KR20150116344A - Method and apparatus for brokering internet of things - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for brokering internet of things, in which a user can access, through a common application programming interface (API), the internet of things which dispersedly exist in several thing′s platforms without additional knowledge on each thing′s platform, in the internet of things environment that various thing′s platforms exist by converting a message into a message format according to a target thing′s device to transmit the same to a thing′s platform having a thing′s device registered therein.

Description

≪ Desc / Clms Page number 1 > METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR BROKERING INTERNET OF THINGS &

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to the Internet of things, and more particularly, to a method for intermediating an object platform.

With the activation of Machine To Machine Communication (M2M) or Internet of Things (IoT), various objects are connected to the Internet and objects are controlled or managed. The trend of Internet technology development is moving from solutions for specific industrial domains such as home, building, energy, health, etc. to current cloud-based IoT platform. The cloud-based IoT platform is a cloud-based IoT platform that periodically updates the state of objects in the cloud using Web technology, especially RESTful (REpresentational State Transfer) API (Application Programming Interface) technology. The state values of objects stored in the cloud Means a platform that provides services in the form of PaaS (Platform As Service) provided to users.

This cloud-based IoT platform is based on web technology and can easily obtain the state values of the objects desired by users. However, in the individual IoT platform, API, data representation and identifier (ID) are defined There is a problem with the heterogeneity of the IoT platform in terms of users who want to access various objects. Therefore, there is a problem that the user has to understand the RESTful API for data representation and data access for individual IoT platforms.

It is an object of the present invention to solve the above-mentioned problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an object brokering method and apparatus for brokering an identifier of an individual IoT platform.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for brokering objects, comprising the steps of: receiving a message from a user terminal; Determining a target object device using the received message; Converting the received message into a message format allowed by the object platform in which the target object device is registered; And transmitting the converted message to the object platform on which the target object device is registered.

The object brokering method and apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention may be configured such that a target object device converts a message into a message format according to a registered object platform and transmits the message to the object platform, The user can access object devices distributed on various object platforms without knowledge of each object platform through a common API.

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an object Internet environment in which a method for brokering objects according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention is performed.
2 is a block diagram of an apparatus for broaching objects according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating a method for brokering objects performed by a broker for object brokering according to an embodiment of the present invention.
4 is a flow chart illustrating a method for a thing brokering device to perform object device search.
5 is a flowchart illustrating a method for a thing brokering apparatus to perform common API request message processing;
6 is a flowchart illustrating a method by which the object brokering apparatus performs response message processing.

While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail.

It should be understood, however, that the invention is not intended to be limited to the particular embodiments, but includes all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention.

The terms first, second, etc. may be used to describe various components, but the components should not be limited by the terms. The terms are used only for the purpose of distinguishing one component from another. For example, without departing from the scope of the present invention, the first component may be referred to as a second component, and similarly, the second component may also be referred to as a first component. And / or < / RTI > includes any combination of a plurality of related listed items or any of a plurality of related listed items.

It is to be understood that when an element is referred to as being "connected" or "connected" to another element, it may be directly connected or connected to the other element, . On the other hand, when an element is referred to as being "directly connected" or "directly connected" to another element, it should be understood that there are no other elements in between.

The terminology used in this application is used only to describe a specific embodiment and is not intended to limit the invention. The singular expressions include plural expressions unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. In the present application, the terms "comprises" or "having" and the like are used to specify that there is a feature, a number, a step, an operation, an element, a component or a combination thereof described in the specification, But do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, or combinations thereof.

Unless defined otherwise, all terms used herein, including technical or scientific terms, have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs. Terms such as those defined in commonly used dictionaries should be interpreted as having a meaning consistent with the meaning in the context of the relevant art and are to be interpreted in an ideal or overly formal sense unless explicitly defined in the present application Do not.

Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In order to facilitate the understanding of the present invention, the same reference numerals are used for the same constituent elements in the drawings and redundant explanations for the same constituent elements are omitted.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an object Internet environment to which a method for brokering objects according to an embodiment of the present invention is applied. The general environment of the object Internet includes object device 100, IoT gateway 200, IoT platform 300, object brokering device 400 and user terminal 10, and may further include an administrator terminal 20 have. In another embodiment, the particular user terminal 10 may be an administrator terminal 20. The administrator terminal 20 can register, modify, and unregister object devices in the object brokering device 400. In some cases, a business that provides its own IoT platform in addition to the object brokering device, The object device can be registered, modified, or unregistered.

The object device 100 is connected to the IOT gateway 200. Using the physical link-dependent communication protocol, the state of the object devices is transferred to the IoT gateway, and the control message is transferred from the IoT gateway to the object device.

