Aspect-oriented design and implementation of context-aware pervasive applications

Pervasive applications must be aware of the contexts where they are executed. These contexts may vary greatly and change quickly. Two main problems are associated with this issue: (1) context-awareness is a crosscutting concern that cannot be well-encapsulated in a single module using traditional technologies, thus hindering software maintenance and reusability; and (2) reasoning about application design correctness can be complex due to the number and diversity of potential contexts where a pervasive application could be executed. In order to overcome these problems, we present a process for the design and implementation of context-aware pervasive applications that uses aspect-orientation and executable modelling in order to overcome these shortcomings. Aspect-oriented techniques contribute to the encapsulation of crosscutting concerns, such as context-awareness, into well-localized modules. Executable modelling helps engineers to reason about application design by executing the design models in different contexts and situations. Pervasive applications are modelled using the aspect-oriented executable modelling UML 2.0 profile, executed at the modelling level for testing purposes, and then mapped into an aspect-oriented middleware platform for pervasive applications. This process is illustrated using a location-aware intelligent transportation system consisting of a set of cooperating sentient vehicles. This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologa (MCYT) Project TIN2005-09405-C02-01 and the European Commission Grant IST-2-004349-NOE AOSD-Europe and the European Commission STREP Project AMPLE IST-033710.     

Supporting pervasive computing applications with active context fusion and semantic context delivery

Future pervasive computing applications are envisioned to adapt the applications’ behaviors by utilizing various contexts of an environment and its users. Such context information may often be ambiguous and also heterogeneous, which make the delivery of unambiguous context information to real applications extremely challenging. Thus, a significant challenge facing the development of realistic and deployable context-aware services for pervasive computing applications is the ability to deal with these ambiguous contexts. In this paper, we propose a resource optimized quality assured context mediation framework based on efficient context-aware data fusion and semantic-based context delivery. In this framework, contexts are first fused by an active fusion technique based on Dynamic Bayesian Networks and ontology, and further mediated using a composable ontological rule-based model with the involvement of users or application developers. The fused context data are then organized into an ontology-based semantic network together with the associated ontologies in order to facilitate efficient context delivery. Experimental results using SunSPOT and other sensors demonstrate the promise of this approach.     

Challenge and solutions of NAT traversal for ubiquitous and pervasive applications on the Internet

Network Address Translator (NAT) has brought up many changes and opportunities to the Internet. How do the ubiquitous and pervasive applications coexist with NAT and interoperate with each other? In this article, we discuss the essence of NAT sensitive applications as well as the challenge and response for various NAT traversal solutions. All questions pointed to redesign a new NAT framework with a major change to accommodate NAT problems all at once. We introduce a novel next generation NAT (NATng) framework, which consists of a Bi-directional NAT (BNAT) and a Domain Name System Application Level Gateway (DNS_ALG) with a Border Network Address Translator Control Protocol (BNATCP) function to control all BNATs. The above components coordinate and provide bidirectional access capability between intranet and Internet, so all private hosts can be addressed via Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). Logistically, NATng extends the IPv4 address space from or even more. It features high potential to solve the problems for ubiquitous and pervasive applications which may encounter IPv4 address exhaustion on the current Internet.     

Microlithography: trends, challenges, solutions, and their impact on design

With lithography parameters approaching their limits, continuous improvement requires increasing dialogues and compromises between the technology and design communities. Only with such communication can semiconductor manufacturers reach the 30 nm physical-gate-length era with optical lithography. Optical lithography is an enabling technology for transistor miniaturization. With the wavelength and numerical aperture of exposure systems approaching their limits, the semiconductor industry needs continuous reduction of the k/sub 1/ factor. Challenges include image quality improvement, proximity effect correction, and cost control. An indispensable ingredient for future success is improvement in the design-manufacture interface.     

Human activity recognition in pervasive health-care: Supporting efficient remote collaboration

Technological advancements, including advancements in the medical field have drastically improved our quality of life, thus pushing life expectancy increasingly higher. This has also had the effect of increasing the number of elderly population. More than ever, health-care institutions must now care for a large number of elderly patients, which is one of the contributing factors in the rising health-care costs. Rising costs have prompted hospitals and other health-care institutions to seek various cost-cutting measures in order to remain competitive. One avenue being explored lies in the technological advancements that can make hospital working environments much more efficient. Various communication technologies, mobile computing devices, micro-embedded devices and sensors have the ability to support medical staff efficiency and improve health-care systems. In particular, one promising application of these technologies is towards deducing medical staff activities. Having this continuous knowledge about health-care staff activities can provide medical staff with crucial information of particular patients, interconnect with other supporting applications in a seamless manner (e.g. a doctor diagnosing a patient can automatically be sent the patient's lab report from the pathologist), a clear picture of the time utilisation of doctors and nurses and also enable remote virtual collaboration between activities, thus creating a strong base for establishment of an efficient collaborative environment. In this paper, we describe our activity recognition system that in conjunction with our efficiency mechanism has the potential to cut down health-care costs by making the working environments more efficient. Initially, we outline the activity recognition process that has the ability to infer user activities based on the self-organisation of surrounding objects that user may manipulate. We then use the activity recognition information to enhance virtual collaboration in order to improve overall efficiency of tasks within a hospital environment. We have analysed a number of medical staff activities to guide our simulation setup. Our results show an accurate activity recognition process for individual users with respect to their behaviour. At the same time we support remote virtual collaboration through tasks allocation process between doctors and nurses with results showing maximum efficiency within the resource constraints.     

