Luigi Manco

Web of Topics: An IoT-aware model-driven designing approach

In the Internet of Things, the extreme heterogeneity of sensors, actuators and user devices calls for new tools and design models able to translate the users needs in machine-understandable scenarios. The scientific community has proposed different solution for such issue, e.g., the MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport) protocol introduced the topic concept as “the key that identifies the information channel to which payload data is published”. This study extends the topic approach by proposing the Web of Topics (WoX), a conceptual model for the IoT. A WoX Topic is identified by two coordinates: (i) a discrete semantic feature of interest (e.g. temperature, humidity), and (ii) a URI-based location. An IoT entity defines its role within a Topic by specifying its technological and collaborative dimensions. By this approach, it is easier to define an IoT entity as a set of couples Topic-Role. In order to prove the effectiveness of the WoX approach, we developed the WoX APIs on top of an EPCglobal implementation. Then, 10 developers were asked to build a WoX-based application supporting a physics lab scenario at school. They also filled out an ex-ante and an ex-post questionnaire. A set of qualitative and quantitative metrics allowed measuring the models outcome.

An ambient assisted living system for elderly assistance applications

In last few years, the number of elderly people is more and more increasing. Consequently, various efforts were made in order to improve the quality of lifestyle for the elderly. Related to this issue, an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) works to create better living conditions for older or disable people. AAL systems are able to continuously monitor the health status of the elderly through data coming from heterogeneous sensors. In this paper, we propose an AAL architecture for the monitoring of elderly people, able to guarantee the collection of heterogeneous sensor data as well as the detection of critical events such as the older adult fall. A remote reasoning system processes this data with the aim of generating appropriate events. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed architecture, a proof of concept was used and validation functional tests were carried out.

Augmented Reality for Allowing Time Navigation in Cultural Tourism Experiences: A Case Study

In the past few years, mobile phones have become an increasingly attractive platform for augmented reality. This paper describes the development of an interactive visualization system based on Augmented Reality Technologies and the integration into a tourist mobile application for Android. The basic idea is to allow the time navigation of cultural points of interest by means of Augmented Reality. The real scene is enhanced by ancient images to increase the cultural experience of the tourist, who can realistically come back in the past.

A Case Study to Enable and Monitor Real IT Companies Migrating from Waterfall to Agile

Agile development methods are becoming increasingly important to face continuously changing requirements. Nevertheless, the adoption of such methods in industrial environments still needs to be fostered. Companies call for tools to keep under control both agility and coordination of IT teams.

WoX: Model-Driven Development of Web of Things Applications

Abstract Nodes of the Internet of Things (IoT) are heterogeneous: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC), Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN), Konnex (KNX), just to name the most popular. IoT clients are heterogeneous too: mobile apps, laptops, enterprise applications, business processes instances, not to mention that even IoT nodes can be clients for other nodes. In this many-to-many relationship scenario, developing a seamless IoT system is arduous even for a specialized developer. All the more so, enable non-technical people to autonomously define innovative IoT-based scenarios is far from being trivial. This calls for the definition of a common design model shared by all the IoT stakeholder: device manufacturers, developers, stakeholders, business entities, end users. The Web of Things (WoT) paradigm has brought the IoT a step closer to the people perception, because it allows treating a networked thing as a Web resource. Nevertheless, sharing a common application layer protocol on top of the physical “things” does not guarantee that IoT application will be fast-developed, robust and easily evolvable. REST APIs definition for the IoT objects is left to the individual developer. Technological needs may vary along the application lifecycle. Stakeholders are often interested in virtual or aggregated environment features, rather than the single networked thing. To overcome these open issues, we think that it is needed an additional abstraction level between the WoT and the application layer. This should be model-driven – in order this to be adequately agreed by all the IoT stakeholders – and topic-based – because of the event-driven nature of the IoT. In this work we propose Web of Topics (WoX), a Cloud platform for the Internet of (every)Thing (IoE). WoX APIs allows companies and organisations to realise robust and high-maintainable IoT-based services, while minimising deployment costs and the time-to-market. Its model-driven approach guarantees a great end-user experience and a seamless integration among the heterogeneous IoT entities. In this book chapter we present the WoX model and the concrete architecture supporting it. As a proof of concept, in this work we also show how we implemented an original IoT scenarios using the WoX concepts, APIs and architecture: the airport short-stay parking service.

On the effects of introducing agile methodologies in software industry

This paper presents some findings on an empirical study conducted to understand the effects of adopting agile methodologies in industrial software projects in the Apulian district (south of Italy). From 2014 to 2016, eleven software houses of the district migrated from traditional to agile methodologies, and collected an interesting set of measures during the transition. This paper reports some findings on collected data. Even if the limited set of subjects does not allow for a sound, robust statistical analysis, some preliminary results are interesting and show possible trends that may motivate further research and empirical assessments.

Exploiting an IoT local middleware for the orchestration of mobile device sensors to detect outdoor and indoor user positioning

Thanks to the proliferation of mobile technologies that enable devices to use the network for providing (publish) or requiring (subscribe) information according to specific applications aims, the Internet of Things (IoT) can be considered as the biggest challenge that the industry is currently facing. During the last years several application domains for IoT have emerged and among these the Smart Cities. In effect, the IoT is redrawing the Smart Cities in a promising way from the technological, economic, and social perspectives. This represents the background of the work described in the present paper that deals with an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) mobile system able to detect outdoor and indoor user positioning, acquiring data through sensors in an unobtrusive way. Our system exploits an IoT middleware, called WoX (Web of Topics) and its local counterpart L-WoX (Local-Web of Topics). Thanks to its model-driven approach, it is able to allow the communication between mobile applications and a set of heterogeneous sensors, orchestrating access services and communication protocols in a very abstract way.

A HCE-Based Authentication Approach for Multi-platform Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are able to gather more and more functionalities useful to control people’s daily life facilities. They offer computational power and different kinds of sensors and communication interfaces, enabling users to monitor and interact with the environment by a single integrated tool. Near Field Communication (NFC) represents a suitable technology in the interaction between digital world and real world. Most NFC-enabled mobile devices exploit the smart card features as a whole: e.g., they can be used as contactless payment and authentication systems. Nevertheless at present heterogeneity in mobile and IoT technologies does not permit to fully express potentialities of mobile devices as authentication systems, since most of the proposed solutions are strictly related to specific technological platforms. Basing on smart payment card approach, Europay, MasterCard e VISA (EMV) protocols and Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology, the current work proposes a distributed architecture for using NFC-enabled mobile devices as possession factor in Multifactor Authentication (MFA) systems. The innovative idea of the proposal relies on its independence with respect to the specific software and hardware technologies. The architecture is able to distribute tokens to registered mobile devices for univocally identifying user identity, tracing its actions in the meanwhile. As proof of concept, a real case has been implemented: an Android/iOS mobile application to control a car central locking system by NFC.