A Role-Based Approach for Orchestrating Emergent Configurations in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned as a global network of connected things enabling ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. With estimations of billions of sensors and devices to be connected in the coming years, the IoT has been advocated as having a great potential to impact the way we live, but also how we work. However, the connectivity aspect in itself only accounts for the underlying M2M infrastructure. In order to properly support engineering IoT systems and applications, it is key to orchestrate heterogeneous 'things' in a seamless, adaptive and dynamic manner, such that the system can exhibit a goal-directed behaviour and take appropriate actions. Yet, this form of interaction between things needs to take a user-centric approach and by no means elude the users' requirements. To this end, contextualisation is an important feature of the system, allowing it to infer user activities and prompt the user with relevant information and interactions even in the absence of intentional commands. In this work we propose a role-based model for emergent configurations of connected systems as a means to model, manage, and reason about IoT systems including the user's interaction with them. We put a special focus on integrating the user perspective in order to guide the emergent configurations such that systems goals are aligned with the users' intentions. We discuss related scientific and technical challenges and provide several uses cases outlining the concept of emergent configurations.Comment: In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on the Internet of Agents @AAMAS201

Q-CAD: QoS and Context Aware Discovery framework for adaptive mobile systems

This paper presents Q-CALl, a resource discovery framework that enables pervasive computing applications to discover and select the resource(s) best satisfying the user needs, taking the current execution context and quality-ofservice (QoS} requirements into account. The available resources are first screened, so that only those suirable to the current execution context of the application will be considered; the shortlisted resources are then evaluated against the QoS needs of the application, and a binding is established to the best available

A Survey of Requirements Engineering Methods for Pervasive Services

Designing and deploying ubiquitous computing systems, such as those delivering large-scale mobile services, still requires large-scale investments in both development effort as well as infrastructure costs. Therefore, in order to develop the right system, the design process merits a thorough investigation of the wishes of the foreseen user base. Such investigations are studied in the area of requirements engineering (RE). In this report, we describe and compare three requirements engineering methods that belong to one specific form of RE, namely Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering. By mapping these methods to a common framework, we assess their applicability in the field of ubiquitous computing systems

Bringing context to intentional services

International audienceIn service-orientation, the notion of service is used in different views. On the one hand, several approaches have been proposing services that are able to adapt themselves according to the context in which they are used. On the other hand, some researches have been proposing to consider user's goals when proposing business services. We believe that these two views are complementary. A goal is only meaningful when considering the context in which it emerges, and conversely, context description is only meaningful when associated with a user goal. In order to take profit of both views, we propose to extend the OWL-S service description by including on it both the specification of context associated with the service and the goal that characterize it

The influence of context on intentional service

International audienceSeveral service-oriented approaches promote the intention concept as a way to describe and document services based on user's requirements. However, these approaches have two main limitations: (1) they don't take into account the fact that a user evolves in a context that can influence his intentions, and (2) at the software service level, the corresponding intentional description of these software services is missing. Such a description should be a high level one, which is not directly connected to the software services. The objective of the paper is to propose a semantic service description that considers both intention corresponding to the service and context in which it is supposed to emerge. In addition, the variability embedded in the intentional description can be also affected by the user context. Such influence is also considered in our proposition

A user-centric vision of service-oriented Pervasive Information Systems

International audienceInformation Systems (IS) have massively adopted service orientation by exposing their functionalities as services. With the evolution of mobile technologies (smartphones, 3G/4G networks, etc.), such systems are now confronted with a new pervasive environment for which they were not originally designed. Indeed, pervasive environments are characterized by their heterogeneity and dynamicity due to their evolving context and their need for transparency. None of these features are particularly considered in traditional IS designed for stable and controlled office environments. In our new vision for service- oriented Pervasive Information Systems (PIS), the user becomes the center of these systems. This paper presents a user-centric service-oriented vision for PIS based on a context-aware intentional approach, which considers the user intention and the context in which this intention arises as a guiding principle for service description, discovery, prediction and recommendation

6G White Paper on Machine Learning in Wireless Communication Networks

The focus of this white paper is on machine learning (ML) in wireless communications. 6G wireless communication networks will be the backbone of the digital transformation of societies by providing ubiquitous, reliable, and near-instant wireless connectivity for humans and machines. Recent advances in ML research has led enable a wide range of novel technologies such as self-driving vehicles and voice assistants. Such innovation is possible as a result of the availability of advanced ML models, large datasets, and high computational power. On the other hand, the ever-increasing demand for connectivity will require a lot of innovation in 6G wireless networks, and ML tools will play a major role in solving problems in the wireless domain. In this paper, we provide an overview of the vision of how ML will impact the wireless communication systems. We first give an overview of the ML methods that have the highest potential to be used in wireless networks. Then, we discuss the problems that can be solved by using ML in various layers of the network such as the physical layer, medium access layer, and application layer. Zero-touch optimization of wireless networks using ML is another interesting aspect that is discussed in this paper. Finally, at the end of each section, important research questions that the section aims to answer are presented

Enriched Semantic Service Description for Service Discovery: Bringing Context to Intentional Services

International audienceIn service-orientation, the notion of service is studied from different point of views. On the one hand, several approaches have been proposing services that are able to adapt themselves according to the context in which they are used. On the other hand, some researches have been proposing to consider user intentions when proposing business services. We believe that these two views are complementary. An intention is only meaningful when considering the context in which it emerges. Conversely, context description is only meaningful when associated with a user intention. In order to take profit of both views, we propose to extend the Ontology Web Language for services description (OWL-S). We include on it both the specification of context associated with the service and the intention that characterize it. This extended description is experimented in a semantic registry that we built for service discovery purposes. Such registry considers a matching algorithm, which exploits the extended description. Then, we present experimental results of this matching algorithm that demonstrates the advantages one may have on using the proposed descriptor. Thus, we propose a new vision of service orientation taking into account the notion of intention and context. This new vision is based on the extended semantic descriptor, which is necessary in order to enhance transparency of the system by proposing to the user the most appropriate service