Interacting with the Web of Things

S2O: A smart objects orchestrator framework based on the web of things

The key concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is linking physical smart things to the Internet to make them active participants on the Internet. The Web of Things (WoT) uses the World Wide Web platform and its associated technologies as a framework to realize IoT. Inspired by WoT, we propose a new paradigm, the Virtual Environment of Things (VEoT), to integrate real-world smart things and virtual-world avatars/objects in a computer generated virtual environment so that entities in either worlds can interact with one another in a real-time manner. To prove the VEoT concept, we design a hierarchical smart gateway, REX (Resources Exchange), to embody smart things as Restful resources that can be combined with networked virtual environments (NVEs) to realize the integration and the interaction of the virtual environments and the real world. In addition, we implement a VEoT-based NVE, called X-Campus, for guiding visitors to navigate a building of National Central University to verify the feasibility of VEoT. This implementation shows the VEoT framework works properly.

With the great impact of the advancement in the hardware field, major efforts have been made to create large-scale networks of IoT devices (e.g., embedded systems, sensors, and actuators) that can interact with each other as well as their surrounding environments. However, most of the deployments are based on proprietary and tightly-coupled systems. To overwhelm the application layer interoperability issues, the Web of Things (WoT) paradigm aims at making smart things an integral part of the Web and thus, enabling them to communicate through Web standards/protocols. Therefore, applications/services making use of smart things become easier to conceive by means of Web standards/protocols (e.g., HTTP, Websockets). This paper proposes an approach enabling the smart devices to join the Web using features provided by the Stack4Things (S4T) OpenStack-based middleware. Thereby, user agents, typically, Web browsers and/or smart devices can make use of the resources of (other) IoT devices using globally resolvable Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) regardless of their underlying used protocol stacks.

This paper reports on the early-stage development of an analytics framework to support the semantic integration of dynamic surveillance data across multiple scales to inform decision making for malaria eradication. We propose using the Semantic Web of Things (SWoT), a combination of Internet of Things (IoT) and semantic web technologies, to support the evolution and integration of dynamic malaria data sources and improve interoperability between different datasets generated through relevant IoT assets (e.g. computers, sensors, persons, and other smart objects and devices).

Policy-based management provides Web of Things (WoT) system with the ability to describe its requirements and functionality, so that desired service goals are achieved. This requires WoT system provisioning smart things which can work under the guidance of policies. However, policy makers with less awareness of specific safety constraints of smart things may create harmful policies, which make smart things work in unexpected situations and cause safety issues. From the view of smart things, the notion of safety issues is two-fold: First, devices themselves work in an unsound and unsecure state, second, devices are influenced by other devices with same or contradict function. We identify these safety issues as device-centric modality conflicts and interest conflicts, and then define a specific conflict detection approach for these conflicts. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of the conflict detection approach to detect device-centric conflicts in two cases. Finally, we conduct three experiments to evaluate the accuracy and time performance of the detection approach.

PurposeDrawing on the personalization–privacy paradox and guided by means–end analysis, this study explores how consumers balance their concerns for privacy and the benefits of smart home device personalization and the role that trust plays in the process. More specifically, this study aims to investigate how perceptions of smart device personalization and privacy concerns are shaped by consumers’ experiences and the role of trust in the deliberation process.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews were conducted across diverse demographic groups of smart device users to shed light on the balancing act between personalization and privacy.FindingsThe study found that product experience, ownership type, perceived value of convenience and control and quality of life via “smart things” are key motivators for product usage. The benefits of tailored recommendations and high relevance are balanced against the risks of echo chamber effects and loss of control. The results also show the role of active involvement in the privacy calculus and trust level. The study points to the significance of an ecosystem-based service/business model in gaining consumer confidence when they balance between personalization and privacy.Originality/valueAlthough many studies have explored trust, privacy concerns and personalization in an artificial intelligence (AI)-related context, few have addressed trust in the context of both smart devices and the personalization–privacy paradox. As such, this study adds to the existing literature by incorporating the concept of trust and addressing both privacy concerns and personalization in the AI context.

In recent times, a massive amount of smart devices or objects are connected that enhances the scale of the digital world. These smart objects are referred as “things” or physical devices that have the potential to sense the real-world physical objects, collect the data, and network with others. The objects are connected through the internet, which crafts the terminology of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has been developed and become the center of consideration due to the novelty of embedded device and a rapid enhancement in its number. This increase is resulting in the creative applications of smart environments. Smart transportation is a central stake for the quality of life of citizens in smart environment. Smart transportation involves the use of devices and sensors in the control system of vehicle; for example navigation system of cars, traffic signal management system, number recognition system and speed monitoring system. In this research article, we propose architecture for smart transportation system using Big Data analytics, in order to achieve real time processing and facilitate a friendly communication in the environment of IoT based smart transportation. The proposed architecture is a 3-phase scheme which is responsible for the organization and management of Big Data, real-time processing of Big Data and service management. The proposed architecture is a generic solution for the smart transportation planning using real time Big Data processing. The proposed scheme is realized using Spark over single node Hadoop setup with various input libraries. A huge amount of data from different authentic and reliable sources is measured to validate the proposed architecture. In addition, the effectiveness of proposed scheme also highlighted with regard to throughput.

Social needs for ubiquitous computing environment, in which anyone can easily, conveniently and safely receive IT service through computer and network anywhere, anytime increase, as IT technology develops. This paper proposes the Web of Things (WoT) platform and relevant technology to build ubiquitous computing environment. The proposed WoT platform enables to reduce expenses to build ubiquitous computing environment through the standardization of access and control mechanism of various smart things.

