INFRASTRUCTURE APPARATUS AND METHOD OF PROVIDING COLLABORATION BETWEEN THING DEVICES

• US 20180205770A1
• Filed: 01/18/2018
• Published: 07/19/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/18/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Inventors: Joo, Seong Soon, Jun, Jong Arm, Pyo, Cheol Sig
• Granted Patent: US 10,791,155 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5011 the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1059 End-user terminal functionalities specially adapted for real-time communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1069 Session establishment or de-establishment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/125 involving control of end-device applications over a network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/561 Adding application-functional data or data for application control, e.g. adding metadata
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/21 for social networking applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/38 for collecting sensor information

Abstract

Provided are an infrastructure apparatus and method of providing collaboration between thing devices. Since a plurality of thing devices located in a specific space share an experience where the plurality of thing devices have performed a collaboration service, each of the thing devices may search for peripheral thing devices for performing the collaboration service without intervention of a center server and may generate a collaboration group including the found thing devices, and tasks for performing through negotiation may be autonomously distributed to the thing devices included in the collaboration group, thereby providing autonomous collaboration between the thing devices.

Claims

1. A method of providing collaboration between thing devices connected to one another over a social network, the method comprising:

interpreting, by a thing device, a collaboration service requested by a user to search for a plurality of peripheral thing devices capable of performing the collaboration service;

in response to the search for the plurality of peripheral thing devices, transmitting, by at least one of the plurality of peripheral thing devices, experience information describing an experience of the at least one peripheral thing device associated with the collaboration service to the thing device;

generating, by the thing device, a collaboration group including the at least one peripheral thing device, based on the experience information;

allocating, by the thing device, different tasks corresponding to the collaboration service to all of thing devices included in the collaboration group, respectively; and

converting, by each of the thing devices, a result of performing of an allocated task into knowledge information to store the knowledge information in a collaboration knowledge base.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the searching comprises performing a sematic search to recruit the plurality of peripheral thing devices.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the searching comprises generating a search query language describing a result of the interpretation of the collaboration service with words or as a sentence to distribute the search query language to the social network.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the searching comprises:

interpreting the collaboration service requested by the user, based on the collaboration knowledge base;

interpreting the collaboration service to generate a search query language which describes, with words or as a sentence, a plurality of tasks for performing the collaboration service, an order in which the plurality of tasks are performed, and number of peripheral thing devices necessary for performing the plurality of tasks; and

distributing the search query language to the social network.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein

the interpreting of the collaboration service comprises interpreting the collaboration service requested by the user, based on the knowledge information stored in the collaboration knowledge base, and

the knowledge information stored in the collaboration knowledge base comprises collaboration service perform history data recording a history of a collaboration service which has been performed by the thing device, context data recording a hardware or software performance specification of the thing device, collaboration service perform evaluation data recording an evaluation of the collaboration service which has been performed by the thing device, and space data recording a description of a space where the thing device is located.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting of the experience information comprises transmitting, by the at least one peripheral thing device, the experience information describing a function and an experience of the at least one peripheral thing device with words or as a sentence.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting of the experience information comprises:

extracting, by at least one peripheral thing device, data associated with a function of the at least one peripheral thing device and data associated with an experience of performing a collaboration service similar to the collaboration service from the collaboration knowledge base;

learning the extracted data to generate the experience information; and

transmitting the generated experience information.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein in the extracting,

the data associated with a function of the at least one peripheral thing device comprises context data recording a hardware or software performance specification of the at least one peripheral thing device and space data recording a description of a space where the at least one peripheral thing device is located, and

the data associated with the experience comprises collaboration service perform history data recording a history of a collaboration service which has been performed by the at least one peripheral thing device and collaboration service perform evaluation data recording an evaluation of the collaboration service which has been performed by the at least one peripheral thing device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting of the generated experience information comprises:

generating the experience information, based on the knowledge information stored in the collaboration knowledge base;

limiting the generated experience information according to a previously set revelation class to abbreviate the generated experience information; and

transmitting the abbreviated experience information.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the generating of the collaboration group comprises excluding, by the thing device, a peripheral thing device, which has transmitted the abbreviated experience information, of the at least one peripheral thing device from the collaboration group.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising setting the previously set revelation class,

wherein the setting comprises setting the previously set revelation class, based on collaboration service perform history data and collaboration service perform evaluation data stored in the collaboration knowledge base.

12. An infrastructure apparatus for providing collaboration between thing devices connected to one another over a social network, the infrastructure apparatus comprising:

a thing device interpreting a collaboration service requested by a user to search for a plurality of peripheral thing devices capable of performing the collaboration service; and

at least one peripheral thing device transmitting, to the thing device, experience information describing an experience of the at least one peripheral thing device associated with the collaboration service in response to the search for the plurality of peripheral thing devices,

wherein

the thing device generates a collaboration group including the at least one peripheral thing device, based on the experience information and respectively allocates different tasks corresponding to the collaboration service to all of thing devices included in the collaboration group, and

each of the thing devices builds a collaboration knowledge base where a result of performing of an allocated task is stored as knowledge information, and includes a storage module storing the collaboration knowledge base.

13. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 12, wherein the thing device performs a sematic search to recruit the plurality of peripheral thing devices.

14. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 12, wherein the thing device comprises:

a collaboration service interpretation module interpreting the collaboration service requested by the user, based on the collaboration knowledge base;

a processor module generating a search query language which describes, with words or as a sentence, a plurality of tasks for performing the collaboration service, an order in which the plurality of tasks are performed, and number of peripheral thing devices necessary for performing the plurality of tasks, based on a result of the interpretation of the collaboration service; and

a communication module distributing the search query language to the social network.

15. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 14, wherein

the collaboration service interpretation module interprets the collaboration service requested by the user, based on the knowledge information stored in the collaboration knowledge base, and

the knowledge information stored in the collaboration knowledge base comprises collaboration service perform history data recording a history of a collaboration service which has been performed by the thing device, context data recording a hardware or software performance specification of the thing device, collaboration service perform evaluation data recording an evaluation of the collaboration service which has been performed by the thing device, and space data recording a description of a space where the thing device is located.

16. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 12, wherein the at least one peripheral thing device comprises a communication module transmitting the experience information, describing a function and an experience of the at least one peripheral thing device with words or as a sentence, to the thing device.

17. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 12, wherein the at least one peripheral thing device comprises:

a query analysis module analyzing a search query language generated by the thing device for searching for the plurality of peripheral thing devices;

an experience information generation module extracting data associated with a function of the at least one peripheral thing device and data associated with an experience of performing the collaboration service, based on a result of the analysis of the search query language and learning the extracted data to generate the experience information; and

a communication module transmitting the generated experience information to the thing device.

18. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 17, wherein the at least one peripheral thing device further comprises an information revelation management module limiting the generated experience information according to a previously set revelation class to abbreviate the generated experience information.

19. The infrastructure apparatus of claim 18, wherein the previously set revelation class is set based on collaboration service perform history data and collaboration service perform evaluation data stored in the collaboration knowledge base.