Using mixed-reality to develop smart environments

Smart homes, smart cars, smart classrooms are now a reality as the world becomes increasingly interconnected by ubiquitous computing technology. The next step is to interconnect such environments, however there are a number of significant barriers to advancing research in this area, most notably the lack of available environments, standards and tools etc. A possible solution is the use of simulated spaces, nevertheless as realistic as strive to make them, they are, at best, only approximations to the real spaces, with important differences such as utilising idealised rather than noisy sensor data. In this respect, an improvement to simulation is emulation, which uses specially adapted physical components to imitate real systems and environments. In this paper we present our work-in-progress towards the creation of a development tool for intelligent environments based on the interconnection of simulated, emulated and real intelligent spaces using a distributed model of mixed reality. To do so, we propose the use of physical/virtual components (xReality objects) able to be combined through a 3D graphical user interface, sharing real-time information. We present three scenarios of interconnected real and emulated spaces, used for education, achieving integration between real and virtual worlds

An exploration of IoT platform development

IoT (Internet of Things) platforms are key enablers for smart city initiatives, targeting the improvement of citizens\u27 quality of life and economic growth. As IoT platforms are dynamic, proactive, and heterogeneous socio-technical artefacts, systematic approaches are required for their development. Limited surveys have exclusively explored how IoT platforms are developed and maintained from the perspective of information system development process lifecycle. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of 63 approaches. This is accomplished by proposing an evaluation framework as a cornerstone to highlight the characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of these approaches. The survey results not only provide insights of empirical findings, recommendations, and mechanisms for the development of quality aware IoT platforms, but also identify important issues and gaps that need to be addressed

Survey on Quality of Observation within Sensor Web Systems

The Sensor Web vision refers to the addition of a middleware layer between sensors and applications. To bridge the gap between these two layers, Sensor Web systems must deal with heterogeneous sources, which produce heterogeneous observations of disparate quality. Managing such diversity at the application level can be complex and requires high levels of expertise from application developers. Moreover, as an information-centric system, any Sensor Web should provide support for Quality of Observation (QoO) requirements. In practice, however, only few Sensor Webs provide satisfying QoO support and are able to deliver high-quality observations to end consumers in a specific manner. This survey aims to study why and how observation quality should be addressed in Sensor Webs. It proposes three original contributions. First, it provides important insights into quality dimensions and proposes to use the QoO notion to deal with information quality within Sensor Webs. Second, it proposes a QoO-oriented review of 29 Sensor Web solutions developed between 2003 and 2016, as well as a custom taxonomy to characterise some of their features from a QoO perspective. Finally, it draws four major requirements required to build future adaptive and QoO-aware Sensor Web solutions

Wireless Sensor Network Virtualization: A Survey

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the key components of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. They are now ubiquitous and used in a plurality of application domains. WSNs are still domain specific and usually deployed to support a specific application. However, as WSN nodes are becoming more and more powerful, it is getting more and more pertinent to research how multiple applications could share a very same WSN infrastructure. Virtualization is a technology that can potentially enable this sharing. This paper is a survey on WSN virtualization. It provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art and an in-depth discussion of the research issues. We introduce the basics of WSN virtualization and motivate its pertinence with carefully selected scenarios. Existing works are presented in detail and critically evaluated using a set of requirements derived from the scenarios. The pertinent research projects are also reviewed. Several research issues are also discussed with hints on how they could be tackled.Comment: Accepted for publication on 3rd March 2015 in forthcoming issue of IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials. This version has NOT been proof-read and may have some some inconsistencies. Please refer to final version published in IEEE Xplor

Autonomic Approach based on Semantics and Checkpointing for IoT System Management

Le résumé en français n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur.Le résumé en anglais n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur

Clouds of Things. Data protection and consumer law at the intersection of cloud computing and the Internet of Things in the United Kingdom

The article critically analyses the Internet of Things (IoT) and its intersection with cloud computing, the so-called Clouds of Things (CoT). ‘Things’ are understood as any physical entity capable of connectivity that has a direct interface to the physical world (i.e. a sensing and/or actuating capability). From another perspective (especially product liability), Things can be seen as an inextricable mixture of hardware, software, and services. Alongside a clarification of the essentials, the six factors of the CoT complexity are described and light is shed on the regulatory options (regulation, co-regulation, self-regulation, holistic approach, fragmentation). Focussing on the British legal systems, the article reports on the state of the art of CoT deployment in the United Kingdom and deals with some of the main technical and legal issues emerging from CoT. Particularly, the core will be data protection, privacy, and consumer law. Indeed, these themes are considered the most relevant by the regulators. By mastering the relevant legal issues and following the example of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea will be able to unleash its extraordinary potential as to the IoT, thus retaining its position as the smartest country in the world

Applications of ontology in the internet of things: A systematic analysis

Ontology has been increasingly implemented to facilitate the Internet of Things (IoT) activities, such as tracking and information discovery, storage, information exchange, and object addressing. However, a complete understanding of using ontology in the IoT mechanism remains lacking. The main goal of this research is to recognize the use of ontology in the IoT process and investigate the services of ontology in IoT activities. A systematic literature review (SLR) is conducted using predefined protocols to analyze the literature about the usage of ontologies in IoT. The following conclusions are obtained from the SLR. (1) Primary studies (i.e., selected 115 articles) have addressed the need to use ontologies in IoT for industries and the academe, especially to minimize interoperability and integration of IoT devices. (2) About 31.30% of extant literature discussed ontology development concerning the IoT interoperability issue, while IoT privacy and integration issues are partially discussed in the literature. (3) IoT styles of modeling ontologies are diverse, whereas 35.65% of total studies adopted the OWL style. (4) The 32 articles (i.e., 27.83% of the total studies) reused IoT ontologies to handle diverse IoT methodologies. (5) A total of 45 IoT ontologies are well acknowledged, but the IoT community has widely utilized none. An in-depth analysis of different IoT ontologies suggests that the existing ontologies are beneficial in designing new IoT ontology or achieving three main requirements of the IoT field: interoperability, integration, and privacy. This SLR is finalized by identifying numerous validity threats and future directions

Participative Urban Health and Healthy Aging in the Age of AI

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2022, held in Paris, France, in June 2022. The 15 full papers and 10 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. They cover topics such as design, development, deployment, and evaluation of AI for health, smart urban environments, assistive technologies, chronic disease management, and coaching and health telematics systems