A Framework to Develop Web Applications based on

RFID Panels

Habib M. Fardoun

, Abdulrahman H. Altalhi

, Pedro G. Villanueva

Ricardo Tesoriero

and José A. Gallud

Information Systems Department, King Abdulaziz University (KAU),

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Information System Department, University of Castilla-La Mancha,

Campus Universitario de Albacete S/N, 02071, Albacete, Spain

Abstract. The pervasiveness of the Web, and the emergence of new technolo-

gies such as the RFID, allow users to interact with the physical environment.

This fact has caused the conception of new types of applications, for instance,

the Web applications based on RFID panels that allow users to retrieve and

store resources from and to the Web through RFID panels. The development of

these applications is defined by three main concepts: the Tool that performs

domain model functionality, the Command that represents an action to be per-

formed by the tool, and finally, the Resource representing the result of the

command on the tool. Thus, this work presents a framework that enables devel-

opers to model Web applications based on RFID panels in terms of these con-

cepts.

1 Introduction

Nowadays, software solutions based on mobile technology (i.e. smart phones, PDAs,

etc.) are becoming very popular in the society. It is due to the spreading of communi-

cations networks (Wi-Fi and GPRS, 3G, etc.) that provides users with connectivity

almost everywhere. Thus, users are able to access the Web through their mobile de-

vices.

Mobile technology provides to users with the ability to take photographs; write

ideas, record out thoughts on voice and video, etc. Besides, it is also capable of sens-

ing the environment through novel technologies, for instance accelerometers, camer-

as, RFID, IRdA, light sensors, touch panels, microphones, etc.

Up to now, informative panels offer static information about the environment. This

information is usually disorganized and it is difficult to understand because of several

factors, such as limited physical space or being obsolete. Besides, these panels are

passive because they are not able to interact with the readers. As consequence, people

tend to lose the interest on the panel information.

Therefore, a new set of applications have exploited the capabilities of mobile de-

vices to improve the information panels by providing them with dynamic information,

Fardoun H., Altalhi A., G. Villanueva P., Tesoriero R. and A. Gallud J..

A Framework to Develop Web Applications based on RFID Panels.

DOI: 10.5220/0004095900370046

In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Interaction Design in Educational Environments (IDEE-2012), pages 37-46

ISBN: 978-989-8565-17-4

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

through new interaction techniques. Thus, an interactive dialog is achieved between

the user and the environment or among users. Some examples of Web application

based on RFID panels are: ecologic information panels, electronic museum guides,

m-learning systems and GIS interfaces that will be discussed further.

Thus, the goal of this work is the definition of a framework that implements com-

mon functionality to support the development of this kind of applications.

The article is organized as follows: Section 2 exposes related work describing

some scenarios that will be implemented by the proposed framework. Then, Section 3

exposes the conceptual view of Web applications based on RFID panels, as well as

the system architecture and, Section 4 describes the proposed framework. Finally,

Section 5 exposes conclusions and future work.

2 Related Work

This section introduces a set of most relevant related work in this field. These systems

show how diverse is the domain application of interactive panels. For instance, they

can be used to encourage people’s involvement in ecological issues (Interactive ECO

Panels), to provide information to museum visitors (Museum guides), to implement

novel learning activities (Interactive Learning Panels), or to easy the interaction with

GIS (Geo-referenced Panels), and so on.

2.1 Interactive ECO Panels

The goal of this application is the encouragement of the society into ecologic issues,

such as city garbage recollection, collective decisions about green zone locations,

illumination and transport system suggestions. Interactive ECO Panels are location-

aware applications that provide citizens with the ability to express themselves about

daily issues [1].

This work describes a solution based on the successful integration of social soft-

ware and location-aware applications offering users a collaborative application that

allows them to both, retrieve and share comments, about topics related to environ-

mental issues just by performing natural and intuitive gestures.

Thus, this interaction allows the participation of the society serving as a tool to in-

crease the social responsibility for creating a sustainable environment. Besides, Inter-

active ECO Panels recycles the informative panels that are present in our squares,

streets, bus stops, etc turning them into interactive panels based on RFID.

These panels are based on the Web 2.0 technology that is the foundation of the so-

cial software concept. They provide users with collaboration tools through the Web

by the means of informal agreements. In fact, panels will take social software from

the Internet and will put it into the streets.

