Giuseppe Loseto

Semantic-Based Resource Discovery and Orchestration in Home and Building Automation: A Multi-Agent Approach

Home and building automation (HBA) trends toward the Ambient Intelligence paradigm, which aims to autonomously coordinate and control appliances and subsystems in a given environment. Nevertheless, HBA is based on an explicit user-home interaction and basically enables static and predetermined scenarios. This paper proposes a more flexible multi-agent approach, leveraging semantic-based resource discovery and orchestration for HBA applications. Backward-compatible enhancements to EIB/KNX domotic standard allow to support the semantic characterization of user profiles and device functionalities, thus enabling: 1) negotiation of the most suitable home services/functionalities according to implicit and explicit user needs and 2) device-driven interaction for adapting the environment to context evolution. A power-management problem in HBA is presented as a case study to better clarify the proposal and assess its effectiveness.

Semantic-Based Enhancement of ISO/IEC 14543-3 EIB/KNX Standard for Building Automation

Current technologies for Home and Building Automation (HBA) basically require an explicit interaction with the user and allow a static set of operational scenarios defined during system implementation. On the contrary, novel HBA solutions should enable so-called ambient intelligence, deriving from a flexible and automatic control of appliances and subsystems dipped into an environment. To this aim, this paper proposes backward-compatible enhancements to one of the most widespread domotic standards, i.e., EIB/KNX ISO/IEC 14543-3, able to support advanced, knowledge-based and context-aware functionalities, grounded on the semantic annotation of both user profiles and device capabilities. Such an approach enables novel resource discovery, matchmaking, and decision support features in HBA. Main benefits are in: (i) determining the most suitable services/functionalities according to implicit and explicit user needs and (ii) allowing device-driven interaction for autonomous adaptation of the environment to context modification. A case study is presented to better clarify the proposed framework also highlighting main characteristics, while performance evaluation is provided to assess its effectiveness.

A Mobile Matchmaker for the Ubiquitous Semantic Web

The Semantic Web and Internet of Things visions are converging toward the so-called Semantic Web of Things SWoT. It aims to enable smart semantic-enabled applications and services in ubiquitous contexts. Due to architectural and performance issues, it is currently impractical to use existing Semantic Web reasoners. They are resource consuming and are basically optimized for standard inference tasks on large ontologies. On the contrary, SWoT use cases generally require quick decision support through semantic matchmaking in resource-constrained environments. This paper presents Mini-ME, a novel mobile inference engine designed from the ground up for the SWoT. It supports Semantic Web technologies and implements both standard subsumption, satisfiability, classification and non-standard abduction, contraction, covering inference services for moderately expressive knowledge bases. In addition to an architectural and functional description, usage scenarios are presented and an experimental performance evaluation is provided both on a PC testbed against other popular Semantic Web reasoners and on a smartphone.

Resource Annotation, Dissemination and Discovery in the Semantic Web of Things: A CoAP-Based Framework

The Semantic Web of Things (SWoT) vision aims to provide more advanced resource management and discovery w.r.t. standard Internet of Things architectures, by means of the integration of knowledge representation and reasoning techniques originally devised for the Semantic Web. This paper proposes a novel SWoT framework, based on a backward-compatible extension of the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), supporting non-standard inference services for semantic matchmaking. It allows retrieval and logic-based ranking of annotated resources. A computationally efficient data mining is also integrated in the framework to process raw data gathered from the environment in order to detect high-level events and characterize them with machine-understandable metadata. In order to test the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a case study about environmental risk prevention for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) is presented.

Semantic Annotation of OpenStreetMap Points of Interest for Mobile Discovery and Navigation

Current mobile systems for assisted navigation have limited effectiveness in satisfying user needs. The information content supporting location-based service discovery and path calculation is usually shallow. Semantic-based technologies can allow to overcome these limitations, by exploiting more accurate and meaningful descriptions of locations, points of interest, road segments and environmental conditions. This paper proposes a general framework leveraging an enriched cartography to enhance travel assistance and safety. The majority of available navigation systems is developed upon closed and proprietary solutions for both maps and software applications, so third parties cannot extend their functionality. Therefore the proposed framework is based on open standards and tools, particularly Semantic Web technologies and crowd-sourced maps available from OpenStreetMap. A case study is presented to assess provided benefits.

Linked Data (in Low-Resource) Platforms: A Mapping for Constrained Application Protocol

This paper proposes a mapping of the Linked Data Platform (LDP) specification for Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). Main motivation stems from the fact that LDP W3C Recommendation presents resource management primitives for HTTP only. A general translation of LDP-HTTP requests and responses is provided, as well as a framework for HTTP-to-CoAP proxying. Experiments have been carried out using the LDP W3C Test Suite.

Semantic-enhanced resource discovery for CoAP-based sensor networks

The integration of knowledge representation and reasoning techniques (originally devised for the Semantic Web) in most common Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) protocols can allow to reach higher levels of autonomicity w.r.t. classic network architectures that basically provide only simplistic discovery capabilities. This paper presents a complete Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) framework, supporting a resource discovery based on non-standard inferences. A backward-compatible extension of Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) has been proposed to support semantic matchmaking for retrieving and ranking resources annotated w.r.t. a reference ontology. Data mining procedures were also exploited to detect high-level events from gathered raw data. A case study on environmental monitoring has been proposed to test the effectiveness of our approach.

A mobile reasoner for semantic-based matchmaking

Reasoning in pervasive computing has to face computational issues inherited by mobile platforms. This paper presents a prototypical reasoner for mobile devices, which leverages Semantic Web technologies to implement both standard (subsumption, satisfiability, classification) and non-standard (abduction, contraction) inferences for moderately expressive knowledge bases. System features are surveyed, followed by early performance analysis.

A semantic-based evolution of EIB Konnex protocol standard

Domotics aims to improve features and capabilities of building systems and appliances. In spite of increasing self-management of electrical equipments, current solutions refer to static scenarios and require an explicit and elementary interaction with the user. Hence the real pervasiveness and context-awareness of enabled functions is still poor. The integration of knowledge representation and reasoning techniques (originally devised for the Semantic Web) in most common building automation Standard protocols can allow to reach higher levels of autonomicity and controllability, so improving user comfort and building efficiency. This paper proposes a semantic-based evolution of EIB Konnex (EIB/KNX) protocol able to interface users (whose needs are expressed via their annotated profiles) with an ontology-based home appliance infrastructure in a fully automated fashion. The proposed approach has been simulated in a prototype in order to test feasibility and prove benefits. Main outcomes are reported.

Linking the Web of Things: LDP-CoAP Mapping

Abstract The Linked Data Platform (LDP) W3C Recommendation defined resource management primitives for HTTP only, pushing into the background not-negligible use cases related to Web of Things (WoT) scenarios where HTTP-based communication and infras- tructures are unfeasible. This paper proposes a mapping of the LDP specification for Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) in order to publish Linked Data on the WoT. A general translation of LDP-HTTP requests and responses is provided, as well as a fully comprehensive framework for HTTP-to-CoAP proxying. The theoretical work is corroborated by an experimental campaign using the W3C Test Suite for LDP.