DIEM Thesis: Semantic Interoperability in Smart Environments

Interoperability Work Package and Embedded Systems Laboratory of Åbo Akademi present a new DIEM related Master of Science thesis "Semantic Interoperability in Smart Environments" by Lakshman Veer.Ponguwala.

The main achievement of the thesis is prototyping a design pattern,— with ontology, code generator, and design principle—, to streamline the development of optimal Smart Applications (SA). Using the design principle, entire functionality of the SA is divided into smallest possible subtasks and each subtask is implemented by a knowledge processor or agent, an entity communicates with other entities in the SA through smart space. Aggregating the functionalities of all these agents forms the required SA. The smart space acts as a central communication hub among agents for exchanging information in SAs. In this design pattern ontologies are used to overcome semantic heterogeneities and played vital role for understanding the meaning of exchanged information. Implementing Meeting Minder SA using this pattern is the main objective of this thesis. For interoperability between agents of this application meeting minder ontology is developed and used in it. The possible ways to update and/or modify the functionality of existing agents are also identified. These methods are applied practically in updating the functionality of meeting minder SA.

The final objective of the thesis is discovering the possibility of sharing common vocabulary (ontology) to interoperate existing SAs. For this objective, meeting minder SA and calendar SA are interoperated by sharing common vocabulary from meeting minder and calendar ontologies.

Based on these implementations it is observed that with proposed design pattern and identified methods (for updating and/or modifying agents and interoperating existing SAs) a novice programmer can develop efficient SAs in short time.