Rodger Lea

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.

Virtual Society: Collaboration in 3D Spaces on the Internet

The Virtual Society (VS) project is a long term research initiativethat is investigating the evolution of the futureelectronic society. Our vision for this electronic societyis a shared 3D virtual world where users, from homes and offices, canexplore, interact and work. Our first implementation of aninfrastructure to support our investigation is known asCommunityPlace and has been developed to support large-scale shared 3D spaces onthe Internet using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Obviously, such an ambitious project cutsacross many different domains. In this paper we outline thegoals of the Virtual Society project, discuss the architecture andimplementation of CommunityPlace with particular emphasis on Internetrelated technologies such as VRML and present our views on the role ofVRML and the Internet to support large-scale shared 3D spaces.

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.

Virtual Society : extending the WWW to support a multi-user interactive shared 3D environment

My invention makes it possible to convert a flat bed vehicle into one having panel sides, and vice-versa. In flat bed arrangement, the panels are laid flatwise on the vehicle bed, each panel having a lug or cleat adapted to seat within a trough which is formed in the flat bed and which extends longitudinally thereof. This is an advancement of the structure disclosed and claimed in my prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,481,627.

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.

Using spatial techniques to decrease message passing in a distributed VE system

In an attempt to reduce the communication costs in a shared distributed virtual environment (VE) system with a large number of participants, we have explored the use of SP* tial interaction techniques. In particular, we have experimented with the notion of an area of interest (AOI) which is dynamically established based on the spatial proximity of participants in the shared space. The work presented here describes an effort to integrate an enhanced aura-based spatial interaction model within the DIVE distributed Virtual Environment system and use this to reduce the overall communication load in the system. By associating light-weight communication groups to AOIS (area of interest), we show how messages are distributed to smaller peer groups, so that overall message pawing is de creaaed. A multi-user application scenario is implemented aa a case study. Real experiments and measurements with the current DIVE system using the scenario were made to validate the interaction model and its implementation. This work waa performed aa a joint research effort between Sony CSL and SICS as part of the Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE) project.