{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,7]],"date-time":"2026-04-07T16:35:36Z","timestamp":1775579736826,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":60,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,4,25]],"date-time":"2020-04-25T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1587772800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100010661","name":"Horizon 2020","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["777222"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["777222"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100010661","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper introduces a possible architecture and discusses the research directions for the realization of the Cognitive Perceptual Internet (CPI), which is enabled by the convergence of wired and wireless communications, traditional sensor networks, mobile crowd-sensing, and machine learning techniques. The CPI concept stems from the fact that mobile devices, such as smartphones and wearables, are becoming an outstanding mean for zero-effort world-sensing and digitalization thanks to their pervasive diffusion and the increasing number of embedded sensors. Data collected by such devices provide unprecedented insights into the physical world that can be inferred through cognitive processes, thus originating a digital sixth sense. In this paper, we describe how the Internet can behave like a sensing brain, thus evolving into the Internet of Senses, with network-based cognitive perception and action capabilities built upon mobile crowd-sensing mechanisms. The new concept of hyper-map is envisioned as an efficient geo-referenced repository of knowledge about the physical world. Such knowledge is acquired and augmented through heterogeneous sensors, multi-user cooperation and distributed learning mechanisms. Furthermore, we indicate the possibility to accommodate proactive sensors, in addition to common reactive sensors such as cameras, antennas, thermometers and inertial measurement units, by exploiting massive antenna arrays at millimeter-waves to enhance mobile terminals perception capabilities as well as the range of new applications. Finally, we distillate some insights about the challenges arising in the realization of the CPI, corroborated by preliminary results, and we depict a futuristic scenario where the proposed Internet of Senses becomes true.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20092437","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,4,28]],"date-time":"2020-04-28T10:30:58Z","timestamp":1588069858000},"page":"2437","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":10,"title":["Crowd-Based Cognitive Perception of the Physical World: Towards the Internet of Senses"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2508-6790","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Gianni","family":"Pasolini","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"WiLAB, CNIT, DEI, University of Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5214-1444","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anna","family":"Guerra","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"WiLAB, CNIT, DEI, University of Bologna-Cesena Campus, Viale dell\u2019Universit\u00e0 50, 47522 Cesena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1773-8541","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Francesco","family":"Guidi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"WiLAB, CNIT, IEIIT, CNR, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Nicol\u00f2","family":"Decarli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"WiLAB, CNIT, DEI, University of Bologna-Cesena Campus, Viale dell\u2019Universit\u00e0 50, 47522 Cesena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5994-1310","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Davide","family":"Dardari","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"WiLAB, CNIT, DEI, University of Bologna-Cesena Campus, Viale dell\u2019Universit\u00e0 50, 47522 Cesena, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,4,25]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1531","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2012.12.028","article-title":"Opportunistic IoT: Exploring the harmonious interaction between human and the internet of things","volume":"36","author":"Guo","year":"2013","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"(2020, April 24). Available online: https:\/\/www.openstreetmap.org."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"(2020, April 24). Available online: https:\/\/www.mapspeople.com\/mapsindoors\/."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"(2020, April 24). Available online: https:\/\/artsandculture.google.com\/project\/streetviews."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"192","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2015.09.008","article-title":"Applications of wireless sensor networks for urban areas: A survey","volume":"60","author":"Rashid","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"29","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2014.6871666","article-title":"Opportunities in mobile crowd sensing","volume":"52","author":"Ma","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"(2020, April 24). Available online: https:\/\/www.ericsson.com\/4ae13b\/assets\/local\/reports-papers\/consumerlab\/reports\/2019\/10hctreport2030.pdf."},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"(2020, April 24). Available online: https:\/\/www.zte.com.cn\/global\/about\/news\/20200323e2.html."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3102","DOI":"10.1109\/JPROC.2012.2203089","article-title":"Cognitive Radar: Step Toward Bridging the Gap Between Neuroscience and Engineering","volume":"100","author":"Haykin","year":"2012","journal-title":"Proc. IEEE"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"32","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2011.6069707","article-title":"Mobile crowdsensing: current state and future challenges","volume":"49","author":"Ganti","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10662","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2799707","article-title":"Edge Computing Architecture for Mobile Crowdsensing","volume":"6","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guo, B., Yu, Z., Zhou, X., and Zhang, D. (2014, January 24\u201328). From participatory sensing to mobile crowd sensing. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communication Workshops (PerCom Workshops), Budapest, Hungary.","DOI":"10.1109\/PerComW.2014.6815273"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4957","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2018.2883318","article-title":"Human in the Loop: Distributed Deep Model for Mobile Crowdsensing","volume":"5","author":"Li","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1262","DOI":"10.1109\/JSAC.2019.2904353","article-title":"Energy-efficient distributed mobile crowd sensing: A deep learning approach","volume":"37","author":"Liu","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun."},{"key":"ref_15","first-page":"1","article-title":"A Survey of Mobile Crowdsensing Techniques: A Critical Component for The Internet of Things","volume":"2","author":"Liu","year":"2018","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Cyber-Phys. Syst."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"86","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2017.1600690CM","article-title":"Promoting Cooperation by the Social Incentive Mechanism in Mobile Crowdsensing","volume":"55","author":"Yang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"330","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2016.2560518","article-title":"Leveraging Crowdsourcing for Efficient Malicious Users Detection in Large-Scale Social Networks","volume":"4","author":"Yang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7","DOI":"10.1145\/2794400","article-title":"Mobile crowd sensing and computing: The review of an emerging human-powered sensing paradigm","volume":"48","author":"Guo","year":"2015","journal-title":"Acm Comput. Surv. (Csur)"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1550","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2018.2792423","article-title":"Connecting Intelligent Things in Smart Hospitals Using NB-IoT","volume":"5","author":"Zhang","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Internet of Things J."},{"key":"ref_20","first-page":"5","article-title":"Crowd-sourced data collection for urban monitoring via mobile sensors","volume":"18","author":"Longo","year":"2017","journal-title":"Acm Trans. Internet Technol. (Toit)"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"140","DOI":"10.1109\/MWC.2018.1600468","article-title":"Wirelessly Powered Urban Crowd Sensing over Wearables: Trading Energy for Data","volume":"25","author":"Galinina","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Wirel. Commun."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wan, J., Liu, J., Shao, Z., Vasilakos, A., Imran, M., and Zhou, K. (2016). Mobile crowd sensing for traffic prediction in internet of vehicles. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16010088"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"161","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2016.7509395","article-title":"Sparse mobile crowdsensing: challenges and opportunities","volume":"54","author":"Wang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"738","DOI":"10.1109\/JPROC.2018.2812836","article-title":"The need of multidisciplinary approaches and engineering tools for the development and implementation of the smart city paradigm","volume":"106","author":"Andrisano","year":"2018","journal-title":"Proc. IEEE"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pasolini, G., Buratti, C., Feltrin, L., Zabini, F., De Castro, C., Verdone, R., and Andrisano, O. (2018). Smart City Pilot Projects Using LoRa and IEEE802.15.4 Technologies. Sensors, 18.","DOI":"10.3390\/s18041118"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10139","DOI":"10.1109\/TVT.2018.2853657","article-title":"Indoor Environment-Adaptive Mapping With Beamsteering Massive Arrays","volume":"67","author":"Guidi","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol."},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"30","DOI":"10.1109\/MSP.2006.1593335","article-title":"Cognitive radar: a way of the future","volume":"23","author":"Haykin","year":"2006","journal-title":"IEEE Signal Process. Mag."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"112","DOI":"10.1109\/MSP.2018.2822847","article-title":"Cognitive Radars: On the Road to Reality: Progress Thus Far and Possibilities for the Future","volume":"35","author":"Greco","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Signal Process. Mag."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"359","DOI":"10.1049\/iet-rsn.2015.0211","article-title":"Cognitive frequency diverse array radar with situational awareness","volume":"10","author":"Wang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IET Radar Sonar Navig."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bell, K., Smith, G., Mitchell, A., and Rangaswamy, M. (2018, January 28\u201331). Multiple Task Hierarchical Fully Adaptive Radar. Proceedings of the 2018 52nd Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers 2018, Pacific Grove, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ACSSC.2018.8645231"},{"key":"ref_31","unstructured":"Liu, P., Liu, Y., Huang, T., Lu, Y., and Wang, X. (2019). Cognitive Radar Using Reinforcement Learning in Automotive Applications. arXiv."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ullo, S.L. (2018, January 20\u201322). Evolution of Cognitive Radars Toward Intelligent Systems Architectures. Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Int. Workshop on Metrology for AeroSpace (MetroAeroSpace), Rome, Italy.","DOI":"10.1109\/MetroAeroSpace.2018.8453550"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"9542","DOI":"10.1109\/TVT.2018.2857718","article-title":"Cognitive Risk Control for Transmit-Waveform Selection in Vehicular Radar Systems","volume":"67","author":"Feng","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol."},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"829","DOI":"10.1038\/nrn1201","article-title":"Working memory: Looking back and looking forward","volume":"4","author":"Baddeley","year":"2003","journal-title":"Nat. Rev. Neurosci."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"608","DOI":"10.1109\/JPROC.2014.2311211","article-title":"On Cognitive Dynamic Systems: Cognitive Neuroscience and Engineering Learning From Each Other","volume":"102","author":"Haykin","year":"2014","journal-title":"Proc. IEEE"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"286","DOI":"10.1016\/0308-5961(94)90002-7","article-title":"Beyond liberalization: From the network of networks to the system of systems","volume":"18","author":"Noam","year":"1994","journal-title":"Telecommun. Policy"},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"267","DOI":"10.1002\/(SICI)1520-6858(1998)1:4<267::AID-SYS3>3.0.CO;2-D","article-title":"Architecting principles for systems-of-systems","volume":"1","author":"Maier","year":"1998","journal-title":"Syst. Eng."},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gorod, A., Gove, R., Sauser, B., and Boardman, J. (2007, January 16\u201318). System of Systems Management: A Network Management Approach. Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on System of Systems Engineering, San Antonio, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/SYSOSE.2007.4304218"},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"40","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2019.1800611","article-title":"Toward Understanding Crowd Mobility in Smart Cities through the Internet of Things","volume":"57","author":"Solmaz","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cornelius, C., Kapadia, A., Kotz, D., Peebles, D., Shin, M., and Triandopoulos, N. (2008, January 17\u201320). Anonysense: privacy-aware people-centric sensing. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Breckenridge, CO, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1378600.1378624"},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"28","DOI":"10.1109\/MWC.2015.7054716","article-title":"User Privacy and Data Trustworthiness in Mobile Crowd Sensing","volume":"22","author":"He","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Wirel. Commun."},{"key":"ref_42","unstructured":"Fuster, J.M. (2003). Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition, Oxford University Press."},{"key":"ref_43","unstructured":"Goodfellow, I., Bengio, Y., and Courville, A. (2016). Deep Learning, MIT Press."},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fan, X., Zheng, H., Jiang, R., and Zhang, J. (2020). Optimal Design of Hierarchical Cloud-Fog & Edge Computing Networks with Caching. Sensors, 20.","DOI":"10.3390\/s20061582"},{"key":"ref_45","first-page":"1171","article-title":"Optimal Workload Allocation in Fog-Cloud Computing Toward Balanced Delay and Power Consumption","volume":"3","author":"Deng","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1910","DOI":"10.1109\/JPROC.2006.886014","article-title":"Cognitive Dynamic Systems","volume":"94","author":"Haykin","year":"2006","journal-title":"Proc. IEEE"},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Haykin, S., Amiri, A., and Fatemi, M. (2014, January 9\u201312). Cognitive control in cognitive dynamic systems: A new way of thinking inspired by the brain. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning (ADPRL), Orlando, FL, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ADPRL.2014.7010623"},{"key":"ref_48","first-page":"207","article-title":"Deep Gaussian Processes","volume":"Volume 31","author":"Carvalho","year":"2013","journal-title":"Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics"},{"key":"ref_49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"54","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2015.2415528","article-title":"Incentives for Mobile Crowd Sensing: A Survey","volume":"18","author":"Zhang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1263","DOI":"10.1109\/TVT.2015.2403868","article-title":"Indoor Tracking: Theory, Methods, and Technologies","volume":"64","author":"Dardari","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol."},{"key":"ref_51","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"63","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2014.6894454","article-title":"Study and prototyping of practically large-scale mmWave antenna systems for 5G cellular devices","volume":"52","author":"Hong","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_52","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zabini, F., Pasolini, G., and Conti, A. (2017, January 25\u201330). On random sampling with nodes attraction: The case of Gauss-Poisson process. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Aachen, Germany.","DOI":"10.1109\/ISIT.2017.8006935"},{"key":"ref_53","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"130","DOI":"10.1109\/MSP.2018.2840156","article-title":"Crowd-Based Learning of Spatial Fields for the Internet of Things: From Harvesting of Data to Inference","volume":"35","author":"Closas","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Signal Process. Mag."},{"key":"ref_54","unstructured":"Rasmussen, C.E. (2006). Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition, MIT Press."},{"key":"ref_55","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dardari, D., Arpino, A., Guidi, F., and Naldi, R. (2015, January 8\u201312). A Combined GP-State Space Method for Efficient Crowd Mapping. Proceedings of the IEEE ICC 2015\u2014Workshop on Advances in Network Localization and Navigation, London, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCW.2015.7247273"},{"key":"ref_56","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Arias-de-Reyna, E., Dardari, D., Closas, P., and Djuric, P.M. (2017, January 5\u20139). Enhanced indoor localization through crowd sensing. Proceedings of the 42th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, New Orleans, LA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICASSP.2017.7952604"},{"key":"ref_57","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"69","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pmcj.2018.06.001","article-title":"An efficient method for physical fields mapping through crowdsensing","volume":"48","author":"Dardari","year":"2018","journal-title":"Pervasive Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_58","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1471","DOI":"10.1109\/TMC.2015.2467373","article-title":"Personal Mobile Radars with Millimeter-Wave Massive Arrays for Indoor Mapping","volume":"15","author":"Guidi","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_59","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guerra, A., Guidi, F., Clemente, A., D\u2019Errico, R., Dussopt, L., and Dardari, D. (2015, January 6\u201310). Millimeter-wave Backscattering Measurements with Transmitarrays for Personal Radar Applications. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Global Telecommun. Conf. (GLOBECOM 2015), San Diego, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/GLOCOMW.2015.7414160"},{"key":"ref_60","unstructured":"(2020, April 24). Available online: https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/article\/internet-of-the-senses-is-on-the-horizon-thanks-to-ar-and-vr."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/20\/9\/2437\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,13]],"date-time":"2025-10-13T14:09:20Z","timestamp":1760364560000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/20\/9\/2437"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,4,25]]},"references-count":60,"journal-issue":{"issue":"9","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5]]}},"alternative-id":["s20092437"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s20092437","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,4,25]]}}}