Cooperative Artefacts

Cooperative artefacts are physical objects, commonly associated with purposes other than computing, but instrumented with embedded computing, wireless communication, and sensors and actuators. Thus augmented, physical objects can monitor their state, share observations with other artefacts, and collectively model their situation and react to changes in the world. This enables software processes to be tightly coupled with physical activity, and to be embedded “where the action is”. This talk will discuss a conceptual framework for cooperative artefacts, present experience with the Smart-Its hardware/software toolkit for augmentation of artefacts, and consider the specific challenge of embedding spatial awareness in common artefacts.