Towards Uninterruptible Smart Home Processes

Today's Smart Home protocols specify the functionality and interfaces of Smart Home devices, but they cannot represent arbitrary, complex processes defined by the user. For example, if a speaker has to play music after a motion detector detects movement. This process has to be set up on a centralized automation system. However, if the connection to the Internet breaks down or the involved cloud systems crash, most Smart Home processes will stop working. This paper proposes a decentralized approach where the defined process descriptions are directly transferred to the devices. The devices interpret and execute the process steps themselves with the help of a component called the Distributed Process Engine. This architecture guarantees the reliable execution of Smart Home processes in the event of many possible types of failures.