Powering the Internet of Things with RIOT: Why? How? What is RIOT?

TL;DR

This paper discusses RIOT, an operating system designed for the Internet of Things, emphasizing its importance for privacy, sovereignty, and large-scale deployment, and outlining its key features and non-technical aspects.

Contribution

It introduces RIOT as a novel IoT operating system, highlighting its unique technical and non-technical features suited for large-scale, privacy-sensitive applications.

Findings

RIOT supports large-scale IoT deployments.

RIOT enhances privacy and sovereignty in IoT.

RIOT's design addresses both technical and societal challenges.

Abstract

The crucial importance of software platforms was highlighted by recent events both at the political level (e.g. renewed calls for digital data and operating system "sovereignty", following E. Snowden's revelations) and at the business level (e.g. Android generated a new industry worth tens of billions of euros yearly). In the Internet of Things, which is expected to generate business at very large scale, but also to threaten even more individual privacy, such aspects will be exacerbated. The need for an operating system like RIOT stems from this context, and this short article outlines RIOT's main non-technical aspects, as well as its key technical characteristics.