=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1002/paper4.pdf
|volume=Vol-1002
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ipsn/KarnouskosMM13
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==Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1002/paper4.pdf
Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets
Stamatis Karnouskos1 , Pedro José Marrón2 , and Daniel Minder3
1
SAP Research, Germany, stamatis.karnouskos@sap.com
2
Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany, pjmarron@uni-due.de
3
Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany, daniel.minder@uni-due.de
Abstract. The area of Cooperating Objects is an emerging domain that
builds upon (networked) embedded systems, ubiquitous computing and
(wireless) sensor networks but stresses the cooperation between modu-
lar, autonomous and heterogeneous devices that try to achieve a common
goal. We present a definition and explain the characteristics of Cooper-
ating Objects. By looking at market predictions and our own survey
we show that the impact of Cooperating Objects to the monitoring and
control area can be very significant and has the potential to drastically
affect future applications and services.
Keywords: Cooperating Objects, market, survey
1 Introduction
Networked embedded devices enable the timely integration of information from
the real world to the virtual world where modern applications live. The core idea
behind amalgamating the physical and virtual (business) world is to seamlessly
gather useful information about objects of the physical world and use the in-
formation in various applications in order to provide some added value. In the
last years we have witnessed a paradigm change, where the rapid advances in
computational and communication capabilities of embedded systems are paving
the way towards highly sophisticated networked devices that will be able to
carry out a variety of tasks not in a standalone mode as usually done today, but
taking into full account dynamic and context specific information, and following
dynamic collaborative approaches.
These “objects” will be able to cooperate, share information, act as part of
communities and generally be active elements of a more complex system. The
close interaction of the business and real world will be achieved by auxiliary
services provided in a timely fashion from networked embedded devices. These
will be able to collaborate not only among them but also with on-line services
that will enhance their own functionality.
As already defined [10], one can consider that:
“Cooperating Objects are modular systems of autonomous, heterogeneous
devices pursuing a common goal by cooperation in computations and in
sensing and/or actuating with the environment.”
32 S. Karnouskos, P.J. Marrón, and D. Minder
The domain of Cooperating Objects is a cross-section between (networked)
embedded systems, ubiquitous computing and (wireless) sensor networks. There
are, therefore, several flavours of Cooperating Objects depending on the degree
in which they fulfil different features. Some of them can process the context of
cooperation intentionally, act on it and intentionally extend it, change it or stop
it. As such they may possess the necessary logic to understand semantics and
build complex behaviours, thus allowing the Cooperating Object to be part of a
dynamic complex ecosystem.
Currently there are several market “predictions” and studies that draw a
promising future for several areas where Cooperating Objects play a pivotal
role. We take a closer look on some of the claims and market predictions, com-
plementing them with a survey carried out during the CONET project lifetime.
2 Design Space of Cooperating Objects
Cooperating Objects share common ground [10] with several domains such as
software agents, Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Systems, System of Systems,
etc. Hence, it is natural that they share also a common design space. However,
the distinguishing difference is that the collaboration is playing a pivotal role as
well as the cross-layer interaction among different devices, systems, services and
applications.
We have already identified several Cooperating Object characteristics which
are depicted in more detail in [10]. More specifically we have:
– Modularity: A Cooperating Object is composed of several elements that
need to exhibit certain features. Each of the elements contributes to the
functionality of the overall Cooperating Object, but the modularisation helps
to keep the single devices simple and maintainable. The modular design
makes it possible to replace an element by a more powerful one or to add
new ones that extend the functionality. Thus, the Cooperating Object can
be developed in an evolutionary fashion and adapted to new needs.
– Autonomy: Each Cooperating Object element can decide on its own about
its involvement in a Cooperating Object. If the element does not participate
at all in the cooperation and coordination activities, it is not considered
part of the Cooperating Object. Otherwise, it decides about the degree of
participation. In general, an element can dedicate only a fraction of its re-
sources or its functionality to the current Cooperating Object, thus leaving
the possibility to serve multiple Cooperating Objects.
– Heterogeneity: In Cooperating Objects, heterogeneity is a crucial point
since it is more than heterogeneity in terms of, e.g., processing power or
memory. In fact, a Cooperating Object must combine devices of different
system concepts, i.e. Wireless Sensor Networks, embedded systems, robotics,
etc. Since these elements can have different hardware characteristics, hetero-
geneity is also exhibited as a consequence.
– Computation: Due to the different nature of the single elements in a Co-
operating Object the computational capabilities can vary largely. However,
Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets 33
a device must at least be able to take an autonomous decision about its in-
volvement in a Cooperating Object and to communicate with others, which
usually requires also computation.
