Cristian González García

Midgar: Generation of heterogeneous objects interconnecting applications. A Domain Specific Language proposal for Internet of Things scenarios

Smart Objects and Internet of Things are two ideas that describe the future. The interconnection of objects can make them intelligent or expand their intelligence. This is achieved by a network that connects all the objects in the world. A network where most of the data traffic comes from objects instead of people. Cities, houses, cars or any other objects that come to life, respond, work and make their owners life easier. This is part of that future. But first, there are many basic problems that must be solved. In this paper we propose solutions for many of these problems: the interconnection of ubiquitous, heterogeneous objects and the generation of applications allow inexperienced people to interconnect them. For that purpose, we present three possible solutions: a Domain Specific Language capable of abstracting the application generation problem; a graphic editor that simplifies the creation of that DSL; and an IoT platform (Midgar) able to interconnect different objects between them. Through Midgar, you can register objects and create interconnection between ubiquitous and heterogeneous objects through a graphic editor that generates a model defined by the DSL. From this model, Midgar generates the interconnection defined by the user with the graphical editor.

A review about Smart Objects, Sensors, and Actuators

Smart Objects and the Internet of Things are two ideas which describe the future, walk together, and complement each other. Thus, the interconnection among objects can make them more intelligent or expand their intelligence to unsuspected limits. This could be achieved with a new network that interconnects each object around the world. However, to achieve this goal, the objects need a network that supports heterogeneous and ubiquitous objects, a network where exists more traffic among objects than among humans, but supporting for both types. For these reasons, both concepts are very close. Cities, houses, cars, machines, or any another object that can sense, respond, work, or make easier the lives of their owner. This is a part of the future, an immediate future. Notwithstanding, first of all, there are to resolve a series of problems. The most important problem is the heterogeneity of objects. This article is going to show a theoretical frame and the related work about Smart Object. The article will explain what are Smart Objects, doing emphasis in their difference with Not- Smart Objects. After, we will present one of the different object classification system, in our opinion, the most complete.

Vitruvius: An expert system for vehicle sensor tracking and managing application generation

Abstract Internet of Things promotes the use of physical intelligent connecting objects to automatize processes and tasks in multiple areas of society. There are numerous intelligent objects with different sensors and communication mechanisms. Today, road vehicles contain many advanced sensors that allow the collection of great amounts of parameters. With an appropriate communication mechanism, vehicles can be converted to intelligent objects capable of forming very useful systems such as road security, vehicle maintenance, urban mobility, traffic congestion, fleet management, CO 2 emissions, etc. The problem is that the implementation of a system is not quick or easy. Many subsystems and heterogeneous elements intervene. The lack of speed in the development can be a big inconvenient, especially when the environment is as dynamic as traffic, subject to many variables. Currently, there are several platforms that integrate intelligent objects and the generation of applications, but none of them are focused on road vehicles. In this paper we present Vitruvius, a platform where users with no programming knowledge can design and quickly implement rich web applications based on the data consumption in real time from interconnected vehicles and sensors.

Midgar: Detection of people through computer vision in the Internet of Things scenarios to improve the security in Smart Cities, Smart Towns, and Smart Homes

Abstract Could we use Computer Vision in the Internet of Things for using pictures as sensors? This is the principal hypothesis that we want to resolve. Currently, in order to create safety areas, cities, or homes, people use IP cameras. Nevertheless, this system needs people who watch the camera images, watch the recording after something occurred, or watch when the camera notifies them of any movement. These are the disadvantages. Furthermore, there are many Smart Cities and Smart Homes around the world. This is why we thought of using the idea of the Internet of Things to add a way of automating the use of IP cameras. In our case, we propose the analysis of pictures through Computer Vision to detect people in the analysed pictures. With this analysis, we are able to obtain if these pictures contain people and handle the pictures as if they were sensors with two possible states. Notwithstanding, Computer Vision is a very complicated field. This is why we needed a second hypothesis: Could we work with Computer Vision in the Internet of Things with a good accuracy to automate or semi-automate this kind of events? The demonstration of these hypotheses required a testing over our Computer Vision module to check the possibilities that we have to use this module in a possible real environment with a good accuracy. Our proposal, as a possible solution, is the analysis of entire sequence instead of isolated pictures for using pictures as sensors in the Internet of Things.

