Middleware platform for distributed applications incorporating robots, sensors and the cloud

Cyber-physical systems in the factory of the future will consist of cloud-hosted software governing an agile production process executed by autonomous mobile robots and controlled by analyzing the data from a vast number of sensors. CPSs thus operate on a distributed production floor infrastructure and the set-up continuously changes with each new manufacturing task. In this paper, we present our OSGibased middleware that abstracts the deployment of servicebased CPS software components on the underlying distributed platform comprising robots, actuators, sensors and the cloud. Moreover, our middleware provides specific support to develop components based on artificial neural networks, a technique that recently became very popular for sensor data analytics and robot actuation. We demonstrate a system where a robot takes actions based on the input from sensors in its vicinity

User-hosted SOA infrastructure over XMPP

The principles of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) argue for the design of systems composed of re-usable coarse-grained software components which consume and provide services in a service ecosystem. Despite being commonly mentioned in an enterprise context, these are very present in the web - most web applications expose some of their data via APIs, which are then used by other web and mobile applications. The proliferation of user-owned connected devices has brought value to mobile application developers which can make use of locally-available sensors and capabilities and send their information to the web, centralizing the data flows. A more distributed approach would have device capabilities offered directly on the network as services hosted by the user. These pervasive user-hosted services could be made discoverable and available over a public federated service infrastructure. The infrastructure would provide transport over an identity layer, where endpoints are addressed by their identities instead of network identifiers, and on top of which services can be exposed to be consumed by trusted friends or anonymous users, as the hosting user prefers. The work presented in this paper explores the possibility of implementing a distributed social SOA over Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). It differs from traditional SOA because it attempts to counter relative centralization of the web, in favour of a fully-distributed service ecosystem where each peer can behave both as service consumer and provider. Finally, an analysis is done on how suitable XMPP is to serve as a base protocol for such infrastructure

Developing Function Blocks for Collecting Data and Integrating Legacy Systems in Manufacturing and Logistics

Manufacturing enterprises have been increasingly technology-driven during recent decades. Industry 4.0 promotes smart manufacturing and intelligent systems which can seamlessly communicate with each other and enable decentralized decision-making by monitoring the factory-floor process. This calls for the Information Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure to be effectively incorporated with the industries. Industry 4.0 presents the concept of “smart factory” in which Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) fuses the physical systems with the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling higher levels of interoperability and Information transparency. However, manufacturing enterprises in the recent past have characterized their efficiency by how prominently and adequately they adopt and utilize their IT solutions and how feasible those solutions are to integrate with their legacy systems. Enterprise Integration, in particular, has become more challenging owing to the highly dynamic manufacturing environment. System integration has become an indispensable field to be addressed , especially when the industry adopts connected enterprise paradigm. Connected enterprise systems enable industries to leverage their technologies to collect, analyze and refine their data to help them make better business decisions. In a recent trend, IT systems in manufacturing are majorly driven towards the cloud and collaborative solutions as a result of the exponential growth of internet technologies and their ability to adapt to rapid changes in the market. Collaborative frameworks are widely preferred by the enterprises as they enable better communication, increases productivity and improve business execution. They are critical for a business to function with agility in this fast pacing and changing world. One such platform is provided by the Cloud Collaborative Manufacturing Networks (C2NET) project that optimizes the supply network of manufacturing and logistics assets. This thesis research proposes an approach to integrate heterogeneous legacy systems by showcasing an implementation which favors robust data collection. This implementation is made possible by adopting Production Logistics and Sustainability Cockpit (PLANTCockpit) Open Source solution, which functions as a viable interface for real-time data collection and data-logistics thus enhancing the process optimization of the manufacturing enterprise. PLANTCockpit OS is a modular solution which enables to build and deploy flexible loosely coupled entities known as Function Blocks (FBs) that facilitate seamless legacy system integration and robust information exchange between the systems. This thesis also fulfills the C2NET project requirement to define the possibility of effective integration of PLANTCockpit OS in the C2NET reference architecture

