Federating Policy-Driven Autonomous Systems: Interaction Specification and Management Patterns

Ubiquitous systems and applications involve interactions between multiple autonomous entities—for example, robots in a mobile ad-hoc network collaborating to achieve a goal, communications between teams of emergency workers involved in disaster relief operations or interactions between patients’ and healthcare workers’ mobile devices. We have previously proposed the Self-Managed Cell (SMC) as an architectural pattern for managing autonomous ubiquitous systems that comprise both hardware and software components and that implement policy-based adaptation strategies. We have also shown how basic management interactions between autonomous SMCs can be realised through exchanges of notifications and policies, to effectively program management and context-aware adaptations. We present here how autonomous SMCs can be composed and federated into complex structures through the systematic composition of interaction patterns. By composing simpler abstractions as building blocks of more complex interactions it is possible to leverage commonalities across the structural, control and communication views to manage a broad variety of composite autonomous systems including peer-to-peer collaborations, federations and aggregations with varying degrees of devolution of control. Although the approach is more broadly applicable, we focus on systems where declarative policies are used to specify adaptation and on context-aware ubiquitous systems that present some degree of autonomy in the physical world, such as body sensor networks and autonomous vehicles. Finally, we present a formalisation of our model that allows a rigorous verification of the properties satisfied by the SMC interactions before policies are deployed in physical devices.     

Robust flat filtering DSP based control of the boost converter

The article deals with the design and implementation of a flat filter tracking digital controller for a boost dc-dc power converter. A highly perturbed switched boost converter circuit is shown to be efficiently controlled, in a trajectory tracking task for its non-minimum phase output, by means of a suitable linear filter, here addressed as a flat filter. Flat filtering is a natural robust version of generalized proportional integral control (GPIC) by which the effects of arbitrary time varying exogenous disturbances, unknown endogenous nonlinearities and un-modeled dynamics can be jointly attenuated in a conceptually similar fashion to observer-based active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) and algebraic identification based model free control (MFC) but: a) without using extended state observers and b) respecting the original system order in a time-varying simplified model while avoiding algebraic estimation techniques. The proposed control technique based on the TMS320F28335 digital signal processor chip is tested by means of realistic simulations and experimental setup.     

A secure and high-performance multi-controller architecture for software-defined networking

Controllers play a critical role in software-defined networking (SDN). However, existing single-controller SDN architectures are vulnerable to single-point failures, where a controller’s capacity can be saturated by flooded flow requests. In addition, due to the complicated interactions between applications and controllers, the flow setup latency is relatively large. To address the above security and performance issues of current SDN controllers, we propose distributed rule store (DRS), a new multi-controller architecture for SDNs. In DRS, the controller caches the flow rules calculated by applications, and distributes these rules to multiple controller instances. Each controller instance holds only a subset of all rules, and periodically checks the consistency of flow rules with each other. Requests from switches are distributed among multiple controllers, in order to mitigate controller capacity saturation attack. At the same time, when rules at one controller are maliciously modified, they can be detected and recovered in time. We implement DRS based on Floodlight and evaluate it with extensive emulation. The results show that DRS can effectively maintain a consistently distributed rule store, and at the same time can achieve a shorter flow setup time and a higher processing throughput, compared with ONOS and Floodlight.     

Real time motion estimation using a neural architecture implemented on GPUs

This work describes a neural network based architecture that represents and estimates object motion in videos. This architecture addresses multiple computer vision tasks such as image segmentation, object representation or characterization, motion analysis and tracking. The use of a neural network architecture allows for the simultaneous estimation of global and local motion and the representation of deformable objects. This architecture also avoids the problem of finding corresponding features while tracking moving objects. Due to the parallel nature of neural networks, the architecture has been implemented on GPUs that allows the system to meet a set of requirements such as: time constraints management, robustness, high processing speed and re-configurability. Experiments are presented that demonstrate the validity of our architecture to solve problems of mobile agents tracking and motion analysis.     

