Research on a Communication Platform Coordinating Web Services and Smart Speakers on the Application Layer

We propose an information platform for connecting smart speakers to Web services and acquiring data. The proposed platform is based on the fog computing model. It enables the smart speaker to connect to web services, control these services, and collaborate with other smart speakers on the application level by converting protocols in the node. In this research, we developed a service to retrieve news about artists of interest by utilizing the history of music services. Furthermore, we constructed the service connecting Spotify and Google News. Then, from the viewpoint of application development, we evaluated the practicality of the proposed platform and its development potential. We found that the unified communication platform reduced the logical source lines of code by about 35% and enhanced the ease of development and serviceability. In addition, We discussed the possibility of using the fog computing model to collaborate data among various http-enabled smart devices and web services as future work.