A Distributed Sensor Data Search Platform for Internet of Things Environments

Recently, the number of devices has grown increasingly and it is hoped that, between 2015 and 2016, 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet and this market will move around 91.5 billion dollars. The Internet of Things (IoT) is composed of small sensors and actuators embedded in objects with Internet access and will play a key role in solving many challenges faced in today's society. However, the real capacity of IoT concepts is constrained as the current sensor networks usually do not exchange information with other sources. In this paper, we propose the Visual Search for Internet of Things (ViSIoT) platform to help technical and non-technical users to discover and use sensors as a service for different application purposes. As a proof of concept, a real case study is used to generate weather condition reports to support rheumatism patients. This case study was executed in a working prototype and a performance evaluation is presented.Comment: International Journal of Services Computing (ISSN 2330-4472) Vol. 4, No.1, January - March, 201

Design and evaluation case study: evaluating the kinect device in the task of natural interaction in a visualization system

We verify the hypothesis that Microsoft’s Kinect device is tailored for defining more efficient interaction compared to the commodity mouse device in the context of information visualization. For this goal, we used Kinect during interaction design and evaluation considering an application on information visualization (over agrometeorological, cars, and flowers datasets). The devices were tested over a visualization technique based on clouds of points (multidimensional projection) that can be manipulated by rotation, scaling, and translation. The design was carried according to technique Participatory Design (ISO 13407) and the evaluation answered to a vast set of Usability Tests. In the tests, the users reported high satisfaction scores (easiness and preference) but, also, they signed out with low efficiency scores (time and precision). In the specific context of a multidimensional-projection visualization, our conclusion is that, in respect to user acceptance, Kinect is a device adequate for natural interaction; but, for desktop-based production, it still cannot compete with the traditional long-term mouse design.Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq 560104/2010-3)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP 2011/13724-1)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes

A distributed sensor data search platform for Internet of Things environments

Recently, the number of devices has grown increasingly and it is hoped that, between 2015 and 2016, 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet and this market will move around 91.5 billion dollars. The Internet of Things (IoT) is composed of small sensors and actuators embedded in objects with Internet access and will play a key role in solving many challenges faced in today's society. However, the real capacity of IoT concepts is constrained as the current sensor networks usually do not exchange information with other sources. In this paper, we propose the Visual Search for Internet of Things (ViSIoT) platform to help technical and non-technical users to discover and use sensors as a service for different application purposes. As a proof of concept, a real case study is used to generate weather condition reports to support rheumatism patients. This case study was executed in a working prototype and a performance evaluation is presented

Development of mechanisms to ease the study and selection of distributed file storage techniques in muticloud computing envieronments

O armazenamento de arquivos e dados está seguindo um paradigma de mudança para a Internet utilizando a nuvem. Porém, este processo ainda gera algumas dúvidas em relação à segurança e a disponibilidade dos arquivos. Este projeto de mestrado propõe criar uma camada de abstração entre diversos servidores de armazenamento público, sem infraestrutura adicional, e possibilitar ao usuário comum um método de armazenamento distribuído, com maior redundância e segurança se comparada às abordagens atuais de armazenamento. Outro aspecto importante deste projeto foi criar uma ferramenta que seja flexível o suficiente para ser fácil de ser utilizada por outros pesquisadores para avaliar novas técnicas de armazenamento e seleção automática de estratégias de dispersão. Este projeto foi feito utilizando conceitos de dispersão de arquivos e de mecanismos de seleção automática utilizando atributos de QoS. A primeira contribuição foi um protótipo denominado FlexSky que implementa os mecanismos de dispersão utilizados. Devido a quantidade grande de parâmetros para se escolher no processo de dispersão, foi necessário desenvolver um mecanismo que reduzisse a quantidade de parâmetros para que um usuário comum consiga utilizar a ferramenta. Este mecanismo foi a segunda contribuição (MSSF), no qual foi criado um modelo baseado em otimização linear inteira para realizar a seleção automática de estratégias de armazenamento multinuvem. Para se avaliar as contribuições foram propostos testes qualitativos de usabilidade da ferramenta e teste quantitativos de desempenho dos processos da ferramenta. Os resultados sugerem que a ferramenta FlexSky facilitou o estudo destes mecanismos de dispersão e possibilita uma avaliação de desempenho deles. Jà o MSSF consegue a partir de atributos de QoS escolher uma estratégia ótima que maximize os parâmetros desejados do processo de dispersão para diversos casos considerando diferentes quantidades de módulos e de provedores.Data and file storage is moving to the Internet using the cloud approach. However, this process still creates issues related to security and availability. This project creates an abstraction layer among several public storage servers, without the need for additional infrastructure, enabling regular users to use a distributed storage method with increased redundancy and security comparing to current techniques. Another important aspect of this project was to create a tool flexible enough to be easy for other researchers to evaluate new dispersal techniques. The first contribution was a prototype named FlexSky, which implements the studied dispersal mechanisms. Due to the big amount of parameters to choose from during the dispersal process, it was needed to develop a mechanism to reduce the amount of user input parameters so a regular user can use the tool. This mechanism was the second contribution (MSSF) and it is composed of a model based on integer linear optimization that automatically selects multicloud dispersal strategies. The evaluation phase was composed of qualitative usability tests and quantitative performance tests. The results suggests that the FlexSky tool made the study of dispersal mechanisms easier and enables to evaluate their performance. MSSF results shown that using QoS attributes, MSSF can choose an optimal dispersal strategy which maximizes and minimizes the required QoS attributes considering several modules and providers