The Web of Things - Challenges and enabling technologies

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an active research area, focusing on connecting real-world things over TCP/IP. This trend has recently triggered the research community to adopt the interoperability of the Web (HTTP) as an application platform for integrating 'things' on the Internet. Harnessing physical things into the virtual world using Web standards is also enriching the arena of conventional Web services to unleash data and functions of real-world things as service providers and consumers on the Internet. This evolution of the Web as a highly interoperable application platform for connecting real-world things has raised many research challenges and problems, leading to the fast growing research area called the Web of Things (WoT). Current research on WoT is a catalyst for the realization of IoT, opening up the possibilities of creating ambient spaces (AS), where people and things seamlessly communicate over the Web. In this chapter we discuss the state of the art in WoT research, focusing on the various challenges, and enabling technologies that are driving this research. We discuss architectural frameworks, models and technologies to build applications for future ambient spaces with the WoT. We present case studies that reflect the feasibility and applicability of the WoT technology. We also discuss future trends and research directions within this domain to throw light on existing problems and challenges.