Phoenix - INRIA Research Group

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a reality with the emergence of Smart Cities, populated with large amounts of smart objects, which are used to deliver a range of services to citizens (e.g., parking availability, traffic, pollution, security). The IoT paradigm relies on the pervasive presence of smart objects or “things”. The development of applications orchestrating masses of sensors  raises a number of new challenges in the software engineering domain.

A Design-Driven Approach

We introduce a design-driven development approach that is dedicated to the domain of orchestration of masses of sensors. The developer declares what an application does using a domain-specific language (DSL), named DiaSwarm. Our compiler processes domain-specific declarations to generate a customized programming framework that guides and supports the programming phase.

Industrial Collaboration

The Object’s World project brings together stakeholders from different domains to build and support the emergence of an IoT sector in France and beyond. This OSEO-funded project is lead by SIGFOX, the world's first cellular network operator dedicated to low-bandwidth wireless objects. The cooperation between industry and research partners (e.g., sensor manufacturers, computer science and electrical engineering research labs) is of uttermost importance in overcoming technological barriers. This issue is currently hindering the development of an IoT sector.

The main objectives of this project are the development of

• Expertise in the low-bandwidth network sector,
• Low-cost transmitter/receiver chips,
• Low-energy autonomous sensors, and
• Software frameworks, which cover the entire lifecycle of IoT applications.

Network infrastructures, which support huge numbers of objects, open up a range of opportunities for innovative services. Critically, these new opportunities rely on the ability to address the software engineering challenges of this new sector. Our contribution is to demonstrate the benefits of a design-driven approach to developing applications orchestrating masses of sensors. As with other domains, this approach should facilitate software development by abstracting over implementation details and guiding the programmer.

Contributors

• Milan Kabáč
• Charles Consel
• Nic Volanschi

Publications