A hierarchical, agent-based service oriented architecture for smart environments

Service Oriented Architectures, which allow for the integration of different subsystems and of applications running on different devices and platforms, may be very suitable to solve the problem of service personalization in large smart environments like cities, where the number of potential users and potentially available services is rapidly growing. Taking this into account, we have designed an agent-based service oriented architecture for smart spaces. Two of the greatest challenges in the design of such a solution are providing effective device, service and context federation and composition mechanisms and handling user mobility. For the first challenge, we have designed a hierarchical architecture and developed a set of inheritance, aggregation and access mechanisms for devices, services and context. To handle user mobility, we have followed three different strategies, using stationary, mobile or nomadic agents. In this paper, we describe the main aspects of our architecture and perform an experimental evaluation to determine the advantages and drawbacks of the different strategies.     

Mixed reality participants in smart meeting rooms and smart home environments

Human–computer interaction requires modeling of the user. A user profile typically contains preferences, interests, characteristics, and interaction behavior. However, in its multimodal interaction with a smart environment the user displays characteristics that show how the user, not necessarily consciously, verbally and nonverbally provides the smart environment with useful input and feedback. Especially in ambient intelligence environments we encounter situations where the environment supports interaction between the environment, smart objects (e.g., mobile robots, smart furniture) and human participants in the environment. Therefore it is useful for the profile to contain a physical representation of the user obtained by multi-modal capturing techniques. We discuss the modeling and simulation of interacting participants in a virtual meeting room, we discuss how remote meeting participants can take part in meeting activities and they have some observations on translating research results to smart home environments.     

Meetings and meeting modeling in smart environments

In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear.

Learning object design considerations for small-screen handheld devices

The key limitation of handheld technology for the delivery of learning objects is the small screen that is available for effective display. The smallness of the screen not only adversely affects the clarity, but it also negatively impacts on the acceptance and integration of this potentially useful technology in education. Handheld devices are likely to change further in size in the future with consumer demand for less bulky but more powerful devices. This exploratory study investigated characteristics of effective design of learning objects on such devices. This paper reports upon user response to learning object design possibilities and provides a set of recommendations to guide improved utility and future research.     

Platform independent overall security architecture in multi-processor system-on-chip integrated circuits for use in mobile phones and handheld devices

A platform independent security architecture for use in Multi-Processor System-on-Chip integrated circuits, primarily oriented for mobile phones and handheld devices, is presented. The suggested architecture provides an enhanced security protection scheme for use in smartphones, PDA’s, as well as other similar systems. Sensitive data storage facilities, cryptographic engines, and physical protection mechanisms such as debug port access control are presented and described in detail. The proposed secure architecture has been incorporated as a part of an application processor which in turn is embedded in a number of smartphone and handheld products. System operation is discussed and hardware realization and experimental results of the proposed architecture are described.     

Lessons learned: Evaluating visualizations for occluded objects in handheld augmented reality

Handheld devices like smartphones and tablets have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for Augmented Reality (AR). The increased usage of these portable handheld devices has enabled handheld AR applications to reach the end-users; hence, it is timely and important to seriously consider the user experience of such applications. AR visualizations for occluded objects enable an observer to look through objects. AR visualizations have been predominantly evaluated using Head-Worn Displays (HWDs), handheld devices have rarely been used. However, unless we gain a better understanding of the perceptual and cognitive effects of handheld AR systems, effective interfaces for handheld devices cannot be designed. Similarly, human perception of AR systems in outdoor environments, which provide a higher degree of variation than indoor environments, has only been insufficiently explored.In this paper, we present insights acquired from five experiments we performed using handheld devices in outdoor locations. We provide design recommendations for handheld AR systems equipped with visualizations for occluded objects. Our key conclusions are the following: (1) Use of visualizations for occluded objects improves the depth perception of occluded objects akin to non-occluded objects. (2) To support different scenarios, handheld AR systems should provide multiple visualizations for occluded objects to complement each other. (3) Visual clutter in AR visualizations reduces the visibility of occluded objects and deteriorates depth judgment; depth judgment can be improved by providing clear visibility of the occluded objects. (4) Similar to virtual reality interfaces, both egocentric and exocentric distances are underestimated in handheld AR. (5) Depth perception will improve if handheld AR systems can dynamically adapt their geometric field of view (GFOV) to match the display field of view (DFOV). (6) Large handheld displays are hard to carry and use; however, they enable users to better grasp the depth of multiple graphical objects that are presented simultaneously.     

