Generating Visual Programming Blocks based on Semantics in W3C Thing Descriptions

We present mappings that leverage the semantic information in W3C Thing Descriptions (TDs) to generate structure definitions and code generator functions for visual programming blocks. In addition, we use link following to discover and consume related TDs. This approach extends device support in low-code IoT environments. Our implementation generates blocks and code generators in O(n), where n is the number of interaction affordances in a consumed TD, and follows links to Thing Descriptions in O(n + m), where n is the number of TDs and m the number of links to follow. Specifically, our implementation can discover 35 TDs with 128 interaction affordances and generate blocks and code in less than 200 ms, which is considered acceptable for interactive user interfaces.