EAGLE (East Alabama General Location Engine)

Introduction

This class is funded in part by a grant from Auburn University for the Information Technology Peak of Excellence. Our aim is to investigate topics related to reconfigurable smart components, and to build a prototype system that exercises some of these technologies. The class is offered fall, winter and spring quarters of the 1999-2000 academic year. The topics presented in class included Jini, Java JNI and RMI, Java Beans, Enterprise Java Beans, an overview of palmtop OS'es, and programming the Palm Pilot palmtop computer in Java.

Our Project

To gain experience with reconfigurable smart systems we implemented a smart badge system based on Sun's Jini Technology. The system consists of three main parts: mobile smart badges, fixed badge detectors, and a Jini location server. The badges communicate via an infrared protocol with the fixed badge detectors, periodically transmitting a string of identification information. The fixed badge detectors know their physical locations, and as they detect badges they can update the location server with messages of the form "Badge X is at location Y." The location server can be queried by any Java program which discovers it, and can answer questions such as "Who is at Y?" or "Where is X?" or "Who is where?". A web interface is our first client for the service. The web interface shows the location of all active badges at any time. Our idea is to use this system to gain experience with the technologies involved, and to use it as a springboard for investigating what new ways of interacting are possible with such a system. We are interested in privacy, facilitation of interaction, having a user's state follow her or him around, and other things.