Massively parallel Lucas Kanade optical flow for real-time video processing applications

This paper deals with dense optical flow estimation from the perspective of the trade-off between quality of the estimated flow and computational cost which is required by real-world applications. We propose a fast and robust local method, denoted by eFOLKI, and describe its implementation on GPU. It leads to very high performance even on large image formats such as 4 K (3,840 × 2,160) resolution. In order to assess the interest of eFOLKI, we first present a comparative study with currently available GPU codes, including local and global methods, on a large set of data with ground truth. eFOLKI appears significantly faster while providing quite accurate and highly robust estimated flows. We then show, on four real-time video processing applications based on optical flow, that eFOLKI reaches the requirements both in terms of estimated flows quality and of processing rate.     

Effects of residual motion compensation errors on the performance of airborne along-track interferometric SAR

Two approximations, center-beam approximation and reference digital elevation model (DEM) approximation, are used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) motion compensation procedures. They usually introduce residual motion compensation errors for airborne single-antenna SAR imaging and SAR interferometry. In this paper, we investigate the effects of residual uncompensated motion errors, which are caused by the above two approximations, on the performance of airborne along-track interferometric SAR (ATI-SAR). The residual uncompensated errors caused by center-beam approximation in the absence and in the presence of elevation errors are derived, respectively. Airborne simulation parameters are used to verify the correctness of the analysis and to show the impacts of residual uncompensated errors on the interferometric phase errors for ATI-SAR. It is shown that the interferometric phase errors caused by the center-beam approximation with an accurate DEM could be neglected, while the interferometric phase errors caused by the center-beam approximation with an inaccurate DEM cannot be neglected when the elevation errors exceed a threshold. This research provides theoretical bases for the error source analysis and signal processing of airborne ATI-SAR.     

Biologically inspired model of path integration based on head direction cells and grid cells

Some neurons in the brain of freely moving rodents show special firing pattern. The firing of head direction cells (HDCs) and grid cells (GCs) is related to the moving direction and distance, respectively. Thus, it is considered that these cells play an important role in the rodents’ path integration. To provide a bionic approach for the vehicle to achieve path integration, we present a biologically inspired model of path integration based on the firing characteristics of HDCs and GCs. The detailed implementation process of this model is discussed. Besides, the proposed model is realized by simulation, and the path integration performance is analyzed under different conditions. Simulations validate that the proposed model is effective and stable.     

Efficient identity-based signature over NTRU lattice

Identity-based signature has become an important technique for lightweight authentication as soon as it was proposed in 1984. Thereafter, identity-based signature schemes based on the integer factorization problem and discrete logarithm problem were proposed one after another. Nevertheless, the rapid development of quantum computers makes them insecure. Recently, many efforts have been made to construct identity-based signatures over lattice assumptions against attacks in the quantum era. However, their efficiency is not very satisfactory. In this study, an efficient identity-based signature scheme is presented over the number theory research unit (NTRU) lattice assumption. The new scheme is more efficient than other lattice- and identity-based signature schemes. The new scheme proves to be unforgeable against the adaptively chosen message attack in the random oracle model under the hardness of the γ-shortest vector problem on the NTRU lattice.     

A competitive study of the pseudoflow algorithm for the minimum <Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis>–<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis> cut problem in vision applications

Rapid advances in image acquisition and storage technology underline the need for real-time algorithms that are capable of solving large-scale image processing and computer-vision problems. The minimum s–t cut problem, which is a classical combinatorial optimization problem, is a prominent building block in many vision and imaging algorithms such as video segmentation, co-segmentation, stereo vision, multi-view reconstruction, and surface fitting to name a few. That is why finding a real-time algorithm which optimally solves this problem is of great importance. In this paper, we introduce to computer vision the Hochbaum’s pseudoflow (HPF) algorithm, which optimally solves the minimum s–t cut problem. We compare the performance of HPF, in terms of execution times and memory utilization, with three leading published algorithms: (1) Goldberg’s and Tarjan’s Push-Relabel; (2) Boykov’s and Kolmogorov’s augmenting paths; and (3) Goldberg’s partial augment-relabel. While the common practice in computer-vision is to use either BK or PRF algorithms for solving the problem, our results demonstrate that, in general, HPF algorithm is more efficient and utilizes less memory than these three algorithms. This strongly suggests that HPF is a great option for many real-time computer-vision problems that require solving the minimum s–t cut problem.