Semantics for the Web of Things

Unrestricted © Siemens AG 2014. All rights reserved
Semantics for the Web of Things
Simon Mayer | Web of Things Research Group, Berkeley
IEEE GLOBECOM 2014 Industry Workshop on the Internet of Things and Services, Austin | Dec 8 2014
Siemens Corporate Technology

December 2014 Corporate Technology Unrestricted © Siemens AG 2014. All rights reserved
Proliferation and Potential of Smart Things
• Smart Thing: Networked physical object with processing capabilities
• Lots of prototypes and commercial products during last three years
• Expected massive growth of the smart things market
• “More than 500 smart devices in a typical home by 2022”
• “(…) distributed system several orders of magnitude larger than the Internet”
[www.withings.com]
[Gartner Inc., 2014]
[Mattern and Sturm, 2003]
[www.koubachi.com]

Proliferation and Potential of Smart Things
• Potential to measure and actuate values in the real, physical world
• Smart things allow more well-informed decisions
• Umbrella lights up if forecast shows rain
• Smart environments can perform complex tasks
• Assembly line adjusts to current business needs

Siemens „Web of Things“ Research Group
• Web Technologies
• Architectural foundations
• Service orientation
• Semantic Technologies
• Applied pragmatically
• Modeling where required
• Application Domains
• Collaborative Robots
• Wearable Sensing
usa.siemens.com/wot

The Internet… and the Web of Things
• Internet of Things establishes basic network-level connectivity between smart things

• Challenge: Isolated “Intranets of Things” on the application level
• Web of Things: Application-level convergence
• Fully integrate sensors and actuators with the World Wide Web
• This also requires heterogeneous machines being able to coordinate their actions

• Challenge: Isolated “Intranets of Things” on the application level
• Web of Things: Application-level convergence
• Fully integrate sensors and actuators with the World Wide Web
• This also requires heterogeneous machines being able to talk to each other
This is where semantic
technologies come in…

The Web of Things and Semantic Technologies
Semantic Technologies
add interoperability!
The Internet of Things
establishes basic connectivity!
The Web of Things adds
usability, scale, flexibility, etc.!

How?
Describe service API
What?
Describe what a
service does
Embed semantic functional service descriptions in
smart things Web representations!
Here is just one possibility of how
this might be accomplished…
[Mayer et al., 2014]

Given coordinates in my
workspace, I can pick up an
object at that location!
𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 → 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ∧ 𝑆𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡
Object Coordinates Object picked up Send HTTP PUT to robot.net
What?
Describe what a
service does
How?
Describe service API

Send an HTTP GET request to carDoor.net to
obtain its 3D position. Next, send this position
to robot.net in an HTTP PUT request.
I want the robot to
hold the car door.

GET carDoor.net
200 OK [ Door Position ]
I want the robot to
hold the car door.

Stepping Stones: Current Siemens WoT Research
• Responsive Machines: Free the Robots!
• Robot reacts to events in its environment
• Environment representation as semantic facts
• Human-Robot collaboration (with UCB) as
prerequisite to “M2M2H” collaboration
• Smarter Healthcare using Wearables!

Stepping Stones: Current Siemens WoT Research
• Responsive Machines: Free the Robots!
• Robot reacts to events in its environment
• Environment representation as semantic facts
• Human-Robot collaboration (with UCB) as
prerequisite to “M2M2H” collaboration
• Smarter Healthcare using Wearables!
• Visualization interface for wearables data
• Semantic wearables search

Semantically Enriched Events Brokerage
• Brokering events in semantically enriched Web of Things environments
• As data format, we use ActivityStreams
• …and plug in links to domain knowledge bases
Events occur Our platform
brokers them to
interested
subscribers
Interested parties
subscribe to events

Wearables
create events Our platform
brokers them to
interested
subscribers
Doctors monitor
patients

Events in a
robot’s work
environment
Our platform
brokers them to
interested
subscribers
Robots react
appropriately

How do these “interested parties” know what to subscribe to?
I’m interested in anything that
happens to this patient and is
related to a heart condition!
You should subscribe to
<subscription>
Semantic
Subscriptions
Service

You should subscribe to
<subscription>
Semantic
Subscriptions
Service
How do these “interested parties” know what to subscribe to?
I’m interested in anything that
happens in my working
environment!

Events occur
Our service brokers
these to interested
subscribers
Semantic
Subscriptions
Service
Interested parties
subscribe to events
A reasoner and knowledge
base support them

Conclusion
How to describe smart things’ needs, characteristics and service offerings
and establish collaboration among devices?
How to apply semantic technologies in order to enable “Plug and
Automate” and mediate between data models of heterogeneous devices?

Dr. Simon Mayer
Siemens WoT Research Group
simonmayer@siemens.com
+1 510 316 2923
Thank You!
usa.siemens.com/wot

Image Sources
Polar Watch: www.polar.com/us-en/products/maximize_performance/running_multisport/V800
Jawbone: allthingsd.com
Doctor: knowyourliver.net
Robot: www.appliedc.com
User: andrewbleakley.com
Umbrella: www.popgadget.net
Manufacturing line: www.pv-tech.org
Conveyor belt: www.pv-tech.org
Lumoback: uncrate.com
Nest: amazon.com
Applications: spaceotechnologies.deviantart.com
Car: www.automobilesreview.com
Wall: www.pd4pic.com
Robot: www.kuka.com
IoBridge: commons.wikimedia.org
Semantic stack: www.ibiblio.org
Car door: www.turbosquid.com

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