Trends and Promises: The Internet of Things

1. Mirko Presser
CCSR, University of Surrey
Guildford, United Kingdom
Trends and Promises
The Internet of Things
Get Real! Go Semantics!
In collaboration with
Manfred Hauswirth

2. Parcel: Tom_to_Tim
I am lonely… =(
5 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter mission status update
Postman Bill unloaded me, but I am now sitting in the middle of the warehouse. HELP!
1 hours and 30 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter request (help)
Hey! Postman Bill! you should not pick me up, Tim is not on your route
2 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter and Postman Bill interaction with the real world
I have arrived at central distributions, and have been filed for pick up
3 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter event (location, mission progress)
Postman Pat dropped me on the way to the Van, but I was not damaged
4 hours 50 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter event (drop)
Picked up at Tom’s House by Postman Pat
5 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter event (pick-up)
*Julian Bleecker, Near Future Laboratory
*blogjects

3. Parcel: Tom_to_Tim
I am lonely too… =(
2 minutes ago from Letter to Parcel response to mission status
I am lonely… =(
5 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter mission status update
Postman Bill unloaded me, but I am now sitting in the middle of the warehouse. HELP!
1 hours and 30 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter request (help)
Hey! Postman Bill! you should not pick me up, I am not on your route
2 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter and Postman Bill interaction with the real world
I have arrived at central distributions, and have been filed for pick up
3 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter event (location, mission progress)
Postman Pat dropped me on the way to the Van, but I was not damaged
4 hours 50 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter event (drop)
*blogjects
*Julian Bleecker, Near Future Laboratory

4. Parcel: Tom_to_Tim
Where do you have to go? Tim’s place by any chance?
1 minutes ago from Parcel to Letter object cooperation
I am lonely too =(
2 minutes ago from Letter to Parcel response to mission status
I am lonely… =(
5 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter mission status update
Postman Bill unloaded me, but I am now sitting in the middle of the warehouse. HELP!
1 hours and 30 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter request (help)
Hey! Postman Bill! you should not pick me up, I am not on your route
2 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter and Postman Bill interaction with the real world
I have arrived at central distributions, and have been filed for pick up
3 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter event (location, mission progress)
*blogjects
*Julian Bleecker, Near Future Laboratory

5. Parcel: Tom_to_Tim
Yes! Let’s find someone to take us.
1 second ago from Letter to Parcel and Central Distributions self-X
Where do have to go? Tim’s place?
1 minutes ago from Parcel to Letter object cooperation
I am lonely too =(
2 minutes ago from Letter to Parcel response to mission status
I am lonely… =(
5 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter mission status update
Postman Bill unloaded me, but I am now sitting in the middle of the warehouse. HELP!
1 hours and 30 minutes ago from Parcel to Twitter request (help)
Hey! Postman Bill! you should not pick me up, I am not on your route
2 hours ago from Parcel to Twitter and Postman Bill interaction with the real world
*blogjects
*Julian Bleecker, Near Future Laboratory

6. We are dealing with several domains…
• User (Sender/Receiver) domain
– Twitter human readable text
• Object domain
– Machine interpretable data
– Sensor data à not damaged, wrong pick-up, …
– Mission progress à distance to Tom
• Application (Postal Service) domain
– Application interpretable data
– Mission progress à location (postal service)
• Application (Customer Service) domain
– Application and human interpretable data
– Efficiency à dropped, delayed, …

7. Bridging the Gap
Making sensor-generated information usable as
a new and key source of knowledge will require
their integration into the (existing) information
space of Communities à Semantic Integration
Physical World Cyberspace
KnowledgeSemantic
Integration
Communities

8. Semantic Integration
• Semantics allows you to create reusable
knowledge that helps to
– understand who is talking to who
– who is doing what
– and what the information means
• This enables the integration of information
as knowledge
• On a large scale this machine interpretable
information is a key enabler and a necessity for
the IoT

9. Semantic Integration
Middleware Middleware
Middleware
10101010
10101010
?
10101010
?

10. Semantic Integration
Middleware Middleware
Middleware
10101010
10101010
10101010
“I am a parcel
for Tom,
dropped once”
“I am TWITTER”
“I am a Post
van, not
going to
Tom”

11. Semantic Integration
Middleware Middleware
Middleware
Semantic Semantic
Semantic
Mash-up of
Real World
Knowledge
Description
Discovery
Integration
Distributed processing

12. Despite Data Volume, Heterogeneity, Distribution, Dynamics:
We dream to use all that data like a database!
1. Structured Querying
2. Integrated Views
3. Aggregation, Analyses à Reasoning upon the data
The World at your Fingertips
The world is the knowledge
base

13. Key Challenges – Semantics
• Where are we?
– The core technological building blocks are now in place and
(widely) available: ontology languages, flexible storage
and querying facilities, reasoning engines, etc.
– Standards and guidelines for best practice are being
formulated and disseminated by e.g. the W3C.
• What is still difficult?
– Scale and time dependency of data
• Storage and Querying of Masses of Dynamic Information
– What do we want to explain by semantics
• Semantic modelling of sensors and sensor data
– How to create useful descriptions without modelling the
whole universe
• Interoperability of domain specific semantics
• Integration with Social Semantic Information Spaces

14. Conclusions
• Tags/Sensors/Actuators are a global
trend à information explosion
• IoT + Semantic Web à Integrated
information space
• Collaboration across domains and
disciplines is essential
– Future Internet Assembly
• Networked Knowledge
• Network Architecture
• Device Technologies
• Security, Privacy and Trust
• Application domains

15. Gartner: „By 2015, wirelessly networked sensors in everything
we own will form a new Web. But it will only be of value if the
‘terabyte torrent’ of data it generates can be collected,
analyzed and interpreted.”
Thank You