Towards a Cloud-assisted and Agent-oriented Architecture for the Internet of Things

摘要

actuators, smart devices, smart objects, RFID, embedded computers, robots) have their identities, physical attributes, and interfaces. They will be seamlessly integrated into the information network such that they will become active participants in business, information and social processes wherever and whenever needed and proper. The technical realization of this vision is a complex challenge as distributed heterogeneous IoT components at different levels of abstractions need to cooperate among themselves, with conventional networked IT infrastructures, and also with human users. To cope with this issue, we propose the synergic exploitation of two complementary mainstream paradigms for large-scale distributed computing: the agent-oriented and the cloud computing paradigms. While the former can support the development of decentralized, dynamic, cooperating and open IoT systems in terms of multi-agent systems, the latter can empower the IoT objects with more computing and memory resources and effectively support system-wide higher-level mechanisms and policies. In this paper, we introduce a cloud-assisted and agent-oriented vision for IoT based on layered reference architecture. Finally, we briefly overview our agent-oriented middleware for cooperating smart objects and a sensor-cloud infrastructure that represent the basic building blocks for technically achieving such vision.