– Interaction with the Environment: Cooperating Objects interact with
the environment using sensors and/or actuators. The interaction with the
environment should be substantial, especially with respect to actuators, i.e.
actuation should have a changing effect on the environment. The involvement
of sensors and actuators makes Cooperating Objects real-world objects, i.e.
there are no pure virtual Cooperating Objects. The interaction with the
environment must be a core functionality of the Cooperating Object and
not just an optional side-effect.
– Communication: If a device communicates there are three techniques of
information exchange [15]. The most common technique is explicit communi-
cation, which can be performed using various means, e.g., wires, radio, light,
sound. The content of the communication is manifold and can range from
just the state of the single element to a common planning. Besides explicit
communication, there are two other techniques that work by observation
using sensors. With passive action recognition the actions of other devices
are observed, e.g., if an actuator moves. In contrast, the effects of actions of
others can be sensed (“stigmergy”), e.g., the increase of temperature caused
by a heater. Usually, these forms of communication show the lack of com-
mon interfaces for direct communication. Nevertheless, the inclusion of such
devices allows for interesting applications.
– Common Goal: The ultimate reason for a Cooperating Object to exist is
the common goal it tries to achieve. There should be a reason for pursuing the
goal using Cooperating Objects: either the goal can only be achieved through
Cooperating Objects or there is at least an improvement compared to a
monolithic or centralised approach. Although the devices do not know the
overall goal they execute a task to achieve it. Thus, each device has detailed
knowledge only about its area of responsibility, but limited information about
the whole Cooperating Object. However, the cooperation of the single devices
makes it possible to achieve the overall goal, which needs the full picture.
Thus, the intelligence of the system lies distributed in the network.
– Cooperation: In Cooperating Objects cooperation is always intentional and
driven by a goal. Without a goal and, thus, no tasks, there is no need for
cooperation at all. Although unintentional interaction might deliver the same
results it does not happen in a controlled way which creates problems in case
of errors. For example, reconfiguration is more difficult if the exact task that
a device has performed is not known. The participation of all devices in a
Cooperating Object is needed to achieve the common goal, i.e. a Cooperating
Object is more than just the sum of the single devices. Nevertheless, the
common goal does not imply benefits for all the cooperating devices. Some
of them can be especially designed to help in cooperation; others can play
a more active part in one cooperative task to profit more in another one.
When autonomous and selfish objects decide autonomously if and how they
34 S. Karnouskos, P.J. Marrón, and D. Minder
cooperate, the sum of the benefit must be positive. Otherwise, a device will
eventually not agree to cooperate or not be asked to cooperate any more.
Within the CONET project(www.cooperating-objects.eu) several applica-
tions were designed and developed. A detailed overview is provided [5], mapping
also the applications to the design space presented here. Examples of such areas
with their respective applications include:
– Deployment and Management of Cooperating Objects e.g., Monitoring Rail-
way Bridges, Cooperative Industrial Automation Systems, Light-weight Bird
Tracking Sensor Nodes, Public Safety Scenarios, Road Tunnel Monitoring
and Control
– Mobility of Cooperating Objects e.g., Mobility in Industrial Scenarios, Mo-
bility in Air Traffic Management, Mobility in Ocean Scenarios, Person As-
sistance in Urban Scenarios, Mobility in Civil Security and Protection
– Cooperating Objects in Healthcare Applications e.g., Physical Activity Recog-
nition, Real-time Physical Energy Expenditure, Emotional Stress Detection,
Physical Rehabilitation, Energy Aware Fall detection, Distributed Digital
Signal Processing, Model Predictive Control
3 Markets
Modern enterprises need to be agile and to dynamically support decision mak-
ing processes at several levels. In order to be able to take efficient decisions and
manage the resources in an optimal way, a direct link to the timely provision
of information residing in all layers between the enterprise services and the re-
sources needs to be established. This increases visibility at a very discrete level
and can provide insights on how specific problems can be avoided or tackled.
However monitoring is not enough, as controlling and adapting the behaviour of
the resources needs to take place in order to close the loop [4].
Existing business processes may become more accurate since information
taken directly from the point of action can be used to manage processes and
related decision-making procedures. The continuous evolution of embedded and
ubiquitous computing technologies, in terms of decreasing costs and increasing
capabilities, may even lead to the distribution of existing business processes to
the “network edges” and can overcome many limitations of existing centralized
approaches. Cooperating Objects offer these capabilities by introducing cooper-
ation as the key principle that may enhance future devices, systems and appli-
cations.
The domain of Cooperating Objects is still at its dawn; however its impact is
estimated to be so broad and significant that could drastically change the future
application and services. Numerous market analyses also seem to point towards
this direction. It is important to understand that Cooperating Objects is a huge
domain with applications in several fields [10], and therefore it is very difficult
to set the limits and estimate its total value. As such we indicatively refer only
Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets 35
to some markets that fall in the category of the Cooperating Objects such as
the (wireless) sensors, networked embedded systems etc.
