Project Members

• Cagri Balkesen, D-INFK, ETH Zurich
• Gautier Boder, D-INFK, ETH Zurich
• Nihal Dindar, D-INFK, ETH Zurich
• Florian Keusch, D-INFK, ETH Zurich
• Katinka Kromwijk, D-INFK, ETH Zurich
• Ali Sengul, D-MAVT, ETH Zurich

Supervisor and contact person: Prof. Nesime Tatbul

Project Overview

The goals of this project are threefold:

1. to automate a library with the help of the RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology,
2. to run higher-level event detection queries on RFID data streams, and
3. to visualize important events and alerts in real time on Second Life.

There are several types of events that can be defined and detected in our system:

• Book check-in and book check-out
• Illegal check-outs (a user is borrowing more books than s/he is allowed to, or a reference book is being checked out which is not supposed to leave the library)
• Theft detection

Although our application is primarily designed  to operate in a library, most of the system components are implemented in a general-purpose way and can be applied to other RFID data management applications as well.

The SmartRFLib System is made up of three architectural layers. Here follows a short description for each layer:

RFID Data Acquisition Layer (by Cagri Balkesen & Ali Sengül)

This is the lowest layer of our SmartRFLib System. Its main task is to interact with the hardware (RFID tags, readers, and antennas) and capture the raw data. This raw data is then cleaned, corrected, and compressed before being sent to the upper layer. We found that RFID data is very difficult to manage, and also that, effective data cleaning and compression can not be performed completely independent from the upper application layers.

Event Detection and Query Processing Layer (by Nihal Dindar & Florian Keusch)

This layer receives cleaned and compressed data from the RFID layer and runs complex event detection queries on the raw primitive tuples. Once an event is detected, it triggers a method on the visualization layer which then displays the event in real time on Second Life. Events are defined in a language that we have defined based on the SASE Language, which we call the SmartRFLib Language (SRFLL).

Visualization Layer (by Gautier Boder & Katinka Kromwijk)

The visualization layer displays the real-time events and alerts in two different ways: in Second Life and through a web interface. The web interface was necessary in order to display all the textual information which Second Life cannot  properly display.

For more information on our project, please consult our project reports, slides, short Second Life videos, and system screen-shots provided below.

Screenshots

Here are some screenshots from various components of our system.

Publications

• K. Kromwijk, C. Balkesen, G. Boder, N. Dindar, F. Keusch, A. Sengul, N. Tatbul, "Connecting the Real World with the Virtual World: The SmartRFLib RFID-Supported Library System on Second Life", Book chapter, Handbook of Research on Web 2.0, 3.0, and X.0: Technologies, Business, and Social Applications, San Murugesan (editor), IGI-Global, to appear.

News Articles about SmartRFLib

• ETH Life Magazine, March 20, 2008
• Science Daily, April 1, 2008
• ACM TechNews, April 7, 2008
• 2L Italia, April 21, 2008
• Le Matin Dimanche, May 11, 2008
• Computer Power User, September 2008

Additional Information

• Project proposal
• Progress report I and corresponding slides
• Progress report II and corresponding slides
• Final report and corresponding slides (a mini version)
• Video on Second Life: small (6Mb) or big (22Mb)
• Here are some papers and links related to our system.