Echolocation — From range to outline segments

A ring of ultrasonic sensors mounted on a mobile robot is used to map a room. The sensors are modelled with an arc model: the object causing the reflection lies on an arc with radius equal to the range and arc angle equal to twice the beam angle. By fusing sensing with motion, a surface is displayed as a sequence of arcs. In this paper, the algorithm for obtaining outline segments from the arcs is presented.     

Artificial Animals and Humans: From Physics to Intelligence

The confluence of virtual reality and artificial life, an emerging discipline that spans the computational and biological sciences, has yielded synthetic worlds inhabited by realistic, artificial flora and fauna. Artificial animals are complex synthetic organisms that possess functional biomechanical bodies, sensors, and brains with locomotion, perception, behavior, learning, and cognition centers. Artificial humans and other animals are of interest in computer graphics because they are self‐animating characters that dramatically advance the state of the art of production animation and interactive game technologies. More broadly, these biomimetic autonomous agents in their realistic virtual worlds also foster deeper, computationally oriented insights into natural living systems.     

LiDCO—From the laboratory to protocolized goal directed therapy

A new generation of cardiovascular monitor, fed by data from non or minimally invasive sensors, employing algorithms that model the cardiovascular system, combined with user interfaces that facilitate decision support and protocolization of care represent a new era where the costs and risks of applying this form of technology are going to be far outweighed by the clinical, human and financial returns.     

PARM—An Efficient Algorithm to Mine Association Rules From Spatial Data

Association rule mining, originally proposed for market basket data, has potential applications in many areas. Spatial data, such as remote sensed imagery (RSI) data, is one of the promising application areas. Extracting interesting patterns and rules from spatial data sets, composed of images and associated ground data, can be of importance in precision agriculture, resource discovery, and other areas. However, in most cases, the sizes of the spatial data sets are too large to be mined in a reasonable amount of time using existing algorithms. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach to derive association rules from spatial data using Peano Count Tree (P-tree) structure. P-tree structure provides a lossless and compressed representation of spatial data. Based on P-trees, an efficient association rule mining algorithm PARM with fast support calculation and significant pruning techniques is introduced to improve the efficiency of the rule mining process. The P-tree based Association Rule Mining (PARM) algorithm is implemented and compared with FP-growth and Apriori algorithms. Experimental results showed that our algorithm is superior for association rule mining on RSI spatial data.      

From time series to linear system—Part II. Exact modelling

In the second part of this paper the problem of finding an exact model for a q-dimensional infinite time series is considered. First a mathematical vocabulary for discussing exact modelling is developed. It is then shown how the results of Part I guarantee the existence of a most powerful (AR) model for an observed time series. Two algorithms for obtaining such an (AR) model are subsequently derived. One of these algorithms gives a shortest lag input/output model. The problem of obtaining a minimal state space realization of the observed time series is also considered. In order to do that, realization theory based on the truncated behaviour is developed. As an extensive example, the classical situation with impulse response measurements is discussed.     

From information to probability: An axiomatic approach—Inference is information processing

We define the very rich language of composed conditionals on a three‐valued logic and use this language as the communication tool between man and machine. Communication takes place for three reasons: knowledge acquisition, query, and response. Learning, thinking, and answering questions are of a pure information theoretical nature. The pivot of this knowledge processing concept is the amount of information (bit) we receive if a conditional becomes true. We follow an axiomatic approach to information theory rather than the classical probabilistic approach of Shannon; information comes first, and then comes probability. In the light of this philosophy, query and response experience new interpretations. Both, acquisition and response are realized by maximizing entropy and minimizing relative entropy, respectively. The iterative solution of these mathematical optimization problems gives new insights into the adaptation of prior knowledge to new information. Our expert system shell SPIRIT supports this kind of knowledge processing, which will be established by suitable examples. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

From keywords to semantic queries—Incremental query construction on the semantic web

Constructing semantic queries is a demanding task for human users, as it requires mastering a query language as well as the schema which has been used for storing the data. In this paper, we describe QUICK, a novel system for helping users to construct semantic queries in a given domain. QUICK combines the convenience of keyword search with the expressivity of semantic queries. Users start with a keyword query and then are guided through a process of incremental refinement steps to specify the query intention. We describe the overall design of QUICK, present the core algorithms to enable efficient query construction, and finally demonstrate the effectiveness of our system through an experimental study.     

