The speed with which digital communications is entering our personal lives is seen in the growth of Internet activity and the growth of mobile phone usage. At the same time, Internet activity is making profound changes to commercial activity across the globe.

This is only the beginning. The next 'big thing' will be ICT (Information and Communication Technology) at the device level.

Computers have ICT because information handling and communications is what essential to their use. But why should other equipment need ICT; for example - why might a washing machine need it?

For several reasons. Firstly, the machine is able to monitor its own performance ensuring that the least amount of soap, water and power is consumed. By keeping a tally of each wash (timed and dated) with the cost of each process, the user is helped to control the running costs. Equally important, this 'ICT washing device' will be instrumented to detect impending failures (leaks, bearing noise etc.) and can be enabled to call for maintenance as required. Soaps can be delivered to the door as required by an automatic soap dispenser (a new market opportunity!) in the same way. So the cost and 'readiness to wash' get better and better. At the same time, manufacturers keep in touch with their products to ensure more effective designs in the future.

The same will apply to every electrical device. Those that are not electrical, the garden mower for example, will have monitoring added. In the case of the mower, local guidance systems might steer the machine over the lawn and to the compost heap for automatic emptying etc.

At this time, computers, PDAs and mobile phones have one style of interface developed for one relatively small group of users, the humans. But in the future, they will be vastly outnumbered by Smart devices. The devices will need their own 'shorthand' style to efficiently communicate among themselves. But of course, their communications will need to be interpreted by humans in order to install, locate and build systems.

This human/device interface problem has not yet been resolved.

In the course of our work with environmental sensors, Hymetrics has developed 'Device Object Technology' which focuses on the representation of device interfaces, a) to other devices and b) to the human mind. DOT provides an efficient framework for identification of and Interoperability across the full spectrum of Smart devices types. DOT has been used by Hymetrics to link advanced sensors and actuators efficiently into device systems.