GOAL-DRIVEN PROVISIONING IN IOT SYSTEMS

摘要

Techniques are disclosed for provisioning Internet of Things (IoT) devices in accordance with a state machine model. More particularly, collections of IoT devices may be organized into enclaves, groups or “shoals” that operate as autonomous or semi-autonomous groups of devices functioning as a collective having a common objective or mission. IoT devices participating in a shoal may be provisioned with shoal-specific context information as part of their device-specific provisioning activity. By way of example, a shoal context object can include a current state variable and a target next state variable. The shoal's target next state variable establishes a goal (e.g., for provisioning activity) without dictating how the individual shoal members (IoT device) are to achieve that goal. This mechanism may be used to drive a shoal's separate devices through their individual provisioning state machines until the shoal itself is made operational.

主权项

1. An Internet of Things (IoT) device, comprising:
device hardware configured to function in accordance with a type of device; IoT hardware including:
a network communication circuit configured to connect to a network communication medium,memory communicatively coupled to the network communication circuit, anda processor operatively coupled to the device hardware, the network communication circuit and the memory, the memory storing instructions that when executed cause the processor to:
employ a provisioning state machine corresponding to the type of device and IoT hardware, wherein the provisioning state machine includes a plurality of states, the final state being an operational state,establish a shoal-specific state information in the memory in accordance with the provisioning state machine,establish an IoT device-specific state information in the memory in accordance with the provisioning state machine,establish communication through the network communication circuit with one or more additional IoT devices, wherein the IoT device and each of the one or more additional IoT devices belong to a shoal of IoT devices,determine, based on the established communication, a state of the shoal and record same in the shoal-specific state information,determine a state of the IoT device and record same in the IoT device-specific state information, andsequence through the plurality of states based on a combination of the shoal state and the IoT device state until the IoT device and the one or more additional IoT devices are in the operational state, wherein updated shoal state is received from at least one of the one or more additional IoT devices through the network communication circuit and recorded in the shoal-specific state information.