Research Interests

Software Engineering Issues in Ubiquitous Computing

As part of the ubiquitous computing vision, more and more of our everyday world will eventually become pervaded by tiny, almost invisible computing devices. By equipping artifacts, rooms, and hallways with processing power, memory, and wireless communication capabilities, these objects and environments will be able to unobtrusively help us manage our everyday life. Without distracting us from our primary work, such enhancements should reside in the background or even become invisible to us, providing assistance without requiring users to learn additional skills or user interfaces.

The design and implementation of such heterogeneous environments and applications faces several challegenges, which need to be classified and examined in more detail to support software engineers building such applications. The projects and activities I am working on try to make a contribution towards generic systems and application architectures, patterns and software frameworks in the area of ubiquitous computing. I am especially interested in the application domain of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) applications and work on new abstractions, concepts, middleware and tools to facilitate the development of such applications.

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Current Projects & Activities

The Mobile and Ubiquitous Compting Lab (M-Lab)
Most UbiComp scenarios focus on applications centered around the home and the office (e.g. the smart fridge). The M-Lab in comparison concentrates on identifying and creating effective business applications for "smart things" in the area of Business-to-Business – from the idea through to the prototype. The M-Lab is a joint project of the University of St. Gallen and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH) and is directed by Prof. Elgar Fleisch and Prof. Friedemann Mattern. We are currently being sponsored by Novartis, Paul Hartmann, SAP, SAP SI, Swisscom, UBS and Volkswagen. As one of the team members my work is focussed on the development of UbiComp business applications and software infrastructures with SAP, SAP-SI and UBS. The work usually involves the development of business cases, feasibility studies and prototypes.

Auto-ID Lab Switzerland
Auto-ID Labs is a federation of research universities that has evolved from the Auto-ID Center, initially founded in 1999 to develop an open standard architecture for creating a seamless global network of physical objects. Funded in part by the EAN.UCC, governments, and industry, Auto-ID Labs is based at the Center's same six leading universities worldwide -- MIT, University of Cambridge, University of Adelaide, Keio University, Fudan University, and University of St. Gallen. Each with distinct interests and capabilities, but linked by the common vision of an "Internet of things," we continue to research and develop new technologies and applications for revolutionizing global commerce and providing previously un-realizable consumer benefits.

EPC Network Prototyping Platform
The Auto-ID Lab St. Gallen / Zurich is currently developing a prototyping platform for the EPC Network. The EPC Network is an infrastructure proposed by EPCglobal to facilitate the exchange of RFID-related data among supply change partners. It is our goal to provide a common codebase for the exploration of novel applications and educational projects at universities and research institutions. The source code will be made available under a free and open source software license.

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Past Projects & Activities

SmartBox Framework (Jun 2002 - Feb 2004)
In everyday life we are often faced with the need to monitor the contents of some kind of container, for example, the contents of a medicine cabinet or a tool box. To remove the annoyance associated by the user with this monitoring task several content monitoring applications (e.g. Smart Medicine Cabinet or Web Luggage) were developed that facilitate the monitoring by using automatic identification technologies, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

The objective of the project was to develop a generic software framework for this special class of ubiquitous computing applications. The SmartBox framework enables software developers to built SmartBox applications by combining and configuring the framework components. One research aspect of the project was the usage of generative programming techniques, such as graphical instantiation and configuration of software frameworks.

Research Project at SAP Corporate Research Center, Palo Alto (Feb/Mar 2003)
I worked as a visiting researcher at the SAP Corporate Research Center in Palo Alto in the Smart Item Research project.

Research Assistant at University of Konstanz (Apr 2000 - Spt 2001)
I worked as a research assistant at the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in the Software Research Lab. My area of work was Distributed Systems and Components and Mobile Computing.

Internship at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, with Prof. Narita (Nov/Dez 1999)
I worked at Waseda University in the group of Prof. Narita on BabelChat for Japanese students who study German or English examining the capabilities of displaying Chinese and Japanese characters, and other localization problems. This allows using BabelChat for different target languages and also different native languages.

Master Thesis: Structured Chatroom Usage in First-Year German Classes (Thesis Defense Nov 8th 1999)
As a requirement for the Master of Science in Computer Science I did my master thesis at Portland State University in cooperation with the Foreign Language Department. The purpose of the thesis study was to determine if first-year German students' writing ability increases by using a specialized, monitored Internet chatroom program, called BabelChat, compared to students using a similar paper activity.
Read the thesis or view the slides of the thesis defense.

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Short CV

Matthias Lampe graduated 1999 from Portland State University in Portland Oregon with a Master of Science in Computer Science. After an internship at Freightliner Software in Portland and a research internship at the Narita Labs at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, he went to the University of Konstanz, Germany, as a research assistant at the Software Research Lab with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Pree.

In December 2001 he joined the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Lab (M-Lab), a joint research project between the Distributed Systems Group at the Institute for Pervasive Computing, ETH Zürich, and the Institute of Technology Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. The M-Lab concentrates on identifying and creating effective business applications for smart things in the area of ubiquitous computing – from the idea through to the prototype.

Matthias' main research interests are software engineering issues in ubiquitous computing, especially applying generative programming and software frameworks to the design and implementation of ubicomp environment and applications.

Contact: lampe@inf.ethz.ch

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