The IoT gateway 200 is connected to the IoT platform 300 and can transfer the status of the object device to the IoT platform using a Web-based service technology such as RESTful, and receives the object control message from the IoT platform. Or the IOT gateway 200 may directly control the object device 100 including the control unit. In order to use the state value of the object device in the object internet environment, the user terminal 10 accesses the IoT platform in which the object device is registered and uses the RESTful API permitted in the IoT platform to calculate the state value of the object device You must.

The object brokering device (400) brokers object data value access API, data representation, and heterogeneity for identifiers among the various IoT platforms (300). To this end, the object brokering device 400 discloses a unified common API that can represent APIs of various IoT platforms. The user terminal 10 directly accesses the IoT platform 300 in which the corresponding object is registered in order to obtain the value of the object device desired by the user terminal 10, It is possible to access the broker device 400 and access the state value of a desired object device through the common API.

2 is a block diagram of a material broaching device 400 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The object brokering apparatus 400 includes a object device information management unit 410, a object device information storage 420, a object device search unit 430, a common API request message processing unit 440, a message conversion plugin 450, A processing unit 460, an input / output unit 470, and a control unit 480.

The object device information management unit 410 registers and changes the detailed information of the object device, and performs the registration termination of the detailed information of the object device.

The object device information storage 420 stores detailed information of object devices. For example, the object device information store 420 may include an object device identifier (ID) assigned by the object brokering device, a geographical location of the object device, such as latitude and longitude, a description of the object device, have. In addition, the object device information storage 420 further includes a name of object device, a tag, an API target address (API Endpoint) (a target URL from which object device information can be obtained), a target ID The corresponding device identifier in the IoT platform), a conversion plug-in identifier (conversion module identifier to be applied), and the like.

The object device search unit 430 searches for a object device matching the input keyword of the user so that the user can search for the object device desired by the user, and returns the result. The object device search unit 430 may extend a keyword up to the analogy of the input keyword of the user by internally including the term dictionary.

The object device search unit 430 searches for a device matching the user input keyword in the description, name, and tag field of the object device stored in the object device information storage 420.

In addition, the user input keywords may include location information. If the keyword includes positional information, the object device search unit 430 searches for a device covered to a specific radius based on a position designated by the positional information included in the keyword. For example, the object device search unit 430 can search for object devices located within a predetermined distance at a position designated by the position information included in the keyword. The allowable radius can be entered by the user or predefined internally in the system.

The common API request message processing unit 440 receives the common API request message and inquires from the object device information storage 420 about the object detail information corresponding to the device identifier included in the request message. Converts the request message by calling the conversion plug-in 450 corresponding to the conversion plug-in identifier in the inquired object detail information, and delivers the converted message to the API target address.

After receiving the response message, the response message processing unit 460 converts the response message received according to the response data expression requested from the user terminal and returns the response message to the user terminal. The message conversion plug-in 450 performs a message conversion process for the individual IoT platform.

The input / output unit 470 performs data communication with the object brokering apparatus 400, at least one of the user terminal 10, the administrator terminal 20, and the IOT platform.

The control unit 480 controls the object device information management unit 410, the object device information storage unit 420, the object device search unit 430, the common API request message processing unit 440, the message conversion plugin 450, And the input / output unit 470, and controls the object broaching apparatus 400 to perform processing according to a message received through the input / output unit 470. [ For example, the control unit 480 analyzes the received message and controls the object brokering apparatus 400 according to the received message to perform object device information management, object device search, common API request message processing, and response message processing .

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating a method for brokering objects performed by a broker for object brokering according to an embodiment of the present invention. First, the object brokering apparatus waits for receipt of a message from at least one of the user terminal 10, the administrator terminal 20, and the IO platform 300, and receives the message (S302). If the message is received (S304), the object brokering apparatus analyzes the received message (S306). Then, the object brokering device performs processing according to the message according to the analysis result of the received message. The following steps S308 to S315 illustrate an example of processing according to a message according to the analysis result of the message received by the object brokerage apparatus.

The object brokering apparatus determines whether the received message is the object device management request message (S308). If the received message is a device management request message, the object brokering device performs object device information management (S309). The object brokering apparatus newly adds, changes, or deletes information entries of object devices to the object device information storage 420 according to the type of the received message (for example, registration, modification, registration release) Can be performed.

If the received message is not the object device management request message, the object brokering device determines whether the received message is the object device search request (S310). If the received message is a request for searching for a device, the device for brokering the object performs device search (S311). The object device search method will be described later separately with reference to FIG.

