Michael Blackstock

IoT mashups with the WoTKit

Toward reducing barriers for developing applications for the Internet of Things, researchers have connected things to the web enabling the development of IoT mashups. While establishing a Web of Things for mashup development has been an important step forward, we believe that web-centric IoT toolkits have the potential to increase the use of Internet-enabled things further by increasing the pool of developers and applications that can take advantage of the connected physical world. In this paper we derive several key requirements for IoT mashup toolkits based on existing systems, past research and our experience with an IoT mashup toolkit called the Web of Things Toolkit (WoTKit). Unlike other systems, the WoTKit aims to address key requirements for IoT mashup developers in one system. From this experience we derive key lessons learned for the community toward improving toolkits for developing IoT mashups.

Developing IoT applications in the Fog: A Distributed Dataflow approach

In this paper we examine the development of IoT applications from the perspective of the Fog Computing paradigm, where computing infrastructure at the network edge in devices and gateways is leverage for efficiency and timeliness. Due to the intrinsic nature of the IoT: heterogeneous devices/resources, a tightly coupled perception-action cycle and widely distributed devices and processing, application development in the Fog can be challenging. To address these challenges, we propose a Distributed Dataflow (DDF) programming model for the IoT that utilises computing infrastructures across the Fog and the Cloud. We evaluate our proposal by implementing a DDF framework based on Node-RED (Distributed Node-RED or D-NR), a visual programming tool that uses a flow-based model for building IoT applications. Via demonstrations, we show that our approach eases the development process and can be used to build a variety of IoT applications that work efficiently in the Fog.

City Hub: A Cloud-Based IoT Platform for Smart Cities

Cloud based Smart City hubs are an attractive approach to addressing some of the complex issues faced when deploying PaaS infrastructure for Smart Cities. In this paper we introduce the general notion of IoT hubs and then discuss our work to generalize our IoT hub as a Smart City PaaS. We briefly describe our approach and discuss our experiences deploying two cloud-based Smart City hubs, one in the UK and the other in Canada.

MAGIC Broker: A Middleware Toolkit for Interactive Public Displays

Large screen displays are being increasingly deployed in public areas for advertising, entertainment, and information display. Recently we have witnessed increasing interest in supporting interaction with such displays using personal mobile devices. To enable the rapid development of public large screen interactive applications, we have designed and developed the MAGIC Broker. The MAGIC Broker provides a set of common abstractions and a RESTful Web services protocol to easily program interactive public large screen display applications with a focus on mobile device interactions. We have carried out a preliminary evaluation of the MAGIC Broker via the development of a number of prototypes and believe our toolkit is a valid first step in developing a generic support infrastructure to empower developers of interactive large screen display applications.

Designing for bystanders: reflections on building a public digital forum

In this paper, we reflect on the design and deployment process of MAGICBoard, a public display deployed in a university setting that solicits the electronic votes and opinions of bystanders on trivial but amusing topics. We focus on the consequences of our design choices with respect to encouraging bystanders to interact with the public display. Bystanders are individuals around the large display who may never fully engage with the application itself, but are potential contributors to the system. Drawing on our recent experiences with MAGICBoard, we present a classification of bystanders, and then discuss three design themes relevant to the design of systems for bystander use: graduated proximal engagement, lowering barriers for interaction and supporting covert engagement.

Toward a Distributed Data Flow Platform for the Web of Things (Distributed Node-RED)

Several web-based platforms have emerged to ease the development of interactive or near real-time IoT applications by providing a way to connect things and services together and process the data they emit using a data flow paradigm. While these platforms have been found to be useful on their own, many IoT scenarios require the coordination of computing resources across the network: on servers, gateways and devices themselves. To address this, we explore how to extend existing IoT data flow platforms to create a system suitable for execution on a range of run time environments, toward supporting distributed IoT programs that can be partitioned between servers, gateways and devices. Eventually we aim to automate the distribution of data flows using appropriate distribution mechanism, and optimization heuristics based on participating resource capabilities and constraints imposed by the developer.

Uniting online social networks with places and things

As the Web of Things (WoT) broadens real world interaction via the internet, there is an increasing need for a user centric model for managing and interacting with real world objects. We believe that online social networks can provide that capability and can enhance existing and future WoT platforms leading to a Social WoT. As both social overlays and user interface containers, online social networks (OSNs) will play a significant role in the evolution of the web of things. As user interface containers and social overlays, they can be used by end users and applications as an on-line entry point for interacting with things, both receiving updates from sensors and controlling things. Conversely, access to user identity and profile information, content and social graphs can be useful in physical social settings like cafés. In this paper we describe some of the key features of social networks used by existing social WoT systems. We follow this with a discussion of open research questions related to integration of OSNs and how OSNs may evolve to be more suitable for integration with places and things. Several ongoing projects in our lab leverage OSNs to connect places and things to online communities.

Smart Cities: an IoT-centric Approach

A number of recent Smart City testbeds and deployments have focused on the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm and technologies for improving the efficiency of city infrastructures. Building on this work, we have explored the use of IoT hubs as easy-to-use aggregators and focal points for access to emerging data infrastructures of smart cities. A hub can support not only access to infrastructure data, but also participatory sensing and crowd sourced data where city employees and citizens contribute directly to the data infrastructure of a city. In this way, smart cities can realize a variety of new applications created by local entrepreneurs and community groups without the need for ongoing coordination by governments. In this paper, we outline the growing interest in a hub-centric approach to the IoT and discuss our own experiences in building an IoT hub for two Smart City projects, one in the UK and the other in Canada.

Toward interoperability in a web of things

In this position paper we explore the challenges and issues around interoperability in the web of things. A key concern is how to increase interoperability while maintaining a high degree of innovation and exploration in the community. To that end we propose a hub- centric approach toward interoperability consisting of four levels or stages. We are working to validate this approach in the context of a large-scale IoT ecosystem project consisting of eight IoT hubs in different domains where a key requirement is hub-to-hub and hub- application interoperability.

Evaluation and Analysis of a Common Model for Ubiquitous Systems Interoperability

To support the deployment of ubicomp systems, the ubiquitous computing research community has developed a variety of middleware platforms, meta-operating systems and toolkits. While there is evidence that these systems share certain abstractions, it is not realistic to use the same platform in all environments; systems and applications specialized for specific environments and applications will always be required. In this paper we present a methodology for interoperability that allows developers to innovate and evolve their platforms while allowing others to build interoperable applications. Our approach is based on our design of the Ubicomp Common Model (UCM) and an implementation of this model called the Ubicomp Integration Framework (UIF). Our aim in this work is to provide clear evidence that the UCM unifies the capabilities of ubicomp systems based on an evaluation and analysis of its use in integrating several existing systems into a composite campus environment.