Process Control in metallurgical plants—From an Xstrata perspective

Some history and modern practice of Process Control in metallurgical operations is reviewed. Clearly the early deliverables from the pioneer days in the 1950s through to the 1970s and early 1980s were under-appreciated. The discipline has since grown into a more visible, sophisticated and accepted practice as a result of the assembly of appropriately recruited and trained individuals and teams, who have successfully negotiated deliverable projects that impact all metallurgical performances beyond early milling processes. The skill set in these individuals and teams essentially includes organisational behaviour in addition to their specialist technical attributes. A strong network to internal and external specialists and experts is essential. Furthermore, instrumentation and control technology has improved immensely. The challenge in the current modern practice is to win support of senior management in operations for the project cost, schedule and deliverables of Process Control. Once gained, this acceptance then amounts to the logistics of project scope and delivery—a track record well-demonstrated by the Xstrata Process Control Group.     

Computers Play Chess; Humans Play Go

The future of AI must involve exploring and understanding the parts of human intelligence we haven't been looking at that much--the stuff at the heart of human thought. To do this, we need to stop looking for new ways to solve well-defined problems and start looking for ways to combine the things we know how to do, and then see if this helps us explore problems with more diversity and scope.     

It's Not Nice to Fool Humans

Computer systems that can successfully masquerade as humans for long periods of time are likely in the foreseeable future. IT professionals will be central to the design, development, and deployment of those machines. Setting aside scientific and entertainment applications, is it a good idea to have machines that masquerade as humans? Some writers interested in computer ethics think not.     

SETL to ADA—tree transformations applied

This paper describes ongoing work at the Institute dealing with the translation of the prototyping language SETL into the production language ADA. Funded in part by ESPRIT, contract number 1227 (1271), a preliminary version was presented at WG '87—Graphictheoretic Concepts in Computer Science, July 1987, Kloster Banz, FRG. In order to place this work in the proper context in software engineering, a brief overview is given of the relatively recent methodology of prototyping using executable specifications. Then the very high level language SETL is characterized and the programming environment Mentor is briefly introduced. Program transformations are also discussed.

After discussing the reasons for selecting ADA as a target language, a translation of SETL's data will be discussed as well as control structures in ADA. The latter point will exemplify how this is done using the transformation of abstract syntax trees. Finally, a brief example of a SETL program and its translation into ADA will be given to convey the flavour of this translation.     

Convergence — The pathway to integration

The convergence of computer and telecommunications technologies into an integrated system solution is now widely accepted as an achievable objective. However, the evolutionary passage towards this goal has been somewhat prolonged and tortuous, and there is still some way to go.

The article reviews that passage, discusses the meanings and implications of the terms ‘convergence’ and ‘integration’, and identifies a number of useful cost-effective techniques which can currently be used to achieve some of the benefits of integration now, in advance of the UK System X architecture.

Fully integrated public systems are unlikely to achieve substantial penetration in the UK until System X architecture is widely introduced into the UK network. Until this happens the full benefits of the convergence of telecommunications and computers will not be realized.

Computer information is already in digital form, so that little change is envisaged in routing this via System X. Speech is analogue however, and it is here that a number of changes are necessary. The article therefore concentrates on this aspect, leaving scope for a further contribution which could focus on nonvoice information.     

Incorporating Tactile Cues into Human‐Centered Virtual Product Design

This study introduces a high‐fidelity tactile feedback mechanism to capture ergonomics attributes of users inside virtual product development cycle. The research question posed regards whether the tactile feedback mechanism in virtual experiment proposes high fidelity of ergonomics results when compared to physical experiment outcomes. This question was evaluated through an objective and a subjective study. Objective study was composed of an ergonomics product assessment experiment, where two different cart designs (a commercial cart and a prototype model) were evaluated for ergonomic adequacy (L4/L5 compression forces). Subjective evaluation was consisted of a questionnaire to assess subjects' preferences regarding which cart model they preferred in three different design categories; maneuverability, accessibility, and ergonomics. Results showed that tactile feedback mechanism was able to replicate the physical test conditions in virtual environment with high fidelity, and prototype cart model received higher mean ratings when compared to commercial cart model in each design category.     

