Software development is central for most companies in the IT business, and the construction of high-quality software is a major bottleneck when developing new IT products and services. To be able to compete, it is important that companies are up-to-date within the state-of-art of software development/technology. With the current trend towards pervasive computing it is necessary that research is carried out in the area of software technology for pervasive computing.

Good software developers are perhaps the category of people within the IT-business who are in greatest demand. Education in software development is therefore an important activity in addition to research. In the Center for Pervasive Computing, research and education within pervasive software technology is therefore considered to be highly important.

The label pervasive software technology covers a large number of disciplines, and it will not be possible to cover them all. The research area described in this document has main emphasis on development of object-technology for pervasive computing. The motivation for this is that object-technology is probably the most successful and promising software technology of today, just as the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, has a long tradition for research and education in object technology.

Research themes
The main research themes within object technology are:

• Architecture of pervasive computing systems
• Development of virtual machines for supporting pervasive computing
• Language support for pervasive computing
• Tools for development of pervasive systems

In addition, there will be cooperation with other areas with CfPC such as mobility, HCI, CSCW etc. The activities within object technology can be classified as partnership activities, lab activities and projects as described in the next sections.

Partnership activities
Fundamental research activities related to the development of object technology for pervasive computing systems. The activities will draw upon experience gained in both lab activities as well as projects. Activities include topics related to software architecture, mobile agents, frameworks, distributed systems, identification of design patterns, language development and development of virtual machines.

Labs
Labs serve both as test benches for testing research ideas from the basic activities as well as sources of inspiration and feedback. A lab for experiments with audio and video units in cooperation with Bang & Olufsen has been established.

Projects
Close collaboration between research institutions and companies on concrete projects serves as valuable sources of inspiration and knowledge transfer for both parties alike. The following projects are currently taking place:

• Objects in appliances
• Distributed objects in embedded systems
• Pervasive Object Model Project
• Object oriented language interoperability
• Knight
• Integrating BETA with Eclipse

The object-technology group is involved in projects within CSCW and Pervasive Healthcare.

Partners
The participants include Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, the Sun group at the Alexandra Institute, and the Alexandra Institute. Cooperation is expected with the Institute of Information Studies, University of Aarhus.

People
The following people participate – or have participated - in the activities:

• Peter Andersen
• Lars Bak (Sun)
• Jakob Bardram
• Michael Caspersen
• Henrik Bærbak Christensen
• Aino Cornils
• Christian Damm
• Erik Ernst
• Klaus Marius Hansen
• Ole Lehrmann Madsen (research responsible)
• Kari Schougaard
• Ulrik Pagh Schultz
• Michael Thomsen
• Mads Torgersen.

In addition, a number of students and student programmers participate in the activities.

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