The increasing complexity of pervasive computing environments puts the current software development methods to the test. There is a large variation in different types of hardware that need to be addressed. Besides, there is no guarantee the environment does not evolve, making the software developed for the initial environment deprecated and in need for updates or reconfiguration. Software deployed in such an environment should be sufficiently dynamic to cope with new environment configurations, even while the system is in use. This goes beyond coping with new contexts of use and building context-aware systems: while most approaches are mainly focused on how the software behavior adapts according to the changing context in a fixed environment, our approach, ReWiRe, allows the environment configuration to change over time.

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Considering the amount of devices a user owns nowadays, a distributed user interface can become increasingly important. This requires reasoning techniques that allow making predictions of future values in the spatial model because these devices can be expected to change their location during usage. Our primary attention will be devoted to the problem of re-distribution of user interfaces in a constantly changing environment. So that a change in spatial topology, i.e. in the way the devices are located relative to one another, will be detected on time and interpreted in a proper way, resulting in redistribution of a user interface the devices are sharing.

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Bringing together the physical and digital worlds has been the subject of research for some time now. In particular, a number of successful prototypes that link physical objects with digital information (often called smart object systems) have already been presented. However, a generally accepted architecture to design such systems has not yet emerged. This paper presents a reusable and practical framework for developing smart object applications today. At the basis of our approach lies the use of Semantic Web technology to drive interaction between the physical and digital worlds. We used this framework to develop SemaNews, a novel application that combines the advantages of digital news feeds with those of physical newspapers. To verify the reusability of our architecture, we built a second prototype in a different application domain: STalkingObjects provides the basic components of a store of the future.

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We present ARCHIE, a research project which aims to discover how handheld guides can be used as powerful instruments to enhance the visitor's learning experience. Although mobile devices are becoming a common aid to support a museum visit, they often lead to an individualized experience. However, most people do not visit a museum alone, and recent research has pointed out that social interaction is a prerequisite for an intensified and improved learning process. To accommodate the shortcomings in many of the current solutions, we are designing a platform that enables us to create a socially-aware handheld guide that stimulates interaction between group members. They can communicate with each other either directly (by voice) or indirectly (by collaborative games) by means of their mobile guides. Besides the aforementioned communication possibilities, handheld guides can also provide a way to present per- sonalized content. By using a personal profile, it is possible to adapt the interface and tailor the information to the needs and interests of every visitor. The combination of personalized content and interfaces, communication channels between visitors in the same group and support for localization might lead to an innovative mobile guide that integrates with the museum as well as with other visitors. Our platform enables social, and, in many cases, playful interactions with other visitors in the same group. At the same time the context-awareness (proximity and personalization) increases the involvement of the visitor with the content presented in the museum.

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Since a growing number of different mobile computing devices are used in pervasive and ubiquitous environments, the need to adopt new approaches for designing and implementing pervasive interactive software with minor effort is emerging. In this paper we present a process that facilitates the design of next-generation interactive software for pervasive environments. We created a distributed runtime infrastructure that enables the distribution of software components on heterogeneous, networked and embedded hardware systems. Some of these components or compositions of components will require interaction by human users from a large range of different devices. To make the deployment of consistent and functional User Interfaces in these pervasive environments easier, Interaction Components are introduced into the runtime infrastructure which enable the presentation of component and service behavior to human users.

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