If the received message is not the object device search request, the object brokering device determines whether the received message is a common API based request message (S312). When the received message is a common API-based request message, the object brokering device performs a common API request message process (S313). The object brokering device processes a common API request message so that a user can access a desired object device in a single method using a common API representing individual APIs of various object platforms. The common API request message processing method will be described later separately with reference to FIG.

If the received message is not a common API based request message, the object brokering device determines whether the received message is a response message to the common API request (S314). The object brokering apparatus performs response message processing when the received message is a response message to the common API request (S315). The response message processing method will be described later separately with reference to FIG.

If the end condition is not satisfied, the object brokering apparatus returns to the message reception standby state (S302) again. If the end condition is satisfied, the object broker The ring method is terminated (S316).

On the other hand, if there is no job to be processed in response to a message, the object brokering device does not perform an operation for the message, and determines whether to receive the next message or stop the operation according to whether the end condition is achieved (S316). For example, if the received message is not a response message to the common API request, the object brokering device can not perform a predetermined process on the received message. Therefore, Or to stop performing the method of object brokering.

4 is a flow chart illustrating a method for a thing brokering device to perform object device search. First, the object brokering apparatus analyzes the search keyword conditional expression to separate the terms included in the keyword (S402). Then, the object brokering apparatus expands the keyword conditional expression (S404). For example, the object brokering apparatus can extend the keyword conditional expression by extracting a similar term of the term from the term dictionary and further including a similar term in the keyword conditional expression.

Next, the object brokering apparatus performs the object device search using the keyword conditional expression (S406). For example, the object brokering apparatus can perform a search by applying a keyword conditional expression to a device description, a device name, and a tag field among the object device information registered in the object device information storage.

On the other hand, if location information is included in the keyword conditional expression (S408), the object brokering apparatus performs filtering using the location information in S406 and returns the filtered search result to the terminal requesting the search S412). For example, the object brokering device may extract, from among the object devices searched and extracted in step S406, position information included in the detail information of the object device and position information included in the keyword condition expression, Can be filtered in the search result so that they are returned as search results. At this time, the allowable radius may be included in the search keyword conditional expression or may be set to a specific value in advance in the system.

On the other hand, if location information is not included in the keyword conditional expression, the object brokering apparatus returns the search result without performing filtering using the location information (S412).

5 is a flowchart illustrating a method for a thing brokering apparatus to perform common API request message processing; First, the object brokerage device stores the requested data representation in the response data representation in the common API request message (S502). For example, the object brokering device may store the requested data representation in the response data representation that the user wishes to receive in the response, among the parameters included in the common API request message. Next, the object brokering apparatus inquires the object detail information corresponding to the object device identifier included in the request message (S504). For example, the object brokering device may inquire from the object device information store the object detail information corresponding to the object device identifier included in the request message. Next, the object brokering apparatus calls the conversion plug-in (S506). For example, the object brokering device calls the conversion plug-in corresponding to the conversion plug-in identifier of the device among the inquired information (S506). The called conversion plug-in performs conversion of the common API-based request message into a request message allowing the target IoT platform (S508). Finally, the object brokering device delivers the converted message to the API target address (S510). For example, the object brokering device can deliver the converted message to the API target address contained in the detailed information of the inquired object device. The object brokering device may transmit the converted message to the IoT platform in which the target object device is registered.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a method by which the object brokering apparatus performs response message processing. First, the object brokering device transforms the response message so that the user terminal responds to the data expression requested in the response data representation in the common API request (S602). For example, the object brokering device may transform the response message to a desired data representation in response to the user terminal requesting a common API request. Next, the object brokering apparatus returns the converted response message to the user terminal (S604).

While the invention has been shown and described with reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention can be carried out without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

The combination of the above-described embodiments is not limited to the above-described embodiment, and various combinations of types as well as the above-described embodiments may be provided according to implementation and / or necessity.

In the above-described embodiments, the methods are described on the basis of a flowchart as a series of steps or blocks, but the present invention is not limited to the order of steps, and some steps may occur in different orders or in a different order than the steps described above have. It will also be understood by those skilled in the art that the steps depicted in the flowchart illustrations are not exclusive and that other steps may be included or that one or more steps in the flowchart may be deleted without affecting the scope of the invention You will understand.

The foregoing embodiments include examples of various aspects. While it is not possible to describe every possible combination for expressing various aspects, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that other combinations are possible. Accordingly, it is intended that the invention include all alternatives, modifications and variations that fall within the scope of the following claims.

Claims (1)

A method for broaching objects, performed by a broaching device,
Receiving a message from a user terminal;
Determining a target object device using the received message;
Converting the received message into a message format allowed by the IoT platform in which the target object device is registered; And
And transmitting the converted message to the IoT platform on which the target object device is registered.

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