Sentience in robots: applications and challenges

The article provides views from researchers and practitioners directly involved with robotics applications to find out what they think about the applicability of this new generation of more adaptable and user-friendly robots. Aspects discussed include: personal robots in human societies; robot teams in urban search and rescue; space robots and natural language communication; representation and reasoning; and rationality and emotions.     

The design and evaluation of interactive systems with perceived social intelligence: five challenges

This paper reflects on discussions within the Social Intelligence for Tele-healthcare (SIFT) project. The SIFT project aims to establish a model of social intelligence, to support the user-centred design of social intelligence in interactive systems. The conceptual background of social intelligence for the SIFT project is presented. Five challenges identified for the design of socially aware interactions are described, and their implications are discussed.     

The cloak of invisibility: challenges and applications

Is it possible to create a cloak of invisibility - a flexible artifact that can make anything inside it invisible and preserve invisibility despite mobility and deformation? Exploring the algorithmic and technological challenges involved reveals tantalizing information.     

Design and implementation of S-MARKS: A secure middleware for pervasive computing applications

As portable devices have become a part of our everyday life, more people are unknowingly participating in a pervasive computing environment. People engage with not a single device for a specific purpose but many devices interacting with each other in the course of ordinary activity. With such prevalence of pervasive technology, the interaction between portable devices needs to be continuous and imperceptible to device users. Pervasive computing requires a small, scalable and robust network which relies heavily on the middleware to resolve communication and security issues. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of S-MARKS which incorporates device validation, resource discovery and a privacy module.     

多视频摘要技术:方法、应用及挑战

多视频摘要技术近年来受到了国内外学者的广泛关注,它是指通过对视频结构和内容的分析,从多个相关视频文件中提取出有意义的部分,将它们以一定方式进行组合,形成简洁的、能够充分表现语义内容的概要,目的是提供快捷的浏览和查询服务。目前该技术还处于起步阶段,实际的应用系统很少,有关体系结构、技术方法仍需要深入研究,更多的应用方向还有待开拓。在介绍研究意义的基础上,对多视频摘要的研究现状和主要方法进行了归纳、评述,探讨了一些应用方向,指出了目前研究面临的重点问题以及发展趋势。     

Tactile interfaces: technologies,applications and challenges

Tactile interfaces are used to communicate information through the sense of touch, which is an area of growing interest in the research community. Potential applications include virtual training for surgeons, remotely touching materials via the Internet, automotive industry, active interfaces for blind persons, and sensory substitution devices.     

Containerization technologies: taxonomies,applications and challenges

Modern scientific research challenges require new technologies, integrated tools, reusable and complex experiments in distributed computing infrastructures. But above all, computing power for efficient data processing and analyzing. Containers technologies have emerged as a new paradigm to address such intensive scientific applications problems. Their easy deployment in a reasonable amount of time and the few required computational resource make them more suitable. Containers are considered light virtualization solutions. They enable performance isolation and flexible deployment of complex, parallel, and high-performance systems. Moreover, they gained popularity to modernize and migrate scientific applications in computing infrastructure management. Additionally, they reduce computational time processing. In this paper, we first give an overview of virtualization and containerization technologies. We discuss the taxonomies of containerization technologies of the literature, and then we provide a new one that covers and completes those proposed in the literature. We identify the most important application domains of containerization and their technological progress. Furthermore, we discuss the performance metrics used in most containerization techniques. Finally, we point out research gaps in the related aspects of containerization technology that require more research.

     

VGA-Classifier: design and applications

A method for pattern classification using genetic algorithms (GAs) has been recently described in Pal, Bandyopadhyay and Murthy (1998), where the class boundaries of a data set are approximated by a fixed number H of hyperplanes. As a consequence of fixing H a priori, the classifier suffered from the limitation of overfitting (or underfitting) the training data with an associated loss of its generalization capability. In this paper, we propose a scheme for evolving the value of H automatically using the concept of variable length strings/chromosomes. The crossover and mutation operators are newly defined in order to handle variable string lengths. The fitness function ensures primarily the minimization of the number of misclassified samples, and also the reduction of the number of hyperplanes. Based on an analogy between the classification principles of the genetic classifier and multilayer perceptron (with hard limiting neurons), a method for automatically determining the architecture and the connection weights of the latter is described.     

Towards sustainable smart IoT applications architectural elements and design: opportunities,challenges, and open directions

The Journal of Supercomputing - The convergence initiatives of cloud technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) have demonstrated a massive rise of the futuristic technologies which ensure...