Generic-events architecture: Integrating real-world aspects in event-based systems

In a future networked physical world, a myriad of smart sensors and actuators assess and control aspects of their environments and autonomously act in response to it. To a large extent, such systems operate proactively and independently of direct human control. They include computer hardware and software parts mixed with mechanical devices. Besides the regular computer communication channels, they also establish interaction channels among them directly through the environment. These characteristics pose a number of fundamentally new consistency and correctness challenges which, if not met, may hinder the dependability of such systems, and ultimately lead to unexpected failures. This paper describes an architectural framework and event model capable of solving these pressing problems. Firstly, we offer an innovative composable object model representing software/hardware entities capable of interacting with the environment. Secondly, we provide event-based communication seamlessly integrating real-world events and events generated in the system. The crucial parts of our work are the generic-events architecture GEAR, hosting the COSMIC middleware supporting the events model, with attributes to express spatial and temporal properties. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.