Cooperating Objects are an integral part of the future Internet of Things.
The latter is expected to enable unprecedented interconnection of networked
embedded devices and further blur the line between the real and virtual world.
If we take a closer look at individual domains, we will see a tremendous growth
on the network side, and information will be provided by networked embedded
devices. Several predictions are made about the status of things connected to
the Internet, which forms also a big part of the basis for Cooperating Object
approaches to flourish. Similarly high expectations are made on the Cooperating
Object domains that could be impacted such as the Smart Grid, smart cities,
industrial automation, aviation, robotics etc.
According to Håkan Djuphammar, VP of systems architecture at Ericsson,
“[In 10 years’ time], everything has connectivity. We’re talking about 50 billion
connections, all devices will have connectivity . . . ” [7]. This was reinforced by
the Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg who mentioned that 50 billion
devices will be connected to the web by 2020. Intel’s John Woodget, global
director, Telecom sector has a more moderate prediction, in the range of 20
billion connected devices by 2020 [7].
According to the Broadband Commission for Digital Development [2], “world-
wide, mobile phone subscriptions exceeded already the 6 billion in early 2012”,
and “by 2020, the number of connected devices may potentially outnumber con-
nected people by six to one”. In the same report the total networked devices is
expected to reach the 25 billion by 2020.
According to Gartner’s ”Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013” [14]
already ”. . . over 50% of Internet connections are things. In 2011, over 15 billion
things on the Web, with 50+ billion intermittent connections. By 2020, over
30 billion connected things, with over 200 billion with intermittent connections.
Key technologies here include embedded sensors, image recognition and NFC.”
Getting down to the smart grid specific statements, Marie Hattar, vice presi-
dent of marketing in Cisco’s network systems solutions group, estimated in 2009
that the smart grid network will be “100 or 1000 times larger than the Internet”
[6]. Similarly Vishal Sikka, CTO of SAP, stated in 2009 that “The next billion
SAP users will be smart meters” [11]. Only for installing smart meters in homes
an estimated $4.8 billion will be spent according to ABI Research [1].
According to Pike Research the market for energy management systems (in-
cluding Wireless Sensor Networks, lighting controls, heating and cooling man-
agement in buildings) will turn into a $6.8 billion a year market by 2020 and
will generate investment of $67.6 billion between 2010 and 2020 [12]. They also
note that a total of $4.3 billion will be spent on the installation, maintenance,
and management services for smart grids by 2015 [13].
These are just some examples, depicting the fact that we are still at the
dawn of a new era. A $4.5 trillion impact is estimated [8] by 2020 on people and
businesses stemming from the sale of connected devices and services. There is a
clear trend where networked embedded devices will blend with the everyday lives
36 S. Karnouskos, P.J. Marrón, and D. Minder
and directly or indirectly affect them. Cooperation among Cooperating Objects
at local and system-wide level may create new business opportunities in the
future.
Homes
Household Appliances
Buildings
Powergrids
Environment
Annual Growth (%)
Logistics & Transport
2020 (in Bn €)
Critical Infrastructure
2007 (in Bn €)
Healthcare
Process Industry
Manufacturing Industry
Vehicles
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Fig. 1. Monitoring and Control Market 2007-2020 [3]
The main focus of Cooperating Objects is in coupling the physical and virtual
worlds; they do this via monitoring and control activities. The most important
market sectors potentially affected by and from Cooperating Objects are de-
picted in Figure 1. As reported in the European Commission study [3], the world
monitoring and control market is expected to grow from e 188 billion in 2007
to e 500 billion in 2020. With a share of e 61.5 billion today, Europe represents
32% of this market. It is expected to grow at an annual rate of 5.7% between
2007 and 2020. Services, with more than 50% of the market value, have the
biggest share. Together, three application markets — Vehicles, Manufacturing
and Process industries — represent 60% of total monitoring & control market.
Healthcare, critical infrastructures and logistic & transport follow closely. At the
moment, the Home is still considered a small niche market.
Although the overall market where Cooperating Objects technologies are con-
tributing is expected to grow significantly until 2020 (see Figure 1), hardware
is expected to have a relative small growth due to decreasing prices; this does
not hold true for network devices which will have an exponential growth in the
next years. Services are expected to dominate the market i.e. next generation of
products or components is included in service packages. This emergence of new
services will create also the need for next generation products e.g., in environ-
mental regulations, energy efficiency etc. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets 37
is expected to be extended and include issues such as precision maintenance, as-
set management, production tools life extension with higher maintenance needs,
more secure & safe installation & infrastructures.
Several innovations relevant to the Cooperating Object domain are expected.
