Integration of Agent-based and Cloud Computing for the Smart Objects-oriented IoT

In the future Internet of Things (IoT), smart objects will be the fundamental building blocks for the creation of cyber-physical smart pervasive systems in a great variety of application domains ranging from health-care to transportation, from logistics to smart grid and cities. The implementation of a smart objects-oriented IoT is a complex challenge as distributed, autonomous, and heterogeneous IoT components at different levels of abstractions and granularity need to cooperate among themselves, with conventional networked IT infrastructures, and also with human users. In this paper, we propose the integration of two complementary mainstream paradigms for large-scale distributed computing: Agents and Cloud. Agent-based computing can support the development of decentralized, dynamic, cooperating and open IoT systems in terms of multi-agent systems. Cloud computing can enhance the IoT objects with high performance computing capabilities and huge storage resources. In particular, we introduce a cloud-assisted and agent-oriented IoT architecture that will be realized through ACOSO, an agent-oriented middleware for cooperating smart objects, and BodyCloud, a sensor-cloud infrastructure for large-scale sensor-based systems.