HomeRules: A Tangible End-User Programming Interface for Smart Homes

A considerable amount of research has been carried out towards enabling average users to customize their smart homes through trigger-action ("if... then...") programming. However, inhabitants of such smart environments keep having problems understanding, administering, troubleshooting, and deriving benefits from the technologies employed in their homes. By synthesizing a broad body of research on end-user programming in smart homes with observations of commercial products and our own experiences, we provide a set of guidelines for designers of future interfaces and tools. Stemming from them, we present the design and the initial evaluation of HomeRules, a mobile and tangible application for end-user programming in smart homes

The M3 architecture for smart spaces: Overview of semantic information broker implementations

A smart space enhances a networked computing environment by enabling information sharing for a multitude of local digital devices and global resources from the Internet. We consider the M3 architecture (multi-device, multi-vendor, multi-domain) for creating smart spaces, which integrates technologies from two innovative concepts: the Semantic Web and the Internet of Things. Our research focus is on analyses of the capabilities of Smart-M3 platform, which provides software implementations for such a central element of an M3 smart space as Semantic Information Broker (SIB). The paper presents a state-of-the-art and contributes our systematized vision on the SIB design and implementation. The analyzed open source SIB implementations include the original Smart-M3 piglet-based SIB, its optimized descendant RedSIB, OSGi SIB for Java devices, pySIB for Python devices, and CuteSIB for Qt devices. We also analyze the design of proprietary or incomplete SIB implementations: RIBS for embedded devices and ADK SIB built upon the OSGi framework with integration in the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment. The theoretical study is augmented with experimental evaluation of available SIB implementations

The paradox of managing autonomy and control

Managers are frequently offered conflicting advice as to how to increase organisational success. One of these complex dilemmas is whether to grant employees autonomy, which may lead to self-management and empowerment or alternatively, exercise control which may enable managers to retain a well-focussed and goal driven workforce. This research focuses on the key factors that influence the various combinations of autonomy and control and their respective outcomes. Qualitative exploratory research was conducted using in-depth interviews with 16 leading South African management and Human Resource experts to uncover their insights regarding this dilemma. The findings suggest that combinations of autonomy and control can co-exist. Management are able to create environments with high levels of autonomy whilst simultaneously retaining high levels of monitoring and oversight when the management control is indirect. It was found that the seemingly contradictory practices of autonomy versus control are a paradox, not a dilemma. Seventeen factors were identified that influence the different levels of autonomy and control in organisations.http://www.journals.co.za/ej/ejour_busman.htmlam2013ff201

The paradox of managing autonomy and control: An exploratory study

Managers are frequently offered conflicting advice as to how to increase organisational success. One of these complex dilemmas is whether to grant employees autonomy, which may lead to self-management and empowerment or alternatively, exercise control which may enable managers to retain a well-focussed and goal driven workforce. This research focuses on the key factors that influence the various combinations of autonomy and control and their respective outcomes. Qualitative exploratory research was conducted using in-depth interviews with 16 leading South African management and Human Resource experts to uncover their insights regarding this dilemma. The findings suggest that combinations of autonomy and control can co-exist. Management are able to create environments with high levels of autonomy whilst simultaneously retaining high levels of monitoring and oversight when the management control is indirect. It was found that the seemingly contradictory practices of autonomy versus control are a paradox, not a dilemma. Seventeen factors were identified that influence the different levels of autonomy and control in organisations

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