C-QoS is a model-driven approach that handles the complexity of representing Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) systems and guarantees compatibility among QoS policies. By leveraging this approach, an IoRT designer can produce BPMN models that capture the key aspects of the system, including the interplay between devices, communication protocols, and QoS requirements.
To show the applicability of our proposal, we developed the C-QoS tool supporting the approach. The C-QoS modeling phase is an extension of the BPMN-js toolkit that allowed us to create a web-based BPMN modeler enriched with the possibility of associating a set of QoS policies to each signal node. The property panel shown in the figure below, allows the designer to define QoS parameters for communication. Once metrics are changed, the tool automatically checks their compatibility as defined in the ROS2 specification, highlighting possible errors that can impact communication between involved devices.
Extended Example
We validate our approach using the C-QoS tool modeling a Smart Agriculture scenario. This scenario integrates IoT devices and robotics, i.e. a smart irrigation system, soil sensors, tractors, a weather station, and a drone to improve agricultural efficiency. In detail, the smart irrigation system takes data from soil sensors and the weather station, to determine whenever the field needs to be irrigated. Moreover, a drone periodically takes off to monitor the field’s conditions, activating tractors if it recognizes, through image analysis, the unwanted presence of grass in the field.
