Socrades

The goal of the SOCRADES project is to create new methodologies, technologies and tools for the modelling, design, implementation and operation of networked hardware/software systems embedded in smart physical objects. The smart embedded system is to be applied in perception and control systems in intelligent environments, in which enhanced system intelligence is achieved by cooperation of smart embedded devices pursuing common goals. These devices with embedded intelligence and sensing/actuating capabilities are expected to be heterogeneous yet they need to interact seamlessly and intensively over a network (wired/wireless).
The middleware technologies to be developed in this project will be based on the Service-Oriented Architecture approach, will be generic to any networking technology or transmission medium, and will provide open interfaces that enable interoperability at the semantic level to any 3rd party. A SOCRADES service is considered a software component which encapsulates device-specific functionality. This functionality is advertised to the system in order to be located and invoked by other networked devices.
The SOCRADES approach is to create system intelligence by a large population of small and smart networked embedded devices at a high level of granularity, as opposed to the traditional approach of focusing intelligence on a few large and monolithic applications. This increased granularity of intelligence distributed among loosely coupled intelligent physical objects facilitates the adaptability and reconfigurability of the system, allowing it to meet business demands not foreseen at the time of design. Focus from a functional view will be in managing the vastly increased number of intelligent devices and the associated complexity. Focus from a run-time infrastructure view will be in a new breed of very flexible real-time embedded devices (wired/wireless) which are fault-tolerant, reconfigurable, safe and secure.

Project objectives

Currently, intelligent systems based on distributed embedded devices concentrate the programming of the behaviour and intelligence on a handful of large monolithic computing resources accompanied by large numbers of dumb devices. The intelligence and behaviour are tailored and individually programmed for each application. Likewise, interfaces and communication links between devices are custom-built in house to meet application-specific requirements for interactions and QoS. Such kinds of tightly coupled distributed systems introduce serious shortcomings for the deployment of new systems and for the reconfiguration of existing systems in order to meet evolving user and/or business needs. Firstly, there is a need to (re-)program and maintain the large and complex computing systems where the system behaviour and intelligence is concentrated. Secondly, serious interoperability issues exist that need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. Thirdly, the QoS of communication links between devices in not deterministic thus yielding unpredictable system behaviour, especially with wireless systems, which are important to facilitate reconfiguration. Lastly, there is poor or no integration of device level information with enterprise systems.

What is expected from future intelligent systems is:

• Seamless interaction between embedded systems and the physical environment.
• Elimination of cabling enabled by wireless technologies.
• Predictable QoS in wireless that meets the real-time requirements of demanding sensor/actuator networks.
• Interoperability between heterogeneous devices deployed in various platforms and networking technologies.
• Autonomous and intensive collaboration between intelligent components embedded in smart devices.
• System intelligence built by aggregating the incremental intelligence offered by small smart devices.
• Autonomous system reconfiguration by adding/ removing/ replacing/ composing smart embedded devices with incremental intelligence for the system.
• Seamless integration into enterprise systems.
• Systematic methods and semi-automatic tools for engineering overall system behaviour.

Scientific and technological objectives

The scientific and technological objectives of SOCRADES are to create a service-oriented ecosystem where intelligent networked systems are composed of wired/wireless smart embedded devices that interact with the physical environment and with the enterprise environment pursuing well-defined system goals.
By taking the granularity of intelligence to the device level, intelligent system behaviour is achieved by composing configurations of devices that introduce incremental fractions of the required intelligence. This approach enhances rapid reconfigurability, as there is no need for software re-programming of large monolithic systems but rather a reconfiguration of loosely coupled embedded units. In order to improve the agility of deployment and reconfiguration, wireless technology for embedded devices is of particular interest, with emphasis on low power consumption and predictable QoS. Interoperability of widely heterogeneous devices is provided by following a ubiquitous service-oriented approach, which provides opaque interfaces and facilitates discovery and composition of resources. Interoperability at the semantic level is enabled by employing machine-interpretable semantic markup, which is used by intelligent physical agents to reason and infer the skills and services offered by other devices, and collaborate towards common goals.

Wireless technology

Wireless technologies can significantly facilitate deployment and reconfiguration by eliminating the need for installing and maintaining cabling, reducing both costs and time. The lack of industrial adoption of wireless technology is due to its lack of maturity, failing to provide real-time performance and reliability metrics that are comparable to those of wired networks.

One of the main objectives of the project is therefore to specify new wireless communication protocols that provide the required reliability, safety, security and real-time parameters for embedded devices. Associated to this objective is the specification of middleware that encapsulates the different mechanisms to offer specific QoS provisions and the different underlying wireless technologies.

Web Services for intelligent embedded devices

The umbrella paradigm underpinning novel collaborative system design approaches is to consider the set of intelligent system units as a conglomerate of distributed, autonomous, intelligent, pro-active, fault-tolerant and reusable units, which operate as a set of cooperating entities. Typically, each entity is constituted of hardware, sensing/actuating resources, control software and embedded intelligence. These entities are capable of working in a pro-active manner, initiating collaborative actions and dynamically interacting with each other in order to achieve both local and global objectives, down from the physical machine control level up to the higher levels of the business process management system.
The use of the Service-Oriented Architecture paradigm implemented through Web Services technologies, at the ad hoc device network level enables the adoption of a unifying technology for all levels of the enterprise, from sensors and actuators to enterprise business processes. The benefits of service-orientation are conveyed all the way to the device level, facilitating the discovery and composition of applications by re-configuration rather than re-programming. Dynamic self-configuration of smart embedded devices using loosely-coupled services provides significant advantages for highly dynamic and ad hoc distributed applications, as opposed to the use of more rigid technologies such as those based on distributed objects.

A key goal of SOCRADES is therefore to specify a service-oriented framework for device-level infrastructures, where system intelligence implemented by intelligent physical agents embedded in smart devices.

To realise this goal, it is necessary to:

• Specify an enhanced version of DPWS for encapsulating intelligence and sensing/actuating skills as services, as well as to specify associated device management and orchestration frameworks.
• Define a methodology for describing services with semantic markup that can be interpreted and processed by agents (Semantic Web Services), for the discovery, selection and composition of resources.
• Specify a framework for service-enabled intelligent physical agents.

Enterprise integration

The application of the SOA paradigm and Web Services technology, as proposed in SOCRADES, results in a single unifying application-level communications technology across the enterprise.

A fundamental goal of SOCRADES is to enable the integration of device-level services with enterprise systems.

This goal will require the definition of new integration concepts taking into account the emerging requirements of business applications and the explosion of available information from the device level. Of particular interest is the availability of real-time events information, which will be used to specify new enterprise integration approaches for applications such as business activity monitoring, overall equipment effectiveness optimisation, maintenance optimisation, etc.

System engineering

Considering the users of the type of distributed embedded systems covered by SOCRADES, it is necessary to support application design, simulation and monitoring of real-time intelligent embedded components. Simultaneously, it is necessary to support the integration of these devices with higher-level business process systems (enterprise dimension), with supply chain partners (value/supply-chain dimension) and within a lifecycle engineering context (lifecycle dimension). Furthermore, the explosion in number of embedded devices will require new tools and methods for managing a new degree of complexity.

Within this area, a goal of SOCRADES is to specify systematic approaches and engineering tools that will facilitate the engineering of the overall system behaviour.