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…

/cliparts/d/L/a/n/N/N/idea-md.png



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

[email protected]

+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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