OSGi-based Distributed Environment Applied in Mixed Robotic and IoT Domain

Thesis Code: 20001

Thesis Type: Thesis in Computer Science, Telecommunication/Electronic Engineering or equivalent

Requirements:
• Good skills in software programming using Java.
• Knowledge of cloud computing (considered a plus).

Description:
Motivation: The next generation of Smart City and Industry 4.0 applications will be geographically distributed, heterogeneous, co-evolving software ecosystems, significantly more sophisticated than the current Enterprise or Cloud compute environments. To be economically sustainable and achieve solution longevity, these software ecosystems must be operationally simple, cost effective to maintain over extended periods of time, and able to cost effectively adapt to both changing environmental conditions and service requirements. To fulfill this, building an IoT application with a modular OSGi approach future–proofs investments that allows to reduce development cycles and enables rapid and cost-effective delivery of new services to these connected devices is highly demanded.

Objectives: The goal of this thesis is to develop an OSGi-based framework supporting the dynamic deployment, monitoring and configuration of distributed microservices implementing cooperative intelligence logics in a mixed robotic and IoT environment. More specifically, such framework will have to support the development of service robotics applications, with robots operating in a dynamic and unknown environment, where robots behaviours are adapted and deployed at runtime.

The thesis work will consist in an initial scouting of state-of-the-art technologies (e.g. mainly OSGi standard specifications, Apache Karaf, AIOLOS, Paremus Service Fabric, Ansible, ROS). The framework will make use of novel and existing technologies and will prosecute a work under development within the BRAIN-IoT EU-funded project, in collaboration with other partners from Europe. The final outcome of this thesis proposal will consist in a proof-of-concept tested with robotic simulation environments (e.g. Gazebo, Webots) and demonstrated with real robotic platforms and IoT devices.

The developed framework will be released open source under Eclipse Foundation incubation initiatives.

The deadline for the demonstration of the developed proof-of-concept is mid December 2020.

Available Thesis: 1

Contact: send a resume with attached the list of exams taken during the Master of Science to xu.tao@linksfoundation.com or enrico.ferrera@linksfoundation.com or pert@linksfoundation.com specifying the thesis title.