Architecting the Internet of Things

Many of the initial developments towards the Internet of Things have focused on the combination of Auto-ID and networked infrastructures in businessto- business logistics and product life cycle applications. However, a future Internet of Things can provide a broader vision and also enable everyone to access and contribute rich information about things and locations. The success of social networks to share experience and personalised insights shows also great potential for integration with business-centric applications. The integration and interoperability with mainstream business software platforms can be enhanced and extended by real-time analytics, business intelligence and agent-based autonomous services. Information sharing may be rewarded through incentives, thus transforming the Internet of Things from a cost-focused experiment to a revenue-generating infrastructure to enable trading of enriched information and accelerate business innovation. Mash-ups and end-user programming will enable people to contribute to the Internet of Things with data, presentation and functionality. Things-generated physical world content and events from Auto-ID, sensors, actuators or meshed networks will be aggregated and combined with information from virtual worlds, such as business databases and Web 2.0 applications, and processed based on new business intelligence concepts. Direct action on the physical world will be supported through machine-interfaces and introduction of agile strategies. This chapter aims to provide a concept for a future architecture of the Internet of Things, including a definition, a review of developments, a list of key requirements and a technical design for possible implementation of the future Internet of Things. As open issues, the evaluation of usability by stakeholders in user-centric as well as business-centric scenarios is discussed and the need for quantifying costs and benefits for businesses, consumers, society and the environment is emphasised. Finally, guidelines are derived, for use by researchers as well as practitioners.

This article aims to argue that, as we move into an era of ubiquitous computing, where the traditional Internet evolves to embrace an Internet of Things, it may be beneficial to embed an “Idea of Man” into its systems design. The “Idea of Man” is a holistic philosophical concept that considers what Man is, what Man should be, and how Man lives with others in society. The article provides arguments for the relevance of the Idea of Man in system design in general. I argue that the Idea of Man influences the power relationship between men and computer systems as well as the values that we build into these systems. Furthermore, I argue that programmers’ Idea of Man influences the values which embed systems. Finally, I highlight future challenges involved in integrating an Idea of Man into systems. The article is a viewpoint and its arguments are purely deductive. Its contribution is that it shows how the Idea of Man could serve as a foundation for a variety of considerations relating to computer ethics. If we take today’s Idea of Man in the Western world, which views men as responsible and mature, able to act rationally, and capable of defining themselves through moral autonomy and freedom of choice, we establish high level guidance for how systems should be built and what an Internet of Things could, or should not, do for us.

In this chapter we present a first analysis towards the enablement of mass creativity in the Internet of Things, potentially leading to a wide range of new tangible, interactive applications that leverage the fundamental new possibilities of an emerging Web of Things. After an introduction of the socio-cultural practice of ‘Do-it-Yourself’ (DiY) as apparent in society, and a discussion on what DiY can mean for the Internet of Things, we introduce a typology of how people can potentially create and customise on top of the Internet of Things. Based on that, we elaborate three concepts forming a basis for new creation paradigms in such smart spaces, potentially leading to new DiY-enabling functions in Internet of Things service creation environments: the Call-Out Internet of Things, the Smart Composables Internet of Things, and the Phenomena Internet of Things. Next to a discussion of applicable state-of-the-art for implementing parts of these concepts, we show first experimental grounding for them, as part of the ongoing exploration process.

Today, there are many end-user programming tools available, but in the Internet of Things domain, this concept is relatively new. Some pioneer examples include solutions, such as d.tools and Pachube, but also Web2.0, Mash-ups, Twitter and Facebook are suitable backplanes for this kind of applications. Another level of development support is various hardware concepts and solutions, such as RFIDs, Arduino, Violet, NFC, barcodes and many more. Appropriate user programmability could transform a system, multiplying the effectiveness of programmers and users. This article discusses how end-users can be empowered with new building blocks and tools, analogous to those that were emerging during the early phases of Internet growth. Accelerators, frameworks and toolkits are introduced, which would allow everybody to participate in the Internet of Things in the same manner as in the Internet through Wikis, Blogs etc.