Bringing Scheme programming to the iPhone—Experience

The iPhone SDK provides a powerful platform for the development of applications that make use of iPhone capabilities, such as sensors, GPS, Wi‐Fi, or Bluetooth connectivity. We observe that so far the development of iPhone applications has mostly been restricted to using Objective‐C. However, developing applications in plain Objective‐C on the iPhone OS suffers from limitations, such as the need for explicit memory management and lack of syntactic extension mechanism. Moreover, when developing distributed applications in Objective‐C, programmers have to manually deal with distribution concerns, such as service discovery, remote communication, and failure handling. In this paper, we discuss our experience in porting the Scheme programming language to the iPhone OS and how it can be used together with Objective‐C to develop iPhone applications. To support the interaction between Scheme programs and the underlying iPhone APIs, we have implemented a language symbiosis layer that enables programmers to access the iPhone SDK libraries from Scheme. In addition, we have designed high‐level distribution constructs to ease the development of distributed iPhone applications in an event‐driven style. We validate and discuss these constructs with a series of examples, including an iPod controller, a maps application, and a distributed multiplayer Scrabble‐like game. We discuss the lessons learned from this experience for other programming language ports to mobile platforms. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business processes—attempts to find a definition

Definitions of business process given in much of the literature on Business Process Management are limited in depth and their related models of business processes are correspondingly constrained. After giving a brief history of the progress of business process modeling techniques from production systems to the office environment, this paper proposes that most definitions are based on machine metaphor type explorations of a process. While these techniques are often rich and illuminating it is suggested that they are too limited to express the true nature of business processes that need to develop and adapt to today's challenging environment.     

ASSIST—a tool to support software inspection

Software inspection is a valuable technique for defect detection. Recent research has considered the development of computer support, with the aim of providing even greater benefits when applying inspection. This has resulted in the development of a number of prototype support systems. These suffer from some fundamental limitations, however. Asynchronous/Synchronous Software Inspection Support Tool (ASSIST) is designed to tackle these limitations and to provide a platform for rigorous investigation of the inspection process. It uses a custom-designed language known as Inspection Process Definition Language to allow support of any inspection process, and provides an open, expandable system allowing multiple document types to be catered for easily. A number of facilities designed to enhance the inspection process are also present.     

Simulated annealing — to cool or not

The optimization algorithm simulated annealing is considered. Presented is a class of problem instances and ‘neighbor selection’ matrices for which no monotone decreasing temperature sequence is optimal with respect to certain natural performance criteria. An algorithm called ‘threshold random search’ is introduced, and use is made of the fact that simulated annealing is a randomized version of threshold random search with deterministic thresholds.     

Interface and bulk effects for bias—light‐illumination instability in amorphous‐In—Ga—Zn—O thin‐film transistors

Abstract— Positive‐current‐bias (PB) instability and negative‐bias—light‐illumination (NBL) instability in amorphous‐In—Ga—Zn—O (a‐IGZO) thin‐film transistors (TFTs) have been examined. The channel‐ thickness dependence indicated that the Vth instability caused by the PB stress is primarily attributed to defects in the bulk a‐IGZO region for unannealed TFTs and to those in the channel—gate‐insulator interface for wet‐annealed TFTs. The interface and bulk defect densities (Dit and Nss, respectively) are Dit = 4.8 × 10¹¹ cm^?2/eV and Nss = 7.0×10¹⁶ cm^?3/eV for the unannealed TFT, which increased to 5.2×10¹¹ cm^?2/eV and 9.8×10¹⁶ cm^?3/eV, respectively, by the PB stress test. These are reduced significantly to Dit = 0.82×10¹¹ cm^?2/eV and Nss = 3.2×10¹⁶ cm^?3/eV for the wet‐annealed TFTs and are unchanged by the PB stress test. It was also found that the photo‐response of a‐IGZO TFTs begins at 2.3 eV of photon excitation, which corresponds to subgap states observed by photoemission spectroscopy. The origin of the NBL instability for the wet‐annealed TFTs is attributed to interface effects and considered to be a trap of holes at the channel‐gate—insulator interface where migration of the holes is enhanced by the electric field formed by the negative gate bias.     

Role models—implementation‐based approaches to using roles

A role of an entity can be defined as the set of properties that are important for an object in order to behave in a certain way, as expected by a set of other objects. A role model is a software that specifies a style of designing and implementing roles. This paper evaluates roles in the context of modeling dynamic systems by examining its foundations, surveying the recent role models available for academic use and giving implementation examples. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.