Discrete Control for the Internet of Things and Smart Environments

The Internet of Things (IoT) requires self-configuration capacities, for which there is a need for design techniques for predictable controllers, and automation in the construction of these controllers. The Feedback Computing approach to autonomic systems proposes to exploit control techniques for this. We present preliminary results in our approach using Discrete Supervisory Control for the generation of the supervisory controllers in IoT and smart environments. A general modeling framework is proposed for the application domain of smart home/building. We formalize the design of the autonomic manager as a Discrete Controller Synthesis (DCS) problem, w.r.t. multiple objectives. We validate our models and manager computations with the BZR language and an experimental simulator. keywords: Internet of Things, Smart environments, Autonomic management, Discrete Control.