اسلاید ارائه تیم رادیکال در همایش "آی.او.تی میتاپ" با موضوع وب اشیاء

1. Physical web
Inside & out
IoT meetup Tehran University
Navid Ardakanian
CTO and Co-founder
Radical Proximity

2. In this meetup, we will discuss the Physical Web and Web
Bluetooth: two unrelated but highly complimentary technologies
that enable us to create signposts and pathways between the
web and physical world.

3. The number of smart devices is going
to explode, and the assumption that
each new device will require its own
application just isn't realistic.
We need a system that lets anyone
interact with any device at any time…
[this] isn’t about replacing native apps,
it’s about enabling interaction when
native apps just aren't practical.
— Scott Jenson, Physical Web Lead, Google

4. 1. A brief history
5

5. The Physical Web isn’t our first attempt to place digital markers
within the physical world. Most older approaches in fact are still in
use as they serve slightly different use cases.

6. QR codes (Japan, 1994)
Invented for use in retail but rapidly
adopted across industries.
Advantages
• Cheap to implement and distribute.
• Can hold up to 1000 bytes of data.
• Easily discoverable.
Disadvantages
• Hard to scan from a distance.
• Many people think they’re ugly.
• Most people (outside Asia) don’t
have a QR code reader.

7. British Airways NFC + e-
paper baggage tag prototype
RFID, NFC (1983, 2002)
• Both employ radio signals to
exchange data between nearby
objects.
Advantage
• Proximity often requires explicit
user action, which improves trust,
and makes these technologies ideal
for payment and identification.
Disadvantage
• Poor discoverability. Must be
signposted or rely on learned
behavior.

8. Proximity marketing 1.0 (2004)
• A small server broadcasts short
messages, images, mp3s etc. into
a space using Bluetooth.
Disadvantage
• Anyone nearby with Bluetooth
turned on received the broadcast.
• Was mostly used for advertising
so became a form of spam (which
forced many people to shut
Bluetooth off).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/voyages-provence/13541325644

9. Apple iBeacon (2013)
• Small battery powered Beacons
broadcast messages to iOS + Android
apps using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
• Only the app that matches the beacon
ID recognizes the broadcast.
Advantage
• Users aren’t bombarded with messages
from brands they don’t already have a
relationship with.
Disadvantage
• Users without the specific app that matches
the beacon can’t discover/take advantage
of the data or service it provides.
*kontakt.io beacon shown

10. iBeacon On iOS, a user’s app will automatically
receive a broadcast each time it passes by a
beacon—even if the app is in background
mode or switched off.
Advantage
• If a user walks by several beacons, it’s
therefore possible track their path and use
it to trigger location-relevant offers or
notifications (i.e. a user’s gate number
when they enter the airport).
Disadvantage
• Potential privacy concerns.
• Even if the user likes a brand,
automatically triggered notifications can
rapidly become annoying.

11. The goal of the Physical Web isn’t to replace these technologies,
but to address some of their challenges by leveraging the ‘super-
powers’ of URLs and the open, flexible, decentralised and
universally supported web.

12. 2. How does the Physical Web work?
15

13. The Physical Web (PW) is an open-source* project. Google
initiated the technology, and has the most widespread
implementation (~800m devices) through Chrome on Android and
iOS—but there’s already a large ecosystem of other contributors.
It’s all open source!
*Visit GitHub to download the source and/or contribute to these conversations.

14. 1. The beacon
(a thing that
broadcasts a URL)
2. The scanner/browser
(a thing that scans for, retrieves
and displays a list of URLs)
3. Proxy
(user advocate)
The Physical Web is pretty simple—it has three parts
The specifications for all three are open source.
optional cloud
service

15. many beacons also include
some form of remote
management app
What is a beacon?
This beacon is by Estimote (but there are many others)
low-cost, long-life
(~2yrs) battery or
other power source
many sizes and
form factors
BLE radio transmitter
(intermittently on, sips power
compared to regular BT)

16. A beacon’s (only) job is to repeatedly* transmit
a signal that other devices can see.
The message itself is transmitted using a BLE
‘advertising packet’, a standard broadcast
format limited to 17 bytes.
Once in range, Bluetooth-equipped devices like
a smartphone can “see” the beacon and
receive its broadcast (if BT is switched on).
*recommended every 700 milliseconds
What it does
broadcast range

17. Unidirectional broadcast
The Bluetooth ‘advertising’ function
is by-design unidirectional.
• A single beacon can advertise to
multiple nearby smartphones but
these devices cannot send data back
to the beacon.
• Beacons also cannot physically
detect when clients scans them so
cannot track passers-by.

