Virtual Objects on the Internet of Things

As technology advances more and more things began to appear in digital format, such as: tickets, agendas, books, electronic purses, etc. Internet of things encourages communication and integration of physical objects with each other and people to automate tasks and improve efficiency. Digital objects like physicists should be part of Internet of Things but the different structures of these digital objects causes in most cases these digital objects can interact only with specific applications that know the specific format. Based on the problems in this paper proposes a structure that supports the generic construction of virtual objects irrespective of their business logic and their integration with other applications and things

MOSDEN: An Internet of Things Middleware for Resource Constrained Mobile Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) is part of Future Internet and will comprise many billions of Internet Connected Objects (ICO) or `things' where things can sense, communicate, compute and potentially actuate as well as have intelligence, multi-modal interfaces, physical/ virtual identities and attributes. Collecting data from these objects is an important task as it allows software systems to understand the environment better. Many different hardware devices may involve in the process of collecting and uploading sensor data to the cloud where complex processing can occur. Further, we cannot expect all these objects to be connected to the computers due to technical and economical reasons. Therefore, we should be able to utilize resource constrained devices to collect data from these ICOs. On the other hand, it is critical to process the collected sensor data before sending them to the cloud to make sure the sustainability of the infrastructure due to energy constraints. This requires to move the sensor data processing tasks towards the resource constrained computational devices (e.g. mobile phones). In this paper, we propose Mobile Sensor Data Processing Engine (MOSDEN), an plug-in-based IoT middleware for mobile devices, that allows to collect and process sensor data without programming efforts. Our architecture also supports sensing as a service model. We present the results of the evaluations that demonstrate its suitability towards real world deployments. Our proposed middleware is built on Android platform

Game design in an Internet of Things

Whilst no consensus yet exists on how the Internet of Things will be realised, a global infrastructure of networked physical objects that are readable, recognizable, locatable, addressable and controllable is undoubtedly a compelling vision. Although many implementations of the Internet of Things have presented these objects in a largely ambient sensing role, or providing some form of remote access/control, in this paper we consider the emerging convergence between games and the Internet of Things. This can be seen in a growing number of games that use objects as physical game pieces to enhance the players’ interaction with virtual games. These hybrid physical/digital objects present game designers with number of interesting challenges as they i) blur the boundaries between toys and games; ii) provide opportunities for freeform physical play outside the virtual game; and iii) create new requirements for interaction design, in that they utilise design techniques from both product design and computer interface design. Whilst in the past the manufacturing costs of such game objects would preclude their use within games from small independent games developers, the advent of low cost 3D printing and open software and hardware platforms, which are the enablers of the Internet of Things, means this is no longer the case. However, in order to maximise this opportunity game designers will need to develop new approaches to the design of their games and in this paper we highlight the design sensibilities required if they are to combine the digital and physical affordances within the design of such objects to produce good player experiences

Internet of things virtual networks: bringing network virtualization to resource-constrained devices

Networks of smart resource-constrained objects, such as sensors and actuators, can support a wide range of application domains. In most cases these networks were proprietary and stand-alone. More recently, many efforts have been undertaken to connect these networks to the Internet using standard protocols. Current solutions that integrate smart resource-constrained objects into the Internet are mostly gateway-based. In these solutions, security, firewalling, protocol translations and intelligence are implemented by gateways at the border of the Internet and the resource-constrained networks. In this paper, we introduce a complementary approach to facilitate the realization of what is called the Internet of Things. Our approach focuses on the objects, both resource-constrained and non-constrained, that need to cooperate by integrating them into a secured virtual network, named an Internet of Things Virtual Network or IoT-VN. Inside this IoT-VN full end-to-end communication can take place through the use of protocols that take the limitations of the most resource-constrained devices into account. We describe how this concept maps to several generic use cases and, as such, can constitute a valid alternative approach for supporting selected applications. A first implementation demonstrating the key concepts of this approach is described. It illustrates the feasibility of integrating resource-constrained devices into virtual networks, but also reveals open challenges

Keynote talk: Augmented, adaptive, accessible, and inclusive things

In this new age of the Internet of Things (IoT) people and things are increasingly immersed in a computing environment that is aimed to simplify and improve daily activities. The Web of Things (WoT) is near to become a W3C Recommendation with the aim to support semantic interoperability across IoT platforms by providing a common interaction model independent of the underlying protocols. In this talk, I will illustrate the main principles of the WoT paradigm and then I will discuss the issue of Accessibility. Following on from the WoT concept of Things as virtual representations of physical digital things and also non-digital things, I will introduce an approach where we envision an Adaptive Web of Things as a mean to increase accessibility and usability of real world objects. The idea is that through the virtualization of physical objects, even objects which are not natively accessible can be augmented to become accessible and inclusive if proper adaptations are performed in order to fit the user\u2019s needs