On the Development of Real-Time Multi-User Web Applications

With the increasing popularity of the World Wide Web (WWW), end-user applications are moving from desktop to the browser. Web applications have several benefits over native applications: web applications have worldwide availability for any browsing capable device without prior installations. In addition, web applications are easy to distribute and update – once deployed, a web application is instantly available worldwide and further modifications to the system are propagated automatically. The current trend seems to be that web applications are offering collaboration, social connections, and user to user interactions as key features. This can be seen, for example, in the popularity of Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Despite all the benefits of the Web, web applications are suffering from the shortcomings in underlying technologies. The Web is strongly rooted in information sharing, and the current technical solutions isolate users rather than make them aware of each other. Since the data cannot be pushed from server to a client, the client must always initiate the communication, which causes a considerable impediment for real-time multi-user web applications, like online chats that have several concurrent users continuously interacting with each other. For such systems, it would be practical if the server could push messages to clients. As a further obstacle, most web application frameworks isolate users in their private sessions that only interact indirectly via the database. This main contribution of this thesis is to make the development of real-time multi-user web applications easier. We elaborate on the difficulties in implementation and design and introduce methods of circumventing them. The main argument is that the Web, the available technology stack, and the frameworks are difficult to use for developing real-time multi-user web applications. However, by selecting the proper approach, the problems can be solved. In this thesis, we have divided the frameworks in groups based on how they make separation of concerns between the client and the server. The separation is important as it determines the thickness of the client and thus where to locate the business logic and the application state. In addition, it has effect on the synchronization of the state between the clients. To collect experiences and for backing up our assumptions, we have implemented real-time multi-user web applications for several frameworks and studied how the frameworks should be used for enabling real-time multi-user application development

Architecting Social Internet of Things

In the new era of the Internet of Things (IoT), most of the devices we interact with daily are connected to the Internet. From tiny sensors, lamps, home appliances, home security systems and health-care devices, to complex heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems at home, myriad devices have network connectivity and provide smart applications. The Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is a new paradigm where IoT merges with social networks, allowing people and connected devices as well as the devices themselves to interact within a social network framework to support a new social navigation. Smart homes is one of the domains that can fully leverage this new paradigm, which will enable people and devices, even in different homes, to actively and mostly automatically collaborate to discover and share new information and services. Unfortunately the heterogeneous nature of the devices around the home prohibits seamless communication in the (S)IoT. Furthermore, the state-of-the-art solutions in smart homes offer little, if any, support for collaborating users and devices. This dissertation describes a new, scalable approach to connect, interact and share useful information through devices and users with common interests. The dissertation has three contributions. First, it proposes a holistic and extensible smart home gateway architecture that seamlessly integrates heterogeneous protocol-- and vendor-- specific devices and services and provides fine-grained access controls. Second, it defines an interoperable, scalable and extensible software architecture for a novel cloud-based collaboration framework for a large number of devices and users in many different smart homes. Third, it provides a reasoning framework to enable automated decisions based on the discovered information and knowledge created and shared by end users. The developed architecture and solutions are implemented in real systems, which integrate with many different devices from different manufacturers and run multiple categories of rules created by end users. The architectural evaluation results show the developed systems are interoperable, scalable and extensible

Intermediate CONNECT Architecture

Interoperability remains a fundamental challenge when connecting heterogeneous systems which encounter and spontaneously communicate with one another in pervasive computing environments. This challenge is exasperated by the highly heterogeneous technologies employed by each of the interacting parties, i.e., in terms of hardware, operating system, middleware protocols, and application protocols. The key aim of the CONNECT project is to drop this heterogeneity barrier and achieve universal interoperability. Here we report on the activities of WP1 into developing the CONNECT architecture that will underpin this solution. In this respect, we present the following key contributions from the second year. Firstly, the intermediary CONNECT architecture that presents a more concrete view of the technologies and principles employed to enable interoperability between heterogeneous networked systems. Secondly, the design and implementation of the discovery enabler with emphasis on the approaches taken to match compatible networked systems. Thirdly, the realisation of CONNECTors that can be deployed in the environment; we provide domain specific language solutions to generate and translate between middleware protocols. Fourthly, we highlight the role of ontologies within CONNECT and demonstrate how ontologies crosscut all functionality within the CONNECT architecture