Masterarbeit
Web Of Things Interface Creation of IoT Devices
Completion
2024/12
Research Area
Intelligent Information Management
Advisers
Description
Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more and more popular as there is an increasing number of smart devices which are cheaper, smaller and more powerful. These IoT devices (e.g., smart lamps, fans, thermometers, etc.) are developed by different manufacturers, and are using different interfaces based on different network protocols (Bluetooth, ZigBee, RFID, custom protocols) or software platforms. The diversity of IoT interfaces brings obstacles to the integration and interoperability of smart devices. In order to reach these devices or to combine them into a system for a desired goal, the developer usually needs to check the capability of each specific device and the specification of its interface. And the lack of interoperability between smart devices increases the difficulty and the effort of integrating heterogeneous devices into a simple application. Also, the scalability is limited because for each device added or changed in a particular application, the corresponding code needs to be implemented by the developer to integrate the new device with the overall application. One solution which improves interoperability is the Web of Things (WoT) which provides a unified interface that allows smart devices to be integrated to the Web. W3C provides a standardization for describing WoT devices in an interoperable format, and this standardization can be extended to support WoT composition, which is essential in automatic AI planning. The smart devices can be properly represented in the extended format, and then turned into Web resources that are accessible via HTTP. Therefore, a unified interface of WoT devices is created where physical devices have addressable URIs and can be treated as Web resources, which means they can be easily accessed and controlled by standard Web mechanisms similar to other existing Web resources, and the efficiency and reusability of developing smart applications can be greatly improved. Web developers will also benefit from this method, because the focus moves from the means of communication to the content of the transferred data and application logic.
The objective of this master thesis is to use a model-driven method that uses an extended WoT Things Description (TD) to automatically create a unified WoT interface. Firstly, the solution will integrate the ontological model of Web of Things Description Language (WoTDL) with the TD model to support WoT composition. Then the smart devices will be represented by the extended TD model. Later, the TD instances of smart devices are transformed into corresponding OpenAPI specifications, which contains all the necessary information of Web resources. Finally, the WoT interface is created in which the smart devices are accessible as Web resources, which supports both protocols of HTTP and CoAP. This solution will help developers integrate physical devices with reduced time and effort. This thesis particularly includes the state of the art regarding Model-Driven Engineering approaches and API creation applications in the domain of WoT. The demonstration of feasibility with an implementation prototype of the concept in a smart home scenario is part of this thesis. Finally, a suitable evaluation of the tool with the suitable target group to show the amount of time required to add a new device to the system is part of this thesis.
