Intuitive Mobile User Interaction in Smart Spaces via NFC-Enhanced Devices

The fusion of interaction and discovery technologies can facilitate easy, intuitive and impromptu access to networked entities by users without the need for significant administrative overhead. Traditional service discovery methods fail to meet the demands placed by such environments due to mobility, intermittent connectivity, complex configuration and small user interfaces. This paper presents n NFC-enhanced middleware architecture that enables a non-expert user to intuitively discover and use new services through a simple touch gesture. The proposed method eliminates the need for multiple manual steps and allows the user to control the ingress of devices/services in the environment into the discovery process. A prototype implementation is presented showcasing attachment to network access points, launching of URLs and discovery and interaction with UPnP devices.