Virtual Sensor Networking is an emergent approach which enables the dynamic collaboration of a subset of sensor nodes, not necessarily controlled or owned by the same Administrative Domain (AD), aiming to complete a certain task or computation at a given time. In this concept, a Virtual Sensor Network (VSN) is composed of sensors or clusters of sensors that might be located far away from each other or controlled by multiple Administrative Domains. This opens the door to the support of virtually infinite number of applications. The vision of VITRO is to bridge the gap between the general concept of VSN and its realization, extend the notion of VSN and address all the new and innovative research topics that the realization of VSN introduces.

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• In a VSN, the interoperability of heterogeneous WSNs requires a sophisticated software abstraction layer helping for the virtualization of sensor resources and services, as well as the management of VSNs. For that purpose, VITRO will propose a novel and open middleware architecture, supported by all objects that can potentially participate in a VSN. The purpose of this middleware is twofold: firstly, it must offer the appropriate protocols for formation, usage, adaptation, and maintenance of VSNs, and secondly, it must provide the tools for service and resource discovery among heterogeneous smart objects.
• The concept of VSNs introduces a truly new and dynamic collaboration paradigm, where provisioning and planning techniques cannot be easily applied. In order to cope with the augmented collaboration requirements of this new paradigm, VITRO will pay special attention on issues like seamless connectivity, energy-efficiency and operational reliability, as well as, trusted routing in large-scale harsh environments.

The VITRO project aims at developing architectures, algorithms and engineering methods which constitute an integrated solution regarding all the aforementioned topics. In other words, the VITRO project will federate unprecedented design approaches across involved layers, with the purpose of having the system design at the core of smart home, building automation and industrial control & monitoring applications. The VITRO toolbox will provide all the means to meet the stringent demands of the latter applications, with respect to zero-outage (robustness), instant-response (hard-delay), green operation (energy efficiency) and adaptability (context-awareness). The VITRO platform will facilitate distribution of the processing, storage and communication resources, as well as seamless network-centric computing/sensing and data aggregation. Abstractions to enable (re)programming and remote access to the heterogeneous networked smart objects of different Administrative Domains will be provided. Moreover, VITRO will evaluate the trade-offs between distributed processing and communications overheads, while hiding the complexity of collaborative objects and thus contribute to better dependability, security and energy efficiency.