Due to the recent enriched micro-level hardware and advanced computer software technology, portable yet powerful smart devices draw fervent responses from users and consequently the world’s smart device market has been rapidly expanded. In addition, since smart devices can be used anytime and anywhere using the wireless internet environment, the traditional PC-oriented works are swiftly moving to smart devices. Recently, the demands for representing more realistic 3D deformable objects have been increased for smart device based 3D game, virtual reality, 3D mobile advertisement, augmented reality and so on. However, current smart devices cannot sufficiently process the details of complex 3D object representation and associated physics based animation yet. This paper proposes a new optimized 3D object simulation and collision handling method specifically targeted for smart devices. The proposed hierarchical bounding sphere FFD- AABB (Free Form Deformation -- Axis Aligned Bounding Box) algorithm provides efficient 3D object simulation, since it quickly rejects unnecessary complex collision tasks by executing simple hierarchical bounding sphere distance tests. We have conducted experimental tests under various iOS environments and have performed comparative performance analysis with previous methods. The proposed method shows on average 34% improvement in dynamic simulation and collision handling procedures.

Fog Computing is an approach involving smart devices. These devices carry out data processing to provide collaborative services to reach a common goal, usually, in the cloud. In the fog computing paradigm, uncertainty and vagueness are inherent to the data processing due to the limitations of computational and communication capabilities of the smart devices. Fuzzy logic and protoforms represent a powerful tool to model and compute imprecise data presented within the fog-computing paradigm. In this paper, we present a fuzzy cloud-fog approach based on fuzzy temporal windows and fuzzy aggregation. The innovations of this paper are: i) to model the uncertainty involved in fog nodes linguistically, ii) to compute and distribute relevant linguistic information (protoforms), and iii) to publish the computed protoforms in the cloud to generate complex protoforms, which reach the common goal. This new fuzzy cloud-fog approach is applied to the problem of activity recognition in smart homes. In this context, the smart devices in a smart home are represented by fog nodes, which cooperate for activity recognition using a fuzzy cloud-fog computing approach to provide solutions in ambient-assisted living. Finally, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposal in handling situations/environments where multiple and heterogeneous devices are involved (such as UWB beacons, smart objects and smart wearable devices), a case study of the proposed fuzzy cloud-fog approach is implemented in the smart lab of the University of Jaén. So, the results obtained with the proposed approach in the case study are compared to the results obtained with a non-fuzzy approach with the aim of showing the advantages of the fuzzy methodology.

An increasing number of real-world entities is currently being connected to the Internet and the World Wide Web. We argue that this development is the precursor of a Web of Things (WoT), which in turn provides a promising way to prototype UbiComp applications, by significantly lowering the technical barriers for making things smart. In this paper, we outline how sensors, actuators and Web services can easily be combined in the WoT in order to enable rapid prototyping of UbiComp applications.

The present study examined whether learners with low English proficiency pay more attention when learning vocabulary using smart devices and learn vocabulary better. The experiment was conducted in a middle school. Four lower level classes each of which has 10 students participated in the study. Ten target words were selected from the textbook based on the vocabulary pre-test. The researcher observed the students` attitude using a classroom observation scheme to see whether students showed more interest and were more motivated when using smart devices. Both experimental and control groups studied the vocabulary for four lessons, the former using a tablet PC and the latter only with the teacher in the traditional classroom. After each lesson, both groups took a post-test immediately. Delayed post-tests were administered two weeks later for each lesson. The result showed that the experimental group was more motivated and gained better grades in both the post-tests and the delayed-post tests. However, when comparing the post-test and the delayed post-test grades for each group, there was not a significant difference. This may mean that learners with low English proficiency learn vocabulary better when using smart devices but still need support to put their vocabulary knowledge into long term memory.

The Web of Things is an emerging scenario in which objects are connected to Internet and can answer to HTTP queries. To date, new applications in this field are mainly produced by designers and engineers while we claim that with simple and effective composition rules and easy-to-use building blocks, even users could invent new applications unforeseen by technology experts. In this paper, we describe a solution for modeling, implementing and running simple connections of smart things based on the point-click-and-compose paradigm. We envision a Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) where things are Web Services using WSDL standard and logical connections between things are modeled as Web Services orchestrations using the WS-BPEL language.

This paper introduces the ‘PnP Web Tag’, a new approach to integrating Internet of Things (IoT) devices with the World Wide Web (WWW) in order to realize the ‘Web of Things’ (WoT). For the first time, the PnP tag provides web developers with an extremely easy and yet systematic way of including sensor data and actuator controls in their web pages. Our approach is fully standards compliant and can be used with all IoT devices that support the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) protocol and the IPSO Smart Object data model. Initial evaluation shows that the PnP tag is extremely low effort for web developers and performs well in representative IoT scenarios.

The Web of Things (WoT) is a technology concept that allows the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with the World Wide Web (WWW). It will vastly affect our lives in the near future given that it offers new services and applications via the well-known web window. In todays’ world where one can hardly imagine everyday life without access to various online services and applications via a plethora of devices, one can notice that technology has a huge impact on our day-to-day quality of living. That is why a user’s Quality of Experience (QoE) towards used technology in general plays a crucial role in their Quality of Life (QoL). Furthermore, security perception in terms of technology is the feature that vastly affects QoE and, consequently, QoL, as the number of security and privacy threats, risks, and vulnerabilities in cyber space, i.e., the technology environment that we increasingly use, is constantly rising. In order to reach the ultimate goals—the adoption of WoT technology and improvement of our QoL—we must know how this important aspect of security is so far addressed and analyzed. Therefore, this paper gives a comprehensive and structured analysis of the existing literature in this field through a proposed framework and provides an overview of research opportunities that should be addressed and elaborated in future investigations.