It is our pleasure to present the book Challenges of the Internet of Things: Technology, Use and Ethics which is based on a selection of articles presented in the French Open Science journal Internet des Objets, available at: https://www.openscience.fr/Internet-des-objets.

This book examines the problems pertaining to the IoT based on three different approaches: technology, use and ethics. The technology used to produce artifacts (physical objects, infrastructures), programs (algorithmic, software) and data (Big Data, linked data, metadata, ontologies) is the subject of many innovations in the field of the IoT, itself rich and stimulating. Along with this technological boom, the IoT is now used in new fields of application, including transport, administration, housing, maintenance, health, sports and well-being. Being a favored interface with digital ecosystems at the center of social exchanges, the IoT is developing the power to act with both good and bad consequences, thereby making it difficult to assess fair activity¹.

In Chapter 1, “Internet of Things (IoT): Concepts, Issues, Challenges and Perspectives”², Imad Saleh presents an in-depth review of the subject based on his article published in 2017 [SAL 17]. The author presents the definitions of connected objects, the Internet of Things and the Internet of Everything (IoE). He then establishes a connection between the IoT and Big Data, and cloud computing and data science. Furthermore, he provides the details of the issues and challenges encountered in the IoT, both at a technical and a human level in the IoT ecosystem, and presents blockchain and its relationship with the IoT. In conclusion, the author provides an overview of the IoT using a figure for clarification.

In Chapter 2, “Deep Learning Approach of Raw Human Activity Data”, Hamdi Amroun, M’Hamed (Hamy) Temkit and Mehdi Ammi offer an approach to recognizing certain physical activities using a network of connected objects. The approach involves the classification of certain human activities: walking up and down the stairs, standing still, sitting and lying down. This study uses a network of connected objects: a smartwatch, a smartphone and a connected remote control. These objects were worn by participants during an uncontrolled experiment (i.e. in an uncontrolled environment). Sensor data from these devices were classified using deep neural networks (DNN) without prior pre-processing of input data (raw data). The authors show how their DNN model provides the best results compared with other conventional models such as Decision Trees (DT) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The results show that participant activity was classified with an accuracy of more than 98.53% on average.

In Chapter 3, “Study and Development of a Smart Cup for Monitoring Post-Stroke Patients’ Activities at Home”, Mehdi Ammi, Mehdi Boukallel, Margarita Anastassova, Hamdi Amroun and Maxence Bobin present the existing platforms for post-stroke follow-up and activity recognition. They then introduce the design concept for a “smart cup”, which includes collected data and sensory feedback offered to patients. Next, the technical realization of a prototype is described, as well as data processing information including the calculation of the orientation of the cup and its capacity to detect and characterize tremors, followed by a method of analysis. Furthermore, they present planned studies with health professionals and patients. Finally, they conclude with perspectives concerning the smart cup.

In Chapter 4, “Enabling Fast-prototyping of Connected Things using the WiNo* Family”, Adrien van den Bossche, Réjane Dalcé and Thierry Val discuss the ability of an open platform to provide fast prototyping of nodes that can be used for connected objects. One of the strategic choices was to place the platform in the open-source ecosystem, from both hardware and software points of view. Their contributions are distinguished from the competition by using components from the Arduino world, the ability to integrate a large number of transceivers and therefore a very large diversity of existing and future physical layers, as well as ergonomics that facilitates the development of protocols and innovation applications.

In Chapter 5, “Multi-standard Receiver for Medical IoT Sensor Networks”, Benoit Geller and Tarak Arbi study the rise in the narrow band mode of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, which provides information about an OFDM receiver (multiple orthogonal subcarriers; see [MIC 01]), which can be used, for example, by a conventional WiFi receiver to serve as a multi-standard receiver.

In Chapter 6, “Ambient Atoms: A Device for Ambient Information Visualization”, Sébastien Crouzy, Stan Borkowski and Sabine Coquillart offer a new ambient visualization device known as Ambient Atoms. Ambient Atoms is a simple connected and flexible object which is in the form of a table where information can be symbolically visualized. A sample application of an informative visualization of an apartment is discussed.

In Chapter 7, “New Robust Protocol for IoV Communications”, Lylia Alouache, Nga Nguyen, Makhlouf Aliouat and Rachid Chelouah first provide some definitions of vehicular networks, application domains, communication technologies and quality of service (QoS) obstacles in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). They then present their proposition to detect and circumvent disconnection zones using a new geographic routing protocol based on: (1) the estimation of the contact time between vehicles, (2) the data loads to be transferred and (3) the logs of communication anomalies. The objective is to ensure the availability, reliability and robustness of inter-vehicular communications by taking these three different criteria into account in an algorithm for routing data packets.

In Chapter 8, “Interconnected Virtual Space and Theater: A Research–Creation Project on Theatrical Performance Space in the Network Era”, Georges Gagneré, Cédric Plessiet and Rémy Sohier present their experiments based on a cross-examination between theatrical staging specialists and researchers involved in virtual reality, digital art and video games. In the first section, the authors discuss the scenic device upon which their presentation is based. In the second section, they discuss in detail the impact of augmenting the player’s game using an avatar, in relation to the scenic constraints encountered on a theatrical stage. In the third section, the authors present the IT aspects of the project by focusing on the exchanges between the various elements of the device and by describing the algorithms that allow for the real-time movement of an actor using capturing devices. Finally, they discuss how the experimental device between a physical actor and an avatar modifies the nature of the collaboration that takes place between the directors, actors and digital artists in terms of the direction of an actor/avatar.

In Chapter 9, “Mobile Telephones and Mobile Health: A Societal Question at Issue in Public Space”, Brigitte Juanals discusses elements from the field of Information and Communication Sciences and deals with socio-political challenges and mobile information access systems, including the production and access to online content and services from a portable computer terminal, with particular attention paid to mobile phones (smartphones). He addresses the challenges of the IoT concerning the use of socio-technical systems in mobile health, which has destabilized the traditional organization of health itself.

In Chapter 10, “Modeling of Power to Act for an Ethics of the Internet of Things”, Samuel Szoniecky discusses current reflections on ethics and the IoT and opens a democratic debate on the problems they cause, in order to propose a method for modeling the IoT’s power of action which aims to evaluate and compare the ethics of these technologies. In order to do this, Szoniecky developed tools to model these connected objects in order to understand their impact on our daily lives. The aim of this research is to propose a simple signage system in order to indicate the ethical position of objects, such as pictograms which inform consumers about the energy quality of household appliances. However, before arriving at the expression of the power to act in this simplified form, the author questions the theoretical and graphic principles of these diagrams as well as their design.

We would like to warmly thank all the authors who contributed to this book as well as our colleagues Jean-Max Noyer, Ioan Roxin, Christophe Kolski and Richard Chbeir for their contribution to the publication of the Internet des Objets journal and Khalid Mekouar, President and Pedagogical Director at ESISA (Morocco), and Ibtissam Mekouar for their kindness, availability and support during our conferences in Fez.

Introduction written by Imad SALEH, Mehdi AMMI and Samuel SZONIECKY.