Interactive ECO Panels provide users with multimedia content such as, audio, text,

video, etc. Besides, it provides citizens with the ability to express their thoughts using

the Vote, the Pool, or the Blog system. It also allows users to get news about im-

portant events through RSS feeds. Thus, Interactive ECO Panels enable citizens to

both, retrieve and share information about ecologic issues.

A concrete example may be the decision by a town council about where to locate

the next green zone among the expansion areas of the city. A possible panel is shown

in Fig. 1a. This panel offers 4 zones (identified by the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4), that

show candidate locations for the green zone in the city. It also offers a set of com-

mands that allows users to interact with different multimedia resources and social

software tools provided by the system.

2.2 Museum Guides

Museum guides allow visitors to retrieve information about objects that are part of a

cultural environment (museum, art exhibitions, old buildings, etc.) On the one hand,

some guides are designed to work in indoor environments [2-6]. On the other hand,

others, based on GPS technology, are designed to operate in outdoor [7] or mixed

environments [8, 9]. Most of these applications provide information to visitors by the

identification of marks or via the location system.

Fig. 1b shows a prototype of a knife showcase where users are able to retrieve in-

formation from knives, groups of them and even from the showcase itself. Thus, the

system provides multimedia information about objects, such as audios, videos, texts

and so on. The implementation of the system is described in detail on [6]. As in the

Interactive ECO Panel, the system also allows users to exchange experiences and

comments through a Blog or express interests using a Vote or Pool tool. The use of

interactive panels in museums is based on marks (see the dashed rectangle on Fig.

1b). In order to retrieve information from an object visitors have to approach the

device to the mark. Thus, users express the intention to obtain information from art

pieces, masterpieces, sculptures, antiques, rooms or even buildings.

(a) (b)

Fig. 1. Interactive ECO Panel (left) and museum guide (right).

2.3 Interactive Learning Panels

The application of computing technologies on education starts almost simultaneously

to the beginning of computing science itself improving education methods, either

formal or informal, and educational mediums, such as online, in-situ or blended. Sub-

stantial achievements in this field include: the introduction of new multimedia infra-

structure into schools and colleges, such as personal computers connected to the In-

ternet, and the development of new educational software that improve student learn-

ing through imaginative software.

Combs in [10] defines informal learning as “the spontaneous, unstructured learn-

ing that goes on daily in the home and neighborhood, behind the school and on the

play field, in the workplace, library and museum, and through the various mass me-

dia, informal learning is by far the most prevalent from of adult learning”.

Thus, mobile technologies become a powerful tool to support contextual life-long

learning, by being highly portable, individual, unobtrusive, adaptable to the context

of learning, the learner’s evolving skills and knowledge [11].

Some characteristics of this type of applications described in [12] include: the ur-

gency of learning need, the initiative of knowledge acquisition, the mobility of learn-

ing setting, the interactivity of the learning process, the “Situatedness” of instruction-

al activities and the integration of instructional content.

At first, informal learning was bounded on formal school and non-formal learning

in courses [10]. From organizational informal learning processes are not formally

organized and are not funded institutions [13]. A broader approach is that of Living-

stone which is geared towards learning and self-directed and self emphasizes self of

the process by the student [14].

Thus, the work presented in [16] indicates that there are two types of exhibits, stat-

ic and dynamic. For instance, [16] makes a distinction between exhibit (broadcasts

facts) and informal learning. Some examples of dynamic exhibitions are [17, 18].

On [19] a prototype developed in our research laboratory treats the idea of teach-

ing the Geography subject at the school, the library or any other learning environ-

ment. It presents a connection between the student and the physical material provided

by this subject.

In this case is a panel which goal is the identification of regions in a country and

the flags of each region into a political map.

This panel is presented in such a simple and intuitive way students can understand

and interact with it without the help of any tutor (see Fig 3a).

On the other hand, the PDA asks for personal information and operation modes.