In Components, increasing computing power and integration, intelligent com-
municating local components, standardization and lower prices are foreseen. In
networks, IP will be everywhere, networks will be transparent across application
sectors, and service oriented approaches will be dominant. On the Services, it
is expected that we will have a largely industrialized (e.g., standardized, widely
used, sophisticated) version of them. As most of the technologies are already in
place, what remains is the optimal exploitation of them. Many technologies still
seem futuristic and with prohibitive cost for mass-application usage. As such the
evolution of the domain will not be heavily based on the technology as such only
but directly linked to different business models that are connected to it.
The majority of the market growth predictions are constantly modified to
the current business climate, therefore the aforementioned numbers should be
taken “cum grano salis” and only as an indicative trend depicting the underlying
potential; the future will tell if and at what timeline they will be validated.
4 The CONET Survey
The vision of Cooperating Objects is quite new and needs to be understood in
more detail and to be extended with inputs from the relevant individual com-
munities that compose it. This will enable us to better understand the impact
on the research landscape and to steer the available resources in a meaning-
ful way. To achieve that, the European Commission co-funded project CONET
(www.cooperating-objects.eu) was formed with leading academic and industry
partners.
A survey was carried out by CONET among selected experts from within
and outside of the consortium. We present selected results of this survey here;
the full details can be found in the CONET research roadmap [9].
Several domains are expected to significantly benefit from Cooperating Ob-
jects. We have found out (depicted in Figure 2) that especially monitoring and
management in automation, energy, health and environment followed closely by
the transportation, logistics, and security domain will be the major beneficiaries.
If we correlate Figure 2 and Figure 1 we can see that the emerging domains with
the highest annual growth rate are the ones that may also benefit most from the
success of Cooperating Objects.
For the wide-spread adoption of Cooperating Objects technologies in mass-
market products, several roadblocks are also identified (depicted in Figure 3).
Confidence in technology is the most critical issue to be solved, closely followed
by the lack of standards and unclear business models. Furthermore social issues
and no proven record of business benefit are seen as having a moderate effect
on the success of Cooperating Objects. Especially the last one is typical in the
technology domain as the advances and benefits cannot be fully envisioned nor
38 S. Karnouskos, P.J. Marrón, and D. Minder
Transportation (Air, Road etc)
Security
Logistics
Human Augmentation
Healthcare and Assisted−Living
Environmental Monitoring
Energy (Smart Grids, Electric cars etc)
Education and Training
Automation (Industrial,Home, Building)
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Fig. 2. Survey: Beneficiary Domains
No proven record of bussiness benefit
Social Issues 1 (not important)
2
Confidence in Technology 3
4
Lack of Standards 5 (extremely important)
Unclear Bussiness Models
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Fig. 3. Survey: Roadblock Impact
widely understood. Although market predictions for the deployment and use
of Cooperating Object relevant technologies are promising, the identified road-
blocks will need to be tackled effectively if Cooperating Objects are to succeed.
Nevertheless, it is clear that there is promising potential in versatile domains,
which could greatly benefit with the introduction of Cooperating Object tech-
nologies, ranging from automation (home, industrial, building) to healthcare,
energy etc. We estimate that we are still in the dawn of a new era, and in the
early phases of Rogers’ technology adoption lifecycle as depicted in Figure 4. We
expect that the Cooperating Objects market will be cross-domain and strongly
embedded in the fabric of success of other domains.
5 Conclusions
The emerging domain of Cooperating Objects envisions the widespread collab-
oration between devices, systems and applications in a fully networked world.
Cooperating Objects Design Space and Markets 39
Fig. 4. Cooperating Objects in technology adoption lifecycle
As we are moving towards a Trillion Node Network Infrastructure, where de-
vices will be interconnected and cooperate, providing and consuming informa-
tion available, collaborative and emergent behaviours are expected to appear
that empower new innovative approaches. The vision of Cooperating Objects is
to tackle the emerging complexity by cooperation and modularity. Achieving en-
hanced system intelligence by cooperation of smart embedded devices pursuing
common goals is relevant in many types of perception and system environments.
The impact of Cooperating Objects may affect many traditional industries
and create significant business opportunities for companies across industries by
opening up new markets and therefore may become an important factor of tomor-
row’s business environment and service-based economy. Its development holds
the potential to provide market stakeholders with a competitive advantage in
global markets, be it in terms of technologies or new services and applications.
Finally, we consider that Cooperating Objects will act as an enabler for a wide
range of applications and services, and hold the potential to empower sophisti-
cated highly dynamic complex systems and applications in the long- term.
Acknowledgements
This work has been partially supported by CONET (www.cooperating-objects.
eu), the Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence, funded by the European
Commission under FP7 with contract number FP7-2007-2-224053.
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