Internet of Things Virtual Networks: Bringing Network Virtualization to Resource-Constrained Devices

Networks of smart resource-constrained objects, such as sensors and actuators, can support a wide range of application domains. In most cases these networks were proprietary and stand-alone. More recently, many efforts have been undertaken to connect these networks to the Internet using standard protocols. Current solutions that integrate smart resource-constrained objects into the Internet are mostly gateway-based. In these solutions, security, firewalling, protocol translations and intelligence are implemented by gateways at the border of the Internet and the resource-constrained networks. In this paper, we introduce a complementary approach to facilitate the realization of what is called the Internet of Things. Our approach focuses on the objects, both resource-constrained and non-constrained, that need to cooperate by integrating them into a secured virtual network, named an Internet of Things Virtual Network or IoT-VN. Inside this IoT-VN full end-to-end communication can take place through the use of protocols that take the limitations of the most resource-constrained devices into account. We describe how this concept maps to several generic use cases and, as such, can constitute a valid alternative approach for supporting selected applications. A first implementation demonstrating the key concepts of this approach is described. It illustrates the feasibility of integrating resource-constrained devices into virtual networks, but also reveals open challenges.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n°258885 (SPITFIRE project), from the IBBT ICON project GreenWeCan, and a VLIR PhD scholarship to Isam Ishaq

Protocol and Architecture to Bring Things into Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept proposes that everyday objects are globally accessible from the Internet and integrate into new services having a remarkable impact on our society. Opposite to Internet world, things usually belong to resource-challenged environmentswhere energy, data throughput, and computing resources are scarce. Building upon existing standards in the field such as IEEE1451 and ZigBee and rooted in context semantics, this paper proposes CTP (Communication Things Protocol) as a protocol specification to allow interoperability among things with different communication standards as well as simplicity and functionality to build IoT systems. Also, this paper proposes the use of the IoT gateway as a fundamental component in IoT architectures to provide seamless connectivity and interoperability among things and connect two different worlds to build the IoT: the Things world and the Internet world. Both CTP and IoT gateway constitute a middleware content-centric architecture presented as the mechanism to achieve a balance between the intrinsic limitations of things in the physical world and what is required fromthem in the virtual world. Said middleware content-centric architecture is implemented within the frame of two European projects targeting smart environments and proving said CTP’s objectives in real scenarios

A Novel Application of the 3D VirCA Environment: Modeling a Standard Ethological Test of Dog-Human Interactions

The concept of ‘Future Internet’, ‘Internet of Things’ and ‘3D Internet’ opens a novel way for modeling ethological tests by rebuilding models of human-animal interaction in an augmented environment as an interactive mixture of virtual actors and real human observers. On the one hand these experiments can serve as a proof of concept, as a kind of experimental validation of formal ethological models, but on the other hand they can also serve as examples for the ways a human can communicate with things (i.e., with everyday objects) in a virtual environment (e.g. on the Internet). These kinds of experiments can also support Cognitive Infocommunication related research, the field that investigates how a human can co-evolve with artificially cognitive systems through infocommunications devices. The goal of the paper is to introduce an example for such an ethological test system, a possible way for embedding a prototype ethological model described as a fuzzy automaton in MATLAB to the 3D VirCA collaborative augmented reality environment. Some details of the applied ethological experiment paradigm developed for studying the dog-owner relationship in a standard laboratory procedure, as a demonstrative example for ethological model implementation, will also be discussed briefly in this paper

Wireless Sensor networks and the Internet of Things

It is estimated that mobile internet devices that can act as sensors will outnumber humans this year (2013), and by 2015, there will be about 15 billion internet-connected devices. Related applications are thriving in commercial, civic, and scientific operations that involve sensors, web, and services, leading by both academic societies and industry companies. It is commonly accepted that the next generation of internet is becoming the “Internet of Things (IoT)” which is a worldwide network of interconnected objects and their virtual representations uniquely addressable based on standard communication protocols. Identified by a unique address, any object including computers, mobile phones, RFID tagged devices, and especially Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) will be able to dynamically join the network, collaborate, and cooperate efficiently to achieve different tasks. With all these objects in the world equipped with tiny identifying devices, daily life on earth would undergo a big transformation