The HESTIA Framework : From an Internet of Things to an Internet of Meaning

Abstract

At first glance, the Internet of Things brings about an expectation for users (be it individuals or organizations) to interact with the many Internet-connected “things” in a natural way while also enhancing everyday work and life. The emergence of smart cities, and smart homes, also fuels the need for a broad audience to interact with the Internet of Things in a natural way. In current practice, however, users are confronted with the need to negotiate a complex landscape involving a myriad of protocols, standards, and work-arounds to integrate “legacy” devices, etc. We contend that users should not have to think about their world in terms of specific sensors, actuators, gateways, and protocols but rather in terms of room temperatures, the desire to increase the temperature in the living room, the concern that the plants in the garden are watered on time, etc. This creates a need to bridge this gap by creating a semantically meaningful layer of abstraction on top of the sensors and actuators that make up the “device and protocols oriented” Internet of Things, to create an Internet of Meaning. To this end, this chapter reports on the HESTIA framework, which combines: (1) An abstraction of the implementation details pertaining to, e.g., different protocols, standards, etc. (2) A domain-specific (conceptual) modeling framework in terms of which “things” can be captured in a way that is meaningful to the domain at hand (3) Based on this, a domain-specific language that is understandable by the user, enabling users to define control/behavioral rules in terms that are meaningful to them The presented HESTIA framework will be illustrated in terms of examples in the context of home and garden automation. Though such application contexts seem less challenging and complex than industrial Internet of Things applications, the variety of devices and protocols and distance between users and the technical details are often larger than in the case of industrial Internet of Things.