icons attached to real environment objects. RFID tags are placed under the icons; they contain data identifying the resources. The mobile terminal is equipped with an RFID reader. The touched icons are collected in the mobile terminal's resource stack; an application is composed from the resources in the stack either automatically or when requested by the user. Some resources collected from the environment can be stored permanently in the mobile terminal. The stack allows also sharing resources with other users at the environment. We also present software architecture for implementing the Touch & Compose concept and suggest a GUI for the mobile terminal.