842 research outputs found
When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things
With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost
wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT)
approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and
facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the
physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both
digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and
services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these
applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge
centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile
environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also
noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and
state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives,
including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event
processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management
are also discussed
User Interface Plasticity: Model Driven Engineering to the Limit!
Keynote paper.International audienceTen years ago, I introduced the notion of user interface plasticity to denote the capacity of user interfaces to adapt, or to be adapted, to the context of use while preserving usability. The Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach, which was used for user interface generation since the early eighties in HCI, has recently been revived to address this complex problem. Although MDE has resulted in interesting and convincing results for conventional WIMP user interfaces, it has not fully demonstrated its theoretical promises yet. In this paper, we discuss how to push MDE to the limit in order to reconcile high-level modeling techniques with low-level programming in order to go beyond WIMP user interfaces
Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey
As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors
deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown
a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has
predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These
sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to
add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling,
reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays
critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be
successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context
awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by
introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning.
Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a
subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial
solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the
last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our
evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some
possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of
techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and
middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only
to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate
their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201
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
From data to applications in the Internet of Things
Con la crescita in complessità delle infrastrutture IT e la pervasivitÃ
degli scenari di Internet of Things (IoT) emerge il bisogno
di nuovi modelli computazionali basati su entità autonome capaci di portare a termine obiettivi
di alto livello interagendo tra loro grazie al supporto di infrastrutture come il Fog Computing,
per la vicinanza alle sorgenti dei dati, e del Cloud Computing per offrire servizi
analitici complessi di back-end in grado di fornire risultati per milioni di utenti.
Questi nuovi scenarii portano a ripensare il modo in cui il software viene progettato
e sviluppato in una prospettiva agile. Le attività dei team di sviluppatori (Dev)
dovrebbero essere strettamente legate alle attività dei team che supportano
il Cloud (Ops) secondo nuove metodologie oggi note come DevOps.
Tuttavia, data la mancanza di astrazioni adeguata a livello di linguaggio di programmazione,
gli sviluppatori IoT sono spesso indotti a seguire approcci di sviluppo bottom-up che spesso
risulta non adeguato ad affrontare la compessità delle applicazione del settore e
l'eterogeneità dei compomenti software che le formano.
Poichè le applicazioni monolitiche del passato appaiono difficilmente scalabili
e gestibili in un ambiente Cloud con molteplici utenti,
molti ritengono necessaria l'adozione di un nuovo stile architetturale,
in cui un'applicazione dovrebbe essere vista come una composizione di micro-servizi,
ciascuno dedicato a uno specifica funzionalità applicativa e ciascuno sotto la
responsabilità di un piccolo team di sviluppatori, dall'analisi del problema
al deployment e al management.
Poichè al momento non si è ancora giunti a una definizione univoca
e condivisa dei microservices e di altri concetti che emergono da IoT e dal Cloud,
nè tantomento alla definzione di linguaggi sepcializzati per questo settore,
la definzione di metamodelli
custom associati alla produzione automatica del software di raccordo con
le infrastrutture potrebbe aiutare un team di sviluppo ad elevare il livello di
astrazione, incapsulando in una software factory aziendale i dettagli implementativi.
Grazie a sistemi di produzione del sofware basati sul Model Driven Software Development (MDSD),
l'approccio top-down attualmente carente può essere recuperato, permettendo
di focalizzare l'attenzione sulla business logic delle applicazioni.
Nella tesi viene
mostrato un esempio di questo possibile approccio, partendo dall'idea che
un'applicazione IoT sia in primo luogo un sistema software distribuito in cui
l'interazione tra componenti attivi (modellati come attori)
gioca un ruolo fondamentale
Ubiquitous computing and natural interfaces for environmental information
Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em
Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe next computing revolution‘s objective is to embed every street, building, room and object with computational power. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) will allow every object to receive and transmit information, sense its surroundings and act accordingly, be located from anywhere in the world, connect every person. Everyone will have the possibility to access information, despite their age, computer knowledge, literacy or physical impairment. It will impact the world in a profound way, empowering mankind, improving the environment, but will also create new challenges that our society, economy, health and global environment will have to overcome. Negative impacts have to be identified and dealt with in advance. Despite these concerns, environmental studies have been mostly absent from discussions on the new paradigm.
This thesis seeks to examine ubiquitous computing, its technological emergence, raise awareness towards future impacts and explore the design of new interfaces and rich interaction modes. Environmental information is approached as an area which may greatly benefit from ubicomp as a way to gather, treat and disseminate it, simultaneously complying with the Aarhus convention. In an educational context, new media are poised to revolutionize the way we perceive, learn and interact with environmental information. cUbiq is presented as a natural interface to access that information
A Network of One’s Own: Struggles to Domesticate the Internet
This thesis is a design research practice-led inquiry into the domesticated Internet. It first seeks to complicate simplistic corporate and academic visions by naming some of the struggles it encounters – not least to assert a private home and network of one's own. It is argued that a century of domestic technologies has emphasised invisibility, ubiquity, and automation in ways that obscure a network of exploited people and finite resources. Furthermore, these technological ambitions are met through machine surveillance, in ways newly enabled by the domesticated Internet, that threaten the privacy of the home.
In response, this thesis seeks some practical ways to design alternatives that assert a network of one's own and makes the work it implicates visible. The methodological approach is broadly Research Through Design supplemented by a practice described as designerly hacking through which hidden technical potential is revealed and given meaning. Two empirical studies are described that together make an account of the technical possibility and social reality of the networked home: an autobiographical technical exploration of the author's home and network with the making of hacks and Research Products privately and in public; and a cultural probe engagement with six rented households surfacing contemporary accounts of the domesticated Internet and in particular the challenges and opportunities of wireless networking. Together this yields a series of technical and social insights for design and two forms are offered to communicate these: a framework for understanding change in the networked home (The Stuff of Home) and a set of 30 design patterns for a network of one's own; each invites different analyses. The conclusion then draws together the multiple threads developed through this thesis and offers some reflection on the complexity of doing contemporary technical design work
Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review
Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today.
Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work
closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue
situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain,
and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely
raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint.
Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and
shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically
survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for
domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal
welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether
animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated
in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is
used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not
isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote
data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart
technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well
as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to
motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication
management as well as policy for animal welfare
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