Machine learning in the Internet of Things: A semantic-enhanced approach

Novel Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services rely on an intelligent understanding of the environment leveraging data gathered via heterogeneous sensors and micro-devices. Though increasingly effective, Machine Learning (ML) techniques generally do not go beyond classification of events with opaque labels, lacking machine-understandable representation and explanation of taxonomies. This paper proposes a framework for semantic-enhanced data mining on sensor streams, amenable to resource-constrained pervasive contexts. It merges an ontology-based characterization of data distributions with non-standard reasoning for a fine-grained event detection. The typical classification problem of ML is treated as a resource discovery by exploiting semantic matchmaking. Outputs of classification are endowed with computer-processable descriptions in standard Semantic Web languages, while explanation of matchmaking outcomes motivates confidence on results. A case study on road and traffic analysis has allowed to validate the proposal and achieve an assessment with respect to state-of-the-art ML algorithms.