Achieving IoT Interoperability through a Service Oriented In-Home Appliance

The Internet of Things (IoT) environments are no more a vision as they are already surrounding the everyday life of citizens. Its pervasive nature brings IoT ecosystems closer and closer to the end users, facilitating their domestic lives through home automation appliances and platforms. Several M2M communication technologies and data representation techniques have been standardized and often established by the manufacturers. For such reasons, many Home Automation Systems (HAS) are irreconcilable due to the incompatibility of their communication technologies. In order to take a step towards HAS interoperability, in this paper we propose RouteX, an experimental cross-technology platform able to manage home devices belonging to different networks and using different technologies. It leverages the potential of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), providing the user with an abstraction layer over a multitude of home sensors and actuators. We also present a practical user interface, through which the user is able to administrate efficiently all his or her home appliances no matter which technology they use.