How to find a Thing?

Discussion of an Object Name Servicewithin the Identities of Things Discussion Group

September, 2014

Ingo Friese; T-Labs DTAG, Matteo Signorini; Excalibur

Exemplary IoT Scenario:Fleet management in farming industry.

*by courtesy of Claas

Exemplary IoT Scenario:Support of farming production processes.

Harvesting Transport Processing

What’s the problem?”All participants of the scenario use different ID from different domains and namespaces”.

License plate e.g. “B-BA 1254”

serial no. e.g. #234.36635.234

CAN-Bus Id ”11011001110”

What’s the problem?”One machine needs to communicate with a another machine from another company”.

License plate e.g. “B-BA 1254”

serial no. e.g. #234.36635.234

CAN-Bus Id ”11011001110”

Example:The harvester needs to communicate with the truck in order to tell him when

and where to take over the crop. The truck might ask asks:

„I need a connection with the harvester over there/ on this field/in this campaign“….but I don‘t know its address and I even don‘t know anything

about its address scheme“.

What’s the idea?Apart from characteristics and features things have “relationships”.

ThingThing

manufactured by

owned by

sold by

used asshipped by

used by

located at

How to find a Thing?With a sufficient knowledge of the relationship a thing might be identified quite well.

manufactured by Claas

owned by Farmer Tom

sold by „Farm Machines Inc.“

Network connected byIP 121.23.45.55

used incampaign xyz

driven byIngo

Located atGPS position34’23‘‘/45’77‘‘/Toms field

How to find a Thing?A relationship can be seen as a graph described in detail with attributes.

EntityEntity EntityEntityrelationshiprelationship

ClaasClaasmanufacturedby

manufacturedby

attributeattribute

serial noserial no

How to find a Thing?A hierarchy structure can be defined among attributes.

Manufactured byManufactured by

ClaasClaas Deutz FahrDeutz Fahr

...... ...... ...... ......

Relationship /Attribute ID

Attribute classes

Each attribute can be sub-divided into a multiple levels hierarchy.The more the number of levels the higher the probability to uniquely identify

a device.

How to find a Thing?A hierarchy structure can be represented by a graph.

Manufactured byManufactured by

ClaasClaas Deutz FahrDeutz Fahr

...... ...... ...... ......

Attribute ID

Attribute classes

The hierarchycal attribute structure can be depicted as a graph with each node representing an attribute class.

How to find a Thing?Circular hierarchical architecture.

Manufactured byManufactured by

Owned byOwned by

Located atLocated at

... ...

... ...

... ...

Used asUsed as

... ...

How to find a Thing?Device identification precision

Higher the number and the precision level of each attribute class and higherthe probability to uniquely identify a device

How to find a Thing?Graph representation of the database

Attributes

AttributesDevices

Devices

How to find a Thing?Say it in RDF (or other formats) and put it to a graph data base.

manufactured by Claas

owned by Farmer Tom

sold by „Farm Machines Inc.“

used ascorn harvester

shipped byMAX-Transport

driven byIngo

Located atGPS position34’23‘‘/45’77‘‘/Toms field

harvester --manufactured by-> Claas harvester --driven by-> Ingo

harvester --owned by-> Farmer Tom harvester --sold by-> Farm Machines Inc.

harvester --network connected by-> IP 121.23.45.55 harvester --located at-> 34’23‘‘/45’77‘‘

/Toms field

Graph data baseGraph data base

How to find a Thing?Ask the database.

manufactured by Claas

owned by Farmer Tom

sold by „Farm Machines Inc.“

used ascorn harvester

shipped byMAX-Transport

driven byIngo

Located atGPS position34’23‘‘/45’77‘‘/Toms field

Now the truck might ask the data base: I’m looking for a “device”manufactured by -> Claas owned by -> Farmer Tom

driven by -> Ingo

Graph data baseGraph data base

How to find a Thing?Graph-based name resolve process.

harvester --manufactured by-> Claasharvester --owned by-> Farmer Tom

harvester --manufactured by-> Claasharvester --owned by-> Farmer Tom

harvester --driven by-> Ingo

The idea of using relationships is not new.See NIST Spec for Asset Identification.

Source: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistir/ir7693/NISTIR-7693.pdf

It's a kind of search engine and DNS.What’s the difference to a “Web-style search engine”.

Classic “Google approach”

Fed through web-crawlingUp to many thousand resultsOwned / controlled by one companyInformation is not controlled bythe owner of a web-site

Our approach

Automatically fed by the devices themselfQuality of the name-resolve query process strictly dependent by the number and precision of attributes used in the queryThe query process can be additionally refined if necessaryOwnership is distributedA „thing owner“ is able to controlwho is able to find his device

How to find a Thing.Open Issues and next steps:

How to design the distribution of the system? Global but also local communities, companies might offer this service

How can the interact?

Do we need ontologies to describe attribute hierarchies? What is the organizational framework?

Do we need something like IANA as an steering organization?

How to ensure privacy? We can restrict requests in several ways. (e.g. if you ask for a certain machine you have to

show your identity)

How to ensure non-repudiation of the relationship data? We store e.g. transactions or events belonging to a certain thing(key word blog-chains etc.)

How to build an business on top of it? A special indicator might show how „expensive“ the requested data/or

computing power is (keyword: smart contracts).

Identities of ThingsDiscussion Group

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Questions?