Dynamic Service Composition and Development Using Heterogeneous IoT Systems

IoT (Internet of Things) systems are based on heterogeneous hardware systems of different types of devices interconnected each other, ranging from miniaturized and low-power wireless sensor node to cloud servers. These IoT systems composed of heterogeneous hardware utilize data sets collected from a particular set of sensors or control designated actuators when needed using open APIs created through abstraction of devices' resources associated to service applications. However, previously existing IoT services have been usually developed based on vertical platforms, whose sharing and exchange of data is limited within each industry domain, for example, healthcare. Such problem is called 'data silo', and considered one of crucial issues to be solved for the success of establishing IoT ecosystems. Also, IoT services may need to dynamically organize their services according to the change of status of connected devices due to their mobility and dynamic network connectivity. We propose a way of dynamically composing IoT services under the concept of WoT (Web of Things) where heterogeneous devices across different industries are fully integrated into the Web. Our approach allows developers to create IoT services or mash them up in an efficient way using Web objects registered into multiple standardized horizontal IoT platforms where their resources are discoverable and accessible. A Web-based service composition tool is developed to evaluate the practical feasibility of our approach under real-world service development.