A digital object memory (DOMe) is a

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

storage Storage may refer to: Goods Containers * Dry cask storage, for storing high-level radioactive waste * Food storage * Intermodal container, cargo shipping * Storage tank Facilities * Garage (residential), a storage space normally used to store car ...

space intended to keep permanently all related information about a concrete physical object instance that is collected during the lifespan of this object and thus forms a basic building block for the

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

(IoT) by connecting digital information with physical objects. Such memories require each object instance to be uniquely identified and this ID to be attached to the physical object. The underlying techniques to create identification codes and to attach them to objects are manifold but machine-readable techniques are mandatory. Commonly used are barcodes with one or two dimensions (e.g.

QRcode A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about th ...

or DataMatrix) and radio based tags like

RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...

NFC NFC may refer to: Psychology * Need for cognition, in psychology * Need for closure, social psychological term Sports * NFC Championship Game, the National Football Conference Championship Game * NCAA Football Championship (Philippines) * Nati ...

. Such codes or tags are a low cost solution but demand an underlying server infrastructure to host the memory data. DOMe Ontology

Active digital object memories

In contrast to the mentioned memories providing only a passive storage space, the more sophisticated active digital object memories (ADOMe) are based on embedded systems in terms of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and provide on the hardware side * a microprocessor, * memory, * microsensor systems, * positioning chips, * radio modules for web connectivity, * possibly

actuator An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving and controlling a mechanism or system, for example by opening a valve. In simple terms, it is a "mover". An actuator requires a control device (controlled by control signal) a ...

s, * its own energy supply or

energy-harvesting Energy harvesting (EH, also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging or ambient power) is the process by which energy is derived from external sources (e.g., solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, and kinetic energ ...

unit and on the software side there are * memory management functions, * sensor interpretation components, * and possibly sensor fusion software modules, * state transformation and processing logic components, * communication interfaces, * user interfaces, * and security modules. Such active memories allow for "on-object" processing of object-related tasks, such as condition monitoring, compilation of associated data, and memory clean-up. In addition to strictly passive memories (storage space is located in the web as mentioned above) and active memories (with "on-object" storage) hybrid forms are also available, that perform simple tasks "on-product", outsource more complex tasks to server-based infrastructures, and keep both representations in sync.

Digital product memory

Digital product memories (DPM) are a subclass of digital object memories, which include memories for all artifacts that were intentionally created such as containers and pieces of art or valuable and rare natural objects such as a marble plate or a lump of gold. Such objects don't have all the attributes of industrial products, but nevertheless a digital black box attached to them for lifelogging can make sense for specific applications.

Semantic product memory

Semantic product memories (SemProM) go beyond that, since they provide a machine-understandable meaning description of their contents based on semantic web technologies. If a product memory has no explicit semantic markup, only propriety software can exploit the information stored in the memory. In contrast, semantic product memories can be interpreted by any software that has access to the semantic description of the epistemological primitives and the ontologies used for capturing memory contents.

Object memory model

In the context of the Object Memory Modeling Incubator Group, part of the W3C Incubator Activity, an object memory format, which allows for modeling of events or other information about individual physical artifacts (ideally over their lifetime) and thus implements an object memory model (OMM), was created. The model consists of a block-based approach to partition the entire memory to groups each with associated object-related information. Each block consists of the data itself (the so-called

payload Payload is the object or the entity which is being carried by an aircraft or launch vehicle. Sometimes payload also refers to the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of ...

) and a set of

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

attributes to describe the block content.

Related research projects

SemProM

Funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, the project SemProM (Semantic Product Memory) employs smart labels in order to give products a digital memory and thus support intelligent applications along the product's

lifecycle Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to: Science and academia * Biological life cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring *Life-cycle hypothesis ...

. By the use of integrated

sensor A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...

s, relations in the production process become transparent and

supply chain In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, acti ...

s as well as environmental influences retraceable. The producer gets supported and the consumer better informed about the product.

RES-COM

Funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, the project RES-COM (Resource Conservation by Context-Activated Machine-to-Machine Communication) focuses on the development of technologies (containing interfaces, protocols and data models) for proactive resource conservation based on M2M-communication. With a defined interaction with active digital object memories the project tries to leverage the integration of distributed and active components to existing centralized structures in the field of industry and manufacturing.

Aletheia

The Aletheia project is a leading innovation project, sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research that aims at obtaining comprehensive access to product information through the use of

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

technologies. The project follows an approach which does not only consult structured data from company-owned information sources, such as product databases, to respond to inquiries, it also looks at unstructured data from office documents and web 2.0 sources, such as wikis, blogs, and internet forums, as well as sensor and

data.

ADiWa

The ADiWa project (Alliance Digital Product Flow), funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, makes the huge potential of information from the Internet of Things accessible for business-relevant workflows that can be strategically planned and manipulated. For the data-level connection of objects from the real world, results from available solutions and from the SemProM project shall be used. ADiWa focuses on business processes, which can be controlled and manipulated based on evaluated information from the real world.

SmartProducts

The SmartProducts project, funded by the European Union in the 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), develops the scientific and technological basis for building "smart products" with embedded proactive knowledge. Smart products help customers, designers and workers to deal with the ever-increasing complexity and variety of modern products. Such smart products leverage proactive knowledge to communicate and co-operate with humans, other products and the environment. The project thereby also focuses on small devices with limited storage capabilities and thus also requires efficient storage mechanisms. Moreover, the project aims to apply the results achieved by the incubator group for optimizing the data exchange between different smart products.

ToTEM

Tales of Things and electronic Memory (TOTeM) is a three-year collaborative project between five universities in the United Kingdom. A project aim is to explore the implications of Internet of Things technologies for the design of novel forms of augmented memory systems. While the potential implications of the Internet of Things for supply chain management and energy consumption have been acknowledged and discussed, its application for the engagement with personal and social memories has been rarely mentioned. More and more newly manufactured objects are often tagged at production and made traceable. Tales of Things provides a design space for exploring the value of a user-generated Internet of Old Things in which people's memories are linked to objects.

SmaProN

The project Smart Product Networks (SmaProN), funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, explores the dynamic linking of smart products to product bundles and product hierarchies, based on the developed Tip'n'Tell architecture (to integrate distributed product information) and the product description model SPDO (using semantic web-based representation languages).

RAN

The project RFID-Based Automotive Network (RAN), founded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, focuses on the development of a RFID-based hybrid control architecture and valuation methods for value added chains. Using the example of automobile industry they develop a combined data management that exchanges product-related information in a decentralized way using RFID-tags. In addition order-related information are stored in centralized manufacturer databases. Such an architecture allows for transport of product-related data at the location of the physical object and process related data in real-time via backend systems.

References

{{reflist Internet of things Semantic Web Research and development in Germany