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UC scientists develop a unified management platform for different sensors of the Internet of Things

25 may, 2021
IoT
IoT
© Gerd Altmann

At first, the Internet of Things (IoT) depended essentially on real (physical) sensors, but nowadays it uses data from other types of sensors, namely virtual and social, which makes management extremely complex. To overcome this problem, a team from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra (FCTUC), developed a platform that allows the unified management of heterogeneous environments that support the IoT.

“More than the Internet of Things, we currently have "Internet of Everything", i.e., the internet of everything, as it is the internet of things, but it is also the internet of people and the internet of software. There is a series of sensors from various heterogeneous sources that collect huge volumes of information. This allows us to measure, among other variables, not only temperature, humidity and air pollution, but also human movements, industrial environments, especially in Industry 4.0, etc.; for example, our mobile phones are devices full of sensors that measure everything without us being aware of it", explains Fernando Boavida, co-author of the study, published in the scientific magazine IEEE Internet of Things.

Thus, the current IoT paradigm, which allows connecting the internet to different types of sensors and environments, in order to collect data on a large scale, requires systems that manage information, i.e., systems that allow to control and monitor data, regardless of the type of sensor.

There are several types of sensors: real sensors, virtual (software) sensors and social sensors, also known as human sensors, since they extract information placed by people on social networks. According to the Professor and researcher of the Department of Informatics Engineering of FCTUC, the starting question for the development of the platform was "How can we efficiently and effectively manage different types of IoT data sources?".

Taking advantage of several studies on IoT, which he has been conducting for over a decade together with Jorge Sá Silva, from FCTUC's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team set out to find solutions that could answer the question.

"Based on technologies widely adopted in IoT to manage real sensors, especially FIWARE technology, we developed a computer solution capable of managing different types of sensors and analysing the best management protocols in terms of performance", says Fernando Boavida, explaining that, in practice, "we took protocols and technologies used to manage real sensors, adjusting them for virtual and social sensors".

Afterwards, the prototype of the developed system was tested with volunteers, students from the University of Coimbra and from a polytechnic school in Ecuador during one semester, showing the viability of the proposed approach. The results obtained represent another step in the evolution of the Internet of Things: "with the same tools, it is possible to make a unified management of various types of sensors, that is, of heterogeneous environments of the Internet of Things. It is a platform that allows the effective management of data, regardless of the type of sensor - physical, virtual and social", says Fernando Boavida.

For instance, if you think about a smart city, "where you can infer the quality of life in a city, you have to manage a lot of factors: environmental factors, like temperature, pollution, humidity, etc.; more complex factors, like how easy it is to move around within the city; and you have to understand if people are satisfied. In this example, different types of sensors are involved. A system like ours allows to manage all that in a unified way", claims the FCTUC professor.

The next phase of the research will focus on the evolution of social sensors, which represent the greatest challenge, because the information that can be extracted is practically unlimited. In particular, Fernando Boavida and Jorge Sá Silva's team will explore the processing and analysis of the data extracted from social networks. In other words, concludes Fernando Boavida, "we intend to close the cycle. Besides extracting information from the social networks, we also want to give useful information, providing advice and data that can contribute to improving the quality of people's lives".


Original news article in Portuguese by Cristina Pinto 

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