Using mixed-reality to develop smart environments

Smart homes, smart cars, smart classrooms are now a reality as the world becomes increasingly interconnected by ubiquitous computing technology. The next step is to interconnect such environments; however there are a number of significant barriers to advancing research in this area, most notably the lack of available environments, standards and tools etc. A possible solution is the use of simulated spaces; nevertheless as realistic as strive to make them, they are, at best, only approximations to the real spaces, with important differences such as utilising idealised rather than noisy sensor data. In this respect, an improvement to simulation is emulation, which uses specially adapted physical components to imitate real systems and environments. In this paper we present our work-in-progress towards the creation of a development tool for intelligent environments based on the interconnection of simulated, emulated and real intelligent spaces using a distributed model of mixed reality. To do so, we propose the use of physical/virtual components (xReality objects) able to be combined through a 3D graphical user interface, sharing real-time information. We present three scenarios of interconnected real and emulated spaces, used for education, achieving integration between real and virtual worlds.