1. Extending Semantic Web tools for improving Smart
Spaces interoperability and usability
Natalia Díaz Rodríguez & Johan Lilius
Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS),
Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
M.P. Cuéllar & Miguel Delgado Calvo-Flores
University of Granada, Spain
DCAI’13, Salamanca, 23.5.13
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2. Introduction
§ Smart Spaces (UbiComp): interoperability, working on
behalf of the user, handle unanticipated situations
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3. Introduction
§ Context-awareness for machine processing and reasoning.
§ Semantic Technologies and Ontologies: independent
knowledge sharing minimizing redundancy.
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4. Programming environments for novice
programmers
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[Scratch]
[IFTTT]

5. 5
Programming environments for novice
programmers
[Twine]
[Valpas]

6. Related Work
§ End-user Domain Specific Languages
– IF-THEN and ECA rule languages to create services
– Rapid test and iteration of ubicomp applications
§ What is missing?
– Underlying semantic capabilities
– Support for imprecise expressions
– Visual GUI for interacting with both fuzzy ontologies
and fuzzy rules
– General Domain
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7. Our proposal’s Contribution
A GUI model to visualize and interact with Smart Space
information.
– User-customized applications
– No knowledge of programming nor Semantic Web
– Semantic graph-based data
– Simple IF-THEN rules
– Publish/subscribe architecture using Smart-M3.
– Imprecise knowledge support
– Guidelines for visual language design
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8. Mapping OWL 2 to visual rule entities
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9. 9

10. Equivalent SPARQL Query
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§ Each rule is converted into a SPARQL query, which
can be transformed to a Smart-M3 subscription.

11. Mapping a visual rule to SPARQL
Algorithm
§ Input: Graphical IF-THEN rule.
§ Output: SPARQL query, [subscription].
§ IF-THEN rule parsing algorithm principles:
– IF conditions => Add RDF Triple patterns to WHERE clause
– THEN actions =>
a) Add Triple patterns to INSERT or DELETE clause
b) External application execution
Parameters:
• Must be defined in IF clause
• Add Triple to SELECT clause
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12. Conclusions
§ Providing ordinary end-users with flexible and functional
Smart Space environment:
– Rapid development of mash-ups applications with rules
– Abstracting away technical details
– Exploiting potential of SW technologies
– General purpose visual language, correct by construction.
– Query federation and imprecise knowledge representation
§ Evolve the SW from data modelling to computational medium
§ Applications:AmI, e-Health, Home Automation, etc.
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13. Future Work
§ Work in progress: further usability studies
§ Support for fuzzy reasoning
§ Visual model for defining higher level human
behaviours
§ Functionality: rule sharing and access control
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14. References
§ [Scratch] M. Resnick, J. Maloney, A. Monroy-
Hernandez, N. Rusk, E. Eastmond, K. Brennan, A.
Millner, E. Rosenbaum, J. Silver, B. Silverman, and Y. B.
Kafai. Scratch: programming for all.
§ [Valpas] Communications of the ACM, 52(11):60–67,
2009. A. Rex. Design of a caregiver programmable
assistive intelligent environment. Aalto University,
2011.
§ [Twine] http://supermechanical.com/twine
§ [IFTTT] http://ifttt.com
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15. Thank you for your attention!
Natalia Díaz Rodríguez
ndiaz@abo.fi
Embedded Systems Lab. Department of Information Technologies
Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
TUCS (Turku Centre for Computer Science)
Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
University of Granada, Spain
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