The core vision put forward by the Internet of Things, of networked, intelligent objects capable of taking autonomous decisions based on decentral information processing, resonates strongly with research in the field of autonomous cooperating logistics processes. The characteristics of the IT landscape underlying autonomous cooperating logistics processes pose a number of challenges towards data integration. The heterogeneity of the data sources, their highly distributed nature, along with their availability, make the application of traditional approaches problematic. The field of semantic data integration offers potential solutions to address these issues. This contribution aims to examine in what way an adequate approach towards data integration may be facilitated on that basis. It subsequently proposes a service-oriented, ontology-based mediation approach to data integration for an Internet of Things supporting autonomous cooperating logistics processes.

The objects of the Internet of Things will be empowered by embedded devices whose constrained resources will need to be managed efficiently. It is envisioned that these devices will be able to form ad-hoc networks, and that the connection from these networks to the Internet of Things infrastructure will not always be possible. In this chapter we propose the use of clustering, software agents and synchronisation techniques in order to overcome the challenges of managing the resources of the Internet of Things objects. We argue that clustering will be beneficial to reduce the energy expenditure and improve the scalability and robustness of the object networks. Software agents will aide in the automation of task, both for the objects and the Internet of Things users. Finally, synchronisations techniques will be necessary to address the various challenges of harmonising plenty of copies of object data with potentially partially disconnected Internet of Things architecture components.

This chapter discusses the contribution of the Internet of Things for providing a fine-grained information infrastructure within collaborative production environments. Such infrastructure makes up-to-date information available to autonomous objects to render contextual decisions that evolve elemental agility. A technical discussion illustrates the feasibility of autonomous objects as well as their possible involvement in the Internet of Things. Additionally, a demonstrator is described, which exemplifies the effects of autonomous objects on agile processes within the automotive industry. Concluding, the chapter relevant research questions in the field of the Internet of Things and collaborative production environments are specified.

The Internet of Things is one of the most promising technological developments in information technology. It promises huge financial and nonfinancial benefits across supply chains, in product life cycle and customer relationship applications as well as in smart environments. However, the adoption process of the Internet of Things has been slower than expected. One of the main reasons for this is the missing profitability for each individual stakeholder. Costs and benefits are not equally distributed. Cost benefit sharing models have been proposed to overcome this problem and to enable new areas of application. However, these cost benefit sharing approaches are complex, time consuming, and have failed to achieve broad usage. In this chapter, an alternative concept, suggesting flexible pricing and trading of information, is proposed. On the basis of a beverage supply chain scenario, a prototype installation, based on an open source billing solution and the Electronic Product Code Information Service (EPCIS), is shown as a proof of concept and an introduction to different pricing options. This approach allows a more flexible and scalable solution for cost benefit sharing and may enable new business models for the Internet of Things.

The emerging Internet of Things provides a networked infrastructure that enables incremental business transformation as well as radical business changes. So far, the full potential of possible business opportunities has not been leveraged. Within this chapter we propose the concept of business models and business model innovation as a means to align “technological development and economic value creation” (Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002) in the Internet of Things. A central point of this paper is the value and revenue creation in the Internet of Things. We consider information to be the main source for value proposition. To investigate resulting impacts, we draw on the “laws of information” proposed by Moore and Walsh (2002) and deduct specifics for the Internet of Things. Building on this, we describe four exemplary business model scenarios. These are visualised using the business model framework by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2009). This framework, the fundamental rules of value creation through information in the Internet of Things and the provided examples may serve as a tool-set for practitioners to analyse and change their business models when implementing the Internet of Things.

The advancements in technology and increased need for streamlined business operations demand new ways in cooperation. In recent years, the Internet of Things has been recognised to be an important future technology, providing new opportunities for enhancing the exchange of information and status updates on real-time regarding business operations. Therefore, Internet of Things concepts have been adopted by several businesses to improve operations. This chapter describes the challenges that arise when implementing the ideas of the Internet of Things, regarding technology, interoperability and architecture of Internet of Things-compatible systems. Besides introducing the basic theories and concepts used to attack the mentioned challenges of Internet of Things applications, this chapter presents the EU-Framework Programme 7-funded project EURIDICE, which aims to conduct the concepts of Internet of Things to provide an open information platform for the transport sector utilising “Intelligent Cargo”.