ProfessorAthman Bouguettaya

Imagine you’re sitting at a cafe having coffee, when you notice your smartwatch is low on charge. What if you could recharge it wirelessly while you’re there – by having it scan the cafe for a suitable energy source, such as someone wearing smartshoes that have generated energy through friction as they walked to the cafe and can now make that energy available to charge your watch? Professor Athman Bouguettaya’s research aims to make this scenario possible.

“My research lies at the intersections of the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing and service computing. I see it in terms of a triangle, where the IoT is a way of collecting information, the cloud is a way of storing information, and service computing is a way of delivering information. I look at the places where any of these things meet, and then investigate how we can use the service computing paradigm to maximise the value of the IoT and cloud computing.

“One example is the concept of energy as a service that can be crowdsourced through the IoT, as illustrated above. Advantages include that it’s green, it doesn’t require any external energy source, and it’s much more efficient and convenient than our current model.

“Another example is leveraging the ubiquity of images and videos published on social media to enable detailed reconstruction and analysis of events such as crimes or accidents. This would be done using the spatiotemporal data automatically uploaded with any image file, to create a rich tapestry of visual and other information – timing, location, angle, lighting, sightlines, peripheral environment and so on – about a particular event.

“A third example is developing the use of drones as our primary means of goods delivery. This would increase efficiency and reliability and decrease costs and road congestion, by relying instead on optimal aerial delivery routes to rooftop delivery points across a CBD.

“I believe service computing can have a great impact on our lives, by enabling us to do a whole range of things better, faster and more effectively. I’ve been working in this field since the early 2000s, and I joined the University of Sydney in 2016, which has provided me with the right environment to do quality research as well as the best students to work with.”