18. smart (and otherwise dumb) things around us
Permanently
broadcasts “I love you”
Turn me
off from a
distance
https://www.flickr.com/photos/naan/2398024748
Change my
colour!
…in the near future, the ability
to broadcast URLs could also be
attached or embedded into all sorts of
Check what materials
i’m made of when
Craigslisting me.
Understand how
I work and where
to recycle me

19. 2. The scanner/browser
As the beacons broadcast URLs, the most common scanners are
(and will probably remain?) web browsers.
Chrome
Android + iOS
~800M devices
Opera
(Labs browsers)
Mozilla
(Beta)
Microsoft Edge
(coming soon)
Safari Mobile
????

20. Unlike iBeacon, there is
however no background
scanning. All scanning for
URLs must be user-initiated.
As the Physical Web is new,
users will probably not scan
unless they’re aware of nearby
content, or notice the logo.
(This is how the ‘normal’ web began as
well :-)

21. …displayed in o
Tapping the notification displays a list of
all beacons within range, showing their
URL, page title, description and favicon*.
If there are beacons nearby, they will see a
low priority (no vibration) notification.
*see this article for details of metadata retrieval in each browser
How do you ‘scan’ (in Chrome)
(Behaviour varies by browser)
A user opens their Android Notification
screen or Today Widget on iOS.

22. https://webPage.io
And then…?
That’s (technically) it. The beacon’s job is done. All subsequent
interactions between the user and brand take place ‘on the web’.
https://shortURL.io
user taps to load the
page (on the internet
—the beacon does
not serve the page)

23. The proxy sits in between the beacon and the user. A proxy is
optional but serves two important purposes: improve
performance and protect the user.
The Chrome proxy is called the Physical Web Service (PWS).
Other browsers have a similar (but probably not identical) service.
3. The proxy
*more details on the PWS and its role

24. https://shortURL.io
1
What it does
(based on Google’s PWS…each proxy is a bit different)
parses the
document to
extract
metadata
2
• final URL
• page title
• description
• favicon

25. BEACONS BOOKMARKTOP SITES
Haro Sushi and Izakaya
haro-sushi.com
Hons on Robson
hons-noodles.com
analysis +
optimisation
4
Search or enter address
1 https://shortURL.io
one-way broadcast
What it does
(based on Google’s PWS…each proxy is a bit different)
parses the
document to
extract
metadata
3
2
• final URL
• page title
• description
• favicon

26. Masks the user’s device information from a web site until the
user has chosen to interact with it.
Ensures site doesn’t contain SPAM or malicious content.
De-duplication*
If several beacons with the same URL are used within a space
the user's will only see one URL.
Optimisation
Augments and enriches the basic results to improve usefulness
and usability. e.g. sorting, ranking and filtering for relevance
User benefits
*Chrome only (for now)

27. Miscellaneous FAQ

28. HTTPS only (on Chrome*)
All communications between your browser and the website are
encrypted.
All interactions are ‘on the web’
Once a user selects a site, all subsequent interactions take place
on the web so automatically conform to privacy-preserving
behaviours such as opting-in to enable geolocation or web
notifications.
Q: Are any other user safeguards built in?
*For now. Other scanners will hopefully emulate this.

