Combining Internet of Things and Crowdsourcing for Pervasive Research and End-user Centric Experimental Infrastructures (IoT Lab)

The Internet of Things will be massive and pervasive. It will impact many and diverse application domains such as environmental monitoring, transportation, energy and water management, security and safety, assisted living, smart homes and eHealth, etc. Developing and testing technologies in conventional research labs appears to be insufficient to really grasp, fine tune and validate new IoT technologies. Moreover, an approach purely focused on technical requirements may lead to a missed target if the end-user perspective is not properly taken into account. End-user acceptance is probably as much important as technical performance, and better understanding their acceptance and satisfaction is critical. IoT Lab (www.iotlab.eu) is a European research project [1], which has developed a hybrid research infrastructure combining Internet of Things (IoT) testbeds together with crowdsourcing and crowd-sensing capabilities. It enables researchers to use IoT testbeds, including in public spaces, while collecting inputs from end-users through crowdsourcing and crowd-sensing. It enables researchers to exploit the potential of crowdsourcing and Internet of Things testbeds for multidisciplinary research with more end-user interactions. IoT Lab approach puts the end-users at the centre of the research and innovation process. The crowd is at the core of the research cycle with an active role in research from its inception to the results' evaluation. It enables a better alignment of the research with the society and end-users needs and requirements. On the other side, IoT Lab aims at enhancing existing IoT testbeds, by integrating them together into a testbed as a service and by extending the platform with crowdsourcing and crowd-sensing capacities.