UbiCap: A Capability-based Run-time Model for Heterogeneous Sensors Management in Ubiquitous Operating System

The Ubiquitous Operating System(UOS) is a new type of operating system in response to the new patterns and scenarios of future human-cyber-physical ternary ubiquitous computing. Compared with traditional operating systems, one of the fundamental requirements of UOS is to adaptively manage numerous heterogeneous sensors according to dynamic environments and diverse tasks. However, traditional management focuses on the sensors' parameters and interfaces without highlighting the perception effect that is users' concern and dynamic changing. It also lacks a unified management approach for heterogeneous sensors. To overcome the limitations, we propose a novel heterogeneous sensors dynamic management model UbiCap, i.e., Ubiquitous Capability, which is based on the capability abstraction and adaptive run-time capability management mechanism. The capability provides a unified abstract for heterogeneous sensors. The adaptive run-time capability management mechanism transfers the management object from low-level hardware sensors to high-level sensing capability. The capability required and the available capability are matched to support run-time adaptive sensors selection. We implement a software prototype iS2ROS(intelligent Sensor Selection Robot Operating System) based on the UbiCap model. We then simulate a forest fire spot monitoring scenario where iS2ROS selects the optimal image sensor during the identification task execution while light or weather condition changes. Experiment results show that the iS2ROS achieves comparative sensing effectiveness through UbiCap with 50% power consumption lower compared to the traditional both-sensors approach.