Requirements Engineering for Continuous Queries on IoRT Data: A Case Study in Agricultural Autonomous Robots Monitoring

The Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) is an extension of the Internet of Things, where intelligent mobile devices acquire sensor data and physically act in the environment. IoRT devices produce huge data streams, typically analyzed using continuous queries. We propose an approach to engineer requirements about continuous queries over IoRT data. Our proposal is specifically devised for end-users not skilled in IT and relies, for requirements elicitation, on spreadsheet-like templates called stream tables. Requirements analysis uses a novel UML profile, while requirements specification and validation rely on a fast prototyping tool so as to allow end-users to define continuous queries by themselves and validate them via web-based prototyping. Non-functional requirements are taken into account as well, in the form of available technological resources and data sources, and used for requirements validation. The results of some preliminary tests made with some real users suggest that stream tables are a valuable instrument for the engineering of continuous queries, and that fast prototyping is an effective support to the specification and validation steps.