Students are free to choose between two operation modes: the exam or a practice. The

difference between these two modes lies on whether results are sent to the professor

or not. To select the option, the student has just to approach the PDA to the mode

icon on the panel. Once the operation mode is selected, a question is displayed. The

question may be the identification of a region in the map or a flag corresponding to a

defined region on the PDA screen. For instance: “Select a state flag and then locate it

into the map”. At the right bottom of the screen the students observes the number of

the question he/she has answered and the total number of them. To select the answer,

the student has just to approach the PDA to the flag or region image depicted in the

panel. Once questionnaire was fulfilled by a student, the results are displayed on the

PDA screen.

To carry out these tasks, at the bottom of the panel appears the control panel that

shows the following icons: the operation modes, the go to previous question, the go to

next question, the accept answer, the cancel answer, the exit application without send-

ing results and the exit application sending result to student and professor (if in exam

mode) emails. Besides, this application supports the playback of multimedia content

(audio, text, video, etc.).

2.4 Geo-referenced Panels

Geo-referenced panels expose a solution to extends and manipulate physical maps

that are present in our daily life. Thought these panels the system is able to interpret a

position selected by the user into the map and turn it into a geographical position.

Thus, users are able to store and retrieve information related to this location.

These panels can be deployed on town councils, public administrations, cultural or

educational institutions to share information.

In tour scenario, tourists are able to share experiences about places through the

map. For instance, users are able to select a region on the map and associate com-

ments to that region. These comments are then read by other users just by querying

these comments. Other scenarios include the use of these panels in bust stops, railway

and metro stations and so on. For instance, they may provide information about traffic

in the public transport network. An implementation of this system provides the ability

to query information from a zone in the map. A typical map is shown on Fig. 3b that

is located into the entrance of a public building.

3 Web Applications based on RFID Panels

In this section we study the conceptual foundations of Web applications based on

RFID panels. Thus, these applications can be defined in terms of three basic concepts:

Tool, Command and Resource. The relationship between these entities is defined by

the Command design pattern [12] where the Tool plays the role of Receiver and the

Command plays the role of ConcreteCommand.

3.1 System Architecture

The system communication is supported by a client-server application. This commu-

nication is based on a SOA architecture that allows users to store and retrieve in-

formation. Thus, when RFID tag identification (ID) is read by the RFID reader in the

client device, the ID is sent to the server to be processed via a web service call. The

server then turns this ID into a command or tool accordingly. Thus, a command is

executed on a tool resulting in a resource that is sent back to the client.

In order to carry out this process, we have organized the application in the follow-

ing packages: client, server, framework, framework extension and commons; as de-

picted on Fig. 1.

The client packages contains those classes that are part of the client application,

the server package contains those classes that are part of the server application, the

commons package contains those classes that are part of both the client and the server

applications, and finally the framework and framework extension packages that are

also part of the server application.

Fig. 2. Package diagram.

3.1.1 The Client Application

The client application conceptual model is depicted on Fig. 2. These classes are part

of the client package.

Fig. 3. Client application conceptual model.

Conceptually a Panel is composed by a set of Tags that are read by RFIDReader.

When the reader reads a tag it creates RFIDReaderEvent that is set to a set of

IRFIDReaderListeners (implementing the Observer design pattern [12]). As the Ap-

plicationClient implements the IRFIDReaderListener interface, it receives

RFIDReaderEvent when a tag is read. Thus, The ApplicationClient sends the getURL

message to the URLFactory jointly with the tag id and data read by the reader. The

getURL method returns a URL that represents an action on the server. The URL is

built from the data and id information (http://data?id=id). Then this URL is sent to the

server via the WebBrowser showing the resource that is the result of the operation.

Besides, the ApplicationClient is configured by the ApplicationClientConfig that

holds the RFID reader configuration represented by the RFIDReaderConfig.

3.1.2 The Server Application

On the server side, the application is defined by two main parts: the server infra-

structure that defines basic services to be used by the framework to carry out its job,

and the server framework itself that is described in Section 4.

The server infrastructure conceptual model is depicted on Fig. 3. These classes are

part of the client package.

When the server application receives a request from the network, the WebHandler

creates the Request and Response objects and sends them as parameter to the Cli-

entProxy through the process method. The ClientProxy is the representation of a

client at the server side of the application keeping the client state on the server. Thus,

the process method retrieves the tag ID from the Request object through the getID

method defined by the URLFactory. Then, it delegates to the framework the respon-

sibility of processing the request. The result of this process is then sent back to the

client by the Response object.

