Fluidware: An Approach Toward Adaptive and Scalable IoT Systems

The objective of this chapter is to present the vision and overall structure of Fluidware, an approach toward an innovative architectural and programming model to ease the development of flexible and robust large-scale IoT services and applications. The key distinctive idea of Fluidware is to abstract collectives of devices of the IoT fabric as sources, digesters, and targets of distributed “flows” of contextualized events, carrying information about data produced and actuating commands. Accordingly, programming of services and applications relies on declarative specification of “funnel processes” to channel, elaborate, and redirect such flows in a fully distributed way, as a means to coordinate the activities of devices and realize services and applications. The potential applicability of Fluidware and its expected advantages are exemplified via a case study scenario in the area of ambient assisted living.