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Issue #3 - published by the ebbits project - August, 2013

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The full functionality of ebbits as a platform for product life cycle management

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ebbits partners are working on the final project prototypes which will illustrate the full functionality of ebbits as an Internet of People, Things and Services platform for product life cycle management.

The ebbits platform aims to bridge the gap between virtual enterprises and public information systems, human users and “things” in the physical world. In the agricultural domain, data from all stakeholders in the food production chain will be gathered and presented through mobile applications, providing traceability and interaction with the users such as the consumer who can rate the product. In the automotive manufacturing domain, data from various production processes, stations and systems will be monitored and analysed to provide life cycle costs and energy efficiency calculations. Monitoring of the manufacturing line will be possible through mainstream consumer devices such as tablets and smart phones which enable control of the industrial environment.

Knowing the story of the product

To provide product traceability for, e.g., beef the food traceability prototype collects and compiles all the necessary product life cycle data, making this data available to external applications via ebbits services. The data sources are visualised in the chart below.

The prototype will create a link between the farm and the slaughterhouse where the animal is slaughtered and cut into bulk meat as well as the in-store butcher where the bulk meat is cut into smaller pieces.

It will be collecting information from the various transport phases of the lifetime of the meat and in particular, the transport from farm to slaughterhouse and of bulk meat from slaughterhouse to retail.

The ebbits platform will integrate with an enterprise resource management system and include a mobile application (app) to retrieve and display the most relevant traceability information to the consumer, including cut, race, quality parameters and best before date with the possibility to rate the meat.

Related paper: The ebbits platform: leveraging on the Internet of Things to support meat traceability

Energy optimisation in car manufacturing

The full functionality of the automotive manufacturing prototype will combine refined versions of the solutions developed during the ebbits project, taking into account the different aspects of the production process. This includes four main areas:

1. A welding line simulation application with the main goal of validating the overall data flow between a framing station within the production line and the ebbits platform.

2. Process oriented energy monitoring and analysis. The aim is to provide a tool for monitoring different processes and compare energy consumption in the various production phases. Energy data is accessed in real time and calculations on consumption are made such as stand-by consumption, consumption during production on different levels (production line, stations and subsystems such as robots). Each production phase is energy profiled and analysis is conducted to calculate the energy efficiency.

3. Wireless sensor network integration with the ebbits platform with the main target of developing a specific proxy interface to expose process data from the field to the upper level of the platform.

4. Robot interaction through tablets/consumer devices: to test and certify the application of common consumer devices such as tablets and smart phones in an industrial environment.


The data extracted from all four refinement areas will provide the necessary input for life cycle costs and energy efficiency calculations.

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Demonstrating the viability of the ebbits platform

 
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Demonstration activities are steadily increasing to prove the viability of the ebbits platform. Product-like prototypes with a sufficient degree of functionality will be demonstrated to gather feedback from key actors in the manufacturing and food industries as well as from users in general.

The manufacturing demo and the food traceability demo have been presented at several events. The manufacturing demo has been presented at the Hannover Fair in Germany in April and at the Future Internet Assembly in Ireland in May, focusing on the aspect of energy efficient production. The food traceability demo has been shown at the IoT China 2013 conference and exhibition in Shanghai as well as the IoT Week in Helsinki in June, which included presenting the traceability app.

Both demonstrators have been received well by the audience. One example is the IoT Week in Helsinki on 16-20 June, where partners CNET, ISMB and TNM exhibited the ebbits demonstrator on food traceability.

"Although our demonstrator is not fully integrated and ready, we received many positive comments and people were impressed", says Peter Rosengren from CNET, who is pleased that the ebbits booth and the exhibition in general attracted many visitors.

The IoT Week is organised by the European Integrated Project IoT-A (Internet of Things - Architecture) together with several research projects from the IERC European Research Cluster for the Internet of Things. The objective of the IoT Week is to unite the IoT community by offering a platform for presenting the latest news on relevant research topics, providing political and societal insights and offering networking opportunities.

"Apart from the representation of EU-projects there were also many visitors from local industries in Finland, Singapore, Taiwan and China who had come to learn about EU activities in IoT", says Peter Rosengren.

Demonstration activities in ebbits will not only be concerned with managing food and car production but also include presenting ebbits as a generic monitoring platform for other manufactured products such as pharmaceuticals.

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From static resources to communicative services

 
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ebbits has contributed to a catalogue of naming, addressing and discovery schemes for the IoT currently researched and adopted in IERC projects, demonstrating how physical devices can be viewed as services and monitored throughout their life cycle.

As part of the IERC-European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things, ebbits partners have contributed to the deliverable D1 “Catalogue of IoT Naming, Addressing and Discovery Schemes in IERC Projects”, which was released on 31st of January 2013. The deliverable provides an overview of the different naming, addressing and discovery schemes for the IoT currently researched and adopted in IERC projects.

ebbits solutions are presented, highlighting the concept of virtualisation that allows physical devices, sub-systems and cloud services to be viewed as services or composition of services. Furthermore, the deliverable outlines an introduction to how ebbits manages entities which are static resources being monitored throughout their life cycle, - e.g., cattle or other objects not enriched with computational or communicative capabilities.

Promoting dissemination and cooperation

ebbits partners participate in the IERC cluster which aims at promoting dissemination initiatives and close cooperation with other EU funded IoT projects in specific areas of interest. IERC activities are organised in Activity Chains and ebbits is involved in the following:

AC2 - Naming and addressing schemes. Means of search and discovery (John Soldatos - OPENIOT)

AC3 - Application scenarios, Pilots and Innovation (Amine Houyou - IOT@Work)

AC4 - Service openness and inter-operability issues/semantic interoperability (Philippe Cousin, PROBE-IT, Co-Coordinator Martin Serrano – OpenIOT)

AC8 - Cognitive Technologies for IoT (Abdur Rahim Biswas – iCore)

ebbits partners support the Activity Chains in organising workshops as well as demo sessions during IoT Week 2012 in Venice and during IoT Week 2013 in Helsinki. In addition, activities include producing documents about recent IoT research and practice. The deliverable D1 “Catalogue of IoT Naming, Addressing and Discovery Schemes in IERC Projects” has been produced within the AC2 - Naming and addressing schemes - Means of search and discovery.

Find the deliverable on the ebbits website or visit the IERC cluster website

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