电力企业移动智能终端安全应用初探

分析电力企业使用移动智能终端时所面临的信息安全风险,提出借鉴电力企业桌面终端安全管理模式来对企业用移动智能终端进行安全管控的思想,并结合当前成熟的移动智能终端管理技术．对适合于电力企业的移动智能终端安全管理模式进行探讨。     

CSP在基于智能卡的移动终端中的开发与应用

IPSec VPN技术因其方便、安全性高等特点,成为现在普遍采用的一种增加网络安全性的方法。智能卡是一张内含嵌入式集成电路芯片的信用卡般大小的电子卡,它将密钥对与证书封在卡内,能够使加密操作在卡内进行,从而保证私钥不需出卡,大大提高了安全性。IPSec VPN和智能卡的结合在网络中应用已经越来越广泛。智能卡软硬件相结合的CSP能够通过微软的Crypto API向应用程序提供各种网络安全应用。该文在移动安全终端系统的背景下,详细介绍了基于智能卡的CSP的设计与开发过程。     

The DYNAMOS approach to support context-aware service provisioning in mobile environments

To efficiently make use of information and services available in ubiquitous environments, mobile users need novel means for locating relevant content, where relevance has a user-specific definition. In the DYNAMOS project, we have investigated a hybrid approach that enhances context-aware service provisioning with peer-to-peer social functionalities. We have designed and implemented a system platform and application prototype running on smart phones to support this novel conception of service provisioning. To assess the feasibility of our approach in a real-world scenario, we conducted field trials in which the research subject was a community of recreational boaters.     

An energy-efficient mobile transaction processing method using random back-off in wireless broadcast environments

Broadcast is widely accepted as an efficient technique for disseminating data to a large number of mobile clients over a single or multiple channels. Due to the limited uplink bandwidth from mobile clients to server, conventional concurrency control methods cannot be directly applied. There has been many researches on concurrency control methods for wireless broadcast environments. However, they are mostly for read-only transactions or do not consider exploiting cache. They also suffer from the repetitive aborts and restarts of mobile transactions when the access patterns of mobile transactions are skewed. In this paper, we propose a new optimistic concurrency control method suitable for mobile broadcast environments. To prevent the repetitive aborts and restarts of mobile transactions, we propose a random back-off technique. To exploit the cache on mobile clients, our method keeps the read data set of mobile transactions and prefetches those data items when the mobile transactions are restarted. As other existing optimistic concurrency control methods for mobile broadcast environments does, it works for both read-only and update transactions. Read-only transactions are validated and locally committed without using any uplink bandwidth. Update transactions are validated with forward and backward validation, and committed after final validation consuming a small amount of uplink bandwidth. Our performance analysis shows that it significantly decreases uplink and downlink bandwidth usage compared to other existing methods.     

Evolution towards smart home environments: empirical evaluation of three user interfaces

Smart home environments have evolved to the point where everyday objects and devices at home can be networked to give the inhabitants new means to control them. Familiar information appliances can be used as user interfaces (UIs) to home functions to achieve a more convenient user experience. This paper reports an ethnographic study of smart home usability and living experience. The purpose of the research was to evaluate three UIs—a PC, a media terminal, and a mobile phone—for smart home environments. The results show two main types of activity patterns, pattern control and instant control, which require different UI solutions. The results suggest that a PC can act as a central unit to control functions for activity patterns that can be planned and determined in advance. The mobile phone, on the other hand, is well suited for instant control. The mobile phone turned out to be the primary and most frequently used UI during the 6-month trial period in the smart apartment.     

Object-oriented data modeling in rule-based software development environments

Object-oriented databases (OODBs) were developed to support advanced applications for which traditional databases are not sufficient. The data management requirements of these new applications are significantly different from more traditional data processing applications. More light needs to be shed on these requirements in order to identify the aspects of OODBs that can lead to standards. We have studied the data management requirements of one class of advanced database applications: rule-based software development environments (RBDEs). RBDEs store project components in an object database and control access to these objects through a rule-based process model, which defines each development activity as a rule. The components are abstracted as instances of classes which are defined by the project's data model. In this paper we discuss the constructs that a data modeling language for RBDEs should provide, and then explore some of the data management requirements of RBDEs. We use the Marvel system we developed at Columbia as an example.     

