An ontology-based sensor network prototype environment

Abstract

This paper describes work-in-progress development of an ontology-based, sensor network prototype environment to facilitate research in distributed, heterogeneous sensor inference, fusion, tasking and control. Currently, the prototype environment consists of wireless sensing capabilities that include temperature, acceleration, GPS, light, barometric pressure, magnetic field and acoustic measurements, with wired visible, infrared, and other high-bitrate sensors pending integration. Communication links formed by the sensors permit the aggregation of data at the base stations. Each base station includes a process that generates a sensor data repository from the raw percepts, which is marked up using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to reference the OntoSensor ontology. Each sensor type in OntoSensor is defined using concepts, associations, and services providing meta data about each sensor, as well as requisite knowledge for interoperability and data fusion. A software agent developed in SWI PROLOG loads the OWL sensor repositories into its knowledge base for subsequent application. Currently, the agent only supports ad-hoc queries of the sensor repositories to discover trends in the measurements. Plans for future work include demonstration of proof-of-concept utility of sensor ontologies in distributed sensor processing and control.