29. No. There are many ways to broadcast a URL. Today, the Physical
Web uses BLE because of its ubiquity on mobile devices today.
Additionally, it is highly energy efficient—many bluetooth beacons
today have multi-year battery lives.
The hope however, is that other useful formats will be supported.
Two strong candidates are mDNS and uPnP—transport protocols
that enables users who are logged into wi-fi to discover beacons
broadcasting on that same wi-fi network.
Q: Will/does the Physical Web only support BLE?
See Github for the latest discussions on mDNS

30. An outstanding issue with wi-fi based protocols is that the devices
that are most likely to broadcast this way (e.g. TVs, printers, smart
home appliances) will most likely broadcast a local IP address
rather than a public URL.
The (cloud-based) proxy will therefore not be able to follow this link
to retrieve the page title and description, perform customary security
checks, or further optimise the discovery experience.
Challenges with wi-fi based discovery
See Github for the latest discussions on local IP-based discovery.

31. Eddystone is a new open source protocol specification from Google
that defines a BLE message format for proximity interactions.
Eddystone broadens what can be done with beacons by
broadcasting up to four formats (or ‘frame’ types):
• Eddystone UID, EID and TLM—Which all work with apps and
enable interactions similar to iBeacon.
• Eddystone URL—Which the Physical Web is now based on and works
with a browser.
Q: What is Eddystone?

32. Does the scanner have to be a browser?

33. No. The browser is merely an app that incorporates the
Physical Web specification. This specification is open source,
so companies could build the ability to “see” Physical Web
URLs into other apps.

34. “…the watches glow and vibrate
when you walk somewhere in the real world
that corresponds with somewhere in
Pokémon Go's virtual world”
Source: The Verge - Pokemon Go Plus hands on photos

35. 3. Three key use cases
40

36. Use case 1: Pure discovery (“A much smarter QR code”)
Use case 2: Interact with moderately “smart” things
Use case 3: Directly control an object

37. tadaslab on Instagram
“Call a taxi” button attached to a tree #iot
…the significance of
technologies such as RFID and
2D barcoding is that they offer
a low impact way to import
physical objects into the
datasphere—to endow them
with an informational shadow.
- Adam Greenfield

38. Part closure
Part closure
Service closed
London Overgroud
Northern
Waterloo & City
Tube, DLR, London Overground
Average wait at North
Entrance is 12 minutes
Good service
on all other
lines
you can also dynamically deep-dive
to the exact content that suit a user’s
context and location
https://www.flickr.com/photos/oatsy40/24775669489/

39. …or attach URLs to a “thing”
whose identity is more important
https://www.flickr.com/photos/morebyless/14246207164
Hi, i’m Narelle!
Ask me anything about
vikings (or join my
class on Thursdays and
Sundays at 14:00).
REGISTER
than its context

40. Miscellaneous FAQ

41. By design, the Physical Web does not push messages (and it
will hopefully remain this way).
You can however expand on its base behaviours by combining
it with other web technologies.
For example…
Q: Is it possible to push messages or notifications
from a Physical Web beacon?

42. Yikes, as you can see,
we’re *really* busy!
There’s about a 20 minute
wait, but our sister location
Oishii still has three tables.
JOIN WAITLIST
SHOW ME OISHII
BOOK ANOTHER DAY
Scenario:
customers can add their names to
a wait-list and receive a notification
once the table is ready
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sfj/288526372

43. Use case 1: Pure discovery (“A much smarter QR code”)
Use case 2: Interact with moderately “smart” things
Use case 3: Directly control an object
50

44. Most “smart” things we use these days are
not that smart. While they can often be
controlled using an app, very rarely does the
app “speak” directly to the thing.
A brief “smart thing” primer…

45. Instead, the app often
communicates with
the cloud, or a local
hub (or ‘bridge’)
which then relays the
command to the
device.

46. 1
Issue a command:
”Lamp on!”
For example…

47. service API
The bridge in your
home receives the
command via wi-fi.
2
For example…
cloud
1
Issue a command:
”Lamp on!”

48. 1
service API
The bridge in your
home receives the
command via wi-fi.
2
3
It transmits the
command (P2P) to
nearby bulbs
For example…
cloud
Issue a command:
”Lamp on!”

49. 1
service API
The bridge in your
home receives the
command via wi-fi.
2
3
It transmits the
command (P2P) to
nearby bulbs
If other bulbs are too far from the
bridge, the closest bulb uses a mesh
network to pass the message along
4
For example…
cloud
Issue a command:
”Lamp on!”

