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Internet of Things – Strategic Research Roadmap
will configure themselves when exposed to a new environment, and show an
“intelligent/cognitive” behaviour when faced with other things and deal seamlessly with
unforeseen circumstances; and, finally, they might manage their own disassembly and
recycling, helping to preserve the environment, at the end of their lifecycle.
The Internet of Things infrastructure allows combinations of smart objects (i.e. wireless
sensors, mobile robots, etc), sensor network technologies, and human beings, using different
but interoperable communication protocols and realises a dynamic
multimodal/heterogeneous network that can be deployed also in inaccessible, or remote
spaces (oil platforms, mines, forests, tunnels, pipes, etc.) or in cases of emergencies or
hazardous situations (earthquakes, fire, floods, radiation areas, etc.,). In this infrastructure,
these different entities or “things” discover and explore each other and learn to take advantage
of each other’s data by pooling of resources and dramatically enhancing the scope and
reliability of the resulting services.
The “things” in the Internet of Things vision will influence each other depending their
functional capabilities (e.g. computational processing power, network connectivity, available
power, etc.) as well as on context and situations (time, space etc.) and will be actively involved
in different processes. Some of their attributes, actions and involvements are clustered under
five domains and presented in Table 1:
Table 1 Characteristics and attributes clustered under functional domains
Domain 1 - Fundamental
characteristics
“Things” can be “real world entities” or “virtual entities”
“Things” have identity; there are means for automatically
identifying them
“Things” are environmentally safe
“Things” (and their virtual representations) respect the
privacy, security and safety of other “things” or people
with which they interact
“Things” use protocols to communicate with each other
and the infrastructure
“Things” are involved in the information exchange
between real/physical, digital and virtual worlds
Domain 2 – Common
characteristics of all things,
even the most basic (applies
to all higher classes too)
“Things” can use services that act as interfaces to “things”
“Things” would be competing with other “things” on
resources, services and subject to selective pressures
“Things” may have sensors attached, thus they can
interact with their environment
Domain 3 - Characteristics of
social things (applies to all
higher classes too)
“Things” can communicate with other “things”,
computing devices and with people
“Things” can collaborate to create groups or networks
“Things” can initiate communication
Domain 4 - Characteristics of
considerate autonomous
things (applies to all higher
classes too)
“Things” can do many tasks autonomously
“Things” can negotiate, understand and adapt to their
environment
“Things” can extract patterns from the environment or to
learn from other “things”
“Things” can take decisions through their reasoning
capabilities
“Things” can selectively evolve and propagate
information
Domain 5 - Characteristics of
things that are capable of
self-replication or control
“Things” can create, manage and destroy other “things”
In the IoT architecture, intelligent middleware will allow the creation of a dynamic map of the
real/physical world within the digital/virtual space by using a high temporal and spatial
resolution and combining the characteristics of ubiquitous sensor networks and other
identifiable “things”.
In the physical world, things respond to stimuli from the environment in a consistent manner.
When white light is shone on a red object the dye absorbs nearly all the light except the red,
which is reflected. At an abstract level, the coloured surface is an interface for the object, and