GrOWTH: Goal-Oriented End User Development for Web of Things Devices

Abstract

In the last few years, interest in the Web of Things (WoT) domain has significantly increased, particularly in the end user group. Therefore, the barriers to entry for end users without technical experience should decrease. However, so far, research in the WoT has been mainly dedicated to technical aspects of smart objects such as communication challenges and interoperability. The benefits of WoT can be amplified if end users; who do not have the required programming skills, are provided the opportunity to be directly involved in defining the behavior of their smart environment without being involved in technical issues. Many of the current end user development (EUD) applications available for WoT are not efficiently usable for the non-technical users, requiring a high learning burden and high development time for the end user. It is a significant challenge to enable EUD frameworks for WoT devices to automatically adjust their behavior based on the goals of the end user. This article presents GrOWTH, an architecture to enable end users to program WoT devices based on a goal-oriented interaction. To fulfill the desired user goal GrOWTH uses semantic web ontologies for knowledge representation and planning techniques from the artificial intelligence domain to dynamically generate plans at runtime taking into account the user goals, context, and available WoT devices. We showcase a prototypical implementation of GrOWTH in the domain of smart home. The design principle is ease of use and reducing the development time.