Smart Spaces-Based Application Development: M3 Architecture, Design Principles, Use Cases, and Evaluation

Smart spaces form now an emerging paradigm for application development in the various domains of ubiquitous, pervasive, mobile, embedded, and edge-centric computing. The smart space-based development still lacks matured methodologies appropriate for a wide range of application domains. The authors consider a particular class of smart spaces where interaction of many participants is information-driven and ontology-oriented using the indirect interaction models from multi-agent systems and knowledge manipulation technologies from the Semantic Web. The paper summarizes more than ten years of the authors' experience for this class of smart space-based application development. The M3 architecture (multidevice, multivendor, multidomain) for smart spaces enables concept development of service-oriented applications based on information sharing by software agents running on various devices and acting as knowledge processors. The Smart-M3 platform is an open source solution that implements the M3 architecture.