IoFClime: The fuzzy logic and the Internet of Things to control indoor temperature regarding the outdoor ambient conditions

Abstract The Internet of Things is arriving to our homes or cities through fields already known like Smart Homes, Smart Cities, or Smart Towns. The monitoring of environmental conditions of cities can help to adapt the indoor locations of the cities in order to be more comfortable for people who stay there. A way to improve the indoor conditions is an efficient temperature control, however, it depends on many factors like the different combinations of outdoor temperature and humidity. Therefore, adjusting the indoor temperature is not setting a value according to other value. There are many more factors to take into consideration, hence the traditional logic based in binary states cannot be used. Many problems cannot be solved with a set of binary solutions and we need a new way of development. Fuzzy logic is able to interpret many states, more than two states, giving to computers the capacity to react in a similar way to people. In this paper we will propose a new approach to control the temperature using the Internet of Things together its platforms and fuzzy logic regarding not only the indoor temperature but also the outdoor temperature and humidity in order to save energy and to set a more comfortable environment for their users. Finally, we will conclude that the fuzzy approach allows us to achieve an energy saving around 40% and thus, save money.

Midgar: Domain-Specific Language to Generate Smart Objects for an Internet of Things Platform

A great number of people have Smart Objects in their daily life: Smartphones, cars, tablets, computers, Smart TVs or micro-controllers. Furthermore, these objects have Internet connection. A great number of these objects have various sensors: accelerometers, GPS, pressure, light, temperature, gravity or proximity. The essence of the concept of Internet of Things is to interconnect all these heterogeneous and ubiquitous objects among them. Some Smart Cities or Smart Homes allow a part of this concept. But this has a problem, the software that an object needs to be interconnected with the IoT platform. To create this software users need to develop the application and need developer skills. In this paper we propose a solution to this problem. We propose a graphical Domain-Specific Language for creating the necessary software for interconnecting any object with an IoT platform. For this proposal we will use the IoT Midgar platform.

Midgar: Study of communications security among Smart Objects using a platform of heterogeneous devices for the Internet of Things

Abstract In last years, the Internet of Things has been a revolution in terms of applications and research. Currently, there are a great variety of nodes connected to each other to create different applications in areas, ranging from sport to business, inter alia. These applications compromise our private information about our bank accounts, health, and location. This makes us take safety measures to achieve a secure communication, where the interception of a message by a malicious user cannot compromise our privacy. This security encompasses a very broad concept that can be addressed in multiple ways. This work focuses on the techniques and cryptographic algorithms that can be used in the messages exchanged among the nodes to create secure Internet of Things networks in a way to protect our communications. In this article, we have used the Midgar platform to evaluate the different possibilities of traditional security techniques related to cryptography with the purpose of testing the different combinations to find a solution for the Internet of Things when it uses insecure protocols. Analysing the results to determine the best solution, in terms of costs and security, we concluded that the use the RSA, AES and SHA-3 algorithms are a real possibility to protect message privacy among smart objects. This combination offers the lowest consumption–security relation among all the combinations that we have tested in our evaluation.

Social Recommender System: A Recommender System based on Tweets for points of interest

Social networks are an inexhaustible source of knowledge. One of its main uses is to express opinions about a particular product or service. Thus, users usually write opinions about places or so-called points of interest. That is a valuable knowledge for other users and especially for users who know and trust the opinions of the writers. In this work, we present an overview of a platform to capture opinions related to places and generate a positive or a negative recommendation for users based on both the global use of Twitter as well as the comments made by trusted people on the network.

IntelliSenses: Sensing the Internet of Things

The popularity of the Internet of Things allows the existence of many connected devices and thus, the quantity of data available is higher. However, many data are unusable if they are alone or out of context but a combination of these data can be valuable. This idea is also present in the information gathered by the human senses. The human body uses the senses to gather data about the environment in order to take the best possible decisions taking into consideration the whole environment. Our proposal is based on the same idea. We propose the creation of several subsystems that would simulate the human senses and another subsystem capable to manage them, and take decisions based on the data gathered by all subsystems. In this way, the data gathered by one subsystem would be complemented with the data gathered by the rest of systems as the human body does.