Smart objects: Challenges for Semantic Web research

The increased availability and robustness of sensors, the wide-spread use of the internet as a communication environment and the intensified adoption of semantic technologies foster the vision of embedding intelligence in physical objects. The race of realizing this vision is pervasive to a variety of research fields, most notably ambient intelligence and semantic web, and leads to the proliferation of several overlapping definitions and terminologies: smart products, semantic devices, semantic gadgets - to which we collectively refer to as smart objects. What exactly are smart objects? And what are the research challenges in realizing them? We hereby explore the answers to these questions.