An IoT-based user-centric ecosystem for heterogeneous Smart Home environments

Recent innovations in the ICT field are strongly focused towards the Internet of Things, which will definitely lead to an enhancement also in the domestic environments. Low-power and low-cost devices are expected to create a network of interconnected smart objects able to transform our homes into real Smart Homes. However, the heterogeneity of the underlying technologies prevents these smart objects to natively interoperate for adapting the environment to users´ needs. In addition, common users are often excluded from the development of new applicative services that exploit physical devices, as they do not have sufficient programming and technological skills. To overcome these limitations, we propose a software ecosystem that allows different-skilled users to develop location-aware services able to autonomously manage the Smart Home. These services control the environment in accordance with user-defined rules and the users´ location, calculated by exploiting an indoor localization mechanism. In addition, to directly interact with smart devices, users can also define customized interfaces for mobile devices. Finally, a multi-protocol middleware allows both the services and the mobile applications to access the physical network hiding the underlying heterogeneities. As a proof-of-concept, the first implementation steps are presented.