Guest Editorial: Internet of things and intelligent devices and services

摘要

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to uniquely identifiable objects (things) and their virtual representations in the Internet and web applications. The concept was initially applied in the Radio-Frequency Identification RFID-tags to mark the Electronic Product Code (Auto-ID Lab). IoT concept is later extended to refer to the world where physical objects are seamlessly integrated into the information network, and where the physical objects can become active participants in business processes. The recent fusion of IoT and intelligent devices and services provoke the emergence of Internet of Intelligent Things (IoIT) and Robot as a Service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_as_a_service), which make IoT a part of other emergency technologies, including artificial intelligence, robotics, big data processing, service-oriented computing, cloud computing, fog computing, and edge computing. Gartner, Inc. forecastedin 2015 that 6.4 billion connected things would be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30% from 2015, and would reach 20.8 billion by 2020. In 2016, 5.5 million new things will get connected every day (https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317). IoT connects to the Internet and devices through general purpose Internet protocols, such as HTTP, TCP, and IP, as well as specially developed protocols, such as industrial internet protocol and industrial control systems protocols. The data generated from IoT devices are typically poly-structured, including structure, semi-structured, and unstructured. The data are represented as web data in forms such as HTML, JSON, XML, and URI. The data can be further transformed and organized into other format for efficiently processing by different applications, such as key-value pairs and ontology triples. The data is typically processed in service-oriented and web-based computing environments. If the data amount is big, it can be processed by cloud computing, big data, and machine learning algorithms. At this end, the IoT and its data are fully integrated into the web and the virtual world, and all the technologies and applications developed can be applied to process IoT data and control the physical world connected to the IoT on the other side. In this Special Issue, six research papers are selected to cover a number of key domains in IoT and intelligent devices. The topics include the development of Internet of Simulation that provides an infrastructure for an array of technologies to be accommodated; Image processing and fusion; Natural language processing; Sensor data preprocessing as a phase of crowd sensing application; Solving security issue in healthcare system through blockchain system; and IoT application development through visual programming. In the first paper, the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Cities are introduced and a new trend of the Internet of Simulation (IoS) is presented, which utilises the technologies of Cloud, Edge, Fog computing, and HPC for design and analysis of complex cyber-physical systems using simulation. These technologies have been applied to the domains of big data and deep learning, but they are not adequate to cope with the scale and complexity of emerging connected, smart, and autonomous systems. This paper explores the existing state-of-the-art in automating, augmenting, and integrating systems across the domains of smart cities, autonomous vehicles, energy efficiency, smart manufacturing in Industry4.0, and health care. This study is expanded to exam the existing computational infrastructure and how it can be used to support IoT and smart city applications. A detailed review is presented of advances in approaches providing and supporting intelligence as a service. Finally some of the remaining challenges due to the explosion of data streams; issues of safety and security; and others related to Big Data, a model of reality, augmentation of systems, computation are discussed. The second paper in this special issue studies the multi-focus