1) Humans should be an integral part of interactions in the Internet of Things, not just observers. Mobile agents can enable thing-to-thing, human-to-thing, and human-to-human interactions in a decentralized way. 2) The document proposes using mobile agents and near field communication to build a system where users are in control of tasks and interactions between devices, sensors, and other users. 3) A prototype was implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of using mobile agents encapsulated in messages to facilitate interactions between various components in the Internet of Things.

1. Center for Ubiquitous Computing, University of Oulu, Finland
Teemu Leppänen, Iván Sánchez Milara, Jilin Yang, Joonas Kataja and Jukka Riekki
Enabling User-centered Interactions
in the Internet of Things
Leppänen, T., Sanchez Milara, I., Yang, J., Kataja, J. and Riekki, J. “Enabling User-centered Interactions
in the Internet of Things”, In: IEEE SMC 2016, pp. 1537-1543, October 9-12, Budapest, Hungary, 2016.

2. Cloud
infrastructure
Current IoT architectures
2 SMC 2016

3. 3 SMC 2016
What is the role of humans
in IoT ???
Just users of cloud-based
services???
Just data observers???

4. Cloud
infrastructure
Current IoT architectures
4 SMC 2016

5. Humans in IoT
5 SMC 2016
Humans as
communication
nodes
Humans as
processing nodes
Humans as
actuators
D. Nunes, P. Zhang, and J. Silva, “A survey on Human-in-the-Loop applications towards
an Internet of All”, IEEE Commun. Surv. Tuts., vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 944-965, February 2015.
Icons designed by Madebyoliver from Flaticon

6. 6 SMC 2016
What should the role of
humans in IoT
???
CC Attribution license. Postscapes and Harbor Research. http://www.postscapes.com/what-exactly-is-the-internet-of-things-infographic/

7. Interactions in IoT
7 SMC 2016
Thing to Thing Human to Thing Human to
Human
A. M. Ortiz, D. Hussein, S. Park, S. N. Han, and N. Crespi, “The Cluster Between Internet of Things and Social
Networks: Review and Research Challenges,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 206–215, Jun. 2014.

8. 8 SMC 2016
How can we build those
interactions ?

9. Mobile Agents for IoT
9 SMC 2016
IoT SOFTWARE FRAMEWORK
Mobile agents operate as multi-agent
system
System components modeled as resources
and accessed with Web protocols:
HTTP & CoAP, providing interoperability
T. Leppänen, M. Liu, E. Harjula, A. Ramalingam, J. Ylioja, P. Närhi, J. Riekki, and T. Ojala, “Mobile Agents
for Integration of Internet of Things and Wireless Sensor Networks,” in 2013 IEEE SMC2013, pp. 14–21.
– Mobile agents are software agents with mobility: migrate
between computers in networked systems
– Agents are autonomous, intelligent and social
– A distibuted application design and implementation paradigm

10. NFC
10 SMC 2016
NEAR FIELD COMMUNICATION
– Short range wireless technology (~5cm)
– Data stored permanently in the tag
– Readers embedded in mobile phones
Reader/Writer P2P Card Emulation

11. User interactions in IoT
11 SMC 2016
Traditional approach
• Central coordination usually in
cloud platform
• To execute a task it might
involve multiple actions, all the
load for the user.
• Human-to-human interaction not
considered
• Conflicts between users solved
by themselves with no
information about current state of
system or external components
Mobile agents approach
• Decentralized, autonomously
operated by mobile agents
• Agent performs actions to
execute user-defined tasks
• Mobile agents can assist
users to take decisions.
• Agents migrate based on
human social relationships

12. Mobile agents interactions (I)
12 SMC 2016
Thing to Thing
Mobile
agent

13. Mobile agents interactions (II)
13 SMC 2016
Human to Thing
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent

14. Mobile agents interactions (III)
14 SMC 2016
Human to Human
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent
Mobile
agent

15. System architecture
15 SMC 2016
Migration through
COAP message
Web Service
Migration through
HTTP request
Migration through NFC
(social interaction)
Agent requests data /
actuates component
Device
Sensor/
Actuator
Device
Sensor/
Actuator
Migration through
NFC

16. Mobile agent architecture
16 SMC 2016
• Task code is application-specific
• Task resources accessed through
URLS with HTTP methods
• State exposes (selected) task
results in the system
• HW, OS and programming
language independent
• Current implementations for
embedded systems (binary code)
and smartphones (Python,
JavaScript)

17. Mobile agent encapsulated in a
COAP message:
• Enables standardized communication
for embedded networked systems
• Integrates disparate systems
• Minimal protocol overhead
• Reduces the resources needed for
protocol translation
Mobile agent encapsulation
17 SMC 2016
Resources addresses +
utility data
Task code
(precompiled to node native language)
COAP Message
COAP Message embedded in one or several NDEF records

18. Summary
18 SMC 2016
• Humans are part of the IoT
– It is necessary consider thing-to-thing, human-to-thing, human-
to-human interactions
– Move away from classical person-as-observer paradigm
• We present an homogenous interaction method for the
IoT
– Best suited for scenarios where users should be in control
– Technology enablers: Mobile agents and NFC
• We implement a real world prototype to verify the
feasibility of the system