面向移动IP组播技术的手机电视系统模型

随着网络宽带用户的快速增长与信息技术的迅速发展,人们对新兴媒体业务和和终端移动性的需求日益增长。对于如何在移动终端上有效的开展多媒体业务,逐渐成为第三代网络发展进程中一个亟待解决的问题。文章在对移动IP组播技术和手机电视业务研究分析的基础上,提出一个应用移动IP组播技术的手机电视系统的构想和应用模型。这一架构将为今后的移动多媒体业务开展提供技术支撑。     

The sensor internet at work: Locating everyday items using mobile phones

We present a system for monitoring and locating everyday items using mobile phones. The system is based on phones which are enhanced with the capability to detect electronically tagged objects in their vicinity. It supports various functionalities: On the one hand, phones can store the context in which users leave registered items and thus help to locate them later on. On the other hand, object owners can search for their objects using the infrastructure of mobile phones carried by other users. We describe the design of our object location system and provide an algorithm which can be used to search for lost or misplaced items efficiently by selecting the most suitable sensors based on arbitrary domain knowledge. Furthermore, we demonstrate the practicability of such wide-area searching by means of user-held sensors in a series of simulations complemented by a real-world experiment.     

Performance evaluation of ambient services by combining robotic frameworks and a smart environment platform

Mobile robots and smart environments are two areas of research that can easily profit from each other. Smart environments, which are spaces unobtrusively equipped with sensors and actuators, providing ambient services to the people living within. Mobile robots inside those smart environments can use the existing infrastructure to increase their performance while decreasing the cost of local sensor systems. On the other side, evaluation of ambient services is often a laborious task. This work presents an approach that simplifies the evaluation by making use of two frameworks from robotics to perform tests in simulated smart environments. A method based on the language as action principle is used to extract realistic behavior of people living in real-world smart environments. Using this data, many different scenarios with varying configurations (different floor layouts, numbers and types of sensors, different number of people and pets) can easily be simulated and the performance of the ambient services evaluated.     

New technology trends in education: Seven years of forecasts and convergence

Each year since 2004, a new Horizon Report has been released. Each edition attempts to forecast the most promising technologies likely to impact on education along three horizons: the short term (the year of the report), the mid-term (the next 2 years) and the long term (the next 4 years). This paper analyzes the evolution of technology trends from 2004 to 2014 that correspond to the long-term predictions of the most recent Horizon Report. The study analyzes through bibliometric analysis which technologies were successful and became a regular part of education systems, which ones failed to have the predicted impact and why, and the shape of technology flows in recent years. The study also shows how the evolution and maturity of some technologies allowed the revival of expectations for others. The analysis here, which focuses on educational applications, offers guidelines that may be helpful to those seeking to invest in new research areas.     

A meta-model for dataflow-based rules in smart environments: Evaluating user comprehension and performance

A considerable part of the behavior in smart environments relies on event-driven and rule specification. Rules are the mechanism most often used to enable user customization of the environment. However, the expressiveness of the rules available to users in editing and other tools is usually either limited or the available rule editing interfaces are not designed for end-users with low skills in programming. This means we have to look for interaction techniques and new ways to define user customization rules. This paper describes a generic and flexible meta-model to support expressive rules enhanced with data flow expressions that will graphically support the definition of rules without writing code. An empirical study was conducted on the ease of understanding of the visual data flow expressions, which are the key elements in our rule proposal. The visual dataflow language was compared to its corresponding textual version in terms of comprehension and ease of learning by teenagers in exercises involving calculations, modifications, writing and detecting equivalences in expressions in both languages. Although the subjects had some previous experience in editing mathematical expressions on spreadsheets, the study found their performance with visual dataflows to be significantly better in calculation and modification exercises. This makes our dataflow approach a promising mechanism for expressing user-customized reactive behavior in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments. The performance of the rule matching processor was validated by means of two stress tests to ensure that the meta-model approach adopted would be able to scale up with the number of types and instances in the space.     

基于openwrt的智能家居服务器的设计

结合ARM处理器,Tplink 703n的Openwrt系统,开发智能家居网关系统的服务器设计。该网关以Cortex-A8架构的处理器S5PV210为核心,移植Openwrt系统到路由器上并在构建服务器应用程序,利用Internet网络的连接,进而实现远程监控家庭内部家居设备。