Sylvain Kubler

Universal Messaging Standards for the IoT From a Lifecycle Management Perspective

According to our original vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), it should be possible to create ad hoc and loosely coupled information flows between any kinds of products, devices, computers, users, and information systems in general when and as needed. However, this is still challenging to achieve in practice due to the lack of sufficiently generic and standardized interfaces for creating the needed information flows between all devices and systems that the IoT is composed of. The paper presents necessary requirements for such interfaces, as well as proposed interface standards that fulfill those requirements. The paper describes the design principles and provides a high-level description of the proposed standards, followed by real-life implementations that illustrate why such standards are needed and how they are applied.

Embedding data on

Nowadays, intelligent products carrying information or having decision-making abilities are becoming widespread. The idea of using intelligent products to ensure an information continuum all along the product life cycle is more and more shared today. However, it is not that easy to identify the information that must be linked to the product. As a result, this paper proposes an information dissemination process for selecting information sensitive to the context of use of the product. This information is then stored on the products themselves using a new type of augmented material, referred to as “communicating material”.

Group fuzzy AHP approach to embed relevant data on “communicating material”

Abstract The amount of data output into our environment is increasing each day, and the development of new technologies constantly redefines how we interact with information. In the context of product life cycle management, it is not uncommon to use intelligent products to ensure an information continuum throughout the product life cycle (e.g., for traceability purposes). Integrating intelligence and information into products themselves is now possible through numerous technologies (RFID, communicating materials). However, these technologies currently have low memory capacities (several kilobytes or megabytes), whereas to product databases are becoming larger and larger (several gigabytes or terabytes). As a result, a data dissemination process is required to determine the relevant information that should be stored on the product. This paper proposes a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method based on a fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (fuzzy AHP). This method is context-aware and supports the aggregation of opinions from a group of experts. An application is proposed to embed context-sensitive information in a “communicating textile”.

A standardized approach to deal with firewall and mobility policies in the IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) is intended to provide a network where information flows could easily be set up between any kinds of products, devices, users and information systems in general. This vision is getting closer to become real due to the continuous development of new information system concepts and technologies. Nonetheless, this new reality requires special attention on particular aspects of the IoT such as security and mobility. First, people and companies want to secure their assets/data using firewalls, which inevitably leads to a challenging conflict between data security and usability. Second, products are becoming increasingly mobile, operating in environments where it can be difficult to contact them directly using their IP address (e.g., due to the presence of NAT or to access restrictions). It might therefore be necessary in some IoT applications to enable two-way communications through any type of firewall, e.g. to enable real-time control and maintenance. Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) messaging standards have been designed to provide generic and standardized application-level interfaces for the IoT that make it possible, among other things, to achieve such two-way communication. This paper provides a high-level description of QLM messaging standards with a particular focus on this QLM feature, along with proofs-of-concept through real-life implementations in building and automotive domains. A high-level description of new IoT standard named QLM ?is introduced.The QLM piggybacking property to deal with firewall and mobility policies is presented.A home automation case study dealing with firewall policies and using QLM is presented.A car automation case study dealing with mobility policies and using QLM is presented.

Problem definition methodology for the “Communicating Material” paradigm

Abstract Today, more and more new technologies of information and wireless communication are useful for social, economic and industrial life. Auto-ID technologies such as RFID are a good example of that. The actual limits of these new systems are relative to their granularity, since items are the smallest parts of an ubiquitous system (Internet of things). In this paper we propose a “communicating material” new paradigm. Working on the credibility of this concept since some years, we highlight here its main technological and research perspectives.

Open IoT Ecosystem for Sporting Event Management

By connecting devices, people, vehicles, and infrastructures everywhere in a city, governments and their partners can improve community well-being and other economic and financial aspects (e.g., cost and energy savings). Nonetheless, smart cities are complex ecosystems that comprise many different stakeholders (network operators, managed service providers, logistic centers, and so on), who must work together to provide the best services and unlock the commercial potential of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). This is one of the major challenges that faces today’s smart city movement, and the emerging “API economy.” Indeed, while new smart connected objects hit the market every day, they mostly feed “vertical silos” (e.g., vertical apps, siloed apps, and so on) that are closed to the rest of the IoT, thus hampering developers to produce new added value across multiple platforms and/or application domains. Within this context, the contribution of this paper is twofold: 1) present the strategic vision and ambition of the EU to overcome this critical vertical silos’ issue and 2) introduce the first building blocks underlying an open IoT ecosystem developed as part of an EU (Horizon 2020) Project and a joint project initiative (IoT-EPI). The practicability of this ecosystem, along with a performance analysis, is carried out considering a proof-of-concept for enhanced sporting event management in the context of the forthcoming FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar.

Technological Theory of Cloud Manufacturing

Over the past decade, a flourishing number of concepts and architectural shifts appeared such as the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Big Data, 3D printing, etc. Such concepts are reshaping traditional manufacturing models, which become increasingly network-, service- and intelligent manufacturing-oriented. It sometimes becomes difficult to have a clear vision of how all those concepts are interwoven and what benefits they bring to the global picture (either from a service or business perspective). This paper traces the evolution of the manufacturing paradigms, highlighting the recent shift towards Cloud Manufacturing (CMfg), along with a taxonomy of the technological concepts and technologies underlying CMfg.

QLM messaging standards: introduction and comparison with existing messaging protocols

Recent advancement in web technology enabled the development of new Business-to-Business (B2B) infrastructures, e.g. based on the concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). These infrastructures enable seamless information exchange among different stakeholders and complex business procedures. However, there is still a lack of sufficiently generic and standardized application-level interfaces for exchanging the kind of information required by such infrastructures. These interfaces must be as complete and flexible as possible to support changing organization needs and structures. Their development is an essential step to design future SOA services and to enhance product lifecycle management. The Quantum Lifecycle Management (QLM) messaging standards are proposed as a standard application-level interface that would fulfil such requirements. This standard is introduced in this paper and compared to existing ones. Several real-life implementations are presented to show why such messaging standards are needed and how flexible QLM messaging standards are.

Method for embedding context-sensitive information on “communicating textiles” via fuzzy AHP

The amount of data output in our environment is increasing each day, and the development of new technologies constantly redefines how we interact with information. In the context of PLM Product Lifecycle Management, it is not uncommon to use intelligent products to ensure an information continuum all along the product life cycle e.g. for traceability purposes. However, it is not that easy to identify what information should be stored on the product. To answer this question, this paper proposes a data dissemination process to select context-sensitive information from the database, that must be stored/replicated on the product especially if the product is made of “communicating material”. Our approach uses the fuzzy AHP theory for aggregating points of view from different actors. The data dissemination process is then applied on a case study to embed context-sensitive information on a “communicating textile”.

Information dissemination process for context-aware products

The amount of data output into our environment is increasing each day, and the development of new technologies constantly redefines how we interact with this information. It is therefore necessary to control the different ways information is diffused. To do so, a four-step data dissemination methodology in the framework of the Supply Chain Management (SCM) is introduced in this paper. On the one hand, the methodology aims to determine which information could be stored on the manufactured product (during its lifecycle) and, on the other hand, to assess what would be their relevance (according to the context).