Consumer Frameworks for Smart Environments

Abstract

In this paper, we present a smart framework for Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled environments that promotes consumer interaction with that smart environment while still providing the control and management functionality necessary to manage the environment. Traditional smart frameworks focus solely upon the control and management functionality, allowing for consumer interaction via a centralized controller only (typically through a website or dedicated application). Traditional frameworks work in small, single manager environments, but are impractical in even medium sized, complex, or distributed multi- manager environments such as smart homes, smart buildings, and smart cities. Our framework is built upon the Liberated Object Location System (LOLS) that provides a distributed, decentralized, secure, and consumer oriented system that merges a control management framework for data collection and analysis with the consumers and the smart elements in the environment. Digital twins, or proxy services, are created for each device. LOLS provides a directory service for each device and its digital twin, allowing consumers to interact with the connected devices in the environment either directly or through the digital twin. Digital twins may exist at multiple levels in the information hierarchy, allowing for localized, regional, or even global functional scope. All digital twins are integrated with the environment control and management functionality, allowing for scalable, distributed smart environments that provide a consumer accessible interface for each smart device.