Ambient intelligence governance review: from service-oriented to self-service

The current generation of connected devices and the Internet of Things augment people’s capabilities through ambient intelligence. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) support systems contain applications consuming available services in the environment to serve users. A well-known design of these applications follows a service architecture style and implement artificial intelligence mechanisms to maintain an awareness of the context: The service architecture style enables the distribution of capabilities and facilitates interoperability. Intelligence and context-awareness provide an adaptation of the environment to improve the interaction. Smart objects in distributed deployments and the increasing machine awareness of devices and people context also lead us to architectures, including self-governed policies providing self-service. We have systematically reviewed and analyzed ambient system governance considering service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a reference model. We applied a systematic mapping process obtaining 198 papers for screening (out of 712 obtained after conducting searches in research databases). We then reviewed and categorized 68 papers related to 48 research projects selected by fulfilling ambient intelligence and SOA principles and concepts. This paper presents the result of our analysis, including the existing governance designs, the distribution of adopted characteristics, and the trend to incorporate service in the context-aware process. We also discuss the identified challenges and analyze research directions.