Fig. 4. Server infrastructure conceptual model.

4 Framework

This section exposes main characteristics of the proposed framework describing the

core of this work.

The framework is based on the combination of two design patterns, the Proxy [12]

and the Command [12] design patterns. Whereas we have applied the Proxy design

pattern to represent the client state on the server side of the application, the Command

design pattern was used to model the operations performed by the user through the

physical interface. The development process of Web applications based RFID panels

is defined in two simple steps:

1. The application definition

2. The application configuration

While the application definition is based on framework subclasses definition that

implement the logic of the application (i.e. tools, commands, etc.), the application

configuration defines the mapping between physical information (RFID tag infor-

mation) and the application tools and commands

4.1 Application Definition

This framework is based on three main classes to be sub-classified by developers in

order to build Web applications based on RFID panels. These classes are the Cli-

entProxy, Command and Tool. The framework is depicted the applications ex-posed

on related work (Section 2).

The ClientProxy is the entry point to the framework functionality. The process

method receives two parameters, Request and Response. These parameters represent

the Web Request and Response objects. This method retrieves the RFID from the

Request object through the getID method defined in the URLFactory class. The RFID

is then turned into a command, a tool or both of them. This process is carried out by

two hush tables that contain tools and commands indexed by RFIDs. They are loaded

in the loadToolsAndCommands method from an XML file following the schema de-

fined in the Fig. 5.

Once tool and command (represented by the currentTool and currentCommand in-

stance variables) were updated, the command is executed on the tool via the exe-

cuteOn method. Thus, the desired command represented by a Command subclass

performs the method representing the action to be performed on the tool represented

by a Tool subclass. The result of this process is a Resource that represents the result

of the operation. To illustrate the framework functionality we have depicted sequence

diagram of the museum application sample representing how information is processed

through the framework on Fig. 4.

Fig. 5. Sequence diagram exposing the process method.

First step to develop a Web applications based on RFID panels using this frame-

work is the definition of the application root tool. This tool is a subclass of the Tool

class that represents the root of all tools in the system. It will define, at least, one

method per command to be defined in the application. Then, the set of commands that

will be supported by the tools of the application will be defined. All these classes will

be subclasses of a root command class that subsequently will be subclass of the

Command parameterized class. The class parameter will be the root tool class we

have defined in the previous step. Subclasses of command root class will override the

executeOn method by calling the method on the tool that represents the command.

Once methods and tools were defined, we have to define the application proxy class.

This class is a subclass of the ClientProxy parameterized class that takes the root

command and root tool classes as parameters. The only method that should be rede-

fined is the loadToolsAndCommands method to load classes from XML mapping

files. Thus, the application definition phase of the development process concludes.

4.2 Application Configuration

The application configuration phase is far simpler than the application definition. It

consists on assigning RFIDs to a command, tool or eventually both of them. This

assignation is characterized in the XML file defined on Fig. 5.

Fig. 6. XML schema of framework configuration.

Thus, each application will define the relationship between the physical environ-

ment it is immersed and the command and tools that are part of the application do-

main logic.

5 Conclusions and Future Work

This work presents a framework to develop Web applications based on RFID panels

that allow developers to build this type of applications in terms of three simple con-

cepts: Tool, Command and Resource.

It employs a client-server architecture based on a SOA (Service Oriented Architec-

ture) that allows panel’s user to retrieve and store information through the Internet.

This work also exposes that, by using this framework can build different applica-

tions from domains, showing the flexibility and extensibility of this software artifact.

The most relevant advantages of employing this framework are: The simplicity and

flexibility of its design which is based on design patterns [12]; the ability to create

novel gestural interfaces for mobile devices equipped with RFID technology; the

provision of a scalable solution to add: new tools (applications), new commands

(functionality to tools) and resources to the system; the ability to create applications

that provide internationalized information in physical spaces. The deployment costs

are low (apart from compact flash reader) and it is a highly scalable solution

Finally, we plan to create a content management application that enables developers

for customization according to the application domain. We also are extending the

framework to cope with other technologies, such us IrDA, Bluetooth, BIDIs, Code

bars, etc.

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