Twitter to integrate human and Smart Objects by a Web of Things architecture

Recent advancements in embedded systems, computer science and telecommunication fields open up to new application opportunities where many physical entities are disseminated across the world and connected through the Internet. This new scenario, often referred as Internet of Things (IoT), gives raise to different issues and challenges to be coped with. Indeed, each kind of physical device comes with different technology details, low level communication protocols and can exhibit different semantic behaviors. In addition, the interaction between human beings and the physical objects must be properly managed. Two main approaches exist to cope with the mentioned issues: (i) the development of new ad-hoc technologies and solutions to deal with the specific issues raising from the new scenario, or (ii) the exploitation of well-known technologies and solutions also in the new context so as to facilitate the integration of the physical stuff with the preexisting internet services. The latter approach is usually referred as Web of Things (WoT). This paper proposes a possible implementation of the WoT vision. The resulting architecture allows creating complex applications where physical resources, internet resources and human resources can properly interact with each other. The objects of the physical world are virtualized and managed through the Smart Object (SO) concept. The SOs are enclosed in a Smart Gateway which exposes them to the world through an uniform web API based on REST paradigm. The human beings interaction is achieved using the popular micro-blogging platform Twitter. The integration between all the entities is provided by adopting a WS-BPEL workflow technology. To validate the approach an example of a smart room environment controlled through Twitter in a crowd source fashion is detailed.