Download In an Internet of Things, the meaning of an event will not necessarily

Internet of Things
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual
representations in an Internet-like structure. The term Internet of Things was proposed
by Kevin Ashtonin 1999. The concept of the Internet of Things first became popular
through the Auto-ID Center at MIT and related market analysts publications. Radiofrequency identification (RFID) is often seen as a prerequisite for the Internet of Things.
If all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers, they could be
managed and inventoried by computers. Tagging of things may be achieved through
such technologies as near field communication, barcodes, QR codes and digital
watermarking.
Equipping all objects in the world with minuscule identifying devices could be
transformative of daily life. For instance, business may no longer run out of stock or
generate waste products, as involved parties would know which products are required
and consumed. One's ability to interact with objects could be altered remotely based on
immediate or present needs, in accordance with existing end-user agreements.
A director of the RFID Technology Auto-ID European Centre at the University of
Cambridge Helen Duce created a bold vision of a new RFID-connected world: "We have
a clear vision – to create a world where every object - from jumbo jets to sewing
needles – is linked to the Internet. Compelling as this vision is, it is only achievable if
this system is adopted by everyone everywhere. Success will be nothing less than
global adoption."
According to ABI Research more than 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to
the Internet of Things (Internet of Everything) by 2020. Cisco created a dynamic
"connections counter" to track the estimated number of connected things from July 2013
until July 2020 (methodology included).
Original definition
Ashton commented in June 2009: "Today computers—and, therefore, the Internet—are
almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly
50petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first
captured and created by human beings—by typing, pressing a record button, taking a
digital picture or scanning a bar code. Conventional diagrams of the Internet ... leave
out the most numerous and important routers of all - people. The problem is, people
have limited time, attention and accuracy—all of which means they are not very good at
capturing data about things in the real world. And that's a big deal. We're physical, and
so is our environment ... You can't eat bits, burn them to stay warm or put them in your
gas tank. Ideas and information are important, but things matter much more. Yet today's
information technology is so dependent on data originated by people that our computers
know more about ideas than things. If we had computers that knew everything there
was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we
would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost.
We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they
were fresh or past their best. The Internet of Things has the potential to change the
world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so." The research into the IoT is still in
its infancy. Therefore, there aren't any standard definitions for IoT. Several definitions
formulated by different researchers are listed in a survey.
Alternative definitions
Different definitions for the Internet of Things and contractions such as thingternet have
appeared. The term is evolving as the technology and implementation of the ideas
move forward. Here are several partially overlapping definitions:
CORDIS
An action plan for the European Union to introduce the governance based on the
Internet of Things.
Casagras
A global network infrastructure, linking physical and virtual objects through the
exploitation of data capture and communication capabilities.
This infrastructure includes existing and evolving Internet and network developments. It
will offer specific object-identification, sensor and connection capability as the basis for
the development of independent cooperative services and applications. These will be
characterised by a high degree of autonomous data capture, event transfer, network
connectivity and interoperability.
SAP
A world where physical objects are seamlessly integrated into the information network,
and where the physical objects can become active participants in business processes.
Services are available to interact with these 'smart objects' over the Internet, query and
change their state and any information associated with them, taking into account
security and privacy issues.
ETP EPOSS
The network formed by things/objects having identities, virtual personalities operating in
smart spaces using intelligent interfaces to connect and communicate with the users,
social and environmental contexts.
CERP-IoT
Internet of Things (IoT) is an integrated part of Future Internet and could be defined as a
dynamic global network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on
standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual ‘things’
have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities and use intelligent
interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network. In the IoT,
‘things’ are expected to become active participants in business, information and social
processes where they are enabled to interact and communicate among themselves and
with the environment by exchanging data and information ‘sensed’ about the
environment, while reacting autonomously to the ‘real/physical world’ events and
influencing it by running processes that trigger actions and create services with or
without direct human intervention. Interfaces in the form of services facilitate
interactions with these ‘smart things’ over the Internet, query and change their state and
any information associated with them, taking into account security and privacy issues.[20]
Other
The future Internet of Things links uniquely identifiable things to their virtual
representations in the Internet containing or linking to additional information on their
identity, status, location or any other business, social or privately relevant information at
a financial or non-financial pay-off that exceeds the efforts of information provisioning
and offers information access to non-predefined participants. The provided accurate
and appropriate information may be accessed in the right quantity and condition, at the
right time and place at the right price. The Internet of Things is not synonymous with
ubiquitous and pervasive computing, the Internet Protocol (IP), communication
technology, embedded devices, its applications, the Internet of People or the Intranet /
Extranet of Things, yet it relies on all of these approaches. The association of intelligent
virtual representations (e.g.: called avatars and embedded, hosted in the Cloud or
centralized) and physical objects are sometimes called "cyberobjects". Cyberobjects are
then considered as autonomous actors of the value chains they are involved in: able to
perceive, analyze and react in various contexts; although acting under the guidance of
human beings as programmed. Cyberobjects can then be assistants, advisors, decision
makers, etc.; and can be considered as true Agent (economics), helping to change
existing economic or organization models. In such a scenario, the conception of avatars
refers to artificial intelligence and Complex system.
Unique addressability of things
The original idea of the Auto-ID Center is based on RFID-tags and unique identification
through the Electronic Product Code.
An alternative view, from the world of the Semantic Web focuses instead on making all
things (not just those electronic, smart, or RFID-enabled) addressable by the existing
naming protocols, such as URI. The objects themselves do not converse, but they may
now be referred to by other agents, such as powerful centralized servers acting for their
human owners.
The next generation of Internet applications using Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
would be able to communicate with devices attached to virtually all human-made
objects because of the extremely large address space of the IPv6 protocol. This system
would therefore be able to identify any kind of object.
A combination of these ideas can be found in the current GS1/EPCglobal EPC
Information Services (EPCIS) specifications. This system is being used to identify
objects in industries ranging from Aerospace to Fast Moving Consumer Products and
Transportation Logistics.
Trends and characteristics
Intelligence
Ambient intelligence and autonomous control are not part of the original concept of the
Internet of Things. Ambient intelligence and autonomous control do not necessarily
require Internet structures, either. However, there is a shift in research to integrate the
concepts of the Internet of Things and autonomous control. In the future the Internet of
Things may be a non-deterministic and open network in which auto-organized or
intelligent entities (Web services, SOA components), virtual objects (avatars) will be
interoperable and able to act independently (pursuing their own objectives or shared
ones) depending on the context, circumstances or environments.
Embedded intelligence presents an “AI-oriented” perspective of IoT, which can be more
clearly defined as: leveraging the capacity to collect and analyze the digital traces left by
people when interacting with widely deployed smart things to discover the knowledge
about human life, environment interaction, as well as social connection/behavior.
Architecture
The system will likely be an example of event-driven architecture, bottom-up made
(based on the context of processes and operations, in real-time) and will consider any
subsidiary level. Therefore, model driven and functional approaches will coexist with
new ones able to treat exceptions and unusual evolution of processes (Multi-agent
systems, B-ADSc, etc.).
In an Internet of Things, the meaning of an event will not necessarily be based on a
deterministic or syntactic model but would instead be based on the context of the event
itself: this will also be a semantic web. Consequently, it will not necessarily need
common standards that would not be able to address every context or use: some actors
(services, components, avatars) will accordingly be self-referenced and, if ever needed,
adaptive to existing common standards.