Applying RFID Technology to Improve User Interaction in Novel Environments
Elena de la Guía, Maria D., Víctor M. R. Penichet · InTech eBooks · 2011
IntroductionAt present our surrounding environment is constantly changing, the impact of new technologies and the information age is spreading dizzily in environments that were previously unthinkable.In order to take advantage of new technological developments we need solutions adapted to the rhythm of everyday life.The interaction with applications has changed.Nowadays we aim to find new scenarios where the interaction between user and computer needs to be improved.We keep advancing, moving closer and closer to the idea of ubiquitous computing .All objects will be connected and the computer user will be involved.Thus, we will be closer to the natural way in which people interact with the environment.To achieve this type of scenarios we make use of the different advantages offered by mobile technologies, communication Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) and identification (RFID).In this paper we describe the development and implementation of three different case studies, actually implementing the concept of context-awareness, location awareness and Internet of Things .In the first case, we describe GUIMUININ (Wireless Intelligent Museum Guides).This is a context-awareness project aim to improve the user experience in museums, so that users can see their location on any of the floors of the building and receive multimedia information on the museum item they select.In the second case, the project RCAR (Robotic Context Awareness by RFID) creates an environment sensitive to the location of a robot, which develops a tracking system and high resolution scanning for indoor or outdoor environments.The third case is the project Co-Interactive Table (Collaborative Interactive Table ) that presents a digitalized table with RFID technology which executes collaborative tasks in a meeting room, face-to-face or remotely.This article has six sections.Section 2 describes a RFID system and defines some concepts: context-awareness, Ubiquitous Computing, the Internet of Things and the types of interaction from user to new systems depending on the level attention.Section 4 presents the general infrastructure of RFID systems.In section 5, we describe our RFID systems and present their advantages and disadvantages.Finally, conclusions are set out in Section 6. Related worksTechnological developments in the miniaturization of microprocessors have opened up new possibilities for user services through the manipulation of information in their environment.