creates challenges with enormous technical, societal, economic, and political consequences. Consequently, a wide range of researchers from academia and industry, as well as businesses, government agencies, and cities, are exploring this exciting technology from three main perspectives: scientific theory, engineering design, and the user experience.Motivated by this more holistic view, the research community has moved its focus from the system to the end user. This shift aims to empower users by providing them with the knowledge required to understand and control their environment, as well as by offering new accessible and interactive interfaces that go beyond the traditional desktop.With this in mind, this special issue of Computer presents five recent research and deployment case studies. Two of the articles project our readers into futurist scenarios: one imagines nanotechnologies' penetration into embedded computing and electronics, while the other discusses the extent to which neuroscience will drive future IoT development. The remaining three articles offer detailed insight into technological solutions that are unleashing new forms of AI and programming constructs, and discuss their societal impact through end-user empowerment. All of the articles are at the forefront of the user-centered design approach.
In this paper, we propose a solution to delegate the control and the management of the network connecting the many devices of a smart environment to a software entity, while keeping end-users in control of what is happening in their networks. For this, we rely on the logical manipulation of all connected devices through device abstraction and network programmability. Applying Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles, we propose a software-based solution that we call Software-Defined LANs in order to interconnect devices of smart environments according to the services the users are requesting or expecting. We define the adequate virtualization framework based on Virtual Objects and Communities of Virtual Objects. Using these virtual entities, we apply the SDN architectural principles to define a generic architecture that can be applied to any smart environment. Then we describe a prototype implementing these concepts in the home networking context, through a scenario in which users of two different homes can easily interconnect two private but shareable DLNA devices in a dedicated videodelivery SD-LAN. Finally we provide a discussion of the benefits and challenges of our approach regarding the generalization of SDN principles, autonomic features, Internet of Things scalability, security and privacy aspects enabled by SD-LANs intrinsic properties.
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