API Descriptions for the Web of Things

The Web of Things (WoT) aims to integrate the Internet of Things with the Web. One requirement is that all things (i.e., devices, sensors, etc.) must be described to be machine discoverable on the web so that they can be searched for and reused in applications. The W3C defines a Thing Description (TD) reference model, but users and industry do not widely accept it. The proposed work revolves around the idea that things should be described similarly to services using OpenAPI or AsyncAPI for Things implementing synchronous or asynchronous communication respectively. Both are becoming the de facto industry standards for service descriptions and can be used to define widely accepted TDs equally well. The emerging TD description model should be based on the combination of both.