The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has announced that its Track & Trace Testbed has helped to define a new Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) standard. The Object Management Group (OMG), a standards-development organization that has been creating and maintaining IT standards for more than 30 years, has used the testbed’s requirements to define its Simple Electronic Notation for Sensor Reporting (SENSR) specification, which is now available as a beta standard.
The IIC is an OMG membership program focused on transforming business and society by accelerating the IIoT. The Track & Trace Testbed creates visibility along the value chain, the IIC reports, by tracking geolocation both indoors and outdoors, and by monitoring the usage of key assets. From this, the organization reports, a need emerged for sensor manufacturers to publish the required interpretation of the data that they produce via an Electronic Data Sheet (EDS).
“For our customers, e.g. large retailers, we have to provide data from transport-related assets, like trailers and containers, to ensure transport SLAs [service-level agreements] are met and logistics chains can be optimized,” said Bosch’s Kai Hackbarth, a cochair of the IIC’s Over-the-Air Special Interest Group, in a prepared statement. “We needed a standard method of retrieving data to help reduce the complexity.”
The SENSR specification, the firm explains, enables manufacturers to precisely describe the output of their hardware so devices consuming the data can properly interpret it. The new spec also allows the manufacturers to specify an EDS that provides a precise model of the data their equipment produces. “With a standard to interpret data, both sensor manufacturers and end users can derive more actionable results from the information they are gathering,” said Erich Clauer, SAP’s VP of industry standards and open source, in the prepared statement.
“One of the primary drivers of our testbeds is to generate requirements for new standards, and we’re delighted to see that OMG has used these requirements to create a new OMG IoT standard,” added Richard Soley, the IIC’s executive director and OMG’s chairman and CEO, in the statement. “IIC testbeds use many industry standards and contribute to their improvements, but this is the first testbed to generate a set of requirements that have resulted in a new standard.”
According to the Object Management Group, SENSR specifies a metamodel for the syntax of streamed data and a mechanism for manufacturers to author guidelines for interpreting that data. “Currently, manufacturers of hardware sensors rely on arcane data sheets to describe the format of data supplied by their sensors, with each manufacturer having their own data sheet format,” said Jason MCc. Smith, OMG’s VP and technical director, in a separate statement. “Errors and ambiguities can, and are likely to, occur in these situations. With the SENSR specification, manufacturers can provide a precise description of the output of their hardware so devices consuming the data stream can properly interpret it.”
The SENSR spec allows devices to report their own capabilities, OMG explains, which enables other devices in their environment to self-configure in order to take advantage of these capabilities. SENSR also enables smart devices to react to the available sensors in an environment more quickly and intelligently. “With SENSR in play,” Hackbarth said, “a smart factory can recognize every tool, device or safety sensor, interpret the data and know what to do with it. That can filter down to the home and personal level. For example, smart devices, such as phones, can create ad hoc mesh networks, enabling a car to access weather data from sensors or help find a parking spot.”
The new specification enables manufacturers to create a metamodel for describing available data provided by hardware sensors, as well as an optional library of data types to facilitate data sharing. The SENSR spec, which can be found in OMG’s specifications catalog, is free of charge and is currently available as a beta version, with the final 1.0 spec expected to be made available later this year.