50. 1
cloud
service API
The bridge in your
home receives the
command via wi-fi.
2
3
It transmits the
command (P2P) to
nearby bulbs
If other bulbs are too far from the
bridge, the closest bulb uses a mesh
network to pass the message along
4
For example…
smart
pretty
smart
less
smart
less
smart
less
smart
less
smart
smart
Issue a command:
”Lamp on!”

51. …by extending this pattern to
the web we can create all
sorts of rich and yet casual
interactions while completely
bypassing the friction of first
downloading an app
https://www.flickr.com/photos/charlottemorrall/3778508426
GUMBOT
Bet you don’t have a
quarter? Am I right or
am I right?
GUMBOT
No sweat. How about
one of these? That’ll
be $0.25 please.

52. Now playing
I Didn’t see it
coming
Belle and Sebastian
VOTE FOR THE NEXT SONG
Monthly special for Spotify
members.
Log in to redeem your
complementary virtual jukebox
credit and choose a song we will
play in the next 18 minutes.
LOGIN with SPOTIFY
https://www.flickr.com/photos/neo_ii/7483010074
the music system…or the café itself?
in this scenario, is ‘the device‘

53. Use case 1: “A much smarter QR code”
Use case 2: Interact with moderately “smart” things
Use case 3: Directly control an object
60

54. Web Bluetooth is an open web standard that enables users
—in a secure and privacy-preserving way—to discover
smart devices, communicate with them, and use a web
page to directly control them.

55. Support levels
The technology is completely separate from the Physical Web but
highly complimentary. It is nearing launch on Chrome and is currently
testable behind a Chrome ‘flag’.
Chrome
Android + iOS
(behind Dev flag)
Opera
(Labs browser)
Mozilla
(Experimental)
Microsoft Edge
(coming soon?)
Safari Mobile
????

56. Built-in security features
HTTPS Only
All communications between your
browser and the website (and in this
case, the object) are encrypted.
User Gesture Required
As a security feature, discovering
nearby Bluetooth devices must be
called via a user gesture like a touch
or mouse click.
FitBit
Heart Rate Monitor GO9

57. Visit the thing’s URL
e.g. shown on the thing’s
package, accessible via QR
code, Physical Web beacon Tap to connect. You can now
interact with the
device!
4
How it works: Device discovery and pairing
1
Choose device and
grant permission to
pair with the device.
2
Parrot Drone
3
CONNECTED success!
PAIR
Playbill candle

58. Come on, get your phone out and type this into chrome:
chrome://flags/#enable-web-Bluetooth
Enjoy!*
*Not you dear Windows user, not you!

60. …one more thing

61. One neat thing about BLE—is that you can also use it to create
new (personalized) web UIs for known devices*.
*whose services are exposed with the necessary read/write permissions.

62. • A standardised way for BLE devices to advertise their
services to the outside world.
• Each device has services (e.g. battery service) which has
characteristics (e.g. battery level: 0-100).
• BLE has a list of generic services for common devices such
as, but products can also create their own.
• The value of a characteristics can be read, you can also write
to it and request notifications* when the value changes.
*the web app (not the user) receives the notifications and uses them to update the UI as needed
Bluetooth (Generic Attributes) GATT 101

64. Each of these examples, taken by itself, is modestly useful.
Taken as a whole, however, they imply a vast "long tail"
where anything can offer information and utility.
— Scott Jenson, Google
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsome1/1243493095

65. Tell us about Radical!!
We are a service provider.
Our target market are retailers and advertisers.
We are business people, not geeks.

66. Eddystone / Altbeacon and Ibeacons!
We have:
Wardriving tool
and database
Beacon
management and
CMS

67. We are finalizing negotiations with
Some of our customers and we will deploy the system soon!
Our customers are large scale retailers.

68. Contact me
Navid Ardakanian
N.Ardakanian@Gmail.com
Tel: 0912 062 1065
Or contact,
Hamidreza Aghighi
Hamidreza.Aghighi87@Gmail.com
Tel: 0915 653 7943
www.radicalproximity.ir