ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Research : Entry Points

Entry Points into a Smart Campus Infrastructure (2001-2003)

A Research Project in Cooperation with the Distributed Systems Group

The Entry Points project is part of the ETH World initiative, whose goal is to establish a virtual campus in addition to the existing physical ETH campus. Unlike the World Wide Web, ETH World is not just a virtual space, but combines physical and virtual elements and is closely related to the physical campus environment. ETH World is designed for the well-defined user community of people tied to ETH and promotes their active participation in everyday work life.

In the Entry Points project we investigate the requirement for material entry points into a virtual campus that increase its accessibility and visibility from within the physical campus environment. A prerequisite to realize this requirement is to provide a seamless coupling of informational and physical entities on the campus, like printed documents, physical objects, and places. By embedding physical hyperlinks into the ETH campus and attaching information to physical objects, visible entry points into the information space of ETH World are created, enabling a natural interaction between physical and virtual environment and thus providing ubiquitous access to ETH World.

Within the Entry Points project, we designed the ETHOC system ("everything has online content"), which enables users to attach virtual counterparts to printed material. The system performs the creation, administration, and intermediation of online resources related to paper documents. To information providers it offers a Web-based author portal for generating unique IDs that can be printed as barcodes, and for associating online content and actions to printed material. To users it offers simple means to interact with virtual counterparts of printed documents using a variety of devices. Examples range from a WAP enabled mobile phone equipped with a tiny bar code reader or an integrated camera, a PDA with wireless connectivity, to the full fledged ETHOC browser for Java enabled PCs and laptops.

This project ended in December 2003.

Selected Publications

See the Publications of the Distributed Systems Group page for a full listing of our publications.

• Jürgen Bohn
  Prototypical Implementation of Location-Aware Services based on a Middleware Architecture for Super-Distributed RFID Tag Infrastructures.
  Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 155-166, 2008
  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0107-2
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Jürgen Bohn
  User-Centric Dependability Concepts for Ubiquitous Computing.
  PhD thesis No. 16653, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, May 2006
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  Published by dissertation.de, March 2007, ISBN 978-3-86624-214-2
  
  
• Jürgen Bohn
  Prototypical Implementation of Location-Aware Services based on Super-Distributed RFID Tags.
  19th International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems – System Aspects in Organic Computing (ARCS 2006). LNCS No. 3894, Springer-Verlag, pp. 69-83, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, March 13-16, 2006
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Jürgen Bohn
  Instant Personalization and Temporary Ownership of Handheld Devices.
  Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA 2004). IEEE Computer Society, ISBN 0-7695-2258-0, pp. 134-143, Windermere, Cumbria, UK, December 2-3, 2004
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Jürgen Bohn, Friedemann Mattern
  Super-Distributed RFID Tag Infrastructures.
  Proceedings of the 2nd European Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (EUSAI 2004). Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) No. 3295, Springer-Verlag, pp. 1-12, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, November 8-10, 2004
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Michael Rohs, Jürgen Bohn
  Entry Points into a Smart Campus Environment – Overview of the ETHOC System.
  International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing (IWSAWC), Proc. 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems – Workshops (ICDCS 2003 Workshops). pp. 260-266, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, May 2003
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Jürgen Bohn, Michael Rohs
  Klicken in der realen Welt.
  Konferenz Mensch und Computer 2001, Workshop Mensch-Computer-Interaktion in allgegenwärtigen Informationssystemen, Bad Honnef, March 5-8, 2001
  BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  

Related Student Projects

The following table lists corresponding student projects in our group. Note that some descriptions will be in German.