SM4ALL Project

The SM4ALL (Smart hoMes for All) project aims at studying and developing an innovative middleware platform for inter-working of smart embedded services in immersive and person-centric environments, through the use of composability and semantic techniques, in order to guarantee dynamicity, dependability and scalability, while preserving the privacy and security of the platform and its users. This is applied to the challenging scenario of private/home/building in presence of users with different abilities and needs (e.g., young able bodied aged and disabled).

 

In particular, in the SM4ALL project P2P, service-orientation and context-awareness are merged in novel ways in order to define a general reference architecture for embedded middleware targeted to immersive scenarios, among which the domotics and home-care have been selected as showcases. The SM4ALL platform will offer specific features of scalability (with respect to the number of embedded services to be managed) and dynamicity (the capability of the platform to manage on-the-fly insertion/removal of (new) devices/sensors/appliances). By exploiting techniques from autonomic computing (self-* properties) and peer-to-peer systems, the services and the platform will offer such features directly built-in, and not as a subsequent add-on. Moreover, in the design of the SM4ALL platform, there will be a specific focus on ontologies for describing service capabilities, to be used for obtaining the dynamic configuration and composition of the services, while preserving the privacy of the users. Specific emphasis is devoted to the overall security of the smart environment, with respect to who/which can do what and to possible intrusions of spy sensors/services/devices.

 

Finally the SM4ALL project aims at defining and developing such an embedded pervasive platform for smart houses truly for all, in which users with different abilities and needs (e.g., young able bodied, aged and disabled) can interact with the services provided by the different domotic devices, appliances and sensors through basic and advanced interfaces, being the latter ones based on brain-computer interaction technologies. Brain-computer interaction (BCI) is a specific set of techniques, based on the interplay of hardware and software, that allows people to interact with a screen; in the project vision, it allows the selection of a desired goal among a set of possible ones, proactively offered by the SM4ALL system on the basis of the available services, the current context of the user (perceived through the sensors and a profiling of previous actions and goals). Once the desired goal is specified, some composition techniques will define the most suitable way of coordinating the available services, and will deploy such an orchestration specification on top of the infrastructure, through which the services interact each other in order to deliver some final composite service to the user. Such a composite service can effectlively satisfy the user’s goal, or can take the infrastructure “nearer” to it than in the initial situation, not being able to progress any more if not correctly driven by the user. Again the SM4ALL system propose new possible alternatives, and the cycle (user makes a choice, composition and orchestration) is repeated until the user’s satisfaction is reached. In such a way, the continuous interaction between the user and the house infrastructure (that acts proactively and automatically among different interaction points, and it is not “passive” as current houses are) allows the user to satisfy his needs by relieving him from low level coordination of devices’ tasks. This is especially useful in case of permanent, partial or temporary disabilities, as the SM4ALL showcase will demonstrate. 

 

In such a way, the ambitious target of the SM4ALL project is to couple, for the first time, advanced research and techniques in embedded and distributed systems with service oriented computing (on the one hand) and accessibility and advanced interation techniques (on the other hand), thus developing a truly embedded dynamic environment for all.