Services Management by Semantic
SEMBYSEM is an European project funded by France in the context of ITEA 2 Eureka call for the period: 2008-2010. The consortium is composed of 15 partners from 4 countries (France, Finland, Spain, Turkey). The SEMBYSEM project deals with enabling stakeholders with AI technology that facilitate the management of services operating in large scale heterogeneous environments. With the advent of the Internet of Things, machines and robotic systems have to operate to in environments composed with myriad of heterogenous and ubiquitous computing objects equipped with sensors and actuators; we call such environments Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT). The solution developed by the SEMbySEM project is an ontology-based framework that abstract the monitoring and control of the IoRT environments despites their size and composition. The SEMbySEM framework is particularly fitting for IoRT environments where monitoring and control need to capture context and perform online reactive reasoning. For this purpose, SembySem propose two languages; micro-concept language for modelling context micro-ontologies and the Smart-Rules languages for modelling the reasoning rules needed for the monitoring and control as well as protecting the integrity of the context knowledge. SembySem provides also an operational platform that abstracts the communication with the real-world entities composing the IoRT environment through the notion of manageable object (MO). An MO is used to abstract atomic entities such as a sensor, an actuator, a computer, machine, robot as well complex entities. An MO makes the monitoring and control of the real-world objects very easy despites the complexity of the corresponding entity. The operational platform of SEMbySEM allows also to generate semantically described views that are updated in real-time, thanks to the queries that can be defined using the smart-rules language and the micro-concept ontology. These views can help the operators of an IoRT environment to make an effective control and trigger abstract actions on MOs. The latter are converted dynamically by the SembySem into proprietary procedures according to the protocol and formatting supported by the entities that are mapped with the MOs.
The SEMbySEM framework have been validated through the following use cases:
Real-time localisation and tracking of locomotives and wagons in rail transport as well as sharing of cargo information and technical data for safety, maintenance and inventory;
Management of virtual metrology results for metal car-panel production to provide users with highly detailed information on part quality and process performance; and
Centralised semantic monitoring and control of multiple and heterogenous building management systems based on the (SCADA) standard systems in a.
In SEMbySEM project, LISSI participated in the development of the SEMbySEM languages as well the reasoning engines of the operational platform. The LISSI have developed also reasoning models that are dedicated for the implementation of context aware monitoring systems, which cope with the requirements of ambient assisted living environments. After the project, the LISSI continues to maintain and evolve and the SEMbySEM Framework, which is called now Smart-rules framework.
For information, ITEA is a cluster research program of the EUREKA Network, which promotes transnational, market-driven innovative research and development projects around information and communication technologies.
